Artisan Breads
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Homemade breads comfort the soul, soothe the heart. I love sinking my teeth into a good slice of artisan style bread. The kind made over a few days, so the yeast can bubble and ferment, magically turning flour, water, and salt, into the staff of life, with its chewy flavourful insides and its crunchy outside.

For such a bread, I’ve been experimenting with a recipe from Home Baking: The Artful Mix of Flour and Traditions from Around the World by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. The bread recipe is called Dom’s Large-Batch Italian Boules and Focaccia. My version of the recipe is a smaller batch, with regular round loaves, au naturel, instead of the more elaborate boules.

This bread is sooo good. It does take a two to three days to make, but as Alford and Duguid say, ‘This is a slow-rise dough. The timing is very flexible; it can be made over several days, with very little time required at each step.’ The first day mix up the poolish (5 minutes), the next morning or evening add more water and flour (10 minutes), 6 to 24 hours later add the salt and rest of the flour and knead the dough (15 minutes), then 4 to 6 hours later (or longer if you’re refrigerating or freezing) shape the loaves, let them rise, then bake. No problem. It really is forgiving dough.


Artisan Italian Bread
Make 2 loaves OR 1 loaf and 2 focaccia

Poolish
1-1/2 cups water
1/4 tsp yeast
1-1/2 cups flour

Bread (Step 1 & 2)
3 cups water
1 cup whole-wheat flour or spelt
7 to 8 cups bread flour
1-1/2 tbsp sea salt

For Focaccia (2)
2 to 4 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp coarse sea salt
1 tsp rosemary leaves

Poolish:
Stir yeast into water to dissolve, add flour, stir until smooth. Cover. Let stand 8 to 24 hours.

Bread Step 1:
Add water to poolish, stir, then add the 1 cup of whole wheat or spelt flour and stir well. Add 2 cups of bread flour, stirring until smooth. Cover and set aside for 4 to 12 hours. The poolish or starter is now considered to be in the sponge stage. It does get very bubbly and light.

Bread Step 2:
Sprinkle salt onto sponge and stir in. Add 5 to 6 cups of flour, about 2 cups at a time, stirring and folding dough over to absorb flour until too difficult to stir and fold. Knead dough 5 to 8 minutes. Or knead with bread mixer for 4 to 5 minutes. Dough should be soft, smooth, and almost sticky. Place into a big bowl, cover with plastic, and let rise until doubled, about 3-1/2 to 4 hours or overnight in a cool place (the fridge works great).

Bread Step 3:
If using cold dough, let come back to room temperature before working. Turn dough onto a flat surface and divide into 4 equal pieces. Shape into round loaves and place on a baking sheet that has been sprinkled with semolina or cornmeal. Let rise, covered, for 1-1/2 to 2 hours. Heat oven to 500 F. Using a sharp knife slash three parallel cuts into the tops of the loaves. Place in oven on baking sheet or slide onto bread stone if using. Spritz oven sides (not the element) with water. To create steam, spritz 3 to 4 times in first 5 to 10 minutes of baking. This helps the bread to rise properly.

If you are making Focaccia:
One focaccia = 1/2 of the dough for one loaf of bread
Flatten the dough on lightly floured surface. Stretch over backs of hands. Transfer to baking sheet that has been sprinkled with semolina or cornmeal, gently pressing and stretching the dough out. Let rest if need be to allow easier pressing and stretching. Spread 1/2 the olive oil over the dough. Dimple the dough all over with your fingertips. Sprinkle over 1/2 the salt and rosemary. Bake 12 to 15 minutes.

Repeat with the other focaccia dough. Or flatten dough into a disk (pita-like in size), seal into a plastic bag, and refrigerate for 24 hours or freeze for up to a month. Bring dough back to room temperature before using.

It took me a long time to plunge into the world of artisan breads. The thought of making a bread over days seemed like way too much organization of time and schedules. But really, these breads likely developed not just to result in fabulous flavour and texture you can’t get any other way, but to fit into a busy schedule where it’s easier to do a bit here and there, then to do it all at once over a few hours.

Henry Miller once said, ‘You can travel fifty thousand miles in America without once tasting a piece of good bread.’ With a fresh baked loaf of this Artisan Italian, you’ll be at mile fifty thousand and one at the home of great bread.


Great Artisan Bakery Bread:
La Decadence Gourmande: A Belgian Oriented Bakery & Bistro in Pickering, Ontario, Canada. Update: Jan 2012, I’ve read Internet rumours that they have closed. Tragedy.

Bulk organic herbs, spices and essential oils. Sin
Photo Credit: Sener Aydin
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