1 DOUGH 3 LOAVES | The Easiest (Actually Good) Bread You Can Make

what's up today i'm going to show you guys how to make a really easy rustic bread dough and then we're going to look at three ways to turn that dough into something crusty and delicious for your table you don't need any skills you don't need a stand mixer and you definitely don't need a sourdough starter so if that sounds like fun stick around let's get started [Music] like i said this is not a sourdough bread recipe and i've designed it for the beginner baker so if you've never made bread before this is going to be a really great place to start one thing that i definitely want to do though is strike that balance between complexity of flavor and simplicity of process so we are going to start by building a pre-ferment and all i mean by that is mixing some flour water and yeast together before we actually mix our dough to build some flavor and to give the final product a little bit more color and structure the type of pre-ferment we're doing here today is called a poolish and you might recognize that from my baguette video a few weeks ago to make that foolish you're going to mix together 150 grams of room temperature water a small pinch of yeast like an eighth teaspoon or 30 or 40 granules and 150 grams of all-purpose flour you're just gonna stir that to combine throw a lid on it and let it sit on the counter from anywhere from four to 24 hours a well-aged poolish gives us a darker crispier crust and a longer lasting more resilient bread overall if you can get yourself to do a little bit of planning i highly recommend letting this ripen overnight you can get away with a four hour pre-ferment here i've done it a few times that way and it works out totally fine but more time equals more flavor so to mix this dough we're gonna grab a medium stainless steel bowl and into that we're gonna measure 280 grams of warm water 2 grams of yeast all of the poolish that we mixed yesterday take a second to stir that to combine into the water a little bit that's going to make the hand mixing part of this much easier in a second to that slurry we're going to add 350 grams of all-purpose flour 50 grams of whole wheat flour and 10 grams of salt to do this mix we're gonna grab a sturdy spoon and stir everything to combine we're trying to keep this dough from getting stuck to everything in sight so combining it this way with the spoon is the tried and true cleanest way of making dough without a mix orbital mixer all we're trying to do is just combine the ingredients all of the strength building and gluten development are going to come a little bit later through the folding process after about 60 to 90 seconds of squeeze rotate repeating with a wet hand things are looking good they're well combined so i'm going to grab some plastic wrap i'm going to wrap this up and set a 30 minute timer all right it's been 30 minutes since we mixed this dough i'm going to take the plastic off here no strength it's a really slacky boy right now i'm going to wet my hand and we're going to come and do the sort of tuck and fold method you've seen me do a few times on this channel so my hands real wet you don't want to mess around with dry hand here because it will get all up in your arm here anyway so that's what it looks like i'm gonna reach in kind of scoop from underneath pull and fold it back over itself i'm going to do that like eight or ten times pulling up throwing back take it to the point where the tension is starting to sort of the dough is like really feels like it can't go any further fold it back and you can see real quick that this does start to get a lot more strong what we're doing is just layering the gluten network those things start to stack up on top of each other get hooked up so now i've got it folded i'm going to do a little bit of a tuck maneuver here this is kind of like a slap in front kind of like a slap and fold so you're going to scoop it from underneath turn it 90 and then kind of tuck we're just trying to get this dough into kind of like a taut round ball basically i'm just gonna do it six or seven times it's almost like if you were on the countertop shaping a bowl that's what i'm doing right here this is just another way for me to get a little bit extra in there and then that's it like it went from a really gross looking shaggy mess into like a nice tucked ball look at that okay [Music] after 30 more minutes or 60 minutes total at this point we're gonna come back and repeat the folding like i mentioned before these two quick rounds of folds are all we need to get a well-developed and strong dough that's easily going to hold itself up in the oven once things are folded up again we're going to wrap this with plastic and i'm going to ferment it for one more hour that's going to be two hours total of bulk fermentation after that two hours the dough should look bubbly and alive and really buoyant it should smell sweet and yeasty and at that point we're gonna shape the loaf and i'm gonna show you three different ways to do that and it's gonna be a little bit more complex each time we're starting with the most easy of course it's going to be something that literally anybody could make you don't need any special gear or previous experience we're going to move on to something that's like 15 percent more complex but 50 percent better in terms of crust flavor and just overall outcome and the third way is going to be a big dog fully shaped bowl that's just going to blow anything you can get at the grocery store out of the water so let's start with the easiest way you can get this dough into the oven i'm going to flip the dough out of the bowl onto a lightly floured work surface and i'm going to lightly flour the top i'm going to grab a half sheet tray and line that with a piece of parchment and then i'm going to liberally flour that as well using a dough scraper or a well-floured knife we're going to cut this dough mask into two pieces the only shaping we're doing here is a gentle tuck under and sort of prop up thing just to get a perky well-structured mound of dough that's gonna sit up on itself when you move it to the sheet tray if things are going well you should have two strong well-risen chunks of this dough that are relatively rectangular for the absolutely fastest and most simple path to making bread just preheat your oven to 525 degrees and spray these loaves with a little bit of water once the oven is up to temp i'm gonna throw the sheet tray in there and bake it for 20 to 25 minutes or until things are really well browned and starting to get crusty be careful because the bottom of the sheet tray can get pretty hot it is metal so just try to keep it away from the heating elements if they're on the bottom of your oven so that's method one of three tons of flavor from the poolish and plenty of good bread utility you could wipe it through something saucy or turn it into a crostini but we can definitely do better so to get to method two we're gonna move on to something slightly more complex here we're gonna be baking these in a dutch oven with a lid so starting at the point where we have the two pieces of dough set up on the floured sheet tray i'm gonna cover that with another sheet tray and let it proof on the counter for 30 to 40 minutes at that point i'm going to load a dutch oven into a 525 degree oven and let it preheat after that oven is well preheated and my dutch oven is ripping hot i'm going to grab that sheet tray of proofy dough and i'm going to cut the parchment in half i'm going to give these loaves a quick slash with my bread lame and this is more of a gesture than anything else i like to have a tear on top of a rustic bread like this it's purely aesthetic once we've got that cut we're going to carefully lift the parchment paper and the loaf and place it into the dutch oven we're going to cover this and bake it in the oven at 500 degrees for 12 minutes at that point we're going to remove the lid of the dutch oven and turn things down to 485 degrees so we can continue baking for an additional 12 to 15 minutes we're looking to get a very crusty very dark almost reddish loaf with the second method here in the dutch oven we get a much more interesting crust in a more well risen loaf the duchy traps the steam the loaf gives off naturally when it bakes and it gives us a much glossier more brittle and longer lasting crust so i'm gonna let this loaf rest and then load the second piece of dough repeating the steps we did for loaf one i love this loaf of bread it's very creamy toasty yeasty it checks all of the boxes if we put this loaf next to the first one we can see a real uptick in terms of quality the crust is much more set it's darker it's more brittle and you can bet that it has a lot more flavor okay if you're ready the third variation here is a big dog fully shaped and proofed bowl and as a reminder all these loaves have the same dough as a starting point we're just changing up how we shape them and how we bake them so to shape this bowl we're going to flip the whole dough out onto a well-floured work surface i'm going to hit my proofing basket with some flour and don't worry if you don't have one of these we're going to get to that in a second we're going to shape this entire thing we're not going to be cutting this in half so to do that we're going to grab a side of it pull it out and fold it back we're gonna repeat that motion and work our way around the dough once things are stretched and tucked up into a ball grab opposing sides and do a crisscross tuck repeating that three or four times at this point we're gonna flip the loaf over and round things off using your hands at 10 and 2 we're gonna create tension and rotate the loaf keeping the seam we just created in the center and on the bottom this is just a larger scale version of what we do with burger buns and check a full slo-mo demo of that in the chicken salad video we're to flip this shaped loaf seam side up into a nine inch proofing basket wait a second so lauren convinced me and now i agree that most of you guys aren't going to have a nine inch proofing basket so in the spirit of a truly beginner's recipe i just washed out the medium stainless steel bowl that we proof the dough in so we're going to transfer that over to that and to do that grab a tea towel fold it twice and line the stainless steel bowl at that point we're going to flour everything liberally because tea towels are not really designed to have dough in there but it will work as long as we've got plenty of flour to keep the dough separate from the cloth we're gonna proof this on the counter for 30 to 50 minutes after about 45 minutes the loaf is buoyant it's full of gas and has risen dramatically when it comes to proofing an exact time is always really hard to say so just try and replicate how this loaf looks and the overall size to what i have here to make this we're going to flip this whole thing into our hand and carefully lower it into the dutch oven if you're not down with this move because your dutch oven's real hot and you're not a bad dog you can flip this whole loaf onto a piece of parchment paper and just lower it into the oven like we did in method two a full rustic bowl and this style needs to be scored on top so that it can open and rise to its full potential in the oven so for that i prefer scissors and that's because it's rustic looking it's really pretty and it doesn't require any skill i'm going to turn the temperature down at this point to 485 we're going to bake this big dog for 18 minutes covered in an additional 25 to 35 minutes uncovered this is going to depend on how good your oven is but we want to bake it dark like really dark the majority of the fun flavor here is going to come from that deep toasty multi crust so don't be scared after about 40 minutes total our loaf is looking really dope it's brittle and crisp and rustic and it's just everything that a fun loaf of bread should be and oh yeah it sings when it comes out of the oven listen so we got the three breads we got the easiest one here which isn't bad but the crust is pretty dead um but i mean it's still good bread we can i'll cut into it real quick like not even that stupid of crumb it's nice bread like if anybody gave this to you in a restaurant you'd be stoked on it it's got good flavor yeasty and this crust can come right back if you throw it in the oven like i mentioned before so total winner for almost no work right here this is the one that was baked in the dutch oven again like fine crumb but that's not really what we're after we want something that has life and has a lot of flavor and is crispy and has a much more interesting crust than the unsteamed just like straight up baked in the oven one and if you were to pop this back in the oven it'd be super brittle really fun this is a big chunk of bread oh my this is essentially just a giant baguette it's one it's a one kilo baguette taylor made for dipping dippage oh baby robust crust i want to say one more thing before i go and that's everybody deserves this a simple easy rustic bread is just a core tenant of a good life and if you enjoyed this video give it a like maybe hit subscribe tell a friend as always guys thank you so much for your time and attention thank you for being here till the end and we'll see you next time i was looking at the camera while i'm taking that bite and got really close to biting my own finger like it slid off the tube beware stay frosty see you next time

Channel: Brian Lagerstrom

Views: 3,581,701

Keywords: easy bread recipe, easiest rustic bread, easy rustic bread, beginner bread baking, bread without mixer, bread, homemade bread, bread recipe, bread with poolish, how to make poolish dough, how to make bread at home, bread for beginners, best bread for beginners, crusty bread, crusty loaf, rustic bread, rustic loaf, brian lagerstrom, weeds and sardines

Id: 5mehXzl7yHA

Length: 12min 28sec (748 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 13 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/SirSupay]

I seriously recommend trying this. I've never baked breads before. Here is myfirst try. So good.

[u/Mozambique_Sauce]

How do I know if my oven is Dutch?

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/Teddy_canuck]

Idk how to eat 3 loaves of bread before they go bad

[u/iSamurai]

Honestly, the first one looks pretty good for a sandwich or some shit. I'm gonna try these.

[u/[deleted]]

I've done this a few times over the years and it has always turned out great. No-knead bread in a dutch oven. I must do it again!

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QpQ9Kd3t5I.

[u/notenoughguns]

Mmmm, I really could go for a nice sandwich.

Oh let me bake some bread.

I'll do about 20 minutes of work (not including cleanup), when wait over night, then do some more work, then wait another half hour, then do a bit more work, then wait another hour or two, then do some more work while pre-heating the oven, then bake it for half an hour then let it cool down then I can make a sandwich.

[u/TheBestOpinion]

I live in France and the third one he made is actually very nice, this is what you'd find in a professional bakery. The first two ones you wouldn't find them, they wouldn't be sellable. It looks more like a custom kind of bread that you'd use for a specific side-dish. Italian bread for dipping, or as the base for a side dish, rather than regular, sandwicheable table bread

If you're going through the trouble to bake bread, which involves quite a lot of boilerplate, you really want to end up with at least something that has a decent crust, so perhaps shoot for the stars and go all-in, make the third one.