Easy Bread Recipe

I suck at baking bread.  I can bake a lot of things, but bread has alluded me.... until now.  I found this recipe from Chef Michael Smith.  I love that his "recipe" for cooking is "cooking without a recipe".  His show gives you ideas on how to make meals from what you have, and to be fearless. I love trying new combinations of flavours. (Aside from the fact that I now know my husband DOES NOT like the flavour of cumin!!!)

Anyways, his bread recipe is soooooo easy to follow. The flavour of the bread is great to.  I think because it has so much time for the yeast to work, the flavour is developed.  He has a few recipes that follow the same method.  So far I've only done this one.  It is for a large loaf.

Step One: Mix together

4 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon dry yeast

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

2 1/4 cups warm water



Bread ingredients



Step Two:

Mix just until incorporated.  It will be a wet dough

Wet dough

 Step Three:

Cover with plastic wrap and set aside to rise in a warm place for 18 hours.

I've left it as short as 9 and as long as 24 hours.... they worked out just the same.

Cover and let rise

 After 18 hours, this is how it looks.  Really moist and more than doubled in size.

Doubled dough

 Step Four:

Knock the dough down

Freshly punched dough!!!

 Step Five:

Form into a baking pan. I use my Pampered Chef loaf pan... it's great.

Dough into loaf pan

 Step Six:

Let dough rise again for 2-3 hours.  I cover it, but give it lots of room to expand otherwise it will stick to the wrap.

After two hours of rising

 Step Seven:

 Bake for 45 minutes in a  preheated oven (425 degrees)

Mmmmm... yummy loaf!

This recipe may sound time consuming because it is spread over such a long period of time, but it's really quite easy.  If you forget about it, it doesn't matter.  You can just knock in down.  From my experience, the longer you leave it, the more complex the flavour is. 

I may try mixing cheese in with it one time, or even cracked black pepper.  I think it'd be super.

Cheers,
Elisa