Rustic sandwich bread loaf
Ingredients:
- 425 grams all purpose or bread flour
- 9 grams salt (2 teaspoons)
- 9 grams instant yeast
- 36 grams olive oil
- 246 grams warm water
Directions:
Weigh and combine all ingredients in a large bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer. Knead for 8 minutes with your stand mixer on medium. If you are doing this all by hand, you will need to knead for at least 15 minutes to get a smooth, but slightly tacky dough.
The dough should be smooth. Once smooth and kneaded, shape the dough into a ball and place it in a lightly greased bowl, cover it with a lid, large plate, or plastic wrap and keep it in a warm spot in your kitchen.
Allow the dough to rest for 45 minutes. At this point, you should perform a stretch and fold of the dough. If you're not familiar with stretch and fold, I suggest you watch this YouTube video: How and when to stretch and fold. Once you have stretched and folded your dough several times, tuck it back into your bowl to continue resting.
After a second 45 minutes, perform another stretch and fold and then leave the dough in a ball on the counter under a clean towel for 10 to 15 minutes.
Now it is time to shape. Perform another stretch and fold, but this time you will want to end with your dough in the shape of the container that you are planning to use for a final rise. If you have a banneton (oval bowl for dough shaping), you will want to shape your dough into an oval. If you are planning to use a medium-sized bowl for the final rise, you will want to shape your dough into a taut ball.
Flour the inside of the banneton or bowl very lightly and place the dough into it upside down with the smooth side touching the floured container. Lightly flour the visible dough and cover the banneton or bowl with plastic wrap.
Allow dough to rise for 45 to 60 minutes or until the dough has about doubled in size. While the dough is rising, preheat the oven to 450 F (230 C).
Grab a large Dutch oven with a lid and place it in the oven to preheat.
Carefully slide out your shaped and risen dough onto a piece of parchment. Score the dough with a very sharp knife and then holding the parchment corners, gently place the dough and parchment into the very hot Dutch oven. Carefully cover the Dutch oven with the lid.
Bake with the lid on for 25 minutes. Remove the lid and bake for 15 more minutes.
Bake directly on the oven rack for up to 10 more minutes if you want a bit more color.
Notes:
If you want to convert this to a sourdough loaf, simply remove all the yeast, 100 grams of flour, and 100 grams of water from the recipe and add 200 grams of fed sourdough starter. If your starter isn't doubling every four hours then you might want to leave about 3 grams of yeast in the dough recipe as insurance that it will rise properly.
You will also probably have to adjust the rise times in the recipe since sourdough might take longer than instant yeast to double in size or rise to fill the banneton or bowl.