The bread I bake most often is what I call my "Lazy Loaf." It is a variation of the recipe in lesson #1. I make a sponge with 1 c wheat flour, 1 c water and 1 tsp yeast. If I'm on the ball, I leave the sponge over night. But more often than not, I make a sponge while I make breakfast and let it hang out on my counter while I get the kids to school and do all the "Mom stuff" I've got to do for the day.

Then I add about 1 T butter, 1 tsp salt and the rest of my flour. Some times I add honey and sometimes I add cracked wheat, depending on my mood.

Keep in mind, I rarely measure for this loaf, (hence the name Lazy Loaf) so all measurements are approximate.

Since trying this recipe out a couple of weeks ago I have fell in love with it. The 1st version was a bit wet so I added a touch more flour the subsequent times, starting with 1lb and then addidng till it felt just right (still keeping it pretty moist though). It is now one of the base recipes I use, making it every few days and adding other things to it, such as a small head of finely chopped roasted garlic or some asiago cheese. Just wanted to say thanks!

Floyd,

I was looking at your recipe, thinking of making baguettes this weekend with it, but when I calculated the hydration, I came up with 90-100% depending on whether one uses 10 or 12 oz of water in the dough.

Is the poolish right? I've always used a poolish with roughly even weights of water and flour, and if you use a cup of both, I think that comes out to 4.25 to 4.5 ounces flour and 8 ounces water. Did you mean to say 1 cup flour and 1/2 cup water?

If you're wrangling with bread at nearly 100% hydration and getting the beautiful loaves I see, you are truly ... The Man. :-)

I meant 1 cup to 1 cup on the poolish. I like the flavor I get out of a wet poolish better.

I'm guessing end up closer to 65 or 70% hydration by the time I bake it. The combination of a bit of extra flour I throw in when mixing plus the flour it picks up when I am folding it on a *highly* floured surface narrow the difference.

Got it. If I can find time to make a loaf of this, I'll let you know how it goes.

The crust on the loaf in your picture looks like a Panera sourdough crust, but of course this is not a sourdough. Is the crust as good as it looks? Is it chewy or flaky? What do you think creates the good crust - the very high baking temperature?

sPh

Two questions: Do you usually use AP or bread flour? Does this recipe make 2 loaves?

Does this crust come out softer? I made this today and it came out crisp but thin. I'm trying to figure out if it just comes out that way or if something else caused it.

Hello All..

I'm new here and somewhat new to bread making, (I've been very fortunate to have always gotten at least edible results though !).

I tried the recipe tonight using 10oz water.

I used "bulk" dry active yeast in both the poolish and the bread.

I mixed the flour with the salt, added the poolish, stirred a bit, and added the warm water with disolved yeast.
While kneading I added flour - likely 1c or so - until the dough just started to stick together - it was still plenty wet.
Working with really wet dough is just a bit over my head at this stage.

I let it rise in the oven with the light on, sealed in a plastic bag.

I only did two rises because I was pressed for time.
Each time the dough easily doubled within the 1 hour time period.
The second rise seemed to be bigger than the first !

After I formed to loaves I put them on the table, also covered in plastic, and they doubled within 40 min.

Question...Are my rises too fast ?

PS....My biggest problem at this stage seems to be shaping uniform and pretty loaves but I guess that will come with (lots of) practice.

I found this link with some photos;

http://jansdough.janktheproofer.com/shapebread.htm

Has anyone got another one ??

Floyd - how did you get the pattern on the top of the loaf pictured ?
I just slice with a razor but I like your effect better !

Thanks in advance for any advice....

John,
Ottawa, Canada

Ever since I started baking bread(thanks to this faboulous cite) my husband wanted me to bake bread in the loaf style, but i did not have a loaf pan. So last night when he returned from his tour he brought a loaf pan. AND so I had to bake a bread immediately. Well not exactly so. I used all purpose flour n made a poolish n also added some of the dough that I has saved from previous baking. It was bubbly within an hour n smelled yeasty. I did not knead it too much and using a little oil made a ball n placed it in a greased bowl.As soon as the dough was near double I used the folding technique and repeated this once again n then placed the dough in the Refrigerator for a slow rising. In the morning the dough had more than doubled. Then I degrassed the dough and again using the folding method shaped the dough n placed it in the pan. After slashing n glazing I poped the loaf in the ovan with the fan on. I like my crust to be little soft so I sprayed water in the ovan once immediately before placing the pan inside n once after five minutes.
The smell of bread was so good. It was baked in 25 minutes.The crumbs was even n the bread was oh so soft inside. The coulor of the bread was not white but slightly pale can some one tell me why was it so. I think the all purpose flour I used was unbleached so the pale(cream) colour but could there be any other reason too.
n hubby was so happy to have his loaf. out came the butter n knife Couldn't wait for even five minutes n slathered it with butter n half the bread was gone. I took some to office for my friends n they too loved it.
Thanks a ton for this site n for sharing experiences. I have learned so much fom all.
shi

Shi - I've always sprayed water in to the oven to obtain a HARDER crust! And a spray five minutes into baking makes it even more so!
For a soft crust, I lightly flour the surface of the loaf and don't spary .. it seems to work! So if you find spraying makes a soft crust - it implies we are all being hoodwinked and there's no difference whatever you do!!!

Andrew

PS did you allow the loaf to rise again after knocking back and folding and placing i the tin~?

andrew actually I did not spray much water just a few squirts on the walls of the ovan for ovan spring.i think for a real hard crust a lot of steam has to be created like by placing a pan of boiling water in the bottom or ice cubes etc. The crust was crunchy n thin not hard. I am really very very new to bread baking but this is how my bread came out.
I can say that the kneading i did was only for say 1 minutes(well the dough was quite wet)and then the twice folding, shaping and yes last rising in the pan. The Top was not perfect but after the slashing n ovan spring u couldnt see that. :))
Do u have any suggestion regarding the pale(cream colour) of my loaf(inside)could it be that the all purpose flour was unbleached(is that good). (sigh) in india we get only all purpose flour(we call it maida) no classification whether it is bleached or un bleached.
shi

There are convincing arguments that ice cubes are not the best for producing steam as they tend to cool the oven. I find a cup of boiling water does the trick with some regular oven-spraying for the first five minutes, then that's it. But perhaps ice cubes give a different character to the crust that might be attractive in another way? Any ideas? I haven't experimented with this yet....

I've had better luck with 2 cups of boiling water into a pre-headed iron skillet at the bottom of the oven. My oven vents so quickly, that I need the extra water to keep a decent amount of steam inside. I also spray water on the walls at 30 second intervals for the first 2 minutes.

Works well for me.

I normally give a good water misting on loaf or loaves as they enter the hot oven, or put into cloche. My husband is an electrician say's no way to mist the walls of the oven.. This was sourdough baked under a cloche. qahtan 

Beautify loaf, qahtan. Can you share more about the recipe and the temps at which you baked this?

In search of the perfect crust & crumb

Have any of you taken old recipes, that often called for baking the bread an hour at 375 degrees F, and figured out how to bake the loaves in much hotter ovens on baking stones/tiles? I'd appreciate your advise.
Sylvia
In search of the perfect crust & crumb

You always get a good crispy crust when you use a cloche, before I bought
the one in KAF catalogue I used this one that my husband made for me,$7.99
at Home Depot, plus ring crew and washer, I ran the pot through the dishwasher first to remove any nasties that may have been on it :-))
But I always bake at a very high temperature,non convection, and I only mist as breads are entering the oven, never ever the oven walls. qahtan

Your loaf looked great and the idea of a cloche appeals.
Do you heat the cloche in the oven with your (appears to be) pizza stone? Then put the loaf on the stone and put hot cloche on top?
I can imagine this would simulate an old fashioned brick oven. If so - I shall get a terracotta pot like that and try it! But of course, that would only work with round loaves - my batons would have to be cooked in the oven without a cloche!

Andrew

I've just used Peter Reinhart's recipe for a cinnamon raison walnut loaf (apparantly based on the one in Brother Juniper) using the "in the News" link on the right (Great idea Floyd - they are always worth browsing).

Anyway all went well with kneading, rising and Peter is right - a fantastic flavoured loaf - BUT - the oven temp??? 375f degrees just as stated in recipe.

I was really disappointed in lack of oven spring - YES a well risen loaf went in and came out exact'y the same BUT no extra "lift" or lightness and the crust is indifferent :~

I usually tackle new recipes as stated unless really unhappy with method before tinkering but wish I'd gone with my gut instinct one this one and heated my convection/fan oven to 200c (my oven cooks hot so "normal loaves" go in at 210-220c but enriched/egg/sweet doughs a little lower to prevent the top catching.

Still it eats well - no photo this time but I will do my best next time as I reckon the recipe is a keeper.

So do I take it that the cloche and pizza stone are not heated first? In which case is there limited oven spring?

Thanks
Andrew

Hi, Im new here and glad to meet you.
Ive been trying to bake bread on and off over the years with some sorry results to some times okay.
I tried your poolish bread recipe and it turned out really good.
My problem was that I just got a new oven and didnt want to crank it up all the way.
So I used my gas grill.
I cranked it up on high with a pizza stone in the center and shut the lid and let it heat for the last twenty or so minutes of the loaves proofing.
I proofed them on a floured pizza peal.
When I put them on the stone, the grill was at 575 degrees.
I poured a cup of water on the hot plates under the grill and shut the lid.
About every minute I would lift the lid just far enough, and pour another cup of water.
This produced great clouds of steam for about five or six seconds and would drop the temperature about twenty degrees.
After five minutes, I turned off the center burner dropping the temp to 425 degrees, and let them bake for about fifteen more minutes.
The bread turned out crusty and yummy.

I needed to bake up a good crusty loaf to be an accompaniment for Cajun Shrimp.
The shrimp is baked in a sauce that needs a good bread to sop up all the
yummies. This loaf looked so good, but I was hesitant to try it because of
everyone's description of working with slack dough. I used 8 oz of water and
even though the dough was slack it was easily managed. My only error was
that I made it into one loaf...one gigantic loaf! I didn't print off the recipe
and I guess I thought since there was a picture of one loaf that was supposed to be
the end result. Even though I don't have stone yet..the loaf looks pretty good.
I will post a pic later. Don't be intimidated by the talk of wet dough as I was,
just try cutting back on the water to begin with. Next time I will try it a bit
wetter and see the difference.
I also baked a German Chocolate cake for dessert..just a few calories tonight!
The gangs all here ..time for dinner..
Happy Father's Day to all our Dads!!

I've been baking bread for about 15 years. I haven't purchased "store bought" bread in about 10 years. I've tried numerous times to bake a nice, tasty artisan loaf with lots of good holes. (I'm not sure what this is really called, but I call it "holes":) Never had any success, until yesterday.

I followed the recipe for My Daily Bread and read the lessons. Thanks to this list I finally made a good loaf yesterday. I discovered that I had been making my dough too dry, over kneading it, and not baking it hot enough. Now all I have to do is make sure that I can do it again! Once could always be a mistake. :) After reading several posts, I decided that I should take photos of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Maybe it will help me to remember what I did to do it right or wrong.

Thank you for this great list!

MJ

[don't throw things at me!!] Just thought I'd put a note up here to say I used the poolish recipe in my breadmachine and got dramatically better results than with any other method I have tried. I put the cup flour, cup water and 1/4 tsp yeast in my breadmachine pan while making dinner, then dumped in 1/4 cup water, 2 1/2 cups flour and 3/4 tsp salt at bedtime and awoke to a shiny, crisp but chewy crust, fairly dense aromatic loaf that compares not with everyone else is no doubt getting out of their steamy ovens, but is finally better than anything I can buy at the grocery store. Just wish I could get the crust a bit darker. Damn them for not making the machines more programmable. Thanks!

This is for Paddyscake. Can you give us the recipe for the shrimp? This sounds like something I would love.

Thanks

I'm one of those lucky people who are not crazy about sour dough so I don't have to continually feed and fret over a starter. Thanks for the shrimp recipe.

I had to try it, and though I haven't tasted it, I'm pretty excited about how pretty this loaf is (in my newbie opinion).  This is my first loaf of bread!!  The dough was so wet I found it difficult to work with and so just made one big loaf. On one side where the loaf sat on the cookie sheet, there are rough edges that are blackened from where the wet dough was not tucked under tight, but I'll shave them off before serving.  Otherwise, this has well exceeded my expectations (especially when nervously trying to make a wet lump into a loaf last night!)

Thanks for this!

I got an answer, thanks.

If you wanted to make double the amount of bread in this recipe, would you just make two batches and bake them all at once, or would you double everything in the recipe?
Thanks.
Deryn

This is my seccond attempt at my daily bread, the first one tasted good and all but the shape was very bad

the only problem wit this one was that i managed to mix up teaspoons to tablespoons in salt :P

 I finally made an attempt at this recipe a couple of days ago.  I keep forgetting to read all the comments below the original post so I was already into this loaf before discovering the wet dough parts.

My dough was very wet as well but I kept adding flour to make it work.  I created the poolish and then added the flour as instructed.  It was very sticky and I found it a challenge but finally got it to where I could work with it.  It just seems like I worked with it all day long however.

I've never had dough RISE as much as this did.  It was amazing to say the least and actually started overflowing my bowl at one point.

I should have made 3 loaves I think but made 2 instead per the instructions.  They were very large and after the final rise they too almost overflowed my baking sheet.

The bread had a good texture with some decent holes and even a couple of too large ones throughout.  Taste was good but I seem to keep creating a hard crispy crust that I'd rather not have.  I guess I'm cooking it at too high a temp.  I find that my bread is better the next day or even on the 3rd day as far as the crust is concerned.  I store it in a plastic bag and it softens up.

I will certainly try this again and hopefully one day can post some pictures of my own.  Thanks for the great recipe and instructions.  Be Blessed!!!

 "We're Making Footprints In The Sand"

I just pulled this out of the oven and was unable to resist trying some hot. It smelled heavenly and tastes even better with a little salted butter. Just had to play with it a little, so I snuck a cup of whole wheat flour in with the rest of the bread flour and added two tablespoons of olive oil. Ended up WAY wet and sticky, and didn't rise much vertically, but man is it ever good.

Thanks, Floyd! This is only my fifth loaf of bread ever, and I'm having a blast.

My first attempt at this recipe and any bread for the past 7 or so years... The crust is delicious, very crispy, and some of the crumb is nice but near the bottom it's kinda doughy. The temperature of the bread was up around 205 when I took it out, but I think either my thermometer is off or I stuck the thermometer so far in it was near the very top of the loaf. In any case, I'm enjoying it.

I've never baked anything fancy that required something like a poolish. I did know about them though from a book that I gave to my mother-in-law, The Bread Bakers Apprentice. After seeing this recipe and finding other tips for the aspiring home baker of artisan/rustic breads I was inspired. Over the past weekend I made a loaf based on this recipe and it was fantastic.

Without a scale I had to guess the proper measurements of flour. Correct me if I'm wrong but would 1 lb. of flour come out to approximately 2-2/3 cups? Like other members who tried this recipe I too had to add more flour during the kneading process. Can someone offer a suggestion on how to properly add flour? I was adding 1/2 cup at a time and kneaded till the dough was tacky enough to peel away from the bowl without sticking to it. Anyway, below are a few pics on my results with the final being my set up in the oven.

In my oven I purchased six of these 6"x6" unglazed quarry tiles from Home Depot for about $3. I'm very happy with the results so I'll stick with them for now. As you can see I got a small cast iron skillet on the bottom of my oven for the steam part of my baking. Works like a charm.

 Floyd:

 Just wanted you to know that I've been working your daily bread recipe for the last couple of weekends and am just loving it.  I'm using a longer, cool ferment, and I'm shaping more like un-scored baguettes, but in all other ways I'm staying faithful to your recipe.

It's frankly given me the crumb I've always hoped for: lots of air and very elastic, with a great crust.

Will put up a pic later today, if I can get my butt in gear.   

Thanks a bunch!

Prandium longa. Vita brevis.

Floyd:

Just to benchmark, what is the range of your average first rise time with this?

Thanks, in advance.  Grrr.

Prandium longa. Vita brevis.

I made this the other day and wow!  I've never used a poolish before, and actually this was my first try with all-purpose flour!  (I was pretty ambitious starting with only wheat)  The dough was wet, but the second rise on top of my little toaster oven was great, and the flavor-amazing!

(that's all that was left of the loaf by the time I got my camera out) 

Hi, all.  I'm a long-time lurker (especially benefiting from the lessons and videos), but this is my first post.   I've made this recipe twice now, with similar results, and I have two questions.  I have two questions.

First, like many others, I found the dough exceptionally sticky.  I can barely shape a loaf, and when I do, they spread a lot.  How do people deal with this?  I've read of using wet hands, for example. 

Second, both times the bread was spectacular right out of the oven (at least by my standards, and my wife's).  But the next morning, it was a little heavy - perhaps a bit stale.  I know that bread without preservatives is going to go stale faster than bread with - but this was faster than other breads I've made.  Has anyone had a similar experience?  Or advice on what I may be doing wrong (or not enough, or too much) to make this happen?

Thanks, Floyd, for starting the site, and to everyone for all the useful information.

 Matt 

Hi! I'm new here, and I just tried the Daily Bread this morning, exactly as written. (although I did add just a bit of wheat flour, while mixing, to help form the dough. I still left it pretty wet, though.)
I have to say, I found it a delightful dough and it yeilded 2 amazing loaves! Absolutely delicious AND beautiful! Thanks so much for this recipe!

Judy

Can I make the poolish, put it in the frige, and then use only a portion of it to any bread recipe.  Say 1/4 cup each time.  It will last for about 2 weeks I think I read somewhere.  So I would be able to get four or six loaves of bread out of t his one poolish?  Is this possible?

I tried my first loaf of Pain sur poolish.

It came out great although I ended up having ot add about another 1.5 cups of flour.

I was wondering if adding a 1/4 cup of malt powder would give it more flavor.  Any Ideas?? 

I've made this loaf many times now and it is scrumptious! However, the last two times I've baked, something has gone wrong.

I've noticed the poolish water hasn't gotten completely incorporated after it's been out over night. This is new; before there was no extra water sitting under the "glop." Also the last two times, the baked bread hasn't turned out. I get many bubbles on the top of the loaf and the loaf itself barely rises. When I cut into it, the top crust is very thin and the top inch of bread is so lacey with holes that there is only about 2 inches of bread below to eat. Why is this happening? It's very frustrating as I don't think I'm doing anything differently.

Floyd, that is exactly what happened! Would it make any difference if I drained the water off? (I thought I should use it.) Or does that whole episode render the poolish not usable? Is there any clue to when that separation begins? Thanks for the feedback.

Here's my weekend effort (minus 1 loaf I gave away). I used a perforated curved pan for the baguette and the batard. The batard oozed out over the edge of its pan and has a bit of a handle, but it still made that great crackling sound when it came out of the oven.

Pain sur poolish