by A.J. Coltrane
An improvised bread. I would highly recommend using a scale instead of measuring cups when baking breads — the process becomes dead simple, really nearly impossible to screw up. Once you have a feel for what the baker’s percentages should be (the relative weight of the ingredients), recipes aren’t necessary anymore.
| Ingredient | Baker’s Percentage | Weight | Approx Volume |
| Bread Flour | 75 | 300g | 2-1/4 cups |
| Wheat Flour | 25 | 100g | 3/4 cup |
| Water | 65 | 260g | 1 cup + 5 tsp |
| Sea Salt | 2.5 | 10g | 1.5 tsp |
| Yeast | 1.75 | 7g | 2 tsp |
| Sugar | 1.5 | 6g | 1.5 tsp |
Process: I kneaded the ingredients for six minutes in the kitchenaid, covered the bowl with a towel, and allowed the dough to rise for a couple of hours. I put a Le Crueset in the oven to preheat with the oven to 450 degrees. (This is the same process that I use for the Lahey No Knead method, referenced many times on this site.) The bread was set in the pot, slashed, then allowed to bake, covered, for 22 minutes. The lid of the pot was removed and the bread was baked for another 20 minutes. The bread was then moved to a cooling rack.
The postmortem: 25% of the bread flour was swapped out for wheat flour. The combination of the wheat flour, the 65% hydration, and the sugar made for a relatively dense interior. I think the bread may have benefitted from the slashing going a little deeper than it did — it may have allowed a little more expansion in the oven. Still, it tasted good, and was virtually no work, so I’ll call that a win.
FlatbreadGarden 