Crusty Bread by kat167

Crusty Bread Recipe

The only complicated part is timing. You need 3 hours the first day, overnight refrigeration, then 5 hours the second day.

DAY 1

Put into your cobalt blue KitchenAid:

2 cups bread flour (you can taste the difference) 1 cup water, room temp ¼ teaspoon yeast.

Using dough hook, mix at low speed until it looks mixed. Dump into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap for 3 hours, then refrigerate at least 8 hours and up to 24. [overnight]

DAY 2

Take out your dough from DAY 1 and leave it on the counter.

Put into your cobalt blue KitchenAid:

3 cups bread flour 1 ¼ cup water, room temp 1 teaspoon yeast

Using dough hook, mix at low speed until it looks mixed. Stop, cover with plastic wrap, and let it sit for 20 minutes.

Then, unwrap plastic (heh), add DAY 1 dough plus 2 teaspoons salt to KitchenAid bowl mix, and mix at low speed for 1-2 minutes. Turn up to next click on KitchenAid, and beat for 3-4 minutes. Dump dough into a big bowl, re-use your two sheets of plastic to cover, then let it sit on counter. [Write down the time!—it’s easy to forget how many times you’ve turned the bread]

1 hour later: turn the dough by folding top down one third, bottom up one third, then turning it over from left side onto right (into halves). Basically, work it gently. Re-cover with plastic.

1 hour later, repeat.

1 hour after that, gently scrape the dough onto a floured surface, pat into 9-10 inch square, then fold left corner down to middle, right corner down to middle, then top part over so it looks like a big fat loaf of bread. Using dough scraper, slice down the middle into two loaves, then gently and quickly shape them into rough loaf shapes. Place on parchment paper, slide onto peel or flat cookie sheet, flour tops LIBERALLY, and re-use that same old plastic to cover them.

Meanwhile, put baking stone in oven on rack so that bread is close to the middle of the oven but has room to rise, and set oven to 500 degrees.

An hour later, take off plastic, slash bread, dump some cold water on ‘em, and slide parchment paper’d loaves onto baking stone. Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce temp to 400 degrees and spin loaves around. They’ll bake for another 20-30 minutes. Cool on racks.

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