Recipe: Simple freshly-baked bread from scratch

Bread from scratch. Photo by Emily Carlin via Flickr

Do you love fresh bread, but hate how fast the stuff from the store goes stale? This bread will stay spongy-soft for days and makes great toast. And no, you can’t use regular flour.

Ingredients

3 cups bread flour

3/4 teaspoon yeast

1 1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups warm water

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl (ingredients will triple in size by morning) before you go to bed and cover with a dish cloth. The mix needs to sit for at least six hours to rise. In the morning, spray one of your (clean) hands with some oil, and lightly knead the dough. Punch it down to roughly the size it was the night before. Warm your oven so it’s just warmer than your kitchen, turn off the heat, and cover the bowl again with the cloth, letting it sit in the oven to rise. Wait one hour. Pour the dough into a dutch oven (or casserole dish) that you’ve lightly greased with some olive oil, and bake at 400 degrees F with the lid on, and then 15 minutes at 375 degrees F with the lid off to brown the top. Before you bake, you can add some sesame seeds on top for extra taste or sprinkle on some sea salt. Enjoy!