crusty bread

How To Make crusty bread

• 1

  In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, salt, sugar, and yeast.
• 2

  Add water and mix until a shaggy mixture forms.
• 
  3

  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set aside for 12 – 18 hours. Can let sit up to 24 hours. DO NOT REFRIGERATE. After 12-18 hours the dough is pretty sticky, but that's ok it's supposed to be.
• 
  4

  Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. As soon as it has heated to 450 degrees, place the cast iron pot with the lid in the oven and preheat the pot for 30 minutes. Make sure the cast iron pot has a metal cap. A plastic cap will not work.
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  5

  While the pot and oven are preheating, dump the dough out onto a semi-heavily floured surface and shape it into a ball. It will not be a perfect ball because this dough is sticky and spreads. Just make a nice little ball with not a lot of handling.
• 6

  After the dough is shaped, cover it with the plastic wrap from the bowl. Let sit for 30 minutes to rest.
• 7

  Remove the pot from the oven. Farefully pick up the ball of dough and drop it into the pot. You may want to flour your hands because the dough is going to stick like crazy. Remember the pan is now 450 degrees hot! Put the lid on the pot and return it to the oven for 30 minutes.
• 8

  Remove the lid from the pot and bake for another 15 minutes.
• 9

  Remove from the oven and carefully remove bread from the pot. Place the bread on a cooling rack until completely cooled.
• 10

  Key tips that helped me make a great crusty bread.
  
  Yeast – make sure and use Instant Yeast or better known as Bread Machine Yeast. This yeast does not have to be activated before adding it to your dry ingredients. You can use Active Dry Yeast, but make sure and activate it with a little warm water before adding it to your dry ingredients.
  
  Parchment Paper – this dough is super-duper sticky. Parchment paper will help you work with the sticky dough after 18 hours. Place the dough on floured parchment paper, make the ball of dough, and drop it into the Dutch oven. To remove the dough from the Dutch oven, just pick up the sides of the parchment paper.
  
  Do not work the dough too much.
  
  Make sure and let the dough rest for 30 minutes after you have shaped it into the ball and before you put it in the heated Dutch Oven.
  
  DO NOT grease your pan. Whether you use the parchment paper or not. The parchment paper is the easiest way I have found to move the dough around.
  
  Also, you do not have to use an enamel-covered cast iron Dutch oven like I have, you just need something that can take the heat. The following have been used: clay pots with lids, pizza stone with a bowl to cover the bread, insert from a Crock Pot, Pyrex baking dish with a lid, stainless steel pot with a lid, baking dish covered with aluminum foil, old cast iron Dutch oven.
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