I got this from Mother Earth News.
3 cups lukewarm water
1 1/2 tbsp yeast
1/12 tbsp sea salt
6 1/2 cups flour
cornmeal
I add 3 tbsp of sugar cuz we like our bread a little sweet.
Bake at 450 for 30 minutes. I take mine out a little early. We don't like the outside real crispy.
I mixed the flour and sugar together in a large bowl. Put warm water, yeast and salt in mixer (I use my Kitchen Aid with dough hook). Let the yeast and saltwater mixture sit for about 3 minutes. Then turn on the mixer to mix yeast into water. After about 30 seconds or so, start adding flour. When all of the flour has been mixed together, dough will be pretty wet. Add to large bowl that has a lid (but leave it vented) or just cover with foil or plastic wrap. Let sit in warm place for about 3 hours. Then refrigerate for at least 3 hours. You can bake after the initial 3 hours but it is pretty wet and hard to make a loaf.
When forming the loaves, take a grapefruit sized ball and add a little flour to it so it doesn't stick to your hands. Pull the underside up in four or five sections so that the bottom of the ball is now on top. This is what you do instead of kneading the bread. This is what makes it so easy, I think. After pulling the bottom over, drop onto a baking stone with either flour or corn meal to keep it from sticking. You also want to put about a cup of water in a shallow pan under the bread. I forgot to do this today, too. I'll be lucky if this is fit to eat. LOL
Yesterday I left it sit for over 5 hours and it smelled like beer when I walked into the house. I was afraid it wasn't any good but didn't want to throw it out since I made two batches and that would be a lot of wasted ingredients. So I put it in the fridge until this morning.
Got up this morning and made two loaves. They are in the oven now and the beer smell is pretty much gone so I think it's good. The dough was pretty wet but I'm almost positive I added too much water yesterday. I didn't look up the recipe and I think I put 3 1/2 cups of water. Oops.
Here is one in the oven. As you can see, my baking stones are almost black from lots of use. If you have one that looks like this and you want it to look new again, put it in the oven while you use the clean function on your oven. It will come out looking brand new.
The bread is looking pretty flat but it usually does. I put a lot of flour o
n top but it just rubs off when it is done. I also add a sprinkle of sugar on top with melted butter when it is right out of the oven. I'll let you know if this batch is any good. If not, I'll have to make more tonight because we are out of bread and this is so much better than store bought. If you make this, let me know how it turns out.
Happy Homeschooling.
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