Beer Around Town

After that exhausting day 1 of baking bread we are going to have to tough it out through day 2.

Back to our timeline, Day 1 ended with our bread dough in the primary rise. Upon completion we had a beer and watched some of the NBA playoffs. Day 2, our theoretical Wednesday, is now upon us and we head off for work, bread still rising away as we tackle the daily grind. Upon arriving home, say 5:00pm we continue our easy bread endeavor.

Step 4 (Wednesday 5:00pm) – Get out a cutting board and dust the top with a nice layer of flour so the dough won’t stick to it. You can also use some corn meal if you have it, but flour works fine. Now, I forgot to take a picture of this step, but it shouldn’t be to difficult, just scrape the dough out of the bowl and onto the cutting board. You will notice lots of air pockets in the dough and it should look pretty stringy, this is good, those pockets are what makes this bread so good, so don’t roll it or knead it, that would be to much work.

Step 5 (Wednesday 5:03pm) – Stretch the dough out on the cutting board into a big rectangle, it should still be about 1″ thick, but this will give you room to put your fixins into your bread. You might want to dust some flour on your hands so the dough doesn’t stick.

Step 5 (Wednesday 5:07pm) – Cover your flat slab of bread with fixins, fill that sucker right up, trust me, you can’t have to much of a good thing. If the fixins are wet, like the peppers were try to dry them off a bit first, it’s not critical that they are dry, but you don’t want this to turn into a soupy mess. Cheese can be grated onto the bread or placed in cubes (my favorite) so you get pockets of cheese.

Step 6 (Wednesday 5:10pm) – Once your fixins are in place roll your dough up on itself and tuck the ends in with the seam faced down so it kinda sits like a ball. It will now need to do it’s second rise for 2 hours. Leave the dough on the cutting board and cover with a dishtowel for 2 hours.

Step 7 (Wednesday 7:00pm) – It is about 10 minutes before your bread is done with it’s second rise and now we want to start heating the pot for when we go to bake this thing. Place the cast iron pot with the lid on in the oven and start the pre-heat to 450 degrees. *note for clarification, the bread is not in the pot, we are just heating the pot, the bread is safe on the counter.

Step 8  (Wednesday 7:10pm) – The oven’s alarm sounds letting us know it has achieved is goal of 450 and our dough is now ready, quickly pull the pot out of the oven and flip the dough into the pot. This can take some finesse, often my dough wants to stick to the cutting board. I try to lift at the edges and put a bit more flour under if this is the case, but usually you can just flip the cutting board over and the dough will land in the pot, try not to squish your bread as you don’t want to press any of the valuable gasses out of it. It should give off a nice sizzle as it hits the pot. Give a quick shake to even it out and place back in the oven with the lid on to bake for 30 minutes on 450.

Step 9 (Wednesday 7:40pm) – Quickly open the oven and take off the lid to the pot and let this bake for another 15 minutes with no lid. This gets the crust all nice and crisp.  Make sure the pot is in the middle of the oven so it doesn’t burn the top to much.

Step 10 (Wednesday 7: 55pm) – You bread is done, your house smells of fresh bread, you are sipping some nice beer, what could be better? Pull the pot out of the oven and use a metal or wood spatula to pull the loaf out of the pot and place on one of the stove burners or a cooling rack to cool. As it cool you will notice your bread makes nice crackling noises as the crust sets, if your bread seams to hard right now just wait, it will soften in about 10 minutes.

Step 11 (Wednesday 8:05pm) – Slice in and enjoy some fresh bread with your favorite beer and cheese.