This basic bread recipe is a great way to introduce yourself to the ingredients and techniques you’ll use in baking great bread. Once you’ve mastered this, you can start incorporating other ingredients and trying different yeasts and baking schedules.
This page will assume you’ve already read through and understand our Getting Started Guide. If you haven’t read that yet, please check it out and familiarize yourself with some terms and the process of bread making.
Schedule: This bread uses the standard bakers yeast schedule
Yield: 1 loaf
Equipment Needed:
See our What to Buy page for links to purchase some of the items below
- bucket/bowl for fermenting
- thermometer for measuring water / dough temps
- kitchen scale for weighing ingredients
- banneton or proofing basket
- dutch oven for baking the bread
Ingredients:
- 500g bread flour (I prefer King Arthur for its high protein content)
- 390g water @ 93’F
- 11g sea salt
- 2g active dry yeast
Method:
- Mix the flour and water and let it rest for 30 minutes (this is the autolyse).
- Combine the yeast and salt with the dough and mix extremely well.
- Perform 3 stretch + folds in the first 90 minutes of fermentation (separate each stretch + fold by 30 minutes)
- Allow the bread to ferment for a total of 5 hours after mixing.
- Shape the dough into a ball and let it proof in a banneton. Put the banneton inside a bag to keep the moisture in. Proof for 30-60 minutes depending on room temperature.
- After 15 minutes of proofing, preheat the oven (with the dutch oven inside) to 450’F
- When dough has fully proofed, transfer to dutch oven and bake at 450’F for 38 minutes with the dutch oven lid on, then remove the dutch oven lid and bake for an additional 14 minutes.
- Remove the bread and let it cool for at least an hour before cutting into it.
Alegre Bread 