The flour and water are premixed to make an autolyse. And that includes rinsing your hands before and after working the dough.Īll of the mixing is done in a large container. For a standard loaf it probably takes no more than 8 minutes of mixing in total, in four blocks. One of the attractions of the breadmaking method promoted by Ken Forkish is that it involves very little work. If it’s much warmer or cooler than expected you might need to modify timings. I also check the temperature of the place I’m going to allow the dough to develop. This ensures a uniform early development of the dough. I use a thermometer to check the water temperature at the start. The resulting bread isn’t necessarily worse, but the dough is a lot harder to work with as it’s always trying to escape. In my experience, the own-brand ‘strong bread flour’ sold by most of the supermarkets make a much sloppier dough than the Bacheldre flours. They’re available direct from Bacheldre Mill and lots of places online. These are strong, absorb water well and have a high protein content. I almost always use Bacheldre organic stoneground flours. The flour you use has a big influence on the characteristics of the dough. Hopefully this will encourage you to have a go as well (and to learn from the few mistakes I made by either trying to cut corners or not reading the instructions). What I will do is qualify some of points in the list above. Bake in a very hot oven in a container to seal in the steamįorkish earns his living writing and baking, so I’m not going to reproduce his recipes here – buy the book (or look for them online as some people have splurged them all over the internet).

Use small amounts of yeast and long rise periods.

Carefully control temperatures and timings.

The general principles promoted by Forkish are: Man cannot live by bread alone … well, I’m not so sure.

Bread flour salt yeast water