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Makes 4 loaves
Starter dough (the day before)
What you’ll need
- 2 1/4 cups bread flour
- 1 1/4 cups water
- 1/4 tsp. yeast (dry)
What to do
- In a large bowl or plastic container, combine flour and yeast, then add water.
- Mix with spoon or hands until all dry ingredients are hydrated, it should have no dry spots and be somewhere between a dough and a batter.
- Leave overnight, covered
Final dough
What you’ll need
- 5 1/8 cups bread flour
- 2 cups water
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 2 1/2 teaspoons yeast (dry)
- Starter dough
What to do
(in same container)
- put flour, salt, yeast on top of starter dough (which will now be nice and bubbly and fragrant)
- combine these dry ingredients together so salt and yeast are distributed evenly throughout flour
- add water, hottest you can get it out of the tap
- mix everything together with your hands until there is no dry flour
big sticky mess
- rest for 20 minutes covered
- knead the dough - I left mine in the container and folded it on itself over and over again
- rest for one hour, covered
- fold dough - fold each of the 4 sides into the middle and flip the whole thing over so it is smaller and tighter
- rest for one hour, covered
- cut out rough pieces (you can use a bread knife - wetting it first helps, but I just used my hands- wet- to make pieces)
- put pieces on baking sheet with tiny amount of olive oil to prevent sticking.
- let rise for 15-20 minutes
- bake at 450 for 20-25 minutes
- check that top and bottom are evenly baking. after 10 minutes, I switched my baking sheets and moved the top sheet to the bottom and bottom sheet to the top. Watch the bottom of the breads so they don’t burn.
