My New Favorite Bread Technique

(just click on the picture to see things closer)

So this is what I made for Christmas and it was one of the best easiest bread so far. This was a potato and roasted garlic bread. The crumb was so big and open. Yum yum. The recipe is from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It is even easier than the No Kneed Bread. Get this you mix up the dough i.e. dump dump stir, stick it in the fridge and can use it after a 40 minute rise for up to 2 weeks.

The way they write the recipes the dough is enough for four 1 lb loaves. I halved the recipe. Oh and get this you can just pull hunks out and make whatever sized roll or loaf you want.

So here is what I did
This is the master recipe… (for two 1 l lb loaves)
1.5 C lukewarm water (I used the water I had boiled the potato in)
2 1/4 tsp salt
2 1/4 tsp instant yeast
3 1/4 C all purpose flour
and I added this to make it potato roasted garlic
1/2 roasted garlic
1/2 of a boiled potato mashed
(I throw the other half of each in a ziploc bag and froze it and ended up making more dough later that week)

Mix it all together in a container with a lid (if it’s air tight make sure to leave it cracked). And the flavor just gets better with time. I’d recommend waiting until day 3 (it’s a pretty wet dough when you first make it), I tried it on day 5 and day 8. When you’re ready to used it pull out the amount you want trying to handle it as little as possible. I flour the counter and my hands and use a dough scraper and scoop out a hunch pat pat pat it into a ball, let it rest for a second, then shape it. I’ve found that it’s best to let it rest and not force it. You want to keep as much of the good air bubbles in there. I let the dough rest 40 minutes (according the the recipe) but on Christmas I let it rest closer to 75 minutes (made it shaped it before church) and that made it wonderfully airy. Preheat oven preferably with baking stone at 450 F. And bake it with steam for 25 ish minutes. To know if it’s done tap it on the bottom to see if it sounds hallow.

Oh and the authors of the book have all kinds of variations and they’ve got their own blog where they answer questions really quickly and provide wonder recipes. And there’s a great explanation of how to get the shape of this Pain d’Epi.

Eat it.