Weekly Photo Challenge Simple

The weekly photo challenge is Simple.

I found a really “Simple” bread to make. Boule bread.

I watched this French cooking show on Cooking channel TV and saw a very, simple bread recipe. It is called The Miracle Boule bread. I made some and decided to tell you about it. This is the easiest bread I have ever made.

You take 3 cups/375 g, of all purpose flour.

½ tsp yeast. (I increased it, the recipe called for ¼ tsp)

1¼ tsp salt.

1½ cup water. I made the water warm, not hot.

Mix the flour, salt and yeast in a bowl. Stir in 1 ½ cups (375 ml) water. What you will have is a wet, shaggy sticky dough, but not so wet as to be batter. (Mine was not real wet.) I just stirred it up until all flour was moist. Cover the bowl with a tea towel. (I put plastic cling wrap over my bowl. Let it rest in a warm place for at least 12 hours. I did it the night  evening before.

It looks like this the next day.

I also coated the bowl with cooking spray so it would not stick so much.

Flour a work surface and dump the dough out onto it. Sprinkle over a little more flour and fold it once or twice. Cover with a tea towel and let rest 15 minutes. (I bought a cotton towel in the dish towel section at Wal-Mart, smooth feeling.)

Put some flour on your hands to keep the dough from sticking to your fingers. Get the dough out of the bowl, use a spatula. Shape the dough into a ball (ball shape, it is floppy). Coat your cotton towel with flour. You need a lot because you want to be sure the dough doesn’t stick to the towel. Put the dough ball in the middle of the towel and pull the towel ends over the dough to cover. Let rise for 2 hours. When ready the dough will double in size.

Half an hour before the dough is ready, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F or 230 degrees C. Put into a cast iron pat or dutch oven. I used a 6.5 qt one. I bought this pot because it has a metal knob, it won’t melt in a hot oven. I have used the plastic knobs in the hot oven and they do melt. Try wrapping foil around them so they don’t melt so bad if you do have a pot like that.

When the dough is ready, remove the pot from the oven, turn the dough into it, seam side up. I just plopped it from the towel into the pot. Shake the pot to settle the bread evenly. Cover with the lid and bake for 30 minutes. Then remove the lid and bake until the loaf is nicely brown anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. Cool on a rack. It is crisp on the outside and nice and soft on the inside. It tastes good too.