Josey Baker Bread

firmly believe in the benefits of a “bold bake.” By baking your bread until most of its crust is a deep, dark brown, you coax out all of the possible flavors from the dough, create a glorious contrast between crunchy outside and soft inside, and also protect the loaf against quickly drying out. This can be a little unnerving at first, as it require

5. Knead a few more times. After 1/2 hour, stretch and fold the dough another ten times. Cover the dough, and leave it alone for another 1/2 hour. Do this another two times, at 1/2-hour intervals.

You have to throw out part of your starter because lots of these little creatures die valiantly for your cause, and also eat up all the available nutrients in the flour. In the process, they also produce a bunch of acid and alcohol, which is great in small amounts, but too much is not good for your bread.

There are a million different opinions on the matter, but let’s just agree that for this sourdough bread, its bulk rise (see the info below) is done when it’s grown in size by about half. A

WHAT TYPE OF LOAF PAN SHOULD I USE? This recipe makes about 2 pounds/900 grams of dough, which will fill out a pan that is 81/2 by 41/2 by 2 in/21.5 by 11 by 5 cm. If you have strong feelings about the final shape of your loaf, you’ll need to get a pan that matches your vision, but all of the bread recipes in this book assume a loaf pan of dimensio

The starter is usually ready to be made into a pre-ferment 12 to 24 hours after its last feeding, depending mostly on temperature and how sour you want your bread to be.

8. Let your loaf rise. Use your spatula or bench knife to scoop up the shaped loaf, and plop it into the basket, smooth-side down. If you want to bake the bread in 4 to 6 hours, let the loaf sit out somewhere in your kitchen. If you want to bake it anywhere from 6 to 24 hours later, stick the loaf in the fridge (or just outside if it’s cool out—about

Possible Bread-Baking Schedules (PBBS) WHAT YOU’RE DOING PBBS #1: “AFTER DINNER” PBBS #2: “EARLY BIRD” PBBS #3: “LUNCH BREAK” mix pre-ferment (step 2) after dinner, say 8 P.M. before you go to work/school, say 8:30 A.M. during your lunch break, maybe 12:30 P.M. mix dough (step 4) before breakfast, say 8:30 A.M. after dinner, say 8 P.M. about 10 or

the magic happen. Leave the dough alone until it has increased in size by about half, which will take 3 to 4 hours.