The bf really loves pasta. So whenever I extend an invitation to come over for pasta, he never refuses. When I tell him I'm making curry, he says no thanks. I still don't understand. My curry is the best. I am known for this dish. When my old roommate moved out, all he asked for was the container of my red curry in the freezer. I usually made a huge pot and gave some away to my friends and froze portions for later meals. I don't do leftovers but I do leftover curry. It is my favorite dish.
Off on a tangent again. I'm not posting about the pasta dish. Nothing too special tonight. I'm not making my own meatballs. I purchased two pounds of hot chicken italian sausage. It is the bread I am posting about.
The last time I made it I told myself I would make a few adjustments. The loaf came out too flat in my dutch oven. I wanted a bigger boule of bread. My dutch oven looks about the same size that Jim Lahey used. I decided to double the recipe.
6 cups flour; bread (This time I only used 4.5 cups of bread and 1.5 of AP. I ran out of bread flour.)
1 Tablespoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of instant yeast (I bought a jar of bread machine yeast this time instead of the little packets. Bread machine yeast = instant yeast + ascorbic acid.)
3 cups water + more depending on how much the dough swallows up.
The night before:
Mix dry ingredients in a bowl. (I used my cheap plastic sterilite because it is big and it has a loose-fitting lid.)
Mix in 3 cups of waters. Add more until you get a wet shaggy dough. This term still confuses me. I'm not sure what is considered shaggy. I try for a wet dough that I can actually grab with my hand and pull away from the bowl.
Let the dough sit at room temperature for 12-17 hours (I think I let it sit longer than 17 hours last time and the bread was still delicious. I wouldn't go too much beyond the 17 hours without refrigerating it. My experiment in the room next door shows how just plain old flour and water can go bad.)
The next day. A few hours before dinner.
Generously flour a work surface. Dump dough onto surface and fold dough over itself several time. Form a boule.
Spray a bowl with oil. Place dough, seam side down in oiled bowl. Cover with damp flour sack towels. Let rise until doubled in size (approximately 2 hours).
Place dutch oven in oven. (The reason I do this is because I want the dutch oven to heat up slowly. I'm afraid that if I place the dutch oven in a hot oven, it will shock it. It is sorta like how you never throw a hot pan in cold water. You need to give it time to acclimate itself.) Preheat oven to 45o degrees. (Jim says 500 degrees but I'm too chicken to heat my oven up that high.)
When dough has doubled in size, take the hot dutch oven out, line with a piece of parchment paper, spray with oil, dump the dough out of the bowl, into the dutch oven. Jim Lahey says to have the seam side up. I don't know why, other than for a more rustic look. Cover the dutch oven with a lid. Prior to dumping the dough into the dutch oven, you can roll it in flour, wheat bran, corn meal, or oat bran. It gives the finished boule and more artisan look.
Bake covered for abotu 30 minutes. I think I will add a few minutes since I doubled the recipe. Take off lid and bake an additional 15-30 minutes until golden brown on top.
Let bread cool a little before slicing. I'm always terrible with this part. I just want to tear into the bread.
Wet shaggy dough. Just mixed.
12 hrs later: Nice and bubbly. You can bake it at this point but I want to wait a few hours for dinner. I will likely let it go until 17 hours for better flavor. The big bowl of dough is actually sitting in my bedroom on my makeup table. I find that dough does better upstairs since it is warmer than the kitchen. I usually leave it in the spare bedroom/storage room but I have the sourdough starter experiment going on in that room and I do not want any commercial yeast to find its way out of this big bowl into my containers of starters. I want to catch wild yeast; not commercial yeast.
17 hrs. Even more bubbles.
Folded and placed in an oiled bowl.
Proofed until doubled. It doesn't look like it has doubled. The metal bowl is a lot deeper than the plastic bowl.
Dumped into a preheated cast iron.
Baked.
I'm not sure I should have doubled the recipe. It almost filled the entire dutch oven. It is shaped like the dutch oven. The center is still very wet. The dough is gummy in the center. Right now it is sitting in a warm oven, hoping that it will dry out a little.
After sitting in the warm oven for about an hour and on the counter for most of the night, the bread actually tasted cooked and was not as gummy. This bread is too moist and moist in a not so good way.
After sitting in the warm oven for about an hour and on the counter for most of the night, the bread actually tasted cooked and was not as gummy. This bread is too moist and moist in a not so good way.
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