We’ll spare you the puns and the periphrastic descriptions this round—there’s no knead for all of that.
Sorry…
There is something about bread that people find intimidating. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that mixed flour, water, salt, and yeast enters an oven, and by some witchcraft, exits a baguette, or ciabatta, or boule (she floats and can summon steaming loaves from the inferno with naught but milled wheat and water—burn her!), or the fact (yes, fact) that bread is so damn beautiful, it’s hard to imagine that humans can create it. Whate’r (sometimes anachronistic contractions writhe their way into our writing, especially when we are lectured ad nauseum about the theoretical involvement of psychoactive bread pans in the Salem witch trials by our resident history freak buff—in any event, no apologies will be made) the case may be, many shy away from this most fundamental of human inventions, when it is also one of the easiest to produce.
Ah, yes: “Gateway Bread.” We coined this term (we think…apologies if you came up with it before 2009) because the simplicity of this recipe, and the artisanal quality of the bread that it produces, tend to send the neophyte baker down the dark path of bread baking. For added incentive, we suggest baking this for guests–they will be entirely impressed, and your yearning to bake more bread will be fueled by their unyielding compliments of your supreme awesomeness, and their please-rule-over-us-lesser-mortals-with-your-benevolent-hospitality-your-breadiness’s…well, they’ll be impressed, we’ll stick to that.
Recipe
4 cups bread flour (or all-purpose, even)
2 cups warm water
0.75 TB salt
0.5 tsp yeast
Mix all the dry ingredients together* in a large bowl so that the salt and yeast will be evenly distributed. Add water and mix with a spoon or your hands until all of the flour is incorporated. Cover the bowl with a wet towel or plastic wrap. Let it rise until at least doubled (about 2 hours, though this will depend on the temperature of your kitchen—warmer = faster rise), or let rise for up to 16 hours for better flavor.
Once the dough has risen sufficiently, preheat your oven as high as it goes (or 450°F, whichever). Surrounding the baking dough with steam is essential to a good crust. To achieve this, there are a variety of solutions but consequently a variety of caveats. The rest of these will be explained in another post, but for now, place a metal brownie pan with 0.5″ of hot water water in it on the lowest rack, as close to the heating element as your oven will allow (while the oven preheats). Be sure that you have a rack in the middle and that there are no racks above it so the dough has room to rise (no bread’s style shall be cramped this night!). If you have a pizza/baking stone, make sure that it’s preheating in the oven. Flip a sheet pan over and place parchment paper on top—set aside. Throw a bit of flour on the dough so you can handle it without it sticking to your hands. Take it out with your hands and begin to shape it into a boule (literally ball in French—baguette is used to name drummer’s sticks, magical wands, and a long loaf of bread alike; it refers to the shape, nothing more) by pushing the sides of the dough under itself with your fingertips and pinching those portions together, making the top round and taut. Place your shaped dough on the pan with parchment paper, and either cover it with a large bowl, or oil plastic wrap and drape it loosely over the dough (it needs the room to rise). Let the dough rise until doubled again (30 minutes to over an hours, again it depends on the temperature of your kitchen).
Check that your pan of water has not completely evaporated, and prepare to put your rather corpulent dough into the oven. With a bread knife, carefully make three, 1/4″-deep slits in the dough: this allows the dough to rise evenly, whereas without, any weaker portions of the dough would ‘blow out’, resulting in disfigured bread—this is largely aesthetic. If you do not have a baking stone, simply place the sheet pan, still upside-down, on the middle rack. If you do have a baking stone, tilt the sheet pan to allow the dough and parchment paper to slide it. Close the oven.
The bread has baked when its crust is golden brown. Check it after 10 minutes, and rotate it if one half looks demonstrably darker than the other. Don’t be afraid of dark brown portions—we call those “character.” Be not afraid! Let the bread be darker, many bakers do this intentionally! And should you cut into what you thought was thoroughly-baked dough to find it is anything but, just put it back into the oven (steam is not necessary now). Do not, however, cut into the bread as soon as it is out of the oven—let is cool to room temperature before cutting into it (resist! you can do it!), as it is not “finished” yet (it continues to bake outside the oven, and the moisture that is most concentrated in the center during bake evens out). If you want hot bread (who doesn’t), put it back into the oven.
*What, astute reader! Are the ordinarily thoughtful members of Erubite ignoring the antiseptic quality of sodium chloride and its therefore harmful effect on yeast propagation when they tell you to put the salt in BEFORE the dough has risen? Yes. Yes we are. The concentration of salt is in no way high enough to “kill” all the yeast and meaningfully influence the rising of the dough.
Love,
Science and Experience
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