artisan bread

This is a simple bread that literally requires very little attention or time...unless you want to wait a week to make it more sour. Then, it would just be 'time passing' and hopefully you are doing something else during that week...I have made this in to rounds or long baguettes, both are excellent. I don't even use a mixer for this one. 
For THREE 5-6" rounds:
3 cups lukewarm water
1.5 TBS yeast
1 1/2 TBS kosher salt
6 1/2 cups flour, unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose

So...I used to have a big, long, 'tooo many details' description on this recipe. The truth is, it doesn't need to be that complicated. It's seriously the simplest bread recipe of ALL the breads that I make... and it happens to be the hubby's favorite. So, simplicity is a must! I make this in tons of different variations. 

Ready? Go! 

Put your warm water in a big bowl--I've heard that using metal is not good for doughs or bigas that you want to sit in for a few days. I've done it both ways...never noticed any difference in flavor or the outcome of the loaves, so...do what you want with that. Add your yeast, let it soften just to make sure it's actually good yeast and it will work. Add a few cups of the flour and stir. Add your salt and then stir again...stir well. Make sure the salt is all incorporated nicely before adding the rest of your flour. It is IMPORTANT that you don't wait until you've added almost all the flour before adding the salt. The salt needs to get around all the dough. And it's important that you don't add the salt directly to the yeast water---this can kill the yeast. So, always have flour in the mix before adding the salt. The kosher salt helps with the elasticity of the dough.

I rarely add the exact amount of flour to any of my breads. The air is changing, maybe I lost a few drops of water....for whatever reason, the air is never the same when making bread. I just focus on what the dough feels like and how quickly it falls when I stop stirring. So, for this bread and almost all WHITE breads that I make, the dough will be sticky. Not so sticky that when I stop stirring, it all falls back to the shape of the bowl. But sticky enough that it holds its shape and a little dough sticks to my finger.. If my finger has no flour on it and it doesn't stick, there is too much flour in the dough. So, the way I deal with this is to use flour on my hands to make my rounds...
So, now that the dough is all mixed, I break it up into 3 rounds. Seriously, just get some flour, tuck it under into a nice round ball. It'll be about 3.5 to 4" around.
Place dough balls onto a greased jelly roll pan. I love the kind with holes---helps with the crust being a little more crisp. You can bake it on a stone, but you'd need to transfer it from already risen to a HOT stone. You can place the pan on a HOT stone---whatever works. The trick for this bread is that you are baking it in a HIGH temperature with water in the oven.

So, now that I've successfully written a few paragraphs and didn't shorten the details... HAH, I'm out of time. Will have to continue later.