Easy, delicious bread recipe

We've had some people ask about the bread recipe we use. Here's the link. We follow this closely, but here's our variation (same ingredients and process for the most part):

• 4 cups warm water (should feel comfortably warm, not hot, to your finger)
• 2 tablespoons Kosher or coarse salt
• 2 tablespoons yeast (any active dry yeast should work; buying it by the bottle is cheaper than the packets)

Mix it together.

• 8 2/3 cups flour

We usually add 4 cups of flour, mix it in (it should be quite wet still), then add the remaining 4 2/3 cups. You can experiment with any proportion of white to whole wheat.

When you finish adding and mixing the flour it tends to be very sticky. Once you extricate your mixing spoon from the dough, cover it with a towel (disposable shower caps work great, and are reusable) and let the dough rise for 2 hours or so.

Once the dough has risen we sprinkle some flour on top of it, add some more flour to our hands, and pull out enough dough for cooking immediately. There should be enough dough for 4-6 loaves, depending on how big you make them. They can all be cooked at once, or placed in a container in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. Leave the lid on loosely for the first 12 hours or so to let the dough finish expanding. Our dough usually gets used in a few days.

For those being cooked immediately, we shape each loaf, from 1x-2x the size of a grapefruit, into whatever shape (great link to shaping a boule here), let it rise for 40 minutes on a greased pan or nonstick mat, sprinkle more flour on top of the loaf and slash the top with a serrated knife (optional, but highly recommended), and place in oven preheated to 450 degrees (every oven's different - 425 works well for us at home).

One note on the oven - we have a roasting basin below the bread pan on a lower rack that we add a cup of hot water to just after adding the loaf/loaves to the oven. This steams the bread and tends to produce a nice, crisp crust. Bake the bread for 20-30 minutes, until browned. Done.

One comment on using loaves from the fridge. Make sure that, once shaped, the loaf is given an hour to warm up and start rising. A lot more rising will happen in the oven (especially if the loaf is slashed deeply), but if you put it in the oven too soon the center of the loaf will remain doughy.

Here's another good overview of bread baking basics, including a discussion of the major ingredients.