Artisan Bread
Today I made some bread for the first time this year. Although I’ve posted bread recipes before, I wanted to post some photos of this particular loaf. Why? Because four key things are different this time.
1) Photos: It doesn’t really affect the bread, but it does affect the photos I take of it—I have a brand-spankin’-new Nikon D40 that I had to buy for a photo class, and I had no idea how much a good camera and a few tricks could improve my photography. The best part is: no more of that orange tint from my kitchen light! I know I won’t miss it, and I’m sure you won’t either.
2) Yeast: I was previously using regular active dry yeast for my bread because I couldn’t find instant yeast at Kroger (they must have been out whenever I looked before). I finally found some last week and boy, does it make a difference.
3) Salt: I used genuine sea salt in the dough this time. Really makes it taste more authentic and rustic.
4) Baking Stone: I used my new baking stone that my mom bought me for Christmas, and WOW—I didn’t realize what a drastic effect it could have on my bread! The crust was SO perfect. Super crunchy and perfectly baked, and the inside was wonderful and moist and soft. Without the baking stone, the crust was fine, but it didn’t have the amazing crunch that artisan breads have. I finally felt like I had actually baked artisan bread.
So, with that, here are just a few photos of the bread I made today. You can find the recipe for boule dough (the master recipe) and further instructions in this post. If you’re using a baking stone, preheat your oven to 450 with your baking stone on the middle rack for 20 minutes prior to baking time. Then, when you’re ready to bake, slide your loaf onto the baking stone, pour 1 cup of hot tap water into your broiler pan, and bake for 30 minutes.
Look at all that dough! With active dry yeast, the bowl would only be about half full, but the instant yeast makes a huge difference. I didn’t really think it was that big a deal that I didn’t have instant yeast before, but apparently it was!
This time, I dusted my surface with cornmeal to help the loaf slide onto the baking stone at baking time. It still stuck quite a bit and therefore the loaf came out a bit deformed, but the cornmeal gives that nice grainy texture to the bottom of the loaf that you find in artisan breads. The book suggests using a pizza peel to shape your loaf and slide it onto the baking stone, but I’m not too keen on buying a pizza peel just for this reason. I’ll have to experiment and find another solution.
The loaf, pre-bake. At this point, you let it rise for 40 minutes just like that. Then, you dust the top with flour and make a tic-tac-toe pattern in the top with a knife just before baking, like this:
Post-bake. The crumb is perfectly moist, and look at the beautiful crust!
Amazing how a few little changes can affect the outcome of a simple loaf of bread. All the bread I made before was good, but this loaf is lightyears beyond them. I guess the moral of the story is: if you want to make great food, don’t cut corners…when you can avoid it, that is. :)
