Homemade artisan bread

Dig it, Daddy-o, because it IS artisan. That right there is ARTS!

And for a regular bloke. Who does this, just because they want some bread? Huh? 

Tons of people, turns out, but I don't know any. I am the only one I know. 

Imagine the loneliness and isolation.

Knowing lots of people and knowing my kind is out there but not knowing any.

It's hard being a pillar of strength and individuality amid such powerful and cogent and compelling forces to conformity.

But we soldier on.

I could not pick this up to transport it to the searing hot clay cloche. This is dangerous, I'm a natural born klutz, and this blob is impossible. A lot of its aeration is lost to mishandling. Finally, I rolled it onto the edge of a cookie tray with a flat edge, and that worked beautifully to tip it into the cloche with perfect alignment, perfect transfer with the side upward that I wanted. 

Were my knife sharpened I'd have a nice clean cut but it needs to be like a razor. As it is the bread burst through my perforations. 

Three bread tricks.

* Exceedingly wet dough. 100% hydration. That means, by weight, equal parts flour and water. By the scoop, 1+1/2 cup cold water, 3 lightly scooped cups flour. There you go, 100% hydration by weight. Very wet indeed.

* Exceedingly slow fermentation, overnight, started with scant 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast and full dose of retarding salt and cold water. Careless mixing. No kneading. You'll be amazed how quickly it grows and fills the bowl anyway.

* Exceedingly hot oven. High as it will go. With some kind of cloche, the materials available are broad. Cast iron pot with a lid will do. Enamelware casserole works very well. 

Flank steak sandwich on homemade bread

The dough is not kneaded, rather, it is kept in the bowl and kept on the wet side, more of a sponge than a firm dough, more loose than stiff. An edge is pulled then folded back onto the top. The bowl is rotated and another edge is pulled and stacked on top again, patty cake style, turned, pulled, and folded again, and again and again until the bowl is fully rotated, and then more if an edge should stick out. This is where salt is introduced between layers, and additional dusting of flour between layers where necessary to prevent the wet dough from sticking to the bowl, until the pile of pulled and stacked edges is sufficiently steady to vaguely hold its shape. This stretching substitutes for kneading, it is a form of kneading, and it results in a satisfactory outer skin that will keep it all together and become the bread's crust when baked.

It is an eloquent and professional technique of producing a loaf of bread. It is the sort of thing we pros do once we get over ourselves. 

Pizza stone and large unglazed bisque clay bowl preheating to maximum hotness. You can see how the bowl inverted will have the shape of a cloche, a hat. This top and bottom will behave as a super heated enclosed clay oven. 

Mortadella sandwich on homemade bread

3 cups flour unsifted.

1 + 1/2 cup water

1/4 t commercial yeast

1 t salt

Slightly less than 100% hydration. 

A cup of sifted flour is usually 4oz. A scooped cup of compacted flour is aprox 5oz. So 15 oz. flour

A cup of water is 8 liquid oz. So 12 oz. water.

Mixed to shaggy dough. Not kneaded. Covered and left alone for 12 hours. Dumped onto  lightly floured work surface. Hands floured, bench scrapper floured. Edges pulled and stacked. Shaped into a reasonable blob. Rested for 20 minutes. Baked at high temperature for 25 minutes inside a preheated clay cloche, an upside down chicken roaster. Uncovered and baked an additional 10 minutes to darken and partially dehydrate. 

This bread is outstanding. It is what professional bakers aim for. The yeast partially digests the flour over that extended length of time as it grows. The dough is partially fermented. That makes the baked bread more readily digestible with less simple sugars, as partially fermented foods are, miso and the like. It is better health-wise than commercial bread that breaks down to sugar, as well as more substantial, more flavorful, and more satisfying.  

The large bubbles, the nice open crumb is a thing of beauty. So unlike commercial mass produced bread that is whipped up quickly within a few hours, punched down to reduce bubbles to uniformly small size to resemble synthetic sponge.

Relish on one side, my own mustard on the other

I cannot stop eating these sandwiches. Sometimes with tomato, sometimes with cheese. Occasionally with avocado. I eat two or three at a time. I already went through one prepackaged 1/2 pound of smallish mortadella, and one full pound of large deli mortadella and now I am starting my second. I've had Boar's head and Imported from Italy, I suppose, eh, Boar's head is imported too, from Canada, this being the U.S.

Mixed meat sandwich on chickpea bread

This sandwich took 24 hours to make. Behold a moment its hand-food savory goodness.

For the full twenty-four hour ordeal the one single recurring thought that kept running through the cook's mind like a corrupted MP3 file stuck playing an endless loop over and over and over as he slogged through each step of the aimless desultory and debilitating sandwich-assembling process was, "Assemble, sandwich. Assemble."

Biga. Poolish. Prefermentation. ↑ 1/2 the water started in advance with minimal yeast.

Turned into this ↓ 18 hours later. It smells strongly of alcohol. 

A handful of chickpeas  ↓ ground to dust in the coffee mill included in the second half

That makes this dough 100% chickpea, according to industry's market-speak. 

But it is enough to color its half of the dough noticeably. 

The second half contains a full measure of yeast. No messing around today. 

New Dough meets Biga and it's love at first sight.  

Now that they are introduced, might as well lay down together and get married. 

Whispers: Let us be as one. 

It's okay, they're married.

After all that I got distracted and the loaf overproofed. I intended the loaf to go into the oven when the yeast began to enter its peak activity. I got to it late. The loaf had already peaked. This mistake would affect the shape and overall look of the finished loaf but nothing else. It turned out fine. 

Alas, for I am without lettuce. Thus lettuceless. This forces me to think of something else. 

KA-POW !

My mustard and my mayonnaise on my bread and if you think that might not make a gigantic favorable difference, well then, it's pistols at 30 paces, Buddy.  

This basil is from the grocery store. It's rooting in a glass of water and it's growing faster than I'm picking it. 

So is that thirty paces total or thirty paces each? I'm asking because I'm new to this, I never did a duel before and it seems like fifteen steps is kind of close. But then I'd hate be taking thirty steps and have you spin around at fifteen steps and shoot me expecting me to do the same. It's important to sort the details before we start out. 

Oh Man, this sandwich is good.