How I make my signature bread (lately)

It's the most requested item in my kitchen. I make it all the time and it keeps evolving. So, I'm going to show you how I make it these days. It's a fkacaike product that I used to make from extra pizza dough. So, the kids called it pizza bread and the name stuck. Get a mixing bowl and about 2 cups, 500 mls of lukewarm water. This will make two big loaves in the bowl. At most, a teaspoon of sugar. It's there for the yeast to eat and to give a slight sweetness to the bread, but more than a little makes the texture dense and gummy. A packet of yeast, between two and three teaspoons thereabouts. Stir that up and let the yeast rehydrate and come to life for a few minutes. I am not speeding that footage up. That is real time. I love that. This blooming step is not necessary, but it speeds up the fermentation process and it lets you make sure your yeast are still alive. All righty. Now, 2 tsp of kosher salt, important for flavor. Too much salt interferes with the gluten and makes the texture a little brittle. 2 tsps is the right compromise, I've found. And then the bread flour. I like this brand. Not an ad, but it's not that important. I just think that the ultra finelymilled double zero flour gets you a noticeably smoother texture. And I just like to put in as much flour as I can stir in with a spoon. No olive oil in the dough anymore. I like the texture better without it. I'm increasingly going for a fluffy interior rather than a dense interior. That's as much flour as I can easily stir in with a spoon. So, it's time to stop. I haven't even touched it yet. Cover with a damp towel for like 15 minutes. Now that the water has hydrated all the flour particles, the dough will be stickier than it was a moment ago, so it'll be easier for it to absorb a little more flour. How much? Again, I just go by however much I can stir in with the spoon. Western bread recipes are generally built around the flour quantity. Every Indian bread recipe I've ever read is built around the water quantity. And I like that even more because water is easier to measure and flour is easy to eyeball. If you only mix in what the spoon can mix in, you end up with something like 70% hydration, which is what I like for pizza bread. I've been going with a wetter dough because I'm not actually making pizza with this. I don't need to worry about it sticking to the peel. Let it be sticky. Time now for the first real rise. Give it like 2 hours. My hands are still clean. 2 hours later, we've puffed up faster than a newly unboxed mattress from Helix Sleep, sponsor of this video. Helix is the most awarded mattress brand. They make very high quality stuff like this new uh kids mattress that I just got for my older one. He said that his uh his old bed was too uh firm for him. I need something a little bit cushier. I think he's going to find this exactly to his liking. I certainly love my Helix that I sleep on. It's water and stain repellent, hypoallergenic, perfect thing for a kid. Go to Helix's website, take their little quiz, find out which of their many mattresses is the perfect one for your body and for your sleep habits and for those of anyone you share your bed with. Then the coolest thing is they just ship it to you. It comes in a box under vacuum seal. You just open it up and poof, it reinflates. And it's a real mattress, not an air mattress. Very high quality stuff. Shipping is free in the US and if it turns out to not be the right thing for you, no problem. There's a 100 night sleep trial. Financing and payment plans available right now. You can save 27% off the entire site. Helixleep.com/reusia. That's my exclusive partner offer for Labor Day. Thank you, Helix. Anyway, after 2 hours, the dough has more than doubled. And again, just using the spoon, I will deflate this and basically think about folding it over on itself. That's all you really have to do to effectively knead a very wet dough. Folding develops the gluten network and it redistributes the yeasties a little bit. Brings them into contact with new carbs to ferment. Now is when I used to break this up into portions. But these days, if I have time, I just cover it and give it another hour or two. A second bulk fermentation. Here we go again. Same thing. Deflate it, fold it over on itself, scrape down the sides, etc. And if I have time, I'll cover it again and ferment it again another hour or so. We're developing flavor here and we're doing it quickly. This bread would taste good if we baked it today. You do not have to age it in the fridge if you don't want to. Also, the fold base kneading gets you those wide sheets of gluten that bake up nice and fluffy in the oven. Might as well rise this a fourth time. I'm just sitting around the house anyway. And since I did this the whole way with the spoon, I have not needed to wash gluten out of the hairs on my fingers a million times. Now is the only time when I will actually get my hands dirty. Grab a second bowl. I'll save whatever dough that I can peel off the spoon. We're done with that. Now I'll just tear this dough roughly in half. I used to portion it into four doughs, but it's less work if I just bake two big ones and they'll always get eaten. Time to oil these. I'll flip the dough around to get the whole ball covered. The oil will taste good later and it will allow us to get the dough out without completely collapsing its structure. You'll see. All right. Every surface is oiled. Get them both covered so they don't dry out. And then in the fridge they go. You could bake one after a 30inut rest or the next day or the day after that or a week later. This one is a week old. It continues to ferment slowly in the fridge. Its flavor changes all through the week. I like how it tastes every day, but I prefer the really old ones. Though, after a week or so, the dough starts to turn gray and liquefy. All righty. I am gently peeling the dough off the bottom of the bowl because I do not want to collapse that netting texture on the bottom, that honeycomb. Those little bubble holes are going to hold olive oil in the oven and bake up crispy. The bottom is our top. A little more olive oil on top. Fill up each of those little chambers. I used to do this part on a plate, but to save dishes, I've just been doing it in the bowl. Garlic powder and lots of it. Because the dough is kind of scrunched up in the bowl, we're going to stretch it out when we bake it. So, you need enough flavoring to cover it when stretched. So, same deal with the crunchy salt. Same deal with the pepper. More than you think you want because it's going to get stretched out thin in the oven, which has been preheating on maximum with my pizza steel inside. You're about to see why this towel is important. Open the oven. Towel goes on the oven door. Plastic bowl goes on the towel where it will not melt. Reach in and grab the dough. And then just let it naturally stretch out as you lay it onto the hot steel or the baking stone. I'm sure you could just bake this on a cookie sheet or something, but it would not come out nearly as crispy on the outside. I've had my steel preheating on 500 fahhe 260 C for about 20 minutes and the actual baking should take at most 10 minutes. You'll notice the garlic powder starting to turn brown on the surface. You want to get the bread out before that powder burns. And yes, there are much easier ways than lifting it out with two spatulas like a platypus. I guess it's just that my pizza peel is on a high shelf and I don't ever want to get it down. You could also slide the bread off with a pair of tongs onto a cooling rack, but I just cool it right here on my stove top. Look at that baby. Aging the dough in the fridge a long while gets you a really crispy top and bottom. Here's one that I baked after just one day in the fridge, and it's still pretty good, but the flavor is not quite as developed, and the outside is a little soft and papery. With the weak old one, the top is glass-like. It shatters when you cut through it. I bisect down the midline and then cross cut into strips. Again, look at that glassy, flaky top. The inside has a very open crumb, as they say, super fluffy to contrast with the outside. And the deep fermented flavor is insane, almost like beer. It's this boy's favorite food. He agrees that the older dough is better, >> more flavorful, tastes better. And since you're making up the dough way in advance, pizza bread is an easy, quick way to be a hero in your house tonight. Well, not tonight because you got to plan ahead, but some night soon.