Overnight Bread
Bread will always be my kryptonite. After a long pause in my bread baking, I started up again with this simple overnight bread.
Great tasting bread with a good crispy crust. An easier take on a sourdough bread, when you don't have time to bake a Basic Country bread a la Tartine.
Makes 2 small round loafs.
Ingredients:
- 150 g whole wheat flour
- 500 g all-purpose flour
- 500 ml water
- 5 g live yeast (about ½ teaspoon dry yeast)
- 50 ml sourdough (leaven)
- 15 g salt
Directions:
Leaven:
Feed your sourdough or leaven the night(about 8-10 hours) before you want to start making the dough.
To test leaven's readiness, drop a spoonful into a bowl of room-temperature water. If it sinks, it is not ready and needs more time to ferment and ripen. If it floats, it's ready to use. As it develops, the smell will change from ripe and sour to sweet and pleasantly fermented.
Bread:
Mix water, yeast, sourdough and whole wheat flour in a stand mixer. Add all-purpose flour and salt, and knead the dough for 10-12 minutes, to build up the gluten in the dough.
Grease a dough-rising bucket with a thin coat of olive oil. Let the dough rise in the prepared bucket, lid on, for about 90 minutes at room temperature. Place the dough overnight in the refrigerator.
Next take out the dough, and pour the dough on a non-floured kitchen table, divide the dough in 2 and shape them into rounds.
Line 2 baskets with clean kitchen towels, generously dusted with flour. Transfer each round to a basket, smooth side down and let to rest, covered, at room temperature, about 1 hour before baking. Meanwhile preheat oven with the dutch oven to 500℉ (260℃).
Gently flip one bread into heated dutch/french oven. Score top twice using a razor blade matfer lame. Cover with lid. Return to oven, and reduce oven temperature to 450℉(235℃). Bake for 20 minutes.
Remove lid and continue to bake until crust is deep golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes more.
Transfer loaf to a wire rack, and let it cool completely.
To bake the second loaf, raise oven temperature to 500℉ (260℃), wipe out dutch/french oven with a dry kitchen towel, and reheat with lid for 10 minutes. Repeat the bake.
Enjoy!