Artisan Bread

I was super-excited when a friend sent me these 3 things:







All three are key ingredients to making artisan bread!


So, I'm going to begin chronicling my adventures learning how to make artisan breads. Today, I started off by making the "Master Recipe." This will hopefully yield the "Boule," which is the simplest form of artisan bread. I am dreaming of crunchy, crumbling crust accompanied by a moist, chewy dough center. You'll see that the only ingredients that I've used are unbleached all-purpose white flour, yeast, salt, and lukewarm water. It all started off as a small little ball of dough that was wet and loose and easily molded to my large dough box. Over the course of 2 hours, the yeast resulted in a tripling of dough that has taken over my dough box!









Tonight, my dough is going to rest in the fridge and cure until I'm ready to bake it tomorrow for dinner. Could it really be possible to have artisan bread without running to the nearest bakery? We shall see tomorrow...