Everyday Artisan Bread

Ingredients

• 1½ cups water
• 1 tsp active dry yeast
• 3 cups bread or all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp kosher or fine sea salt

Instructions

1. Sprinkle the yeast over the water and let it sit for 10-15 minutes.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour and salt and let sit for 10 minutes.
3. Add water and yeast to the bowl then use a rubber spatula to mix it together just until combined. The dough will look a little sticky and stringy and there should still be a little flour around the edges of the bowl.
4. Cover and let rise somewhere warm until it has doubled in size, about 8-10 hours.
5. Once the dough has doubled in volume, use your hands (or a dough scraper if you have one) to pull the dough out onto a floured surface. With floured hands, gently fold the dough into itself several times until a soft, flour-covered ball is formed. Seam side up, lift and place it into a flour dusted bowl. Dust with flour, cover and refrigerate overnight. You can even leave it for as long as 48 hours at this point if you’re not able to bake it right away.
6. When you're ready to bake your bread, preheat oven to 450ºF (232ºC) with your Dutch oven inside the oven.
7. Uncover then invert the bowl to turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface seam side down. If needed, gently turn it with your hands and nudge it into the shape of a loaf. Place it on a sheet of parchment paper and score the top with a razor blade or the tip of a sharp knife with a design of your choosing. This will allow steam to escape while it’s baking.
8. Once the oven is preheated, remove the Dutch oven from the oven and transfer the dough, still on the parchment, into the Dutch oven. Cover and bake for 30 minutes, then remove the cover and bake for 15-20 minutes more. Your bread will be done once the top is browned, and it sounds hollow when you tap the top.
9. Using parchment edges, lift bread from Dutch oven and transfer it to a wire cooling rack to let cool for up to an hour before slicing.