Artisan Bread

This bread looks fancy and tastes fancy but is stupidly easy to make. Let’s make bread together.

Get out 3 cups of flour, 1 1/2 cups warm to the touch water, 1/2 teaspoon of yeast and 1 teaspoon of salt. That’s it. That’s all you need.

Dump it all together.

Stir it up, do not knead. It’s okay if it’s shaggy and not all looking like dough. It really is okay.

I decided to add some rosemary. You can add anything you want. Anything. Normally I’d add herbs and stuff when I initially dump all the other ingredients in, but I decided this last minute.

Now cover it with loose plastic wrap or a tea towel and set it in a warm spot, I use the microwave, for 8-12ish hours. (Don’t let this deter you, the timing isn’t terribly precise, just before you leave for work in the morning dump all this stuff in a bowl and when you get home you can heat the oven and bake it in time for dinner.)

After a lon rise it’ll look basically like soup.

Heat your Dutch oven (or any oven safe cookwear with a lid) with the oven as it preheats to 450°. [if you don’t have a Dutch oven or anything like it, you can bake this in a regular loaf pan or a cake pan, but the crust might not be as thick/crunchy/chewy like artisan bread. But I have done it and it still is yum]

Flour a surface well and scoop out your dough.

Basically we just want to form a ball. As best you can. Usually it’s pretty runny, and that’s okay. Here’s how I do it: grab an edge of the dough and bring it to the center. Keep doing that until you gone around the whole glob of dough. Then, as best you can, pinch all the seams that are now in the center together.

Drop your dough into your hot Dutch oven.

Put the lid on and bake for 30 minutes, then take the lid off and bake for 15 more minutes.

Wait as long as you can before slicing the bread. Waiting until it’s fully cooled is ideal but I rarely do that bc I’m impatient— but it’ll be MUCH easier to slice if you do and your crumb will set properly.

Just tip the pot over and it’ll fall right out.

This is how I slice the bread:
​cut it in half

Take one half and lay it cut side down.

Slice it this way as thick or thin as you want.

Repeat for the other half. If you’re not going to eat the whole loaf in one day, only slice what you’ll eat and store it sitting on the cut side like this until you’re ready to cut it. But don’t wait too long.

This loaf is going to two sweet ladies at my church so I’m preslicing and wrapping them up for them. Enjoy!!

If you make this, tell me how it goes! What flavors would you add? What would you serve it with? Am I terrible at giving instructions? LET ME KNOW.