Homemade crusty loaf, with or without a dutch oven
Thanks to Magic Spoon for sponsoring this video! Use my code RAGUSEA to get $5 off your delicious, healthy Magic Spoon cereal by clicking this link: magicspoon.thld.co/ragusea_0422
**RECIPE**
2 cups (474mL) water, divided in two
2 teaspoons (10g) salt (based on the Morton Kosher I use)
1/8 teaspoon dry yeast (two small pinches)
bread flour (you'll need maybe 5-6 cups, 500-600g, but this recipe is not based on firm quantities)
a little whole wheat flour, if you want (I like to replace maybe a tenth of the white bread flour with whole wheat - I just eyeball it)
The night before you want to bake, mix a poolish by combining half of the water (1 cup, 237mL) with the yeast and enough flour to get a thick batter / pudding consistency. I think a wooden spoon is the best utensil to use for this, but whatever spoon you use, use something rigid. You can just leave the spoon in the poolish overnight. Cover the poolish and let it ferment 8-24 hours.
About four hours before you want to bake, uncover the poolish and mix in the remaining cup (237mL) of water, salt, and as much flour as you can stir in with a spoon (no hand kneading). Again, you can leave the spoon in there. Cover and let rise/hydrate for about an hour.
Check it again and see if you can stir in a little more flour now that the previous addition has hydrated. When you're done, you can get rid of the spoon. Cover and let rise/hydrate for another hour.
These next steps I do in the bowl, just to keep the mess contained, FYI. Sprinkle the dough with a little flour to keep it from sticking to you. Grab one side of it and pull it out until just before it's going to tear, then fold it back in on itself. Rotate the dough 90 degrees and repeat until you've done this four total times. Position the dough so that the seems are on the bottom and the smooth surface is on top. Cover and let rest for about 20 minutes.
Do the whole folding and stretching procedure again, rest 20 minutes, and then do it a third time.
The following instructions are for baking this with a dutch oven. If you're using a baking sheet with a heat-safe metal bowl, skip to that part now.
Get a sheet of parchment paper, crumple it up into a ball, un-crumple it and stuff it down into the bottom of your dutch oven. Transfer in the dough, smooth-side up. Cover the dutch oven (but not with the lid). Put the lid in your oven and get it heating to 500ºF/260ºC (some people get better results with slightly lower temperatures, but every oven is different). Let the dough proof for about a half hour while the oven heats up.
When the dough is looking puffy, score the surface - I find a few quick, confident slashes with a serrated knife work ok. Put the dutch oven over a burner on your stove, turn the heat on high, and cove it with the hot lid from the oven. When the side of the dutch oven feel hot (it should just take a couple minutes), transfer the whole situation to your oven and let bake for a half hour undisturbed, so as to not let any steam escape.
Carefully remove the hot lid, reduce the heat to 450ºF/230ºC and let the surface of the bread brown while the interior finishes baking, 10-20 more minutes. You can test the interior with a thermometer - anything in the neighborhood of 200ºF/93ºC is good. Let the bread cool before slicing.
The following instructions are for doing this with a baking sheet and a heat-safe metal bowl.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. After you've done the whole folding thing three times, position the dough on the baking sheet, smooth-side up. Cover it with a heat-safe metal bowl that's big enough to not touch the dough as it rises and/or bakes. Get your oven heating to 500ºF/260ºC (some people get better results with slightly lower temperatures, but every oven is different). Let the dough proof for about a half hour while the oven heats up.
When the dough is looking puffy, score the surface - I find a few quick, confident slashes with a serrated knife work ok. Move the whole pan/bowl rig into the oven and let bake for a half hour undisturbed, so as to not let any steam escape.
Carefully remove the hot hot bowl. If your oven has a convection fan, turn it on. If not, just crank your oven to its highest temperature, if it can go any higher. Let the surface of the bread brown while the interior finishes baking, 10-20 more minutes. You can test the interior with a thermometer - anything in the neighborhood of 200ºF/93ºC is good. Let the bread cool before slicing.
Thanks to Magic Spoon for sponsoring this video and for helping me hit my macros in spite of all that bread! Use my code RAGUSEA to get $5 off your delicious, healthy Magic Spoon cereal by clicking this link: magicspoon.thld.co/ragusea_0422
Only 3 likes and no replies??? Love ur content, your recipes are so simple and delicious😃
clean your beard
Over-proofing. Could make for a good video one day.
Do you ever get tired of shilling this nonsense?
Adam, at 12:35 you said that the thinner metal did not radiate heat onto the bread as well. This actually has nothing to do with how thin the metal is, only how thermally *emissive* the metal is. Shiny reflective things have lower emissivity; dull and non-reflective things have high emissivity. If you have an equally light weight bowl, but the bowl is matte black, it will brown your bread nicely. Also, because the bown was shiny, it reflected away radiant heat. Notice how your sheet pan, which is a lot more finely textured and not shiny, did result in some browning at the bread near the bottom. See this video explaining emissivity in plain English: kzhead.info/sun/i5V9o719bqt-mKc/bejne.html . This is a principle of physics. Cast iron and clay both have very high emissivity, and low reflectivity. Stainless steel and polished aluminum both have low emissivity and high reflectivity. That's why using a dome of either of these types will result in pale bread. If you have a thin light metal bowl that you get micro-shot-peened so it has a satin finish, both inside and out, you may find that it radiates heat onto your bread much better and gives you better browning. Or, if you can get a thin carbon steel dome, give it a satin finish with fine sandpaper, and season it so it is black, you will also find the same effect. Can you find a ceramic bowl or even a metal bowl that is dull and matte in surface finish rather than one that is shiny? Try this again with that bowl, and you will find that even though it is light weight, the bread will brown very nicely. That would be a great experiment to try.
As one who carves wooden spoons for cooking and eating, it's nice to see the humble wooden spoon thanked for it's bread making service. I can't recall another cooking video where a low end implement gets it's due.
While I don't use them to eat with much, save chopsticks, wooden utensils are highly underrated in the kitchen. If you have a few that are actually well-shaped for their uses, they are gold medal players. The designs from Earlywood are great -- more people should make hardwood scrapers.
I always use them for stirring pasta meals
There’s an older British man named John Kirkwood who does some cooking videos and he is a beast with the wooden spoon
My wooden spoons are very easily the most used tools in my kitchen.
Wooden spoons, the humble, unsung hero of cookery.
An important note about hydration, I've found that relative humidity makes a significant difference in the amount of water I need to add when baking bread from a recipe. I noticed that nearly every recipe I followed didn't seem like it had enough water in it, especially when I was working from a recipe I found on a video. My dough never looked like the dough in the video, it was always too dry and thick. Then I remembered that I live in a desert, and the air here is almost always dry. This wouldn't seem like it would make much difference, but the effect is compounded by two factors: 1: Dry flour has much more capacity to absorb water so your recipe wants more water to begin with. 2: (And probably more important) Dry flour weighs less. If you're weighing your ingredients, you're using more flour in your recipe than you would if you lived in a more humid environment, but the weight of the water remains constant. I'm a woodworker, and the water that wood absorbs from the air will make up anywhere from around 8% to 20% of the total weight. That's a LOT. If flour acts at all similar (and I suspect that it does), this would make a huge difference in your recipe. Because of this, whenever actually following a recipe (instead of measuring with my heart as Adam suggests here), as a rule of thumb I put in about 15% more water than the recipe calls for just because I know my climate requires it, and my dough started turning out great right from the start. If you live in a humid climate, you may want to adjust in the other direction if your dough is always too sloppy.
Yes, my family uses this trick for pie crusts! Also, winter months are usually drier (cold air holds less water) so that makes a difference too
Yes, this. Bump it to the top to help newbies
Thanks for talking actual numbers. I like Adam but this "no measuring" crap infuriates me.
@@BillJBrasky all this “measure every ingredient to the gram” crap infuriates me lol
@@i.Gnarly if Adam would measure his flour he'd have a better product. It takes basically no extra effort to read numbers on a scale.
An alternative non-dutch oven method I discovered when I was too broke to afford one. Bake your loaf with an aluminum foil tent over it and a cookie sheet or baking tray filled with water on a lower rack to generate steam. Remove the aluminum foil after the half hour and let it bake uncovered for the rest of the time.
This will corrode the inside of your oven and eventually cause it to rust. Don't use this method frequently!
@@HallsteinI I smell bullshit.
@@HallsteinI Why? People braise stuff and bake very wet things all the time. A pan full of plain water is just another steam source.
@@Amanda-C. Yeah exactly isn't that why ovens are enameled inside?? I don't wanna eat at y'all's house if you just makin sad dry unseasoned chicken breasts in the oven.....
@@drasco61084 Uh... my oven chicken breasts are usually sad and dry, so I don't try to make them. 😁
When you do your stretch and fold method, try wetting your hands rather than adding more flour. The additional flour will give you a denser crumb at the end. It’s really not a big difference, but it’s easy to add too much.
Yeah it sounds counterintuitive but it really does work, it stops the dough from sticking until the water on your hands is absorbed and when you fold it enough it stops being too sticky
I have to say this is really good advice. My adventures with sourdough have been failure up until I really tried to keep high high hydration, the less flour the better IMO. edit: I'm also high altitude so its drier here so it was really important.
I find when I do this the dough spreads out so much almost into a pancake instead of retaining shape? Any advice?
Thank you!! I think I added too much flour 😅 beginners mistake…
@@ferret9 spend more time developing gluten during the kneading stage, with high hydration doughs I typically spend anywhere from 20-30 mins kneading my dough in a stand mixer on medium high speed. Or try the slap and fold method. Look it up on KZhead if you choose to follow this route
For homecooking, baking bread doesnt require precise flour measurement. There are sooo many factors like type of flour, humidity, luck, ect that I just end up eyeball it anyway. I try to keep the dough sticky cause it produces a more open crumb, which I love. Using a recipe is a good jumping off point, but actually baking bread is where you learn :)
I don’t think much baking requires precise measurements. All of my favorite recipes from my grandmother use vague units ie swig, pinch, a punch and ‘as much (flour) as it will take’.
@@ProcrastPerfection Variance is how recipes are improved over time.
Every other bread video: "this is impossible to make without a food scale, and there needs to be exactly 0.5% salt and 69.7386% hydration" This video: "the spoon will measure for me"
Sigma male Grindset.
What’s up with food scale slander? The scale makes measuring easier and produces consistent results
@@evanvoss1380 food scales are great! That said a lot of bread nerd people get very "sciencey" and technical with their bread making. Which is actually pretty cool, but it can make it tricky for people who are new and don't really know what's going on.
@@evanvoss1380 i think he is contrasting the approach rather than slandering the requisite tool.
While you can get "bread" the quality of your bread improves dramatically by measuring. Salt is the big one here. Nothing is worse than an undersalted dough. A good rule of thumb is 2% of the weight of the flour (NOT WATER). His recipe is roughly a 50-60% hydration (i.e., 50% the weight of the flour is the amount of water added). Its a tight crumb (lack of air bubbles) but there is nothing wrong with that. The biggest failure is not waiting until the bread completely cooled before cutting into it. The bread can become rather gummy if you dont let it cool completely to room temperature. This will also harm your crust's chewiness.
I would mention that preheating the pot only really work on gas stovetops, that blast lots of heats to the sides (and the wooden spoons you rest on the pot, and the whole kitchen) . If you have an induction top, even if it probably heats faster than even a gas top, I would not recommand as youll burn the bottom before heating the sides
I was wondering about that, I was thinking that my Induction would be too hot for this trick. Maybe like medium heat for a bit longer?
Maybe you could add some water to the pot so it would not burn the bottom
nah, used my induction and it worked fine tbh
That's actually a pan design issue more than the stovetop.
Pro (safety) tip: when taking off the 500F hot lid put the lid back into the oven instead of somewhere else in the kitchen!! Then there is no risk of anyone severely burning their hands by accidentally picking up the hot lid... 🙂
The "cooking with your senses" is something I love. I hardly ever look into recipes while cooking. I use them to get an idea what proportions might be good and then do what feels right. I had 3 occasions in which it wasnt the best idea, but not the worst either and my gf never complained about taste (we are german, she would complain if there was a good reason, it is part of our culture) so I assume it works well that way.
tbf, most germans cant tell what quality food is so being german isnt everything when it comes to that
Meanwhile I absolutely need (and enjoy cooking with) a recipe because I have raging ADHD and there is a very high chance I will make a mistake or leave something out without a recipe, at least until I've made the dish in question dozens and dozens of times. It's only at that point that I'm no longer likely to forget an ingredient or similar, and also it takes that level of familiarity before I'm best able to make changes on the fly with little to no risk of a sub-optimal end product. I'm so nerdy I keep my recipes in a wiki so that if I go down a wrong path when experimenting with them, I can just roll back to a prior version in the history. Different strokes for different folks!
I've found that when making biscuits I start with the Buttermilk and add the flour until it looks right. The biscuits are even better that way. I follow the recipe with all my other baking so far
Thanks for this Adam, people think bread is far more intimidating than it is, so keeping it casual like this encourages new people.
The lazier you bake, the better haha!
Not really cuz he's eyeballing it and not providing exact measurements for people to follow
@@jasondeblou6226 Adam has other videos with exact measurements. But people already have this impression that bread is this insanely complicated thing where everything needs to be super precise, but that's just not true. Plus it's a video, so you can go by how much it looks like what Adam is doing rather than slavishly following precise steps
People are intimidated by bread?! What do they eat their sandwiches with? Baked potatoes?
@@dargkkast6469 making bread from scratch
Tried the recipe, worked like a charm. Nothing beats freshly baked bread with butter, eggs, bacon, cheese and hot chocolate. Thanks Adam.
I love your constant recommendation to cook with your senses. Knowing techniques and using your instincts is so much more valuable than memorizing recipes. It means you can adapt dishes when you don’t have the exact right ingredients. My wife is GF and the variance between GF flours is so widespread and every recipe online is based off a different type of GF flour. We just buy whatever is on sale and I have learned to adapt. It doesn’t take long to gain the confidence to break from the recipes
what's GF stand for?
oh fuck gluten free right?
@@vizprave6721 😂
@@vizprave6721 Thanks for asking..then answering that question. I don't know if what happened here is more indicative of the English speaking world's obsession with acronyms or gluten. WTF
@@eggrollorsoup6052 I was legit confused lmao. When you put wife and gf seperated by only a single word, I got confused. Idk what it meant and then I realised it was gluten-free
For the pan and bowl method, spray the inside of the bowl with enough water to stick to it, but not so much it drips. It'll add a little extra moisture.
Baking in a Dutch oven from cold (no heating whatsoever) before it goes in the oven has similar results to preheating the pot. King arthur flour had a good post on this method. Also, Brian's method of scoring with scissors (cutting slashes in the dough) is a good option if you don't have a lame
Do you mean that you can even skip preheating the oven? Just slap the ball of dough into the dutch oven, then throw it into the cold oven before baking? What does this do to the time spent baking?
@@diairairship2403 yeah cold pot in a cold oven. Turn on the oven. Once it indicates it's up to temperature, start the baking time (around 30 minutes)
@@goattactics Sweet, I'll give it a try next time I'm making bread. I use a much simpler recipe ( a lot more hands off) than the one Adam shows here, and one of the few things that annoyed me about my process was the transfer of dough into the the preheated pot.
No knead bread does make a decent loaf
@@diairairship2403Pro Tip: A note on transferring a loaf into a ripping hot dutch oven.....let your loaf do it's final proof before baking on the countertop rather than in the mixing bowl on a piece of parchment paper large enough to lift by the edges and lower into the dutch oven without burning the piss out of yourself. The loaf goes into the hot pot parchment paper and all, slap the lid on and right back into the oven and you don't de-gas your dough doing it that way cause you're not worried about burning your hands so you're not dropping the loaf in the pot, you're setting it in gently.
There is a very nice video from ChainBaker uploaded in February this year that talks specifically about the effect of salt on dough. He makes a few examples and explains what the salt does, as well as the proper amounts to achieve what you want with the bread. The video is titled, "This Is How Salt Affects Bread Dough"
ChainBaker is awesome!
Love the ChainBaker! By measuring and checking temperature you consistently get an outstanding result.
Wow! Just pulled mine from the oven and IT IS GORGEOUS! Thanks for this simplified "cooking with our senses" recipe - there are always variations in exact quantities and local humidity/kitchen conditions. Love your channel 💖🐝
about to put it in the oven right now edit: I've made 3 loafs of bread each better than the last very nice
Hey Adam, just two pieces of bread advice that seem very on brand: 1. You mentioned it, but all purpose and bread flour are very similar protein wise and create virtually identical breads at reasonable hydration levels. I worked at a French style bakery and we only used all purpose flour. 2. Consider trying the Ken Forkish scoring method from the book Flour Water Salt Yeast. Bake the bread seam side up instead of down. The seam will act as a score and create really beautiful, wild designs when the bread springs. No knives, no razors!
Out of curiosity, where did you source your all purpose and bread flours from? I have found that the bread flours available to me are extremely high (12-14%) in protein content for whatever reason and AP is pretty mid in terms of protein content (8-10%). Would appreciate any help!
I think it is very dependant on where you live in the world if bread flours and all purpose are similar in protein content. Typically in the US the protein content in AP is a good 1-3% lower.
@@PenguinBrosa_great_person That's kind of the point with bread flour, it has a high protein content for a stronger/larger gluten network. More chew and better able to hang onto air and steam for a high rise. 8% does seem very low for an AP flour. King Arthur Flour (in the USA) is 11.5% which is kind of high for cakes. But works for pretty much anything else.
@@PenguinBrosa_great_person ours was sourced from Shepard’s Grain in Eastern Washington at the bakery but I just baked one of my best at-home loaves ever with a $3 bag of bleached flour from Walmart at 65% hydration yesterday. Going along with what KJ Dude was saying, I’m pretty sure the blue King Arthur bread is only like 12.6% or something and the red AP is 11.7% according to a bag of it I have in my house.
This is probably the best, most detailed and easy to follow explanation on how to bake a simple, rustic bread that I've seen. Thank you!
I just baked my second loaf of "basic bread" tonight. Wow, I never knew simple bread could taste so good! Thank you Adam for yet again another practical recipe that focuses on results and doesn't waste time with the "right" way. You introduced bread baking to me and I am very thankful.
Going to cook with our senses? Oh! Adam is using feeeeeling. Fuyooooo, not bad, not bad.
Fuyoooooo!!!
well said uncle
yayyy uncle Roger would approve. although you didn't add msg
Uncle??
When it comes to bread; feelings is the best way to bake and get it right no matter where you are. A bread baked on an icy mountain will vary from one baked in death valley; but those are just the extremes and it will vary a ton there, but still for the less extreme cases will vary lots Esp moreso cuz things like flour protein lvls and available yeasts will vary for all cases as will fermentation times. A baseline can be given as exact measurements, but it shud always be adjusted by feel to get the exact correct kind of bread rather than relyin solely on measurmeents that cant be made spec to every case.
Hey Adam, I didn't follow you 100% I actually went a little simpler, but this was the main video I used to make my own homemade bread. I just lost my mom this month and was in a real bind financially, being able to make this bread really helped me out in a big way. It came out fantastically with barely any effort - I didn't even have some of the stuff you used, I just used my convection oven, all-purpose flour, water, yeast and salt. Heck I think I even over-added the yeast but it still came out great. Really excellent way to learn how to make bread for those of us who like to cook with our senses like you say! I always enjoyed cooking but baking always turned me off because of the measurements and seemingly complicated method. I'll be making this bread more often, thank you again for sharing these home-kitchen friendly options!
I've always been apprehensive about making bread myself (partly because it's messy business in a small kitchen), but this made me confident enough to want to try!
Nice, another variable measurement baking recipe! Everyone in my house loves the cinnamon rolls from your last baking video. Hopefully we see more in the future!
When i bake i do this all the time here at home in Sweden. I use my poolish for basically the entire dough, just mixing in enough flour in the morning to make it workable. Then i fold it like you and roll it up so seams are at the bottom. Then rest for 30 min in the "dutch oven"-substitute i have. I dont have a real one, nor metal bowls, but i _do_ have a oven proof glass bowl with a lid. Just straight into the oven. Very similar results as to what you showed in the alternative version. *_Definitively_* stealing the crumpling up of the baking paper tho, always used the paper but didn't even consider crumpling it, brilliant!! Learnt a lot of why things work the way they do, thank you so much, taking away a lot from this.
How interesting to know that the covered pyrex bowl works for this! Thanks!
I had used a terracotta pot with a lid, but had to replace it with a glass one when it got cracked. I love low yeast breads, so this thingy was a life (and money) saver!
@@chezmoi42 if you don't have a lid, such as oven proof glass mixing bowls, you can place a slightly smaller bowl upside down on top!
@@panajotov I have a very flat, stainless steel oval fish pan with high domed lid. Of course things would stick to it easily (fish), and it wasn't cheap. The bottom is fairly heavy, so it should be suited for high heat on the stove, but warped just a little bit nontheless, when I fried things in it - even though I did so on an electric stove top with an oval heating element for such pots / pans. Plus the mess because there are almost no "side walls", so even careful stirring will get things on the stove top surface, never mind frying things-. So for many years that pan and lid have served as an overqualified "closed bread basket". (Advantage: I rarely get mould in it - but then it is a breeze to disinfect it, after a good wash I heat it up on the stove). Now that shopping failure might have found its real call. It is completely made from metall so high heat in the oven is no problem. The slightly uneven bottom does not matter in the oven, and the dome is fairly high, so a boule, or an oval shaped bread should be possible in the middle. Or I could use it like a metal kind of tajine for roasts. The lid fits well onto the bottom part so it should keep the steam in.
I also got several enamel casserole forms from older relatives. Some are slighly larger than others, so maybe I can find a combo where one sits securley on top of the other (they are heavy and after all have to be handled when hot so it had to be a stable setup). Ideally the top casserole form would be slightly wider & longer than the bottom form to enclose the form under it. But it must not slide down too deep, so the bread has enough room to rise. Or the bread would have to be a flatter rectangle to begin with. And that kind of setup could also be used for a roast (roman pot / baking brick style of roast, it is not clay but metall, but the steam would stay in). I am getting a lot of ideas here .....
I appreciate the "no measurement" idea a lot, but for those who are curious about measurements: a poolish will be 1:1 water and flour, say 100g (just over 1/3c water and about 1 cup flour) each. Then about 0.25g of yeast. for the bread in this method, you'd want about 350g (about 3 cups) of flour total (an additional 250g (about 2 cups) more than the poolish) and shoot for around 85% hydration (essentially how much water mass you want based on the flour amount). 350g*0.85 = 300g (1.25 c) of water (an additional 200g (just over 3/4c) than the poolish). For every 100g of flour, use about 2g of salt, so one heaping teaspoon for the above amount (7g total). Regarding the salt, Adam used two tsp of salt and two cups of water, so assuming he was close to this 85% figure (I think he was a bit lower, actually) then he is pretty close to this 2g of salt to 100g of flour ratio.
This recipe was far from an 80% hydration dough. This is much closer to maybe 60% max. 75%+ hydration dough is getting quite difficult to handle for a novice baker (unless you are going with the no knead style).
@@kjdude8765 the no knead doughs I started with were very high hydration, and I get why it might be a bit difficult for a beginner. 85% is probably best for a pure autolysis kneading. I probably should have mentioned that lol
@@Ryan_Perrin They make amazing bread with very little effort.
@@kjdude8765 i hope you aren't implying that I'm not suggesting otherwise? Nothing I have stated would indicate that I am. I'm sure the bread tasted fine, I just wanted to give context for those who aren't suffering from scale-phobia
@@Ryan_Perrin Nope, I am in full agreement with you.
Hey Adam, I appreciate the effort you put into opening/closing your shots. The covering/uncovering of the camera makes for a nice touch.
I’ve been looking for a recipe like this for a long time (without a Dutch oven), thank you for making this recipe and I will definitely try making soon
Just made your bread, Adam. Came out terrific. Really enjoy your approach to cooking/baking. Feels like a creative experiment with the fun in eating it in the end. Keep up the great work.
I have been trying for so long to find a good bread recipe that doesn’t need a Dutch oven since I can’t afford one. Thank you so much!!
Wanted to post a comment, I have watched and re-watched this video at least 20 times now as I just made my first load of bread ever using this video, and WOW it tastes AMAZING. Thanks for putting it together
Your comment about fresh bread being the best thing that you've ever tasted, reminds me of Thanksgiving at Grandma and Grandpas house. Grandma would make homemade dinner rolls. We could be down in the basement playing pool and smell them cooking upstairs, so we would come up and wait. She would rub butter on the tops when they came out of the oven. Then split one open, put a pad of butter inside and enjoy. Doesn't get much better than that. Hot and steamy roll, and melted butter dripping on your hands and chin haha. Definitely an amazing thing.
Adam, thank you for this video. This is what I needed. Baked it on my Silpain with a water bowl on the bottom of the oven as usual. It turned out on the pro side because a woman with a lowly metal spoon can only mix in as much flour in. Wet hands do make a difference when working it, and apparently helps with the initial steaming. Also got the cool white bloom from it. I've always done the kneading by hand and no poolish phase, even less with folding and it turned out with thick hard crust. Poolish was flat this morning (maybe not enough flour initially) but after adding flour it was bursting the bowl at the seams in an hour. My best bread so far. Best wishes from one recipe shunner to another!
The easiest way to add steam is just to pour boiling water onto a tray below the rack, it helps with the oven spring if you can't use the dutch oven 🙂
something that's a little safer is to fill a tray with water about 3/4 full and let it preheat with the oven
Another thing I found useful is putting a few ice cubes in the tray, instead of the boiling water. I find it a bit simpler than boiling water and pouring it into a hot tray.
@@IanZG42 oh yeah, I tried using ice cubes, but I don't always have them in my freezer😅 spritzing water right into the oven a minute before putting bread into it and right after that also works very well
It does, **except** most ovens have fans that pull that steam away quickly. I still do both that and spritz water inside the dutch oven when i want maximum spring tho. I also often use a big glass bowl to cover things that wont fit in my dutch oven and use both spritzin inside it and the water tray beneath for maximum steaminess when i do that. Notably i just use water and ice if i have ice when i fill a tray with water below it. I use a casserole dish so i can fit a lot of water in it and it not slosh around too much. tho pourin boilin water from a kettle works just as well.
Be careful about doing this too frequently, the water vapor will gradually corrode the inside of your oven until it begins to rust.
this is my favorite kind of bread. super craggy and crispy outside, with a very dense moist crumb. it is the PERFECT vessel for butter and jam, and the flavor of homemade bread like this is usually infinitely better and more complex than any of that weird sweet fluffy bread you usually find at a grocery store
Awesome as always Adam! One tip though, I've been doing bread like this weekly for about 4 years and one thing that I've discovered that makes it really easy to handle the bread is to turn the pot upside down! unscrew the handle on the lid so it sits flat and put the bread on the lid while preheating the "pot" part!
This wudnt work for me sadly as my dutch oven lid has a lot of spikes in it for some reason that gives it a rly cool texture on the lid but also means it aint flat. Tho who knows, maybe that texture cud look rly awesome, but it just seems more likely to be a bad thing for me heh. I just leave enuf parchment paper to make sure that it reaches to the outside top of the dutch oven so i can lift the bread out without touchin the inside at all
Adam, thank you for another good looking and easy to prepare recipe, we're definitely trying this tonight for fresh Bread tomorrow. We especially liked the "no measuring" aspect of your video!! God bless, and Happy Good-Friday
I love Brian's videos! His "1 dough 3 loaves" video was what got me into bread-making and I was excited to hear you and him talk on the podcast! ChainBaker is another excellent -BreadTuber- bread-KZheadr and has been crucial to helping me learn the science behind bread-making. Also: using kitchen shears to score the bread works much better for me than a knife, especially when working in/around a hot dutch oven.
I watched the same video haha. Helped me get a grasp on basic baking/kneading techniques, but I switched to the king arthur's french style country bread recipe measurements and it's so nice. Also personally, I use a razor blade to score my loaves, it's worked really well so far.
Hey this is just to inform you that "BreadTube" actually refers to a group of leftist youtube channels 😂 i know its stupid, and your understanding of breadtube makes much more sense
@@MichelleObamasBBC BREAD IS BREAD!
That crazy! I got into baking a month or two ago and those exact things are all I have used to learn how to bake, chain baker, and the 1 dough 3 loaves video. I think using that recipe, and using the knowledge from chain baker is a great introduction to the hobby.
@@MichelleObamasBBC I sense a robust crossover opportunity. I want to see Alice's baking skills.
Did my own today. Two loafs for a 3 generation Easter breakfast. Was amazed by my dad's cast iron pot: it had a bowl-shaped lid so you could pour water into it and then put it into the oven. Last 10 minutes took the lid off (water had evaporated): perfect color, perfect crunch, perfect fluffiness inside. Now i have to get one of these pots myself.
It's kind of neat listening to some of the conversation that lead to this episode, thank you Ragusea Pod.
Thank you sooo much Adam. For the longest time I wanted crusty bread ❤️
Great this video dropped like a day before Passover and now I REALLY wanna make bread
Oh no, that's the one where you're only allowed to eat unleavened bread (amongst other things), isn't it? It's also almost easter, which in Dutch is called pasen; I wouldn't be surprised if the Dutch name comes from passover/pesach considering it looks and sounds somewhat similar.
@@nienke7713 yep that's the one can't eat and use a lot of stuff and yeah it does sound really close the whole name thing is super interesting might have to check
This was the first video that explained the process exactly how I needed it explained to me. Came out wonderful the first try following this advice. And this was after many failed attempts following recipes that just list amounts. The bread was delicious and easy to make! Thank you!
Wow, I am impressed! You and Brian teach us so much! My bread (used Dutch Oven) looked exactly like yours first try. My go - to weekend bread recipe. Thank you!
woohoo congrats on becoming a baker Adam! It is rough watching the process with no measuring but the bead looked beautiful and delicious! The upside down reversible Lodge Dutch Oven that Brian recommended is definitely the best, I've been using that over a year and love it.
I have found when scoring bread with a serrated knife that wetting the knife helps prevent snagging on the dough.
Yep I do this too, wetting the blade and rincing it between cuts prevents almost all snagging. The water film sticking to the blade lubricates the whole thing.
Thank you so much for a bread recipe that feels achievable! I love that I can learn from your method, but apply it to more complex recipes if I want without having to buy new equipment
i like how you said use your senses, this is key in baking and a plus when bread making
Amazing video as always Adam! That is an interesting recipe for baking Bread and it's nice to see the contrast between the dutch oven and aluminium baking tray. I have adapted my own go to recipe for a simple bread dough using Chef John and your refrigerated Pizza dough recipes. It is designed to be as lazy as possible, so little to think about and is really straight forward. I will typically make a really large batch of dough that I can not only use for Bread, but also Pizza, etc. To make the dough, I will mix in a mixing bowl with a wooden spoon: - 1kg of Flour - 1-2 tsp of Salt (may need more for Morten Kosher) - 1/2 tsp of dry active Yeast - 1L of hot/ warm Water The good thing is that this can be scaled up or down depending how much you want (so 250g/ 500g/ 750g/ etc). Once mixed together it will seem like too much water has been added to the mix, however it will keep the dough hydrated as you are now going to leave it to ferment for up to 7 days. I usually keep the bowl out in the house at room temperature rather than the refrigerator which works just as well (I live in the UK so it's usually cool and humid most of the time). After 7 days I will get the bowl and add enough flour to get the dough to come together and knead it on the work surface (it will take a while for a larger dough). Once rested I will portion it into either bread rolls, baguettes, one loaf, etc. It's quite adaptable as to what you want to make it into. Once I have made the rolls/ baguettes/ etc I will then let it proof for a second time for 30 mins - 1 hour. 20 mins before they are done I will switch my oven on with a water bath at the bottom. I typically put it on to 210°C Convection setting from the get go as this works fine in my oven, but you may need to go to a higher temperature if that works best for you. Just before I put the bread into the oven I will slash the top several times and then stick them in the oven for 20 minutes uncovered and pull them. They may need a few more minutes, but if it's nearly done I switch the oven off and leave them to bake in the residual heat. Voila place them on a cooling rack and eat once cooled. Another recommendation would be to add in some dried fruit and nuts into the dough and/ or some seeds on top of the bread before baking. Walnuts, Dates and Figs work amazingly well in the dough and complements the yeasty flavour very well.
+Xflare 1000 Thanks very much for the recipe, I will try that out.
Thank you so much!! Really. Thank you! I’ve always found baking intimidating. Too precise to be approachable. I always feel like I’m on the verge of screwing it up - cookies, cakes, pies, bread - doesn’t matter. It always felt like it was a disaster waiting to happen. So I avoided it for a long time. This time it felt different. I think it was a combination of the “I don’t know how salty you like your bread” and “let the spoon measure”. Even when you had an opportunity to get specific on the salt with a grams measure or a ratio, you didn’t. Add that to the almost comically simple “let the spoon measure the flour”, well this felt approachable somehow. Todays loaf will be number 4. The first three were easy. Really winner, maybe for the first time in my kitchen, and the best part was it wasn’t stressful. Hell it was fun. My kids liked the bread. My wife like the bread. So did I. Loaf 1 - we just ate it. Straight up. Butter for the kids first piece, the rest just straight up. Loaf 2 - sandwiches for school lunches, and my breakfast toast. Loaf 3 - I made French toast with what didn’t get eaten warm. Loaf 4 - it’s in the oven now. Will be warm when the kids get off the bus. So thank you Adam. Really. I have no expectation that you can read these comments anymore. Just too many. And this one is too long for anyone to bother reading. So it’s just a thank you, for the algorithm at least. I’ve watched dozens of your videos, maybe hundreds at this point. I love the approach. The honesty. The information. (Washing meat? Who knew it was an interesting topic? But it was!) But thanks most off for making something I usually find stressful and have avoided for years now, into something that worked for me and my life. I just said no to baking for a long damn time. Gateway bread? Who knows. Maybe it’s the gateway to baking. Peace and love! Thanks again!
Ragusea: "I don't measure things" Ragusea: *sticks thermometer inside a loaf*
Thanks for posting this! I had no idea bread could be made in a dutch oven, but I really wanted to try this so, I bought a dutch oven off Amazon and baked my first loaf today. I put a little more whole wheat into mine, but it turned out perfect!
I’m supper excited to make this for sandwiches. This is an awesome BLT style bread and I love buying it from my local bakery.
Just discovered your channel. I love it..your informative and to the point...I;m going to explore your videos now.But in case you don't have it. I'd love tips on making pizza dough for my wood oven in larger quanties..When I have a party I'd usually make between 12 and 14 12" pies...i Buy the dough from my pizzeria..but I want to start making and using my own dough..thanks alot. keep up the great work.
I appreciate the low key visibility you gave to King Arthur flour. Worker owned food producers deserve more attention.
really love the "what'ever" approach to cooking in this channel. nice work mr ragusea
I been baking bread for a while but I definitely need measurements!!!
Very good attempt, Adam. Just a quick tip (you may already know about it), rather than flouring, wet your hands when touching dough. It makes them practically non-stick, which makes things easier when working with sticky dough. For me, it was a game-changer when I learnt about it.
Thanks ☺️ my focaccia always pain in a butt to knead when it's sticky
This was a great one. Beautiful tips on baking by feel. I love recipes that "free" me!
Thanks for the tip on the parchment paper and more organic method Adam! Have had great success with Brian's 2.0, but your vid has helped clarify and simplify, thank you!!
I place the dough on a parchment paper to rise and simply lift all of it from the corners and put it in the preheated dutch oven.
For those without a ditch oven you can get a very similar result with a old heavy ceramic crock pot just make sure you don’t use one with a plastic handle or anything like that
I love that shot of you turning off the lights! very cool and worked great as a transition
The best bread I have ever made. Simple and convinient
A video about bread. I never baked. I probably won't... Perfect random daily food content!
This is a great video! When you make it yourself, you can make it the way you like it. I recently decided to toast about 1/3 of the flour in a dry pan to a medium brown. Your nose will tell you when it’s brown enough. You get a deep, nutty flavor and it smells wonderful! Toasted flour is a game changer for me.
Hey Ragusea - for Easter dinner Im making this bread recipe, and your chocolate yellow cake recipe from your videos ( both of those I made today - the day before Easter) and tomorrow Im doing your Lamb shank recipe. Im doing beef shanks instead and red pitatoe puree ( couldnt find lamb shanks or celeric root) So our entire Easter family meal is directly from your recent videos bud - thank you! Cake& frosting came out amazing. Bread loaf looks amazing! Anxious to do the shanks tomorrow and see how the whole thing comes out! Happy Easter to you & yours!
Ill say I used Steens cane syrup for frosting - wish I hadnt. Although not bad, Id rather not have that cane syrup taste in the frosting. Shud have stuck with the standard corn syrup
Fascinating, wonderful video on baking bread. Great Job on this video Adam!
I just made myself an easy reference card so I can use this a lot. Once you understand the principles Adam presented, I think you can keep making it again and again with just these instructions. If it’s a help to anyone: Poolish overnight with 1 c water, pinch yeast, bit of flour (pudding-like) 4H ahead, +flour water salt. Shaggy. R1H More flour if needed. R1H 3 20-min. S&Fs Setup oven, Dutch oven or baking sheet & bowl, rest the dough till puffy. Score it. Bake it. (I’m gonna stick with my pre-heating of the D.O., since I usually use a different type that has a low footprint on the bottom pan that’s easy to deal with). Bake cover on, then cover off. Timing depends on method, oven, etc. Edit: I’m guessing if you allow more resting times on day 2, you can adapt this for sourdough starter instead of yeast if you like.
I LOVE the whole cooking with your senses thing, I do it all the time! (With sometimes great results and sometimes terrible mistakes, but I love it anyway)
Thank you Adam for this video. I made a sourdough a few years back. While it was very delicious, it was such a big effort that I didn't make any more bread for the next few years (even through the Covid lockdowns). However I decided to give this a try and it turned out wonderful! I'll definitely make more in the near future.
Made this today and it turned out great. I hadnt used this poulish method before and it seems to have made the bread taste better and it's softer too
Eyeballing ingredients has always been my favourite way to bake. Not only does it save time by removing the urge for my brain to get whole numbers on the scale, but it builds the skill to visualise amounts, which to me is what gives home cooking the "home" theme.
Adam -- Please try this again except next time put a layer of heavy-duty aluminum foil between the lid and body of your Dutch oven. I've done this numerous times when slow cooking meats so as to preserve juices and the foil works so well at creating a seal there's often *too much* juice 😂 I wonder if this technique will trap even more steam to create even better bread 🤔
Tried this recipe ..worked quite well. Thank you for sharing
I've been waiting for magic spoon in the uk for a while now! Adam you've made my week
people preheat the dutch oven because, if not, the dough will "bond" with the metal... it's weird you knock it cuz that's exactly what happened to your upside down lid. I still preheat my dutch oven and let the dough do a final rise on paper separately, then drop the paper with dough in the hot dutch oven.
I told myself I wouldn't try to make Chinese food on a regular home range stove, but Kenji convinced me to get a wok and I think Adam just might make me pull the trigger on baking.
also watch kenji's video i got better results by following him exactly with a scale kzhead.info/sun/abaOdMVofX2mn6M/bejne.html
I heartily encourage you to do so. Making a perfect pie crust or scratch cake is probably frightening for a reason, but it's hard to mess up bread so badly that the result is inedible. Your first loaf will taste just fine and everything beyond your fifth loaf will taste better than anything you've ever bought at the store.
@@MatthewDaly thanks for the words of encouragement! I have this go to garlic sourdough I get at the grocery store but I would like to learn to make my own and have another reason to love my Dutch oven.
@@evanduvall2359 The store probably cheats by adding citric acid or ascorbic acid to their bread to imitate the sour flavor, so it may be more sour than you'll get at home without some experimentation. Following Adam's process will get you some sour flavors, as will any poolish/biga-based bread. Throwing the poolish in the fridge for 2-3 days and letting it develop slowly will get you more. Ditching the commercial yeast and making a wild yeast starter (lots of guides online) will get you a uniquely-flavored sourdough from the natural yeasts and bacteria in your area. It's really not hard to make amazing bread, though, and even the "more advanced" techniques aren't actually difficult. The most advanced it ever gets is switching to weighing everything and taking notes, but you can get tasty results as long as you have flour, water, yeast, and salt -- forgetting the salt is the most common mistake!
Join the dark side. We have bread.
Oh and thanks, for the awesome modest recipe and for showing that's it's ok - better - to 'feel' the measurements!!😊❤
Loving the jazz hands transitions. Keep up the good work
Your approach to cook by your senses is exactly what I've been doing over the last year's. I think once you got a broad idea of how ingredients work you don't need measurements. Only downside: my first freestyle homemade bread was fantastic but I was never able to replicate it as good due to missing information on what exactly I did
This reminded me of a question I’ve had for a while that would probably make a good video topic: how clean are wooden spoons? My instinct is that they’re similar to cutting boards, but I’m not sure!
ooh, I like this!
I’ve been washing mine in the dishwasher due to laziness, but it really weakens the fibers and makes them very likely to break. Not an answer for what to do, but what NOT to do... haha.
Brilliant, gorgeous, wonderful! Finally, a recipe I can follow with my heart haha. I’ve always shied away from baking because it was so precise. This helped me gain the confidence I needed to trust in the process and now I’m confident I can make bread without following an exact recipe! Cheers!
Thank you for this great approachable recipe. My family loved it.
As a longtime home baker, "Cooking with your senses" TERRIFIES me! My Favorite food influencers (of which you are undoubtedly the foremost, good sir) keep saying it works and is nice and is fun and is delicious...... I keep edging closer towards trying it for myself. X) Thanks for helping with that! btw, where the bloody*&#% does one find a dutch oven without a plastic lid handle? WHY do they make them with plastic lid handles? Whyyyyyy Le Cruset is even doing it these days... even if it's heatsafe plastic, I'm still going to be worried about it at 500F, you know?
Yep! My knob is reduced to the screw that went through it and a tiny bit of residual knob material.
@@apatterson8128 Exactly! I have seen that before on others' and on secondhand DUs. Seems nonsensical to produce them with these plastic handles. Is it THAT much cheaper? sheesh
I wouldn't expect your avatar (the old unicorn game that got popular on /v/ a decade ago hence reaction images) to make a comment like this haha
@seronymus Nice, I actually didn't know the provenance of this image, i just classified it as a 'rage face' haha. It's been my chat profile pic for 5+ years at work. Gotta keep your branding consistent, man! =P I should go check out Know Your Meme for this. Heh, I'm 41, memes never stop being funny for people my age *smirk* Exhibit A: Image-search "listen im 40 memes never die reddit" and the first result is a hilarious Zennial meme manifesto I'm fond of X)
Great video! I use these videos not at all as recipes, but as a way to understand my own home breadmaking. My preferred loaf nowadays is quite different - wetter, constrained in a loaf pan or on rolls (to make baguettes) and precisely measured (I don't share your love for feelsy cooking). But it took information like that in this video to really converge my cooking and preferences. Often you just make recipes and wonder why it's not as good as people say it is. That's sometimes just down to your own preferences being different! Anyway, I got a few new ideas from this video, will try them out on the next soup&bread day. Idea for the next bread video: cornmeal (or semolina) as anti-stick agent? Less wasteful than paper sheets, and adds a (to my palate) nice bit of texture to the bottom!
I loooooove your philosophy of cooking with your senses!!
Big big thank you to Adam for this. The bread turned out unbelievable with minimal effort and pretty much zero experience with bread making. This recipe is a life hack and I will be sharing thing around with people who want to save money and give themselves the infinite bread glitch. Genius recipe. Been watching this channel for a while now, but this is a huge cut above
I’m a home bread baker and have made this as a straight yeast dough and sourdough. I believe it would be better to use more exact measurements, then use “feeling” to get the dough. I’m fairly new to working with a Poolish, but have made baguettes and a round loaf using this method, exact measurements from the total dough to make the Poolish. “This recipe is not based on firm quantities”, but it should be, for bread baking, then tweak for more water or flour.
Small tip I enjoy - Spray bottle with water, spritz it lightly all over before dutch-oven lid goes on, the bread will behave very similar to a steam injection oven.
I was thinking that if steam was the goal why not add a splash of water around the loaf before lidding.
Best bread I ever had. Thank you Adam! I really appreciate it.
I watched this video at 1030-11pm EST and started a batch. Going to give this a shot. Thank you for the video. Going to watch again tomorrow when my 8-24 hours has gone by.
Hey Adam! Great vid! Quick question; was your wife on family feud recently? There was someone named Lauren that looked very similar to your wife on. Thanks!
How do you prevent it from getting so dense? That is the primary issue I have had baking homemade breads.
Same
use a wetter dough
This video convinced me to try baking bread - a huge thanks, how good is fresh bread and butter!
My new favorite bread recipe, thanks Adam!
I’m a really big fan of Adam and his channel, he’s a huge inspiration for like half of my weeknight meals. But some of his seemingly obligatory refusals of basic kitchen skills (measuring by weight, actual knife skills) feel purposefully contrarian. Using a kitchen scale is arguably way easier for beginners to use rather than eyeballing the look and feel of a dough which comes with time. And you don’t have to wash kitchen scales, something else Adam doesn’t like to do. Still love the content man.
Something like a kitchen scale can also be a hinderance to novice cooks because, as he said in the video, depending on the protein content of your flour and even the humidity of where you store it, the amount of flour can vary by quite a bit. Encouraging people to gain an intuition for these things without special equipment is a good idea. Anyone who wants to investigate baking beyond their first loaves can and probably will get a scale.
@@TehS3ANaSAURUS I totally understand that point, for sure protein content and humidity is important. I'm no professional but i do bake a ton of bread and even homemade sourdough rather frequently. Maybe I'm just crazy but doesnt intuition come after learning how the dough is supposed to feel in the first place? I agree a kitchen scale can sound daunting at first but i think knowing how a dough is supposed to feel comes after knowing how it should actually feel with proper measurments.
@@graysenm1320 in my own experience I find visual cues to be more helpful, I can see in the video the consistency that he gets it to, so it's easier to just add flour until it looks like that. A ballpark measure can be helpful for that, but it's not really necessary. That being said I wouldn't discourage anyone from using a scale, especially if reproducing a very similar loaf is the goal. Adam has talked elsewhere about how he doesn't care for making something exactly the same way because he wants a unique experience. And, it's also a very simple loaf. You'd have to really muck it up to not get something tasty at the end of the day lol
@@TehS3ANaSAURUS lol yeah this recipe is something close to a “peasant loaf”. Not being derogatory it’s just a certain style. Thanks for a non toxic disagreement bro
@@graysenm1320 likewise, happy baking
What would you do if you wanted a bit more air in the loaf? As someone who’s never baked, my guess would be maybe waiting a bit longer in between folds during the proofing?
Wetter dough (more internal steam in the oven) and yeah, letting it proof as much as possible that last time before you bake. There's always a danger that you'll over-proof it though and it'll collapse!
@@aragusea Got it. I'm very tempted to try out this method now for my first ever attempt :P thanks a lot for the response! I always enjoy your content
Measure ingredients. This maybe sounds counter intuitive but starting with precise measurements makes bread more approachable than someone that's very experienced telling you to just add flour til it feels right, whatever that means. Once you've baked a couple dozen loaves then maybe you get a feel for it but I really don't understand someone making an instructional video aimed at newbies telling them to feel their way through it.
Thank you for a strech and fold recipe; I'm not very strong and I have coordination issues so stretch and fold recipes are very helpful for me.