Description
A rich bread with an open crumb and a light crust with a good crunch.
Ingredients
Units
Scale
Biga
- 110 grams bread flour
- 70 grams water
- 1/2 tsp dry yeast
Dough
- Biga
- 340 grams water
- 65 grams whole wheat flour
- 435 grams bread flour
- 16 grams salt (2 tsp)
Instructions
- The night before you plan to make this bread, mix the ingredients for the biga together and knead into a dough. Place in an oiled bowl and cover for the night.
- The next morning, combine the water and flours with the biga (I cut mine, with scissors, into small pieces) in a stand mixer. Mix, with the dough hook, for 2 minutes. Cover the dough and let rest for 25 minutes.
- Uncover and add salt - mix for 6 more minutes. Place in a lightly oiled bowl, cover, and let rise for 75 minutes.
- Uncover dough and fold it. Cover and let rise for 30 minutes.
- Uncover and cut dough into two pieces - let rest for 20 minutes before shaping dough into loaves, covering with a damp towel, and letting it rise for 90 minutes.
- Heat oven to 425 F, bake bread for 23-25 minutes or until it sounds hollow when you knock on the bottom. Cool on a bread rack until completely cool before packaging - it will soften up considerably
Notes
- To make your own bread flour, use Smitten Kitchen's tip of replacing 1 Tbsp per cup of regular flour with gluten flour.
- Using a stand mixer was the easiest way to make this bread, but you could do it by hand - just be prepared for a lot of kneading!