Zoe Francois Artisan Bread Recipes

Steps:

• Preparing Dough for Storage:.
• Warm the water slightly. It should feel just a little warmer than body temperature. Warm water will rise the dough to the right point for storage in about 2 hours. With cold water it will need 3-4 hours.
• Add the yeast to the water in a 5 quart bowl or, preferably, in a resealable, lidded (not airtight) plastic food container or food-grade bucket. Don't worry about getting it all to dissolve.
• Mix in the flour and salt - kneading is unnecessary. Add all of the flour at once, measuring it in with dry-ingredient measuring cups, by gently scooping up the flour, then sweeping the top level with a knife or spatula. Don't press down into the flour as you scoop or you'll throw off the measurement. Mix with a wooden spoon, a high-capacity food processor (14 cups or larger) fitted with the dough attachment, or a heavy duty stand mixer fitted with the dough hook until the mixture is uniform. If you're hand mixing and it becomes too difficult to incorporate all the flour with the spoon, you can reach into your mixing vessel with very wet hands and press the mixture together. Don't knead, it isn't necessary. You're finished when everything is uniformly moist, without dry patches. It takes a few minutes, and will yield a dough that is wet and loose enough to conform to the shape of its container.
• Allow to rise. Cover with lid (not airtight or it could explode the lid off). Allow the mixture to rise at room temperature until it begins to collapse (or at least flattens on the top), approx 2 hours, depending on room temperature, and initial water temperature Longer rising times, up to 5 hours, won't harm the result.
• You can use a portion of the dough any time after this period. Fully refrigerated dough is less sticky and easier to work with than dough at room temperature.
• On Baking Day:.
• prepare your loaf tin, tray, or whatever you're baking it in/on. Sprinkle the surface of your refrigerated dough with four. Pull up and cut of a grapefruit-size piece of dough (c 1 lb), using a serrated knife.
• Hold the mass of dough in your hands and add a little more flour as needed so it won't stick to your hands. Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all 4 sides, rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go. Most of the dusting flour will fall off - that's fine, it isn't meant to be incorporated. The bottom of the loaf may appear to be a collection of bunched ends, but it will sort itself out during resting and baking.
• The correctly shaped final product will be smooth and cohesive. The entire process should take no more than 30 - 60 seconds.
• Rest the loaf and let it rise in the form, on the tray/pizza peel, for about 40 minutes Depending on the age of the dough, you may not see much rise during this period. That's fine, more rising will occur during baking.
• Twenty minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 450°F Place an empty broiler tray for holding water on any other shelf that won't interfere with the rising bread.
• Dust and Slash. Dust the top of the loaf liberally with flour, which will allow the slashing knife to pass without sticking. Slash a quarter inch deep cross, diagonal lines, or tic-tac-toe pattern on top using a serrated knife.
• After a 20 min preheat you're ready to bake, even though the oven thermometer won't be at full temperature yet. Put your loaf in the oven. Pour about 1 cup of hot water (from the tap) into the broiler tray and close the oven to trap the steam.
• Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the crust is nicely browned and firm to the touch.
• Store the rest of the dough in the fridge in your lidded (not airtight) container and use it over the next 14 days. The flavour and texture improves, becoming like sourdough. Even 24 hours of storage improves the flavour.
• This is the standard bread. There are loads of variations - both savory and sweet - in the book.

Steps:

• MIXING AND STORING THE DOUGH:.
• Whisk together the flours, yeast, salt and xanthan gum in a 5-quart lidded Round Food Storage Container or the mixing bowl of your stand mixer (a metal mixing bowl should be fine as long as it is stainless steel).
• Combine the oil, honey and water; set aside.
• Dump the eggs into the dry ingredients and then stir while you pour in about 1/3 of the oil and water. (Unlike wheat doughs, we do not add all of the liquid at once and stir. If you do that it will result in a lumpy dough).
• Continue to stir while you pour in another 1/3 of the liquid; the dough will start to come together in a thick dough. NOTE: You can use your mixer for these steps with your bread hook rather than stirring the dough ingredients together.
• Add the final 1/3 of liquid and stir until the dough is nice and smooth. Cover container with the lid, but do not snap it shut. Allow it to rest on the counter for about 2 hours.
• Place the dough in the refrigerator and store for up to 7 days.
• NOTE: If you want to bake a loaf immediately after the initial proving you can bake it the first day, but you need to reduce the resting time before hand. In fact, you can mix the dough, shape it and let it rest on the parchment. After it has risen then slide it directly into the oven.
• BAKING DAY:
• On baking day take the bucket from the refrigerator. The dough will be quite fluffy still and you do not want to handle the dough too much. Just like our other doughs the trick is to keep as much of the air bubbles intact as possible.
• Use WET HANDS to remove a 1-pound (grapefruit-size) piece of dough from the bucket. In order to not handle the dough too much you can even scoop it out of the bucket with a slightly wet metal spoon.
• The dough will be quite scraggly when you take it out, just place it on a piece of parchment paper.
• Use wet hands to smooth out the surface of the dough and shape it as desired. DO NOT KNEAD. This may take dipping your hands in the water a few times...to get a nice shape. Gently smooth it out with wet hands into the shape you want.
• Cover dough loosely with plastic wrap and allow to rest on the counter for about 90 minutes. If your kitchen is very warm you may only need about 75 minutes.
• The dough will not have grown much while resting, but it will seem a little bit puffier. Use a serrated knife to cut slashes in the dough.
• BAKING OPTIONS:.
• STONE OR COOKIE SHEET OPTION: If you want to bake using a baking stone, you can OR you can use a cookie sheet.
• Preheat oven to 450°F
• Place parchment paper with your prepared dough on prepared stone or baking sheet.
• Place a pan (not glass) under the baking stone or sheet (at least 4 inches away) and add a cup of hot water to it when you put the loaf in the oven to create steam.
• Bake at 450 degrees for 30 minutes.
• DUTCH OVEN OPTION: Preheat the oven with a 5 1/2 quart Dutch Oven in it to 500 degrees 30 minutes before baking time. (Be sure it is fitted with a metal Replacement Knob, the original plastic knobs can only be heated to about 400 degrees.)
• Remove the pot from the oven and take off the lid.
• Lift the bread on the parchment and VERY CAREFULLY lower the parchment and bread into the pot, replace the lid onto the pot.
• Return to the oven and bake for 20 minutes.
• After 20 minutes remove the lid, turn the heat down to 450F and bake for an additional 15 minutes.
• COOL THE BREAD:
• Once the bread is done baking remove it from the pot using a spatula or from the stone/sheet and transfer to a baking rack to cool.
• ALLOW THE BREAD TO COOL COMPLETELY before eating or the center may seem gummy.
• The loaf is also wonderful toasted and served with butter and marmalade. Enjoy!