Simple Crusty Bread
- Total Time
- About 45 minutes plus about 3 hours' resting and rising
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
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Ingredients
- 1½tablespoons yeast
- 1½tablespoons kosher salt
- 6½cups unbleached, all-purpose flour, more for dusting dough
- Cornmeal
Preparation
- Step 1
In a large bowl or plastic container, mix yeast and salt into 3 cups lukewarm water (about 100 degrees). Stir in flour, mixing until there are no dry patches. Dough will be quite loose. Cover, but not with an airtight lid. Let dough rise at room temperature 2 hours (or up to 5 hours).
- Step 2
Bake at this point or refrigerate, covered, for as long as two weeks. When ready to bake, sprinkle a little flour on dough and cut off a grapefruit-size piece with serrated knife. Turn dough in hands to lightly stretch surface, creating a rounded top and a lumpy bottom. Put dough on pizza peel sprinkled with cornmeal; let rest 40 minutes. Repeat with remaining dough or refrigerate it.
- Step 3
Place broiler pan on bottom of oven. Place baking stone on middle rack and turn oven to 450 degrees; heat stone at that temperature for 20 minutes.
- Step 4
Dust dough with flour, slash top with serrated or very sharp knife three times. Slide onto stone. Pour one cup hot water into broiler pan and shut oven quickly to trap steam. Bake until well browned, about 30 minutes. Cool completely.
- Variation: If not using stone, stretch rounded dough into oval and place in a greased, nonstick loaf pan. Let rest 40 minutes if fresh, an extra hour if refrigerated. Heat oven to 450 degrees for 5 minutes. Place pan on middle rack.
Private Notes
Comments
775g flour
8g yeast
23g salt
630g water
I reduced this recipe by 1/3 and it makes a loaf just the right size for a family of 4. 1 1/2 tsp yeast 1 1/2 tsp salt 2 cups + 3 tbsp flour 1 cup water I also used a cast iron dutch oven to bake in the oven. Preheat the oven and dutch oven to 450 for 30 minutes. Put the dough in the dutch oven and bake for 30 minutes covered. After 30 minutes, remove the lid and bake for 5 more minutes. Works beautifully without need for pizza stone or water.
Must have done something wrong. Most of the dough wound up attached to me and half the kitchen. I think it could be weaponized and used to subdue the enemy or large rioting mobs in thick, inescapable goo.
It was easy and yummy. I did it in a bread pan since I don't have a stone. It was great. I also did a loaf later out of the fridge. Let it sit for an hour and then baked. It was yummy. It had been in fridge for a few days and had a little bit of a sourdough taste. Yum!
Made a half recipe, 2 small loaves. A little bland. May need to add more salt. All the discussions with different opinions about measurements make things very confusing. I would think, since this recipe has been around for a long time, NYT would have stepped in and made a change or at least commented on what the correct measurements are.
Waste of time and effort. Extremely wet and sticky. Not simple.