Bread Baking 101: Master Artisan Breads at Home

1. Introduction to the Course: Flour, water, soil, and yeast. That is all you need to make beautiful bread at home. Hi, my name is [inaudible]. I'm a professionally trained Baker and Chef from [inaudible]. I have work for many years in Sydney across some of the best bakeries, and I want to share all my professional experiences with you in this class. The class is designed not just to cover the recipes, but to learn concepts which will make you think like a baker, like dough temperature, role of yeast, and understanding the fermentation process to build a strong foundation. Once you master these fundamentals, we apply these concepts to make a beautiful no-knead Focaccia with the olive and hair tomatoes. This bread will make your house smell like an amazing Italian bakery. The second recipe, we learn how to make one of my favorite breads, vagabonds and dinner rolls. We will learn how to make the softest dough from scratch and learn different shaping techniques so you can develop new skills to impress your friends and family. The third recipe, we make a fairly light and healthy whole beat sandwich loaf. This bread is perfect for incorporating whole wheat in your diet and eating clean and healthy. To finish the class, we make a beautiful French Boule, which will take your baking skills to another level. We will learn skills on how to handle and develop bread doughs, and cover aspects, such as shaping, scoring, and baking the bread. The class also comes with a detailed recipe book with all the recipes and class notes so that you can easily master these recipes at home. Baking bread at home can seem intimidating, but this class covers all the steps and processes and will help you build a strong foundation so that you can become a master baker. 2. Course Outline and Class Project: In this lesson, I'm going to briefly describe the outline for the class as well as the class project. The class is basically divided into two sections. The first section basically covers the essential concepts of theory you need to know as a baker, and the second one consists of the recipes. So when you actually make the recipes, I would advise to actually watch the videos and make it along with the videos, so that you can follow all the steps properly. The class project for this class is basically for you to share any one recipe you like. It can be a Focaccia, it can be a sandwich loaf. So that I can actually review it and give you some pointers on where you can improve. Also, I would like to say that if you have any questions or if you have any suggestions, please feel free to drop in and I will definitely get back to you. Also if you could drop a small review, that would really help me. Let's move forward with the fundamental aspects of baking in the next section. 3. Tools and Equipment : In this section of the course, you'll be looking at some of the tools and equipment which will use during the course. I wanted to briefly explain basically the role of all the equipment and their uses and if you understand, and if you have this equipment during the class, it'll be really easy to make these recipes and also it will help you develop your skill as baker as well. Let's have a look at some of my favorite equipment. Let's have a look at the equipment I use as a baker and this is probably the essential things you need and also to be able to work with different breads in the class as well, having this equipment will really help you. The most important one for a baker is this one, bench scraper and a bench knife. This is like an extension of your hand, when you're basically scraping the dough from the table or even if you're cutting the dough, it's really helpful and taking the dough off your hands as well it's really nice. The second one is a bench knife. This is also really nice if you are basically cutting dough, portioning dough very, very helpful. Keep your workplace really neat and clean. These two, I would say a must-have. This one for sure I think you should definitely get this one. The next one is a thermometer, either you can use this one or this one. Now, we use a thermometer in the bakery all the time in all processes. We have to check the temperature of the dough to adjust our workflow and to basically check how the dough is progressing, if it's fermenting too fast or if it's fermenting too slow. For example, if I make a dough and if it's too warm then I check with the thermometer, I'll maybe put it in the fridge for 10 minutes just to cool it down to get it to the ideal temperature I wanted to. That is why I really like using this even when I make a dough just to keep track of the temperature. The third one I really like using is a bearing knife and a chef's knife. This is super useful when you're basically carrying foods or even doughs, I really like using both of them. The fourth one is a scale. The scale is really important when you are measuring doughs. Say for example, if I want to stretch the dough for a pastry or even when I want to push the dough, if I'm filling the dough with something like chocolate, I basically stretch it out to a certain dimension. That is why this is very helpful. Just to be very accurate when you're measuring. The fourth one is a bread knife. A bread knife is very important when you're portioning bread because if you use a knife like this one or this one, you won't get a smooth cut but for the bread knife, you always get a really nice cut. When you putting bread on the table this is very nice, when you're portioning bread as well. The next one is a scissor. Scissor is something you use quite often actually, but you don't really realize it especially when you're maybe cutting baking paper or sometimes even cutting things you need to put in the dough as well. It's really nice to have one. The next one is a palette knife. This is really helpful if you're spreading something on the dough or just any filling as such just to make it even. It's quite helpful to have this as well. The last one, I like having these pastry cutters. They have two designs, either you can get a circle one or this design and this is nice if you like making cookies or if you're basically making scones or if you're portioning dough if you want that shape, I really like using this as well. These are the ones you should have when you begin baking because they will really help you and really help you in your workflow as well, and also to get better with your products. Let's have a look at some of the equipment which we'll need in this class. The first one is a baking tray. This is just like a sheet pan and it's really useful in the focaccia we make, even when you want to make bread rolls just to bake it in this just forms a really good baking mechanism. I highly recommend you to have one of these because it will really help you. The second one is a cooling rack. The cooling rack is important because when we bake bread, a lot of moisture still remains in the bread when we take it out and it's cooling and because this rack has these ridges in it, all the moisture can evaporate when we're cooling down the bread and the bread also is baking as it's cooling down so if you put it on a flat surface tray for example, if I cool it down on a tray, it might get a little bit soggy from the bottom. Just cooling it down on a cooling rack makes so much difference in the quality of the final product. The third one we're going to use is a baking tin. It's like a bread tin like this one. This you can get it at any store. It's really useful to baking the sandwich dough from this. The fourth one is a silicon. A silicon mat like this. This is nice because you can reuse this and it bakes really well on this. If you want to make burger buns and dinner rolls, you can use this but if you don't have this one, you can use baking paper. Make sure you get baking paper which is slightly coated so nothing sticks to it basically. The next one is a banneton. This is really good when you want to proof bread when you make a bowl and you want to prove it in this. We'll be looking at it in further classes when I actually make a bowl then I show it to you. This is not necessary because you can also ferment and proof in a bowl which is a similar shape to this, but this is really nice to proof because it's got these ridges here where the dough can breath and really good in sourdough as well, if you plan to make sourdough. If you can get one of these to proof bread in it. The next one is a lame. This is used to score the bread and I like using this because it's slightly curved. When you score it, you get that really nice shape on the bread. This is really easy to make actually. It's just a stick and you can get any wooden stick like a skewer, you can put it on the blade and just make a lame out of that. You don't really need to get it online or spend so much money on making it. You can just make it at home, it's a really nice way of doing it. The next one is just a cutting board like this, just to cut bread on it and just for presentation as well. If you're making a cheese board, just to make a finished product for your friends and family, very nice to have this one as well. I hope this helps you understand the uses of different equipment and it'd be really helpful if you can just keep building this up and keep getting more equipment and keep experimenting with different techniques and different doughs. 4. The Role of Yeast in Baking: In this lesson, we're going to learn about yeast. What is yeast exactly? It's basically a microorganism which feeds on the starches and sugars present in the flour and it produces carbon dioxide and ethanol. The carbon dioxide basically inflates the dough and creates all those lovely air bubbles and that really nice texture which you get in breads. There are basically three types of yeast. One is cake yeast, the second one is active dry, and the third one is instant yeast. The ones we'll be using in class is instant yeast but if you cannot get instant yeast, I'm going to explain the properties of cake yeast and active dry. Cake yeast is basically compressed form of yeast, it's got more moisture in it and it needs to be refrigerated. It has a smaller shelf life and it's not that easily available so you'll find it in really all bakeries or maybe if someone is brewing beer, you can find it with them. I wouldn't advise using that, but if you can get your hands on it, make sure to use thrice to the amount of the instant yeast. The second one is active dry. Active dry basically needs to be bloomed in water before using because it's a dehydrated version of cake yeast. Make sure to bloom it before you use it otherwise, it won't work in the recipe. The third one is instant yeast, which is the one we're going to be using and which is the one I have seen used in most bakeries I worked at because it's the most convenient one. It has a really long shelf life and if you keep it in the freezer, it just lasts forever. The advantage of instant yeast is that you can directly add it to the flour you don't really need to bloom it. It's really convenient when you're making like 20 to 40 kilos of dough. You just put the yeast in the flour and just mix it with the water, you don't need to spend time blooming it. That is why I really like using it and it's very stable, it always works. That is what we're going to use as well in the class. If you can get your hands on that, that would be perfect but if you cannot get it, you can use active dry with the same amount, but make sure to bloom it. I hope this helps you understand different types of yeast and their properties. 5. Understanding the Fermentation Process: Let's try to understand a little bit about the fermentation process. What actually happens when yeast, flour, and water come in contact with each other? The yeast starts feeding on the sugars and starches, and starts producing carbon dioxide. But salt because it controls fermentation and it's hygroscopic, it controls the activity of yeast and balances it. When we knead the dough, we're basically aerating the dough, be giving the dough oxygen, and that causes these air pockets in the dough, which is what the carbon dioxide fills, and that is how the dough expands. This is surely interesting. What happens when we actually proof the dough and put it in the oven to bake? The bread expands one final time. Basically, the air bubbles fill and the yeast starts to die, and basically, the bread expands and becomes a beautiful dough. What is called fermentation? It's basically when we put the dough in the fridge and yeast becomes dormant below four degrees Celsius. So you have other complex bacteria, like lactic acid bacteria, basically growing in the dough and that actually develops a lot of flavor. Most of our breads, most of our recipes in this course are actually cold fermented because I wanted to develop a lot more flavor than the usual processes we make the dough. Cold fermentation also results in a stronger gluten structure so that the bread, when you proof it in the final stages, it comes out really nicely. 6. Role of Salt in Baking: Let's understand the role of salt in baking. Salt not only gives flavor to the dough, but it also helps to maintain the gluten structure in the dough so that when the dough expands because of CO_2, when we bake it, it doesn't collapse. It basically maintains the gluten structure, so the bread actually stays really nice and fluffy and really bulky. In bakery, we've actually sometimes forgotten to add salt to the dough, and it's been a complete disaster. I'm sure it will happen with you at some point where you forget to add salt, and you'll see that when you put the dough in the oven, it'll just collapse completely, and it'll be really dense, and it won't have any flavor. So don't forget to add salt to your dough. Not just that, it basically also controls the fermentation. It basically maintains the activity of the yeast so that yeast does not reproduce too quickly, and it stays within permissible limits, and it just doesn't over-ferment. That is why salt is really important. When you use salt in the dough, you can use any type of salt. You can use sea salt, you can use kosher salt, but make sure that the grains of the salt are really fine so that it dissolves really easily in the dough. If you use sea salt with big crystals, make sure to dissolve that salt in water before using it in the dough because otherwise it will not dissolve in the dough. Salt also acts as a preservative so that if you add salt to the dough, the bread actually stays longer, and it does not spoil. That is why salt is one of the most important ingredients we use in baking. 7. Why is Gluten Important for Baking Breads: In this lesson, let's try to understand more about gluten. People have really bad conceptions about gluten, like it's really evil thing nowadays in society, but that's not actually true unless you are gluten intolerant. It's actually not that bad for you. If you actually ferment the dough and break down the starches in the dough by long fermentation and if you don't eat commercial bread, which has a lot of chemicals in it, gluten usually won't harm you in any way. It's basically the protein present in the flour. When you hydrate the flour, glutenin and gliadin are two proteins, they basically bond together and form gluten. Gluten is basically, think of it like a net. It's a structure of the dough and once the CO_2 starts filling up the dough, the gluten acts like a net and holds that structure in place and that is why you get that chewy and airy texture. Gluten also differs from different flours. For example, cake flour has 8 percent gluten, but bread flour has about 12-14 percent of protein, so you need to consider the flour as well and that is why you get a different product based on a higher gluten content. So based on the flour, you get a higher gluten content, you get a different product. You'll get more chewy and airy texture. Gluten is really essential if you want to make a really good loaf of bread because you need that structure in place. So how do you develop gluten? Basically when you kneed the dough or you do a stretch and fold, you are developing gluten in the dough. Usually, if you have doughs of low hydration, we kneed it and that basically stretches the proteins and it makes it most stronger, it's like a rubber band basically and when we stretch and fold it, it's the same, we're basically developing the gluten a little more slowly, but we're still developing it. In this class we'll be looking at recipes and I'll teach you how to develop gluten in the dough in a slightly slower manner by stretching and folding because a dough has a lot of hydration. So you cannot actually kneed these doughs, so it'd be really interesting to look at it in future classes. 8. Understanding Dough Percentages: Let's learn a little bit about dough percentages. As a baker, if I go to work in a bakery, no one's going to done me recipes. They're always going to tell you the dough percentage of a baguette or a croissant. They're not going to tell me the exact recipe. What is actually a dough percentage? Think about it in this way. You take flour as a 100 percent in the recipe and you calculate every other ingredient based on the flour. For example, water is 60 percent of the flour. If you have one kilo of flour, you have 600 grams of water because it is 60 percent of the flour. Similarly, you'll take salt, yeast based on the amount of flour. This makes it really easy to think like a baker and also to scale recipes so I know exactly how much hydration there is in a recipe. If you start thinking like this and if you understand this concept, it will really help you scale up or scale down a recipe. If I want to make one loaf or 10 loaves, I have the same baker's percentage. Let's learn through an example how we actually calculate this. Let's look at an example to understand the dough percentages. I'm just going to make a dough recipe to understand this concept. The 1st thing you do is take flour which is 100 percent, and everything else is based on this. The 2nd ingredient is water. I'm going to take that 60 percent, 3rd one is yeast, it's at one percent, and salt is two percent. Now what does this actually mean? Let's try to understand it. Say for example, I have one kilo of dough, which is one kilo of flour, so this is 1,000 grams of flour. Now how do I know how much water I need? I just take 60 percent of 1,000, which is 600 grams. What about the yeast? It's one percent of 1,000, which is 10 grams, and similarly salt, which is 20 grams. If I want to calculate, say for 500 grams, half a kilo, I can just use the same percentages and calculate the recipe. I don't really need a specific recipe if I know this. As bakers, we always refer to water as hydration. I have 60 percent hydration in this dough. That gives us a sense of how much water is in the dough. Let's take an example. This makes about two loaves. I need to make one loaf, so that will take 500 grams of flour. I know that I need to make one loaf and it uses 500 grams of flour. Now I should be able to think how much water I need because I know that that is 60 percent, so that's 60 percent of 500, that's 300 grams of water. I also know that it's one percent of yeast, that's five grams of yeast, and two percent salt, so that's 10 grams of salt. Now it's just really nice to know this. Now, for example, I need to make four loaves. I can just multiply this into four, everything into four. If you think like this, you can basically make every recipe in percentages and then just work your way around recipes. Also, if you want to make modifications to recipes, once you know these percentages, you can maybe increase the water, reduce the yeast, just like that. Knowing this concept will really help you develop a thinking of a baker. 9. Why is Dough Temperature Important: In this lesson, you're going to learn about what is the desired dough temperature. As a baker, maintaining the temperature of the dough is one of the best skills you can learn. If you can master that, you'd have so much more control over the fermentation and the proofing stage of the bread. The ideal temperature of the dough is about 27 degrees Celsius. This is a temperature when the dough develops really good flavors and also gets a really good texture. How do we actually come to this temperature? We take three variables. First is the temperature of the room, second is the temperature of the water, and third is the temperature of the flour. The temperature of the room and the flour are considered equal because we store the flour in the room temperature. But temperature of the water is something we can change as a baker to get to that 27 degree, the ideal temperature of the dough. I wanted to basically explain how you can actually calculate this. Let's understand this concept through an example. Let's try to understand the desired dough temperature with an example. This is what we do at the bakery as well. We read the temperature and then we calculate the temperature of the water and we also keep taking the temperature of the dough at every stage of the process. We have three elements basically which we need to consider. The first one is the room temperature. Second one is the temperature of the flour. Third one is the water temperature. In the bakery, we also use another element which is called friction factor, which is the heat which the mixer gives. But because we're making really small quantities at home, I'm not going to consider that. Now what we know is that these two are equal because we keep the flour at room temperature. This is the one we need to calculate. What is the ideal temperature? It's about 27 degrees. We need to basically multiply this by three, because we have three elements. That comes to about 81 degree Celsius. Say for example, the room temperature is 23 degrees Celsius. That's the same as the flour as well, because the flour is stored in the room. I don't know this one. This is the one I need to calculate. But I know that this is the temperature which it should be of all the three elements. It should be 81 degree Celsius. What I'm going to do is add these two up and subtract that by 81. So 81 minus 46. That comes to about 35 degrees Celsius. This is the temperature of the water we need for this recipe. It can be different [inaudible] based on your room temperature, you can have a different outcome of the water you need. That is why I say if it's somehow, say for example, you have 35 degrees Celsius here, the water temperature will be really low. But when this is lesser, the water temperature will be higher. That is the reason why it's so important to calculate the water temperature because it can have a really big impact on your dough. Once you master this concept, you'd have a lot more control on the dough and also the flavor and the consistency. If this does not make complete sense at this point, don't worry, because we'll look at this concept when we actually make the recipes as well. So it will make a lot more sense in that case. 10. Understanding Different Types of Flour: In this lesson, we're going to talk about different types of flours, which we use in bread baking. There are mainly four types of flours. The first one is cake flour. Cake flour has the lowest protein content, about 8 percent. It's really good to make cakes or biscuits or scones, but not really good to make bread because you need a higher protein content to make a good gluten structure, which the cake flour cannot make, but it's perfect to make cakes, because in that case you don't really need the formula of gluten. If you're using cake flour, don't use it for bread baking, but you can definitely use it for cakes. The second one is all-purpose flour. All-purpose flour is actually one of my favorite flours, because you can use it for cakes as well as you can use it for bread baking. It's really versatile, and if you don't have bread flour, you can definitely use that to make bread. In this class, if you don't have bread flour, you can use all-purpose flour. The third one is wholemeal flour. The wholemeal flour is basically the grain, is basically not sifted, so it has the germ and the bran in it. When we actually grind the grain in a mill, we don't sift it at all. It's a little bit dense when you make a bread with it, so that is why we combine it with a white flower. But it's still at the same time, it's very healthy. We'll be looking at it in future class when we make the sandwich loaf and incorporate the wholemeal flour in baking. The last one is bread flour. This is actually the best flour you can use to making bread, but I understand in some countries it's not readily available. But if you can get your hands on it, you will be able to make really good breads. It has a protein content of about 12-14 percent, and it forms a really strong gluten structure. Because of that, you get a really chewy and airy crumb. I would highly recommend to use it. I hope this helps you understand a little bit more about the flours which are available to us as bakers. 11. Foccacia- Understanding Ingredients and Making the Dough: Before we start the recipe, let's understand the biggest [inaudible] for the focaccia recipe. The first one is 100 percent of flour. Flour will always be 100 percent, because all the percentages are based on this. The second one is yeast. We want this to rise slowly, so we're going to be using less yeast. It's about 0.5 percent of yeast in this recipe. The third one is salt. Two percent of salt, this is the most common percentage of salt we use, and I would say in 90 percent of the recipes, it's two percent salt to the flour. The fourth one is olive oil. I'm going to use in this recipe, about five percent, and this olive oil actually goes in the dough itself, and I'm going to be using some separately, which I'll put on top and I'll bake it. The last one is water. It can be anywhere between 70 to75 percent. If you're just starting out, I would do 70 percent, but if you are a little bit more experienced, you could probably push it to 75 percent. If you add more water, you'll get more open holes and a little bit more softer texture, but, it's a little bit difficult to handle, so, it's totally up to you. I would start with 70 percent, and as you get more comfortable, make it to about 75 percent. The reason why we have percentages is because we can basically make any recipe out of this. In professional bakeries, say, for example, if I have a kilo of flour, I can use this and make a recipe out of it, so it's very easy to basically make different types of breads because we know the percentage of every ingredient. For example, in this recipe, I'm going to use 500 grams flour. Now, the yeast would be about 2.5 grams, because that's 0.5 percent of 500. The salt would be about 10 grams, olive oil would be 25 grams, and the water is basically, if you're doing 70 percent, it's about 350 grams of water. If you're doing about 75 percent, it's roughly about 375 grams. This is really easy way to do it. Once you know this percentages, you can make this recipe any quantity you like. That's why I really like this method, that's why I wanted to teach you this method as well, so that you can really improve the baking skill. Let's learn how to measure ingredients on a scale. First, you take your bowl, then press the TARE button to get it to zero. I need about 10 grams of salt for this recipe. Seven, just put a little bit more. That's perfect, that's 10 grams. I need about 375 grams of water, again, press the TARE button. Whenever we put a new bowl, for example, like this, we always press the TARE button, because you want to get it to zero, and then we add the element and we take it off. That's how you use a scale. Also, if you want to measure in milliliters, there's usually a button at the back, you can just press that and it changes. This is ounces, this is ml. Usually, most digital scales have this option, if you have to change it to ml or grams, but I usually use grams because the weight of water in ml and grams is the same, so you can definitely use grams just to make it easier. Before we start working on the recipe, the first thing we need to do is calculate the temperature of the water based on the temperature of the room and the flour. These two are usually equal because the flour is at room temperature, so we take them as equal. Today, the room temperature is about 23 degrees and the flour temperature is 23 degrees. We need to calculate the water temperature. How we calculate that is we add these two and subtract that by 81 degrees, such as the optimal temperature. That comes to about 35 degrees. The water temperature we use today is 35. This is just an indication based on the temperature I have in my room, but it can totally differ from where you are. If it's winter, maybe it's higher. If it's summer, then it's low. That's why I just wanted to say that you can't really say that we have to use warm water. It totally depends on the room temperature you are in to get to that sort degrees dough temperature, which is the perfect temperature. Before we start assembling the dough, we're going to check the temperature of the water. It's about 34 degrees Celsius. That's fine. This is always, I do this before I put the water in the dough because I want to be sure of the temperature. I've got 500 grams of flour here, and I've got the other ingredients. I wanted to show you what three grams of yeast looks like. It's about this much, because usually, we don't have the small scales to measure it. This is a teaspoon and it's about three-fourth of a teaspoon. This is instant yeast, so you don't need to bloom this one. I'm going to add the salt. The salt and the yeast make sure that they don't touch each other, because the salt actually kills the yeast. It's best that you put it on this side and then we mix it up before we add the liquids in it. Just add the water, and this is already wet dough because you wanted the focaccia to be really spongy and really open and nice so it absorbs the oil. To mix this dough, I'm going to use a dough scraper, and at this point, we just want a really shaggy though we don't want to develop any gluten at this stage. Let's just make sure all the flour is hydrated. You'll get something like this. This right now looks like it's never going to make bread, but you'd be surprised how much liquid the flour will absorb as it sits. Take a bread scraper and just scrape all the dough from your hand. This is probably the most useful tool as a baker, you use it probably all the time. So definitely have one. That's perfect. Let's check the temperature of the dough. If you see it's about 27 degrees, and that is perfect. That's exactly the temperature we wanted. Anywhere between 25 and 27 is perfect. Cover up nicely with the plastic wrap, and I'm going to set this aside for 30 minutes and then I'm going to give the dough a turn. 12. Focaccia-Developing the Dough and Preparing it for Toppings: You can see the dough is still quite shaggy. What I'm going to do is when I handle the dough, this is my olive oil, I'm going to dip the hands in the olive oil and just massage my hands. The oil is going to be absorbed by the dough and also it will prevent the dough from sticking to your hands because the dough is really wet. What we're going to do is stick the dough, stretch it, and pull it back. Take the dough, stretch it, and pull it back. We're going to do this about 20 times. What this is going to do is that it's going to develop gluten. Because the dough is so wet we can not knead it by our hand, we need to develop the dough like this. So if it starts sticking to your hand, just dip your hand in the oil and you'll see that it'll start coming together. It gets more stronger and stronger. Perfect. Now, if you see, if I do this, you can see that it's getting a smooth skin, which is really nice. Now I'm going to put this for about half an hour more, and then we'll give another set of turns to develop more gluten. Just dip your hand in the oil again. We're going to give it about 30 turns. We can already feel like the dough feels more stronger now because the more time we give it, the more gluten it develops, and the more the flour absorbs all the liquids. So when you start making it, you'll feel like it's not going to come together. You'll be surprised how much it just develops if we give it time and the [inaudible] because it's so wet initially that you can't really knead it. It's best to stretch and fold like this. Perfect. You see it's becoming so much more smoother. You can see it's got a really nice smooth skin now. Just tuck it in like a ball. Now what we're going to do is give it an overnight ferment in the fridge so that it develops more and it develops a lot of flavor as well. This is what we're aiming for in this class, to get a lot of flavor out of our breads. That is what artisan bread is. It's like slow fermentation and cold fermentation, and just a lot of flavor. Whatever oil you have remaining, just pour it on top of the dough so that it does not dry out, and it'll be easy to take it out as per the next day. Take the plastic wrap and cover it fairly nicely. This goes in the fridge for about, I would say anywhere between 16-32 hours is really good. But if you really want to use it fast, a minimum of eight hours of fermentation in the fridge is good. This is the dough we made yesterday. It's been proving in the fridge for about 15 hours. When you look at the dough, it's roughly about doubled in size. A little bit more than doubled. It's developed a lot of flavor and also a lot of texture. Just have a look. So if you touch it, you can feel there's a lot of air. You can see a lot of air bubbles as well. That's really nice. What I'll do now is just take the dough out of the bowl just like that. Give it one final turn. Just roughly shape it. That's perfect. Something like a rough ball. Something like that. Nothing too perfect. It's completely fine like this. Next, I'm going to prepare my tray. The tray I'm going to use is roughly about 30 centimeters in length and about 25 centimeters in breadth. You have two options here. If you want something like a sandwich, you could use something like this, a container like this. But I want it a little bit more flatter. I want to dip it in oil, so I'm going to use a slightly more flatter tray. We prepare the tray. Take some olive oil. I'm going to use some extra virgin olive oil. Just A little bit, maybe two teaspoons. Take your hand and just spread it. We're going to do this for two reasons. One is that it's going to get a crispy texture and the second is that the bread doesn't stick, it comes out easily. Now, this step is optional. What I like to do is put a little bit of semolina. This fine semolina. You could also use polenta. This gives a slightly crispier texture, and I really like using this. This is optional, but I would highly recommend you use it. Just sprinkle it very gently; not too much. So when it bakes, it's going to get quite crispy with this. Then we take the dough and just put it like that and just spread it slightly; not too much. Put a little bit of olive oil on top. Slightly cover the dough with a plastic wrap. The reason we do this is because it protects the dough from getting air so it doesn't get dry. We want the dough to relax because we just pre-shaped it and it's still quite tight, and we don't want to deflate the air bubbles. When you make artisan bread, the more we ferment the dough, the lesser we handle it, and we do that to basically preserve the air, the fermentation bubbles inside the dough. Just set this aside for two hours and then we'll spread the dough out. It's been two hours, and you can see the dough has risen quite well. What we're going to do, just take a little bit of oil in your hands so it doesn't stick to your hands, and really gently, just spread it. Take it from the center and spread it nicely on the sides. Perfect. 13. Foccacia- Putting Toppings and Baking the Bread: For the toppings on the focaccia, we're going to use tomatoes, sage, and some olives. You could definitely use other toppings like rosemary, potatoes, thyme. I've seen so many variations, so just experiment and do whatever flavors you like. Tomatoes, today, I actually got it from my garden. It's really beautiful and really fresh. I'm going to cut this in half because I like it roasts better if you cut it in half. The olives, I'm going to leave it as is, but you could cut it in half if you want. The sage, make sure to put olive oil on top of it before you put it on the dough, because any herb, when it bakes in the oven, it will burn if it doesn't have olive oil on top. So make sure to put oil. Let's just cut this in half. See how fresh this is. It's so juicy and nice. Then it roast in the oven, it will get very nicely caramelized and it would taste really good. I cut here. Perfect. So after you've done this, what I'm going to do is spill a little bit of oil on sage. It just makes it perfect. Just be really creative with this. Just put the tomatoes. I put it really randomly. You don't have to really follow any order when you do this. Just like different colors. Put the olives. Then we put this but you just going to press it in just at the end. Just at the end, put the sage. You can even use rosemary or thyme depending on what you like, but I really like using sage. It's just like getting a contrast of different colors and then you put it on the table, it just looks so nice. Let's put a little bit more olive oil on top. What we're going to do is just press it in. This is one of my favorite steps. It's so much fun to do. Just take this really gently. Just press everything in so you'll get this fermentations, [inaudible] bubbles. It looks so nice. After you've arranged your toppings, what you can do is you can directly bake this. But what I like doing is just proving it for another half an hour to 45 minutes so it just gets a little bit more buffier. If you directly bake it, you'll get a little bit more crispier texture, a little more tighter crumb. But if you're making sandwiches, it would be better if you just let it prove for about 30, 40 minutes. Just cover it and just set it aside. It's been about 30 minutes and you can see the dough has nicely risen. At this point, I'm going to put the oven to preheat at roughly about 240 Celsius, 460 Fahrenheit for about 15, 20 minutes, then I'll bake it. What I'm going to do before I bake, spill a little bit more olive oil and a little bit sea salt on top just to give it flavor. Then I'll bake this. I'm going to bake it at 240 degrees for roughly about 10 minutes, then I'm going to lower the temperature to 220 degrees. The reason I bake it at a higher temperature in the beginning is because I want it to rise really well, and I lower the temperature so it bakes very nicely. Let's see how it looks like after 30 minutes. This is our focaccia looks like. It looks so nice and beautiful. Just when it comes out of the oven, add a little bit more olive oil. All these holes we made here, they'll absorb all the oil and it would get really flavorful. I'm going to cool this down for about 10, 15 minutes, and then I'm going to just cut it. This one you can eat hot. You don't have to cool it down super long. But if you can cool it down, about 30 minutes is good. It is so nice and light. To know if the bread is good, just press it and it just spring back. That means the bread is really nicely baked. This sound is so nice. 14. Burger Buns - Understanding Ingredients and Making the Dough: Let's try to understand this recipe. I've got 400 grams of bakers flour. I'm using bakers flour because I've wanted the dough to be quite strong when I develop it because we're going to add fat to it and also an egg. It needs to hold its shape really well. If you have all-purpose flour, it will work as well for this recipe, but don't use cake flour because we want to develop the gluten quite well. The second one, I've got some yeast and sugar. I've combined them together because the yeast regulate sugar, that's why I put it together, but you can add it separately as well. The next one is milk. This is at about 24 degrees today. The ideal temperature of this dough is roughly about 23-25 degrees Celsius. That's why I've kept the milk little bit low. The reason I'm adding milk which is at a slightly lower temperature is because I'm going to add butter to the dough and if the dough is too warm, the butter will tend to melt. That's why we need to keep it at roughly 23-25 degrees Celsius. The next one is salt. The salt will basically help to bind everything together. It will help to develop gluten, and it could also help to maintain the fermentation in the dough, so that it does not get over fermented. That's why salt is really important ingredient. Just add everything together. The butter we're going to add later after we develop some amount of gluten in the dough because if we add butter straight away, what happens sometimes is that it splits out of the dough and you don't really want that to happen. Partially develop the gluten and then we add the butter. I've added the salt, sugar, and the yeast. Just mix it through lightly. Just in the center, put an egg and put the milk. Take a bench scraper and start mixing everything together. I actually prefer using my hands, so it's up to you. At this point we just want to hydrate the flour completely and develop the dough about 30-40 percent because we'd be giving the dough times in developing it. I also wanted to say that if you're using a stand mixer, you can follow the same process but just mix the dough for 45 minutes and then just follow the same exact process. You can see the dough is nicely hydrated. At this point, we're going to start developing it with our hand. Then we need to stretch it and then put it back. Stretch it, put it back. This dough will be a little bit wet when you start kneading it, but don't add more flour. Because if you add more flour, the dough will get more dry and it wouldn't be as soft as it's supposed to be. If it sticks just scrape it off. This is after three minutes of kneading, you can already see that it started to come together. The first time we mix it, the total time to develop the dough is about 45 minutes. We'll develop the dough about 40 percent, not fully because we're going to rest it and then you're going to give it stretch and folds to develop it more. I've kneaded the dough for about four minutes, and you can see it feels a little bit more stronger now, but it's not completely developed. What I'm going to do is just make a ball and put it in the bowl in which you mixed it. I'm going to cover it with a wet towel and then it rest for about 30 minutes. That's the dough after half an hour, it's risen slightly. We can add the butter now. Just take it. This process takes about five to six minutes. If you're doing it on a stand mixer it's slightly more easier to do it with hand, but hand it takes a little bit more time, but I'm just going to do it with hand because I like working with hand. When you look at this dough, it looks like it's just completely spread, but if you keep kneading it, the butter will incorporate in the dough and it will become really smooth. If it feels sticky, just use your bench scraper. This is after two minutes of kneading, you can see that it started to come together. Just knead another 2-3 minutes, and then you get a smooth dough. This is after four minutes of kneading, you can see that it feels more smoother. Just make a rough ball like that, and we're going to do bit of fermentation for about one hour, and then we're going to do a cool fermentation for roughly about 12 hours overnight. After one hour you can see the dough has risen nicely. I'm just going to give it one last time to stretch it. You can see that the dough feels really smooth as well. Just make a rough ball. Perfect. This goes overnight in the fridge. I want to give it a cold ferment because it develops a better flavor. Just cover it with a plastic wrap. We're going to refrigerate this for about 12-15 hours. I'll show you how to shape it in different ways tomorrow. 15. Burger Buns- Portioning and Shaping: This is what we made yesterday. It's so nicely risen. I really like cold fermentation because not only does it give a lot of flavor, it also makes it easier to shape the dough as well. In today's lesson, I'm going to show you different ways of shaping this into dinner rolls, bugger buns. It's really interesting to learn these methods because you can make it at home. You can even impress your friends. It's really cool all these methods. Just take it out of the bowel, deflate it slightly and have a scale here. The bugger bun, is about 60 grams each, and the dinner roll is going to be roughly about 30 grams each. So first I'm going to shape the bugger bun. Just cut it in half. If you can avoid using any flour because you don't want to incorporate any flour in the dough. That's about 60 grams. Perfect. Let's start on how to make bugger buns. This is the smooth side, this goes down. Then you flatten it out slightly. Then you basically fold it. [inaudible] and then you turn it around and then you just make a gap with your hands. This finger and these two fingers, that's it. So these two fingers go below and the tong goes above. So just watch this. Just make it into a tight ball. That's perfect. Let's learn this again. This is the front smooth side turn it around, flatten it and just fold it. [inaudible]. Then use your finger. Just tuck it in. This then becomes very smooth. Something like this. Like a really smooth ball. That's a bugger bun. Let's learn the next one. I'm going to basically portion this into 30 gram pieces. Perfect. So this one, you just basically flatten it like that and you're going to make a roll. Just tuck it in like that. Just like that. Then just spread it into thin, like a ribbon. Try to keep it as even as possible. Let's see this again. Just flatten it slightly and just fold it like that. Again, just seal it lightly. Now we're just going to stretch it from the center. Perfect. The same with the next one. It's okay if it's not perfect, don't worry about it. Now I'm going to braid this. Take 1, 2, and 3. The trick with braiding is that the outer one goes inside, inside and inside. Then this goes here. This goes here. I'm just taking it in the middle of both of them. Just at the end, you just seal it and tuck it in. So it becomes smooth and then tuck this in itself. It becomes nice and smooth. The ends, just seal it. If you see it's a beautiful bread. Let's have a look at it again. This time I've taken 50 grams of dough just to make it easier to visualize it and you can take any amount of dough, it's the same technique. Just flatten it and just seal it like that. It's almost like making a baguette. Seal it, and the same goes down, and from the center, you basically start and you start spreading it this way. It's done, but I'm going to do something different. Take it like this, and just fold it like that. So you get a bun which is braided. The next one, similar to the previous ones, just make the same shape again. [inaudible] like that. Turn it like that. Let's learn the forth technique. I have taken about 60 grams of dough. The same thing we did before. This makes something like a slender, like that. Seem down. Start from the center. Space case start coiling it from here, like that, and start coiling this from here. Same technique. I'm going to show you how to do it with two hands. Just take, basically your fingertips, the edge and just turn it like that. 16. Burger Buns- Proofing and Baking: Just get your baking tray and the baking paper. Now, this is optional, but you can put a little bit of butter on the baking paper. But this is completely optional. I've seen some bakers do it, some bakers don't do it. Just put the burger buns and keep a little bit of gap because they tend to expand a lot. I'm going to take another small tray and put the rest of my bread. It's really important to give a lot of gap in between so that the bread can proof and expand really bad. To cover the bread, stake take a plastic wrap and put a little bit of oil in your hands. Just really little. Just spread it. What this does is when you put this over the bread, over the dough, it doesn't stick to the dough. We just cover it. The reason we cover it is because we don't want to do it again dry, because if it gets dry, it doesn't proof bubbly and when it bakes, it will crack. So we need to maintain the moisture level inside. Just like that, lightly. This bread usually takes about 1-2 hours to proof. I'll show this to you after one hour, just to know how it looks like. It might look different in your case because of the room temperature you have. But it's nice to know how the bread looks like and also when it's ready to bake. Because that's, I think really important to get a really light dough. Let's check after one hour. It's been one hour and let's have a look at the dough. You see it's really nicely proofed. It's almost double in size. How do I check? How do I know that it's perfectly proofed? You just press it and it will spring back. It will leave a slight indent. It shouldn't spring back immediately, it should do it slowly. If I press it, and you'll feel it's quite airy as well. I preheated the oven for 15 minutes at about 200 degrees Celsius and I'll bake these for roughly about three minutes. But before I put them in the oven, I'm going to egg wash them. Let's learn how to make an egg wash. Just crack one egg, take a teaspoon of milk. What this egg wash does basically is it gives it a nice glaze. You get that really nice golden brown color. You can do it with milk as well, but I like using egg. Just whisk it together. Just take the egg wash and really gently, not too much. What I'm going to be doing is that I'm going to put some sesame seeds and poppy seeds on top. It just gives a really nice look and flavor. But it's totally up to you. You can skip that. But it just gives that look when you get it from a bakery. That's why we like doing that. Another way you can know that if it's proofed is, if I shake the tray like this, you'll see that it'll wobble. That's a really good sign. If it's wobbling, that means it's really good. When we egg wash it, make sure that the egg wash does not drip down a lot because it does not give a good flavor and it prevents the dough from rising really well. I'm going to sprinkle some sesame seeds on this one. The other one, I'm going to sprinkle some poppy seeds. I'm excited to see how this turns out. I'm going to bake them now, and then I'll show you the end result. It's after one hour 20 minutes. These are our final proofed buns. What I can see from this tray is that one of those doughs is over-proofed. Can you guess which one has over-proofed? It's this one. How do I know it's over-proof? Let's have a closer look. I'll also tell you the reason why it's over-proofed. The buns and the bread, they're shaped more tightly. When you shape a dough tightly, it takes a little bit more longer to proof. But this shape, it's a little bit more looser, so the dough proofs faster. When you make at home, when you make this shape, put it with the other one. Don't put it that the buns, put the buns separately. What happens if a dough is over-proofed is that when it bakes, it will expand a lot. But because it's over-proofed, the gluten strands basically start deflating. So when it bakes, it expands, and then it just starts deflating a little bit. In this case, you won't really know that much, but still, just to improve your baking skill. How do I check if the burger bun is proofed correctly? If you touch it, you'll have a slight wobble. If I shake it, you can see it's wobbling slightly. That's good. If I touch it, it'll feel a slight spring back when you touch it. So that's perfect. I'm going to put some sesame seeds on top because that's the classic way of making it. This is the final result, and I'm really, really happy with this. When you make it at home, it's optional to take it to this color. But I find that when you bake it to this color, you get more flavor. Us, bakers, we usually tend to bake breads a little bit on the darker side, because honestly, I really like the flavor which you get out of it. To finish them, what I do is take a little bit of softened butter and just brush the top when they're still warm. What this does is that it gives flavor and it also gives a nice shine to the bread. When you take it to the table, to your family or to your guest, they'll really be so amazed when they see these breads. Let's compare these two burger buns. This one is 30 grams and this one is 60 grams. If you're making a slider or something, you can make the 30 grams one. But this one is nice if you're making a burger. You can even push it to 90 grams. But in the industry, we usually make about 60-80 grams. That's the weight variable of the bun. 17. Sandwich Bread- Understanding Ingredients and Making the Dough: [NOISE] Let's try to understand the baker's percentages for a whole meal sandwich loaf. What I've done is I've taken 50 percent bakers flour and 50 percent whole wheat flour. This combines and becomes 100 percent, which is our flour. The reason I'm taking 50 percent of bakers flour is because I wanted the dough to be slightly more light, because if I use whole wheat, it's going to be a little bit dense. I find the combination of both these flours makes a lighter loaf. But if you are using whole wheat flour, just expect your loaf to be a little bit dense. The next one is salt, which is two percent, which is the common percentage of salt we use in the recipes we make. The yeast in the recipe is about one percent and hydration is about 70 percent. This dough is not extremely wet, but at the same time we need to develop it by stretching and folding. Let's try to understand how to make this dough. I've got about 250 grams of whole wheat flour and 250 grams of bakers flour in this bowl, got 10 grams of salt, and about 350 grams of water. The water is at about 23-25 degrees Celsius. The reason I'm using water which is at a slightly lower temperature is because when we use whole wheat flour the dough ferments likely move faster. We want to ferment the dough little bit more slowly because we want to give it time to develop. That is why at the ideal dough temperature in this case is roughly about 25 degrees Celsius. The first step I'm going to do is put this salt and put our yeast, using about a teaspoon of yeast, which is roughly about four grams, and just mix it through with your hand and add the water. At this point, we just want to hydrate the dough because whole meal as a flour it takes a little bit more time to hydrate, and also with whole meal when you make the dough, the dough has to be slightly better because you'll see that it absorbs a lot of water when implement ferment. To make this bread really light and airy, we need to incorporate a little bit more hydration than usual. After one minute on mixing the dough, you can see that it's nicely mixed. I can't see any dry flour in the bowl. What I'm going to do, just scrape your hand, I'm going to just let this sit for about 30 minutes so that the flour can nicely hydrate itself, and then we'll develop the dough, giving it folds. Just take a wet cloth and set this aside. It's been half an hour and you can see that the dough has become slightly risen but we need to develop it now. What I want you to do is get a bowl add some water like this, we'll dip our hands and low-water and give it some folds. Just stretch it and put back, we'll do this about 30 times. What this does is it develops loaf structure in the dough. If it starts sticking in your hand just dip your hands in water. [NOISE] After 30-folds, you can see that it's got a lot more structure and it's become more smoother. Just make it into a round ball and set it aside for another half an hour. It's been half an hour, and you can see the dough is risen quite well. Let's give it another set of turns. Several round of turns. Just make it a smooth ball and rest it for another half an hour, and then you'll give it the last set of turns. It's time to give the final turn. If you look at the dough now, it feels so much more stronger, it's more extensible, it's got a nice, beautiful structure. That is, why, artisan baking, we give it enough time to develop and a lot of care as well. Then I give about 10 folds and I'm going to refrigerate this overnight, that will develop a lot of flavor and also a lot of structure in the dough. Make sure you cover with a plastic wrap so that there's no dry air that goes inside, and we don't want to dough to become dry. I'm going to refrigerate this for about 12-15 hours and we bake the bread tomorrow. 18. Sandwich Bread- Shaping,Proofing and Baking the Loaf: Before we shape the dough, we need to prepare the baking pan. What I'd like to do is put a little bit of butter. What this does is it gives flavor as well as it prevents the dough from sticking when it bakes, so that the loaf will come out really easily from your baking tin. Just like a really light coating of some softened butter. You can even put oil, you can spray it with oil as well. Completely up to you. After you finish this step, let's learn how to shape our loaf. This is our dough after the cold fermentation. You can see that it's become almost three times the size. What has happened when it's cold fermented is that it's developed their lot of flavor, and it's also built in a lot of strength in the dough because we've fermented it really slowly. I'm going to show you how to shape this now. When the dough is cold, it's a little bit more easier to handle as well. That is also an advantage of cold fermenting it. Put a little bit of flour. Don't put in a lot, just a little bit is good. Just take the bowl and let the dough fall on its own just like that. Just flatten the dough slightly. If the dough is sticking to your hands, just put a little bit of flour. Just make a square. Now, what we'll do is we'll just take this, fold it like that. On the sides, we fold it inside. Again, fold it inside. See I'm pressing it slightly so it's sealing it, and then press it from the side and seal it again. Do this about three, four times. Then just at the end, we're going to press it like that. See that, nicely. Just fold it. You get a nice set of rounds to lend off, on the ends just pinch it. This is really nice, see? If I've done the dough, let's have a look. You can see that there's a nice seal here, and it's nicely sealed from the side. This is optional, but if you think that this seal isn't really good, what you can do is just pinch it slightly so it stays together, because that will help it rise when it ferments. Let's put it in in our baking tin. Just really gently just put it in. You don't want to flatten it too much, just spread it slightly so that it's even. That's quite nice. Now, what we'll do is we'll cover it with a plastic wrap and set this aside for roughly about, I would say it will take roughly 1-2 hours. Completely depends on the temperature you have in your room, but I would say in my case it would take two hours. Let's have a look after one hour how it looks like, and then I'll show you when it's completely proved. After one hour, our dough is nicely proved but it's not completely proved. It's about 60-70 percent there, and the reason I can check that is because if I see that I can feel that it needs a little bit more air in it. If I press it, it just springs back immediately. I want the indent to stay there for a little bit more time. When it's completely proved, maybe in another half-an-hour, I'll show you how it looks like. After one-and-a-half hours, the dough is almost ready. What I'm going to do now is set the oven to preheat at roughly about 200 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes. I'll just give this about 15 minutes more, and then we'll see how to score it and bake it. It's been a total of one hour 45 minutes, and let's have a look at the dough now. It's nicely proved. It's ready to bake. Now, how do I know that? First step, you just basically shake it like that, you'll see that the dough will wobble slightly because of the gases inside. That's a really good sign. If I touch it, it will come back, but slowly. That's really good. Now, let's learn how to score the bread. Before I score the bread, what I usually do is take some flour in a sieve and just put the flour on top of the dough. This makes it easier to basically score the loaf because the dough is quite wet. I'm taking some whole meal flour, just really gently. You don't want too much flour just so that it gets a surface which you can score. Next, I'm going to take a blade. You can also take a blade with a stick on it, but I'll just do it this way. You want the hand to be slightly curved, not straight, slightly curved when it goes. Maybe I'd like a 45 degree angle, and you have to do it in one go. Take it like this and like that. If you think that it needs to be a little bit more deeper, just go and do it one more time. It should be about roughly this much, the depth, because you don't want it to be too much, but you don't want it to be too little as well. When we do this, the steam will basically evaporate and the bread will rise much better. I'm going to bake this for about 30 minutes. When I put it in the oven, I'm just going to give it a little bit of steam. I'll just spray some water so that it dries as well. When you score the bread, just put it in the oven immediately. Let's open the oven, put it in, take a spray bottle and spray it on the top and the bottom. Create nice steam and just close it. Don't open this for the next 30 minutes. This is how our final loaf looks like. I'm going to let it cool down in this loaf pan for about 5-10 minutes. Then because of the heat, it will start coming out from the side. Then I take a palette knife and just loosen it, take it out. Because we buttered our tin, it should come out easily. Just tilt the pan down like that and just tap it. It should come out. Nice. How do you know if the loaf is baked well? First, it would feel very light when you lift it, and you won't feel any raw spots. Well, it should feel quite solid. If you tap the bottom, can you hear that hollow sound? That means that it's nicely baked. If it doesn't sound hollow, just put it in the oven for 5-10 minutes more and then check again. We're going to cool this down for about half an hour to one hour because as it's cooling down, it keeps baking, and with the whole meal loaf, it takes a little bit more time to cool down. If I was you, I would give it at least one hour before I cut into it. Let's listen to the sound of this loaf. If you press it you should be able to hear a really nice and crispy sound. The smell is really nice that you can smell that from the whole meal flour. Let's cut the loaf and see how it looks like. When I cut it, it feels really light. You can see that it's got a really nice crumb. We have little bit of holes here, which is quite nice. With the whole wheat loaf, the crumb is usually quite dense, but in this one the crumb is not dense at all. It's so light. If you press it, it springs back. That's because we put a lot of water in it and we developed it quite gently, so that's why you have a really soft texture. This makes really nice sandwich loaves. If you just tear it apart, you can see that it's really nice and soft. We didn't even put any fat in it, but it's just because of the water, and we developed it so well. 19. French Loaf- Understanding Ingredients and Making the Loaf: Before we begin the last recipe, let's try to understand the baker's percentages of the French loaf. It's a really, really easy recipe, but it's just the technique of putting it together, it just takes a little bit of practice. But the ingredients are so simple, you have flour, salt, yeast and water. This is the basic French lean dough. You can make, honestly any French bread just out of this bakers percentage, like baguettes, boule de pain, even fougasse. You can make all sorts of French bread and this is the bakers percentage which I used to make at the bakery, so that is why I wanted to share this with you. The recipe we're making today uses 400 grams of flour so because flour is 400 grams, the salt, will be 8 grams, because that'll be 2 percent of 400 grams. The yeast will be 2 grams and the water will be about 70-75 percent. Now, I've put this in a range because if you're a beginner now, I would suggest make 70 percent water, which is about 280 grams of water and if you are a little bit more advanced, if you're more comfortable with wetter doughs, you can push it to about 75 percent of hydration. But in this lesson, we're going to be using 70 percent hydration. Let's understand how to make the dough. I've got about 400 grams of bakers flour, in this recipe I would suggest to use bakers flour if you have at hand, because you need a little bit of gluten in this recipe to make this bread. I would not suggest using anything below 10 percent of gluten, 10 percent of protein in the flour, because then you won't get that really nice texture in the bread. This flour is about 12 percent protein, so it's perfect for this recipe. The next one is salt, so this is just some fine sea salt I'm using and water. The water is at about 27 degrees, just to get that ideal temperature up to 27 degrees. Next one is yeast, so this is about 2 grams of yeast, it's roughly about half a teaspoon. What I'm going to do is put all the ingredients together. The yeast and the salt on the side, just mix everything together and in the center I'm going to add the water. At this stage we are going to make a rough dough and it's going to be quite bad. Make sure you have a bench scraper with you just so that it's easy to make the dough. When you get a really rough dough like this, I'm just going to cover it with a wet cloth and let it sit for about half an hour. What this will do is this will help the flour absorb all the liquids and then we can develop the dough with stretching folds. After 30 minutes, what I'm going to do is get a bowl of water, just dip my hands so that the dough doesn't stick to my hands and just give the dough about 20 turns. You can see that the dough feels slightly less wetter now, because the flour absorbed the liquids. But just keep dipping your hands in water, so it doesn't stick. Now you can see it feels much more stronger now, that's perfect. I'm going to give it a rest for another 30 minutes and then I'm going to give another series of folds. After half an hour you can see that the dough has started to proof now, which is a good sign, that means that the yeast is fermenting the dough. Let's give it 20 more turns and you can see that the dough is more stretchy, it feels much stronger as well. If you look at the dough now, it's got a nice and smooth skin. What I'm going to do now is just make it into a rough ball and set this aside for one hour. I am going to check on this for one hour and then I'll show you how the dough looks like. After one hour, you can see that the dough is nicely puffed up. We're going to give another set of turns and the reason we need to give it more turns is because the dough is slightly wet and because we're going to make a boule, it needs to serve hold its shape, so it needs to have a strong structure and these turns will give it a really nice structure. This time I'm going to give 10 turns. I can already feel that the dough, it feels like there's more volume in the dough now because it's fermented. That's perfect. This is the final recommendation, another hour and then we're going to put it in the fridge. Let's give it another hour then I'll show you how it looks like. After one hour, you can see if I move the bowl, you can see that the dough moves with it so it's got a lot of air inside it, which is nice. Now I'm going to just give it four turns, so the more the dough develops, the less the turns I gave it because I don't want to disturb the gases inside it. Because if I'd done it a lot, the crown will be quite dense and I want it to be really light. Super gentle and that's it. Now it looks so smooth, so when we initially started it, it looked so undeveloped but now it's like really nicely developed. So what I'm going to do now is just cover it with a plastic wrap and put it in the fridge overnight. I would give it at least 10-12 hours and you can even push it to 15 hours. In my case, I'm going to give it 12 hours and I'm going to bake it tomorrow, so I will show you how it looks like tomorrow and how to bake it as well. 20. Pre Shape and Proofing the Loaf: This is our dough from yesterday, and you can see it's really [inaudible]. The first step that I'm going to do is pre-shape the dough and rest it, then finally shape it. Let's see how to pre-shape the dough. Put a little bit of flour on the workbench and take your bowl and turn it gently. Just let it guide out because we don't want deflate the air that much. Just put your finger and it should just gently come out. Perfect. I'm not going to deflate it, just very roughly, just like this, like this, and one more time. That's it, nothing more than that. You don't want to deflate the dough at all. Just shape it like that for 30 minutes, and then I'm going to finally shape it. It's been half an hour, now let's learn how to do final shaping. I'm trying to use the less amount of flour I can so I'm going to flour my hands instead. Just a little bit of flour on the dough. Take a bench scraper and just lift it backwards. In the center, stretch it, put it in the center, do this four times. That's it, and then we turn it and gently just tighten it into a ball. Make sure not to deflate it too much. This is surely nice. I can still see air bubbles so that's good. After we've shaped the bread, we need to proof it. I'm going to use a banneton, and I will also show you how to proof it if you don't have a banneton. What I need to do is coat this with flour. Just take a sieve and just nicely coat it and the excess, you can just gently take it out just like that. You've got flour on all the sides, so it'll be really easy to take it out. The other option we have is to take a bowl and just put a cloth in it. Really any cloth will do, and if you have a linen cloth that's the best. Just put flour on it. You don't want to put a lot because otherwise that will dry the dough. Similarly, we just put the dough in it and just fold it like that and let it proof. This is the other option you have but I prefer using the banneton because it proofs better than that. To put the dough in the banneton, just gently sprinkle a flour on the top so that it doesn't stick. Since this is the smooth side, this will go down. This is a smooth side just like this, so the smooth side goes down and then we flip it, the smooth side will come on the top. Just put a little bit more flour on the top. That's really nice. Now I'm going to cover this and let it proof for roughly about 2-3 hours, and I'll show you how it looks like. This is what a dough looks like after one hour. You can see that it started to develop fermentation, so that it get more airy. But it's not completely proofed because if I press it, it just springs back immediately and it also needs more air in it. We're going to let this proof for another one hour, and then I'm going to show you how it looks like. It's been one hour 45 minutes, and you can see that the bread is got really fluffy now. What I'll do at this stage is set the oven to preheat at the highest temperature possible for at least 30-40 minutes, and by the time, this would be nicely proofed. If you're using a dash oven, you can send that to preheat as well. 21. Baking in a Dutch Oven: How do I know that this is ready for the oven? First thing, if I just move it, you can see that it wobbles slightly, that means that's nicely fermented. Second, if I press it, you feel like when you press it the marks stays inside. It doesn't spring back immediately, it springs back slowly. You'll also start seeing these fermentation bubbles. That's a really good sign. The next step, what I'm going to show you is how to score the bread and how to put it in the Dutch oven. I've cut out a piece of parchment paper, just make sure that it's bigger than the size of the bowl. Put a tiny bit of flour, and take it out of the batter tin. Just gently twist it like that and it should fall out. You can see really nice design on top. It's really nicely fermented and you can see that it's got a lot of air inside. We need to be really gentle with this now. When I score this, as fast as he can, put it in the Dutch oven. I'm going to do a very easy scoring just across like that, just one go. Beautiful. Just really easy scoring. If you want, you can make it a little bit more deeper. This is a preheated Dutch oven. Always with the Dutch oven, make sure that you have a towel below, because it's really hot. If I open it, you can feel the heat comes out the steam. That's a good sign that the Dutch oven is ready. After you put the bread, just sprinkle some some in, that creates nice steam, and then sprinkle some water on the lid as well, and straight away in the oven. You're going to bake this for about 20 minutes with the lid on and the highest temperature possible. In my oven it's about 250 degrees Celsius, and then we'll take the lead off and then bake it through. It's been 20 minutes, and this is how our bread looks like. It looks really beautiful. It's risen so well. Now what I'm going to do is reduce the temperature down to about 220 Celsius and bake it for 15 to 20 minutes. The reason I reduce it down is because now I want it to bake internally, and I also don't want a lot of color on it. I want it to slowly bake and also to dry out a little bit so it gets a really nice and crisp exterior. Let's have a look after about 15 to 20 minutes, and then I'll show you how the final look looks like. This is how our bread looks like after about 20 minutes of baking. In total, I baked it for about 40 minutes. It looks so beautiful. If you want to make it darker, you can put it for another 5 to 10 minutes. It's totally up to you what color you like. If I touch it, it feels quite crispy, that's a really good sign. What I'm going to do now is take it out and cool it down for about 30 minutes, and then we'll have a look how it looks like from the inside. If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of the bread like it's cracking and that's a really good sign of a very nice artisan bread. 22. Baking directly in an Oven: Let's try to understand the oven set up in case you don't have a Dutch oven. I've put the oven at bake. It's at the highest temperature possible, which is 260 degrees Celsius in my case. If I open this oven, I've got a stone. It's like pizza steel, but you can also get a stone. If you don't have a stone, you can also put a tray, but there should be something which is preheating so that when you put the loaf in, there's an initial heat which heats the loaf, and the loaf rises. Because if you just put it directly, the loaf will be quite dense, because it won't get that initial heat, which you get. To create steam in the oven, I'm going to put a tray. You can even put a cast and ban if you have one, that's the best thing to do. But I'm just going to put a tray because that's something everyone has. This needs to preheat for 30-40 minutes along with the stone or the steel. Then I'm going to load the bread, I'm going to put some ice in it, which will melt and create steam. That will help the bread to rise. These are two techniques. One is the stone and one is the tray and we'll also spray water. This is essential to get a really nice rise. It's been two hours forty-five minutes and the bread is ready to bake. If you look at it, it's nice and lovely. If I press it, it doesn't spring back that easily. What I'm going to do is I've got a sheet of paper, put little bit of flour and just gently tip it over. It should just come off. Perfect. To score this back, I'm just going to make a really easy cross. Just go like that, in the center, and just turn it, just like that. What I'm going to do is to split this on just any wooden board or any tray you have, just like that, and just directly put the [inaudible] in the oven. Just open the oven. It's quite hot. Take the tray, put the ice cubes in, then take your dough and just gently snip it in, it's like a pizza. Like that, done. Then just sprinkle the water and close it. Don't open this for another 30 minutes, then you're going to check it. It's been 15 minutes, and now what I'm going to do is lower the temperature down to about 220 degrees. Because what happens is that initially we need a lot of heat, but then if we keep the heat really high, it starts to get burnt and you don't want that. We've got the initial rise. Now I want to lower the temperature to about 220 degrees Celsius. It's risen nicely, it looks really beautiful. You can hear that sound. It's nice and hollow. That's perfect. What I'm going to do now is lower the heat to 180 degrees and just let it dry out for another 10 minutes so that when we take it out, it doesn't become soggy, it's still crispy. This is what we do at the bakery as well when we bake bread. We usually just let the bread dry out a little bit. Bread's completely cool now. If I press it, you hear hear that crispy sound, which is really nice. When I lift it, it feels really light. That is also a really good sign. Let's cut it. Do you see that? It's beautiful. It's got a beautiful structure. 23. Thank you: We finally reached the end of this class, and I'm so proud of you, of the progress you've made, and of the concepts you've learned. If you have any questions, feel free to message me and I'll definitely get back to you. Also if you could follow me on Instagram and also check on my YouTube channel, that would be amazing. Thank you again. It was such a pleasure teaching you and I hope to see you in my future classes. Thank you.