Gâteau á la Crème

This month, the Bread Baking Babes (12 awesome women from around the world who bake a specific yeasted recipe every month) are making Gâteau á la Crème. The Kitchen of the Month chooses the recipe and the Babes bake and post on the same day of the month. This month the Kitchen of the Month is Notitie van Lien, (click on her page to see links to all of the Babes' variations) and she chose this recipe from Kitchen Secrets by Raymond Blanc.

I am baking along as a Bread Baking Buddy. To find out how to be a Buddy, check out Lien's page.

This is a brioche dough with a citrus flavored filling that bakes along with the dough. It makes a wonderful breakfast pastry as well an impressive dessert.

Whole Wheat, Oat, & Flax Seed Bread | Sharing Bread

One loaf for you, one loaf for me.

This bread has just enough healthy to make you feel good about eating it. It is also super soft and moist....  and it is amazing spread with butter. It's also an excellent sandwich bread. I love it for turkey avocado, chicken salad, and BLT sandwiches.

And making it is easy!

Vesper Martini

I don't usually see movies when they first debut, mostly because I am easily distracted by fellow movie goers. I have issues.

We finally watched Sky Fall last week on PPV. I was not prepared to love it as much as I did. The Astin Martin, the gadget references, and the shaken martini. So many references to the original Bond. Loved it.

Semolina Torpedo Bread | Pane di Altamura

I love the nutty flavor of semolina, but working with the flour has its challenges. Bread made with 100% semolina does not develop a thick crispy crust like bread made from high protein all purpose or bread flour. In fact, the crust tends to crack. Regardless, it has a beautiful color and a sweet nutty flavor.

I have made a few breads (click here and here for two of my favorites) with a combination of semolina and bread flour. This is the first time I've made a bread recipe that uses entirely durum flour.

This bread is made from the same flour from which pasta is made, but the flour is more finely milled. If you attempt to make it with the coarsely ground semolina available in the grocery store, substitute half of the durum with all purpose or bread flour.

This small loaf is hand kneaded. It involves a starter that is allowed to sit with the rest of the flour sitting on top of it for about 4 hours.

The loaf is small... about 3/4 of a pound.  I found the dough fairly easy to work with and shape. I baked mine in a clay baker, but having one is not necessary. Instead, bake the bread directly on a pizza stone and add steam to your oven.

This is a good video describing the various methods of creating a steam oven. I use a variation of the methods, except I do not use lava rock... any porous rock will do... long story... something to do with a trip to Hawaii and angering the volcano goddess Pele. =)

Golden Semolina Torpedo

Adapted from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Bread Bible

Ingredients

Sponge

100 g durum flour

1/8 tsp instant yeast

3/4 C room temperature water

Flour mixture

117 g durum flour (or half durum, half all purpose flour)

3/8 tsp instant yeast

3/4 plus 1/8 tsp salt

Reserve Flour

38 g durum flour

Bread flour for the kneading surface

Instructions

1. Mix the sponge ingredients in a medium bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let the bowl sit overnight (about 10 hours).
2. Whisk the flour mixture together and sprinkle it over the sponge to completely cover it. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow it to sit for 1 to 4 hours. 
3. Mix the flour into the sponge with a spoon, and then your hands in the bowl. 
4. Scrape the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead by hand for about five minutes, adding additional durum from the reserved 38 grams as needed. The dough should be slightly sticky. 
5. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let it rest for 20 minutes. 
6. Knead the dough for five minutes more by hand. The dough should be very smooth. You can continue to add flour in small increments if the dough is too sticky. You should be able to shape the final dough into a ball. 
7. Place the dough into an oiled dough rising bucket or bowl, and allow it to rise until doubled, about 90 minutes to 2 hours. 
8. Shape the dough into a torpedo. Check out this video on how to do it (my loaf is not quite as pointy as it should be). If you are using a clay baker, place the loaf in the bottom half. If not, place the loaf on a piece of parchment paper. Cover with oiled plastic wrap. 
9. Allow the loaf to rise for about 60 to 75 minutes, until almost doubled. 
10. At the same time, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F with a baking stone and the top of the clay baker (if using) in the oven. 
11. Slash the bread and transfer it to the baking stone, and either cover it with the clay baker or steam the oven as illustrated by the video. 
12. Bake for 15 minutes and then remove the top of the clay baker if using. 
13. Lower the temperature of the oven to 400 degrees F. 
14. Bake for 15 to 25 minutes. The bread should be golden brown and the interior should reach 200 degrees F. 
15. Allow the bread to cool on a rack before cutting. 

Enjoy!

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Stir Fried Chicken with Carrots and Mushrooms | Wok Wednesdays

I'm going to start this by saying that this stir fry was really good and really easy. Any problems are because of "user error." Essentially, the "user" needs to read the recipe all of the way through.

Before settling in to watch a movie, I shredded the carrots, skinned and cubed the chicken and set out all of the ingredients. Mise en place. Got that down.

Once the movie was over, I took a look at step one.... "soak the mushrooms in .. cold water 30 minutes."

1. First, I could have bought fresh mushrooms and skipped this step. 
2. Second, I need to read recipes all of the way through. 

This gave me time to get my act together. I'm new to wok cooking. It is very fast paced. In step one of the book, you soak the mushrooms. In step two, you mix the chicken, cornstarch, and soy sauce. In step three, you stir fry. Here's how I broke down step three. 

Yep. Nine steps. I'm a beginner. And I'm a read-write learner. Thank goodness I'm completely comfortable writing in my cookbooks.

This stir fry is simply chicken thighs, garlic, carrots, and shiitake mushrooms with soy, sugar, and salt, but it is pretty magical. The carrots were amazing.

If you want to save a huge amount of time preparing the julienned carrots, get one of
these. It works great.

This dish was a big hit in our house. If you want a recipe that will get people to eat their carrots, go with this.

The dish goes best served with rice. It reheats beautifully, and is wonderful as a main course or as an addition to a multi-course meal. I like to add a little black and crushed red pepper at the table.

This recipe is from Grace Young's Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge. I am loving making the recipes in this book. As a beginner, I also love all of the wok tips.



 I'm also enjoying the Wok Wednesdays community. Amazing how food brings us together.

The recipe can also be found here.

Mocha Chocolate Chip Cookies | Tuesdays with Dorie

I am in serious love with these cookies.

There is nothing new about them.. other than that they contain a large amount of instant coffee in the dough.. and a pound of chocolate vis a vis two cups of flour. Love the ratio.

These cookies are from the book Baking with Julia edited by Dorie Greenspan. This particular recipe was contributed by Rick Katz. I can't stop eating them. I had no idea that mass quantities of coffee in a chocolate chip cookie would taste so good.  Seriously good. I expected that the coffee flavor would be too strong. It's not. I'll probably use more next time.

What did I like about this recipe?

1. The flavor. Ah-maze-ing. 
2. After three days these cookies remained as chewy as the day they were baked. So good. 

What didn't I like?

1. That they bubbled up in the oven and then collapsed once they were removed. I'm guessing that I used less flour than the recipe required. I like to weigh my flour and used 9 1/2 ounces. Maybe more would give these cookies a little more body. 

What did I do differently from the book?

1. Instead of instant coffee, I used 2 T of espresso. 
2. I didn't add the apricots. (That doesn't mean that they wouldn't be a nice addition.)
3. I used 1/2 pound of semi sweet chocolate chunks, 1/4 pound of milk chocolate chips, and 1/4 pound of cappuccino chips.  

Suggestions?

1. If you have kids in your house, use decaf. They will not understand why they can't have more cookies.
2. Smaller cookies turn out better than larger. The recipe says it yields 48 cookies. Go with that. 
3. Make these. Seriously. Make these. 

To get the recipe, visit Galettista by Peggy. To see how other bakers fared with this recipe, visit the Tuesdays with Dorie site and click on the links. 

To find out more about Tuesdays with Dorie, click here.

Sharing with Tasty Tuesdays. 

Pistachio Shortbread Cookies

These cookies are super easy. They are normally made with pistachios on top, but because I brought them to a Saint Patrick's day potluck at work, I decorated them with these tiny little shamrocks instead. The pistachios are tastier, but these are definitely cuter. Sometimes style over substance will have to do. Plus, kids won't turn their noses up to sprinkles the way they might with nuts.

Éirinn go Brách says I.

Pistachio Shortbread Cookies 

Ingredients

8 ounces of room temperature unsalted butter

1 3.4 ounce box of instant pistachio pudding mix

1/4 C sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pistachio flavor or vanilla extract, both optional. I used vanilla.

8 1/4 ounces unbleached all-purpose flour

Shamrock sprinkles, or 3 ounces shelled and chopped pistachios

Instructions

• Preheat the oven and line two 8 inch square cake pans with parchment. Spray the parchment with spray oil.
• In the bowl of a stand mixer or in a medium bowl with a hand mixer, beat the butter, pudding mix, sugar, salt, and extract. 
• Add the flour and continue to beat until combined. It will be dry at first but should come together. I've not had to add any water, but if you need to, add up to 1 T to get the dough to come together. It should be quite stiff. 
• Divide the dough in two and press it into the two prepared pans. Prick the dough all over with a fork and lightly press the sprinkles or nuts into the dough. 
• Bake for 35 to 40 minutes. The edges should be golden brown.
• When done, place a plate over the pan and flip out the short bread from the pan. Turn the squares back over onto a cutting board, and cut with a pizza cutter while they are still warm. 
• Cool the cut cookies on a wire rack. 
• Yield depends on how large you make your cookies. 

This recipe is adapted from King Arthur Flour's website. 

Linked to Katherine Martinelli

Whole Wheat and Rye Sourdough Bread

I came across this recipe from King Arthur Flour. Because of all of the positive reviews from other bakers, I had to try making it. Of course that meant I had to order white rye flour from them (no worries, you can use medium or dark rye in this recipe, it's just that I look for any excuse to try a new ingredient).

This bread makes great sandwiches, and the dough is super easy to handle. It's great for sandwiches. It's also excellent toasted with a fried or poached egg on top and eaten with a knife and fork for breakfast.

Whole Wheat and Rye Sourdough Bread

Adapted from King Arthur Flour, where it is called Marilyn's Whole Wheat and Rye Sourdough Bread. 

Ingredients

1 T instant yeast

1 3/4 C lukewarm milk

16 1/2 ounces sourdough starter

1/4 C packed dark brown sugar

2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground cardamom

1 T caraway seeds

1 tsp whole anise seeds

4 1/4 ounces white rye flour

4 ounces whole wheat flour

14 3/4 to 17 ounces unbleached all-purpose flour (I use King Arthur Flour)

Instructions

• In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the yeast, milk, starter, sugar, salt, cardamom, caraway, and anise and stir by hand to combine. 
• Add the rye flour and stir until the mixture is smooth.
• Add the whole wheat flour and stir to combine.
• One cup at a time, add the white flour and stir. Continue to add flour until the dough forms a sticky ball. Move the bowl to the mixer, and with the dough hook, knead on low, adding more flour in tablespoons until the dough is still tacky, but not sticky. Depending on the moisture in the air and in your flour, you may or may not use all of the flour.
• Move the dough to the counter and knead by hand about a minute, adding more flour if necessary. The dough should not stick to the counter. (you can also knead this dough entirely by hand)
• Place the dough into an oiled bowl or dough rising bucket, cover with plastic wrap, and allow it to rise until doubled, about 90 minutes to 2 hours.
• Gently divide the dough into two loaves and shape as you like, and place them on a parchment lined baking sheet. (you can also make one big loaf or several rolls)
• Cover the loaves with oiled plastic wrap, and allow them to rise for about 45 to 60 minutes. 
• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and bake the loaves for 25 to 35 minutes, until they are browned and the interior reaches about 200-210 degrees F on an instant read thermometer. 
• Cool completely on a wire rack. 
• Make yourself a pastrami sandwich.

Spicy Parmesan and Herb Grissini

These super skinny and crispy pieces of straw colored goodness are completely addicting. The ingredient list includes parmesan, black pepper, white pepper, garlic, chives, rosemary, thyme, sage, and oregano. My biggest issue with them is that I can't leave them alone. They are crazy good.

Pane di Como | Como Bread

Isn't this bread pretty? It's a white bread with a lovely thin crisp crust. The starter contains both malt syrup and milk. The interior, while not super airy, is somewhat soft and has both large and small holes. It's great for sandwiches and morning toast.

Check out the other side.

Hi there. The recipe did not mention that I should have slashed the bread. Or maybe not. When researching the bread, I came across this post in Serious Eats than used the same formula, and the loaves do not appear to be slashed in the photo. It also looks like those loaves may have a bit of "bursting action" going on too.

As the name implies, the bread formula is from the Como region of Italy, and is sometimes referred to as Italian French bread. This recipe is adapted from The Italian Baker, Revised: The Classic Tastes of the Italian Countrysideby Carol Field. The book gives you three options for mixing the dough, either by hand, mixer, or food processor. I used a mixer.

The dough requires a starter that is made the night before and left to bubble up.

Pane di Como

Ingredients

Starter

1 tsp active dry yeast

1 scant tsp barley malt syrup

1/3 C warm water

2/3 C room temperature milk

135 grams unbleached all purpose flour

Dough

2 C room temperature water

860 grams unbleached all purpose flour

1 T salt

cornmeal for the baking stone

Instructions

To make the starter:

• In a large bowl, mix the water, yeast, and malt syrup and let it sit for about 5 minutes. 
• Add the milk and flour and stir with a spatula or dough whisk until combined.
• Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit until it is very bubbly, at least four hours, but overnight is better. It will get very large.

To make the dough:

• In the bowl of a stand mixer, mix the starter and water with a dough whisk or the paddle attachment. 
• Add the flour and salt, mix first by hand until all ingredients are blended, and then switch to the dough hook and mix on medium for about 4 minutes. The dough should be slightly sticky and elastic. 
• Remove the dough from the mixing bowl onto a lightly floured surface and knead by hand for about a minute. 
• Move the dough to an oiled dough rising bucket or large bowl, and cover with plastic wrap. 
• Allow the dough to rise until doubled in size, about 90 minutes. 
• Divide the dough in half and shape into boules (round loaves) and place them, seam side up, into oiled and floured bannetons or brotforms. If you don't have a banneton, you can line a bowl with a well-floured tea towel and place the dough in there. Cover with plastic wrap. 
• Allow the dough to rise until doubled, about an hour. 
• Prepare the oven with a baking stone and preheat it to 400 degrees F. 
• When the loaves are ready, sprinkle the stone with corn meal and turn the loaves out onto the stone. 
• Spray the oven with water to create steam, and close the door. About 30 seconds later, spray the oven again and shut the door. 
• Bake the loaves until golden brown and the interior reaches about 200 to 210 degrees F. The bottom, of the loaves, when tapped, should sound hollow. The book says about an hour, but mine took about 50 minutes. 
• Allow the loaves to cool completely on a wire rack. 
• Slice and enjoy!

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Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread

Today is Friday. It's been a long week for some reason. Same for you? Would you like some comfort food?

Stir-Fried Chili Scallops with Baby Bok Choy | Wok Wednesdays

This is a meal that you can prepare when you get home from work and are too tired to cook. The ingredients don't require a lot of prep, and you can have this on the table within minutes.

Croissants | Tuesdays with Dorie | Baking with Julia

Pain au Chocolate

I've made croissants before. Successfully. How hard could this be? The last time I made croissants I had hunks of butter popping out everywhere and they still turned out. I can do this.

Dough & butter 

I cannot tell you how "done" I was with this process. Making these croissants has been a three day adventure (ordeal). I'm sure it was fun for the other member of my household to watch me standing on a chair just to get leverage with my rolling pin. The palms of my hands are sore from rolling out this laminated dough over and over and over.

Laminated dough before final roll out

And this dough did not easily roll out for me as it did for Esther McManus in a video of her demonstrating it with Julia Child (no longer available).  Every time I turned a 20 by 24 inch piece of dough, it shrunk back up to to about a 10 by 12 inches (slight exaggeration).

Even though I had a lot of time and labor invested in this project, when the time came for the final roll out and shaping of the croissants, I was DONE. Three hour rise? Forget it. One hour will have to be enough. I need to go to bed. I don't really have to do this. It's a flipping hobby, not my JOB. I can skip this.

End of rant.

Jumbo pain au chocolate

I haphazardly rolled up half of the dough into 12 semi-crescent shapes and the other half of the dough into four huge pain au chocolate shapes (when it's supposed to be ten to twelve), let them rise for an hour, threw them in the oven, set the timer, and used one of my least favorite expressions.. "whatever."

When the croissants were done baking, I decided to try the teeniest one. Oh. My. Goodness. Alrighty then. It was all I could do not to stuff the rest of the croissants into my mouth right then. Right there.

Croissants

These croissants are about as flaky as anything I will, could, should ever create. Ever.

This recipe is from Baking with Julia: Savor the Joys of Baking with America's Best Bakers edited by Dorie Greenspan (of Tuesdays with Dorie fame).  Awesome book. To see the recipe and step-by-step photos, visit the Tuesdays with Dorie host Amanda's blog, Girl + Food = Love (no longer available). To see how each baker did with this recipe, visit the Tuesdays with Dorie website and click on everyone's links.

What did I do differently from the original recipe?

• I let my croissants rise for just one hour at room temperature (about 65 degrees F) instead of the three hours in the warm environment that the book called for. Oven spring took over from there. 
• To save time, I baked some of the croissants in the toaster oven (it worked!).
• I shaped the second half of the dough into four large pain au chocolate instead of 10-12 rolls. 
• I started the four large pain au chocolate at 450 degrees F to give them a boost and immediately lowered the temperature of the oven to 350 degrees F.
• I used instant yeast instead of the fresh yeast called for in the recipe at a 40 percent ratio by weight. 

These can be wrapped individually and frozen. Thaw, wrapped, at room temperature. Unwrap and re-crisp in a 350 degree F oven for about 5 to 10 minutes. 

Enjoy!

No-Knead Chocolate-Cherry Pecan Bread | ABC

This month, the Avid Bakers Challenge (ABC) is King Arthur Flour's No-Knead Chocolate-Cherry Pecan Bread.

No Knead bread is a wonderful thing. Mix up some flour, salt, a teeny bit of yeast, water, and maybe some add ins, let it sit at room temperature for at least 12 hours, and you have this amazing dough that makes an airy flavorful bread with a thin crispy crust that literally sings when you take it out of the oven.

 Second rise, seam side up. The dough eventually filled the bowl. 

I usually make it in a cast iron Dutch oven Combo Cooker but the KAF blog by PJ Hamel (love, love, love her... I'm a big fan) warned against doing this because the bottom would burn, so I rigged up my baking stone and an upside down metal bowl. The reason for baking the bread in an enclosed environment is to create steam and simulate a brick oven.

A self-portrait of me and a panoramic view of our kitchen. 

The bottom of the bread still charred, maybe because of all of the chocolate and cherries? Next time around, I will start the bread on the pizza stone to get that great blast of heat and oven spring, but once I uncover the loaf after 20 minutes, I'll add an oven rack and place the loaf on a baking sheet to finish baking.

Here's the deal. The dough is quite slack and wants to spread out like a pancake. The hot stone and cover seem to help the dough push upwards and become a taller loaf. I could try using a hot baking sheet with the bowl and compare results. Bread experiments. Just thinking out loud.

Verdict? I love this bread, charred bottom and all (I just have to give it a little "shave"). This bread does require some attention. I had a hard time keeping all of the add-ins inside the dough and half way through baking, I had to pick off burned cherries that had wormed their way out of the bread and were sticking out like the popping out eyes of one of those squeeze toys. One of the ABC Bakers describes it as whack-a-mole. I think that is appropriate.

See the spots where I had to pick off burnt cherries?

No Knead Chocolate Cherry Pecan Bread

Ingredients

6.75 ounces bread flour 

6 ounces unbleached all purpose flour

2 ounces rye flour, any type 

2 ounces whole wheat flour

2 1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp instant yeast

14 ounces water

3 1/4 ounces dried cherries

3 ounces chocolate chips (I used chocolate chunks because they were just beginning to bloom, and I didn't want to have to throw them away)

6 ounces of diced pecans, toasted (toast for about 6 to 8 minutes in a 350 degree F oven)

Instructions

•  Mix the flour, salt, and yeast in a large bowl. Spray the top of the dough with spray oil and cover with plastic wrap. Let the dough sit at room temperature overnight (I did a stretch and fold before I went to bed). The dough should have grown quite a bit by morning and be very bubbly. Mine quadrupled. 
• Lightly flour a work surface and scrape the dough out onto it. Using a wet dough scraper and wet hands (have a bowl of water nearby for dipping), stretch and pat the dough out into a large square.
• Spread the pecans, cherries, and chocolate chunks over the dough, and stretch and fold the dough over the add-ins. Make sure they are fully incorporated. 
• Spray a banneton or proofing basket with spray oil and sprinkle with flour (I used brown rice flour). 
• Form the dough into a ball and place it, seam side up, into the banneton. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to proof for 90 minutes to 5 hours, until puffy. Mine took 90 minutes in a my makeshift warm environment. 
• Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F with a pizza stone on the lower third of the oven and an inverted large metal bowl on top of the stone. (You could also use just a sheet pan or a cake pan on top of a sheet pan with a bowl over the dough.) 
• When the dough is ready, spray a sheet of parchment with spray oil, place it over the dough. place a pizza peel over the parchment, and flip the whole contraption over.
• Move the dough and parchment onto the pizza stone, spray the dough with water, and cover it with the heated bowl immediately.
• Bake, covered, for 20 minutes. 
• Removed the bowl and move the loaf to a sheet pan. Add an oven rack just above the pizza stone and place the sheet with the loaf on that rack.
• Bake for another 20 minutes, until the loaf reaches an internal temperature of about 205 degrees F. 
• Place the loaf on a rack and cool completely. Seriously. Leave it alone! You don't want gummy bread. 
• Enjoy!

To see other ABC versions of this recipe, visit the Avid Bakers Challenge page.

Note: Most of the flour I used for this bread is King Arthur Flour. It's a personal choice and King Arthur Flour has not asked me to promote their products. I'm just a big fan.

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Kontinentbrot | Continent Bread

My friend David of Hearth Baked Tunes contributed this recipe to the Artisan Bread Bakers Facebook page for the February Bread of the Month. David is currently on a quest to bake the perfect German breads (brots). His favorites include a rye starter, lots of rye flour, and lots of seeds. Hearty breads. It's been fun to see what comes out of his oven. Did I mention that he is a Dead Head?

I've had my challenges with breads with a high percentage of rye flour. Rye flour can get very sticky when kneaded.  Fortunately, Cathy of Bread Experience attempted this recipe first, so I was able to benefit from her recommendations.

One other thing.... this recipe calls for pumpkin seeds, which I love. A lot. But I couldn't find my pepitas. While rummaging through the bottom of my baking freezer (did I just admit I have a freezer for baking ingredients?), I came across some pine nuts and decided to substitute them. They worked out well, although next time I might toast them first and add a bit more salt to the dough to compensate.

Verdict: This is a very dense bread that lends itself to salty toppings and cheeses. It goes well with salty/savory toppings such as feta, Boursin, or tapenade. After the second day, I recommend slicing it thinly and then freezing the slices for toasting and topping.

Here is my version of this bread. To see David's version, click here. To see Cathy's version, click here. I don't know if mine turned out correctly, but it's pretty tasty.

Kontinentbrot

Ingredients

Sourdough Build

110 g whole rye flour

11 g sourdough starter

85 g water

Quellstuck (soaker)

77 g whole rye flour

22 g rolled oats

35 g pumpin seeds (or pine nuts)

20 g sunflower seeds

13 g flax seeds

15 g toasted sunflower seeds

127 g water

Final Dough

73 g whole rye flour

106 g bread flour

10 g salt (I would recommend a bit more)

All of the sourdough build

All of the Quellstuck

4 g yeast

138 g water

Instructions

Make the sourdough build

Mix all of the ingredients in a bowl, cover and let it rest for about 14 to 16 hours.

Make the Quellstuck

Mix all of the ingredients, cover, and let it soak overnight at the same time that the sourdough build is fermenting.

Make the dough

• Mix all of the ingredients (including the sourdough build and quellstuck) in the bowl of a stand mixer until mixed. Don't overmix.
• Cover and let the dough rest for about 30 minutes. 
• Form the dough into a ball and place it into a banneton/proofing basket, spray with spray oil, and cover with plastic wrap. Proof for for about an hour in a warm environment. I let it rise in a warmed microwave. (Don't microwave the dough, heat water in the microwave to warm the oven and then add the dough). 
• Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F with a cast iron Dutch oven in it. When it is time to bake the bread, remove the Dutch oven, turn out the dough into it (no need to slash the dough), cover, place the contraption into the oven, and bake for 15 minutes.
• Remove the cover from the Dutch oven, reduce the oven temperature to 425 degrees and bake for about 20 to 30 minutes more. The internal temperature of the bread should be 205 to 210 degrees F. 
• Allow the loaf to cool completely on a wire rack. 
• Wrap the bread with a towel and allow it to sit for about 24 hours before slicing. 
• Enjoy!

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