Crusty white bread

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This simple bread recipe makes two medium-sized extremely crusty loaves with a sourdough-like internal texture and minimal active preparation time with no kneeding, knocking-back, pre-ferments, or multi-stage fermentations. The recipe is adapted from this baguette recipe with the salt content increased, albeit still within the 2.2% flour weight recommended upper limit for salt content in bread.

Ingredients

• 975 grams high-protein bread flour,
• 730 millilitres room temperature water,
• 20 grams salt,
• Half a teaspoon of baker's yeast.

Method

Add the flour, salt, and yeast to a mixing bowl taking care to keep the yeast and salt separated. Pour in the water and stir with the handle of a wooden spoon until a rough dough forms and all flour is incorporated. Note at this point the bread dough is extremely stiff and will take some effort to incorporate fully — I have previously snapped a wooden spoon mixing at this point — and some effort will need to be expended to scrape all flour from the base and side of the mixing bowl to incorporate it. However, depending on your flour, if the mixture proves too dry to fully incorporate everything, carefully add small amounts of water until just enough is added to combine everything, taking care to avoid making the dough too wet. Adding too much water at this stage will make the resulting dough too hard to work with once fermented.

Once formed, cover the bowl containing the dough with cling film or a clean teatowel and set aside in a cool room to ferment for at least eight hours. Previously, I have left my dough to ferment for up-to 48 hours in the past with good results.

After fermentation the dough will be sticky, slack and quite hard to work with, so you must prepare and move fast once ready to bake. Preheat a fan oven to 250 degrees Celsius and prepare two flat baking trays by sprinkling a little flour over the surface. Then, with a wet hand, gradually work your hand under the dough to remove it from the mixing bowl and separate into two equal portions. Roughly shape these into your desired loaf shapes, place in the centre of the baking trays, slash their tops with a very sharp knife to allow them to expand whilst baking, and sprinkle a little flour on top. Once done, quickly move them into the oven, as they will start to expand and lose their shape once placed on the baking tray (this is normal). To help generate a surface crust, throw a cup of boiling water into the base of the oven to generate steam before closing the door.

Bake in the centre of the oven for 45-55 minutes, until risen, their surfaces are a dark brown, and they sound hollow when tapped.