This loaf of 100% whole grain, sourdough leavened bread is the perfect “daily driver” for me; it’s exactly what I want to experience when I make some toast or a hearty sandwich. Sliced and buttered (un-toasted), it also makes a magnificent complement to a meal of soup or pasta.
The specific grains used and the long, slow, partly cold bulk fermentation develop a subtle, amazing flavor that includes more than a hint of sour tang without in any way overwhelming the wholesome, sweet, complex personality of the wheat.
I think that there are about as many different ways to bake bread as there are bakers of bread. And I am of the opinion that due to the number of hard-to-control variables in bread baking, and the complexity of the interactions between them, that every bread “recipe” should be seen as a starting point for experimentation and not a stone tablet, guaranteed to produce a specific result.
Rustic Italian Bread An Easy Recipe That I Inherited
The information presented here is a set of ingredients, measurements, timings, and techniques that one intermediate bread baker has developed for one particular style of bread loaf. It’s the result of several years of trying other people’s recipes and techniques, coupled with a lot of my own
Experimentation. I’m presenting specifics here, but please read them as a beginning and not an end. This is especially important for the length of the bulk fermentation period. Aside from the freshness and specific qualities of the flour you start with, the fermentation period is probably the single most important variable, but it’s also the hardest to pin down. And while I could tell you how long I did things for a particular bake, what I can’t really tell you is how I decided how long that would be; because it totally depends on my observing the dough and the intuition I’ve developed over the years of when done is
If you are like me (and probably also if you are nothing like me), you are going to make a lot of mistakes learning how to bake bread. I want to put on my Pope Hat or Rabbi Tallit for a moment, wave my virtual fingers over your virtual head, and say, “That’s totally OK. You are pre-absolved of all bread-baking sins.” Over years of trying this and that, I have baked a lot of ugly bread. And certainly some loaves have tasted better and worse than others. But I honestly can’t remember ever baking an inedible loaf of bread and plenty of the ugliest ones were absolutely delicious. I’ve noticed that a lot of questions in the forum here at start with “Can I …” and I believe that the best answer in most cases is “Yes you can. Let us know how it comes out.” There are a few things in bread baking that you really shouldn’t do, like spraying cold water on a hot clay baking vessel, but other than stuff like that, if you wonder about something, just go ahead and try it. I think the worst thing that could possibly happen is that you end up with bread that you don’t want to eat and waste a few dollars worth of materials. But you’ll have learned something valuable for next time, so a worthwhile investment of a couple bucks and a few hours.
Same Day Country Loaf
Flour: For this bread, I use home-milled 100% whole red fife flour, and home-milled 100% whole hard white wheat flour produced by milling organic wheat berries I got from with my Mockmill 100. In my experience, freshly milled flour has a large positive effect on the flavor of your bread. But if you don’t have a home mill (or access to a friend’s to borrow which is how I became convinced that I needed one), I think it should work fine to substitute milled whole red fife and milled whole hard white wheat like the flour you can get from . They mill in very small batches and so whatever you get from them is likely to be much fresher than what you find in a grocery store or buy from one of the big mills (
I chose red fife because I just really love the flavor of this heirloom grain. Hard white wheat (unlike hard red wheat) has a pleasant, neutral flavor profile that doesn’t get in the way of the red fife, and due to its relatively high protein / gluten content, adds some additional strength and integrity to the dough.
Starter: I keep a small jar of “mother” starter culture in my refrigerator all the time. I feed it only organic white bread flour about every 2-3 weeks. Usually, the night before a bake I will take a teaspoon of this mother starter and combine it with 1/2 a cup or so of whole grain flour and about 1/3 cup of water to make a bake-specific
Four Hour French Country Bread
For the next day’s loaf. But for this recipe, I use such a small amount of starter (30g – about a heaping tablespoon) that I just take it straight out of the jar of mother starter, right from the fridge. The small amount and its relatively low activity (unfed and right out of the fridge) is a feature for this recipe which takes advantage of a very long, slow bulk fermentation period.
Kneading: Although I haven’t tried it, I am pretty sure that you could do this bread completely no-knead and get excellent results. Especially if you increased the hydration a bit (which I have done, up to 100%, with great results, though the dough becomes more difficult to handle). But I like to do a small amount (5-10 minutes) of Rubaud-style kneading
One of my bread gurus, Trevor J. Wilson. This short video shows what it looks like when I do it. If you can’t tell what I’m doing, and to learn a lot, watch TJW’s longer video (linked from his name). I do this an hour or so into the bulk proof and I wet my hands before handling the dough to keep it from sticking to my fingers.
Open Crumb Rustic Bread Recipe With Biga :the Best Homemade Artisan Bread Recipe
Stretching and Folding: I have an idiosyncratic “wiggle stretch” and fold technique that I’ve evolved. I find that it develops a lot of strength in the dough. I think you can see in the video below how much elasticity develops over just a few wiggle stretches. During the room temperature parts of the bulk fermentation, I’m doing this periodically, whenever I think about it – maybe every hour or two. Again, with a wet hand. As you can see, I’m not concerned at all about de-gassing the dough or in any way being “gentle” with it. This rustic loaf is meant to be man handled. Over the course of the initial period of bulk fermentation the character of the dough transforms, and toward the end of the first ten hours it’s starting to feel very alive in my hand.
And I thought, you know, why can’t my whole grain bread have a crumb more like that? And then I thought about the differences between a
Is made from laminated dough rolled up. I can’t make a whole grain loaf with white flour, and I’m not going to laminate the dough with layers of butter like a real
The Best Homemade Artisan Bread Recipe
, but I can kinda, sorta, laminate the dough and roll it up, right? So I tried it. And I didn’t get a
As in all things bread-baking, sometimes it goes one way and sometimes it goes another way. In the video above, probably due to the timing and amount of my stretching and folding, the dough was not as extensible as it can sometimes be. So in this case, after I stretched the dough the initial rectangle was not as big as it sometimes is. When I have more extensible dough and a bigger rectangle, I will add another top to bottom fold after the first one so that the height of the rectangle, before rolling it up, is just about the length of my proofing basket.
Baking: For years now I have been baking ARTISAN BREAD! And ARTISAN BREAD! has a thick, dark, chewy crust with enough caramelization to give it a bit of bitter. I really enjoy that kind of crust. Then one day I baked some
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And I noticed that I was also really enjoying the light, thin, crispy crust quite a lot. So for this country loaf, I decided to aim for something in between and I experimented with using a lower oven temperature than I usually bake bread with. And I found that it really works for me. Try it and see what you think. Of course if you prefer the darker, crustier ARTISINAL
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