This is a recipe that a colleague shared with me and its by far the best bread i’ve ever tried. The original recipe comes from here and as always i’m gonna share how i put it in practice.
Ingredients:
- 3 1/3 cups (430 grams all-purpose flour) plus more for dusting
- 2 teaspoons instant yeast
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1 1/2 + 2 tablespoons water
And, let the games begin! First we put all ingredients in a bowl and we mix them until they’re homogenous – no need to knead. Just mix. One we have this one dough ball, we place it in a container, cover it with some film and let it rest on the side for about 12 hours. My experience is that if you let it rest in the fridge for about 18 hours, the bread will come out like a delicious sourdough but not so strong in taste. In Greece we call this kind of bread loaf “choriatiko” which means “from the village”. I guess that’s quality assurance….
So anyway, the point is that when you take the dough out of the fridge it should be fluffed up and bubbly (and if you smell it, it should have this weird sour smell – but maybe don’t smell it.. not necessary).
The next step is to flour your hands well and take it out of the container on a floured-sprinkled surface. Form a dough ball (do not knead, NO NEED) and put it back to the container for another 15 minutes. Once the 15 minutes are gone, take it out again and place it on a flour-sprinkled parchment (baking) paper. Put it back to the container – as is, in the parchment paper. Let it rest for 2 hours… in the meantime, play with the cat 🙂
Half an hour (30 minutes) before the 2 hours are over, warm up the oven (230 ℃, fan only) and WARM your dutch oven in it (γάστρα, για να καταλάβει και η καημένη η μάνα μου). In other words, the dutch oven should be super hot.
Then, place the dough (with baking paper) in the dutch oven and let it bake for 30 minutes with the lid on. After 30 minutes, remove the lid and let it bake for another 15 minutes.
When time has gone by, remove the dutch oven from the oven, take the bread out (use the parchment wisely so as not to burn yourselves) and let the bread cool down on a rack. Most probably you have to hide it from cats and family members during the cooling process. It looks yummy. It tastes even better 🙂
