Homemade Artisan Bread
I LOVE bread! In fact when I was younger, the cook would say he hoped I married a baker because I ate so much bread. On trips home from the bakery (Big Treat), I would devour half a loaf of butter bread before we arrived at home. Clearly we bought more than one loaf on those trips. That was just over a decade ago but I still remember the texture of the bread, watching it come out of the oven – a little too hot to be sliced immediately…yum
Nowadays I can’t eat that much bread without paying the price in miles but I still love my bread. I don’t eat it every day but my current favourites are 12 grain and oat nut. Oh and sweet Hawaiian bread? My goodness, it reminds me of Big Treat bread 
Anyway some days ago, I ran out of bread (gasp) so instead of buying some I decided to try a simple homemade bread recipe…
In a large bowl, mix your 1.5 tbsp salt, 1.5tbsp yeast and water.
Then add the flour, sugar and cinnamon. The sugar and cinammon are not necessary – you can substitute the sugar with flour. I include them because I like sweeter breads.
With a wooden spoon (or very clean hands), mix all the ingredients together until incorporated and all the flour has been covered with some water. It should stick together and come off the sides with a tiny bit of resistance
Cover with a lid or greased foil and set aside for 2-5hours.
On a piece of well floured parchment paper, divide dough into three sections. Form each section into a ball by pulling the sides and wrapping them on top.Cover the dough with a clean towel and allow to rest for 40 minutes
Score the dough with a cross for steam to escape as it bakes. Place into a preheated oven and bake for thirty minutes.
Take out of the oven and place on the cooling rack for a few minutes ( The loaf rose a LOT – it ended up twice as tall). It looked way too good to me so I didn’t let it cool much before I sliced it up. I wish I could have captured the pretty steam rising from each slice…
Homemade Artisan Bread
Inactive Prep Time: 5-8 hours
Bake Time: 30 mins
Ingredients
- 5.5 cups All purpose flour
- 1 cup Brown Sugar
- 1.5 tbsp cinnamon
- 1.5 tbsp Active Yeast
- 1.5 tbsp Kosher Salt
- 3 cups warm water
Directions
- In a large bowl, combine warm water, yeast, cinnamon and salt. Mix and dissolve thoroughly
- Add the flour and sugar to the water.
- With a wooden spoon, mix in the flour thoroughly until everything is incorporated.
- Cover the bowl with a lid or greased aluminum foil and let the dough rest for 2-5 hours. It will rise quite a bit during this time.
I let mine rest for 3.5hrs. Since it is a bit cold in LA now, I turned on the heater so the dough could rise in a warmer environment - Put the dough in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours. This makes it easier to work with
- Take the dough out of the refrigerator and sprinkle with dough.
- On a piece of well floured parchment paper, divide dough into three sections
Note: You can freeze the dough for baking later – I saved one section of this batch - Form each section into a ball by pulling the sides and wrapping them on top
- Cover the dough with a clean towel and allow to rest for 40 minutes
- Preheat your oven to 450 degrees F. Depending on your oven, you can turn it on twenty minutes after covering the dough. The oven should be ready by the time the dough has finished resting.
- Uncover the dough and score each section with a cross
- Slide the dough and well-floured parchment paper on to a baking tray and place in the oven
- Bake for thirty minutes
- Take out of the oven and place on cooling rack for a few minutes
- Slice and enjoy
I ate mine with butter and jam. I confess I ate pretty much all of one loaf so now it was off to the treadmill…;)
Addendum: Thawing and Baking
I knew I wanted more bread today so I thawed out the last dough section and baked it. Here are the steps beginning from yesterday.
- The day before you want to bake the bread place the frozen dough in the refrigerator for about 24 hours to thaw
- Unwrap the dough and place in a lightly greased bowl. Cover with a clean towel and allow to rise again – I left it for three hours
- The dough rose quite a bit and had a good bit of air when I picked it up so THWACK!!!! I had to punch it down.
- Then formed it into a ball as outlined above, scored and baked.
- Result: YUM!
Yeah, this was pretty delicious everyone. I had the pleasure of tasting some of the thawed bread yesterday and it was DELICIOUS. And to think that this was made without a mixer…we are bringing back old school cooking! Go Dayo!