Here's the 12th bread I made. I created a little series so you can get a feeling for the process.
First comes the doughy phase. Here, the flours, water, salt and additional ingredients* are mixed and -in the case of sourdough bread- beaten. There are two main techniques to achieve a good dough structure, but they have in common: stretching and folding. I do it the brutal way where you stretch the dough, lift it up from the table and smash it down again.
Second, the loafy phase. After the dough has recovered from the beatings, it is given some time to relax. This helps the flour take up the water - this will make the bread stay fresh longer, and also the gluten structure can develop. You can see the structure and tension of the dough when it doesn't "run away" on a flat surface. Ideally, it stays somewhat round.
After all this, the bread is made into a nice round loaf and brought to sleep overnight in the fridge.
Just when the bread awakens from its slumber, is it brought into the fiery pits of my oven. I crank it up to 250 °C (roughly 480 °F) and let it bake in a sealed pot for about 50 minutes. The lid stays on so that the water vapour from the dough stays "nearby" and allows the dough to rise nicely. After this time, the lid is taken off, and the temperature lowered. This ensures that the crust dries out and becomes crisp.
Remember: Always let your breads and cakes cool fully before cutting them up, otherwise they will lose too much moisture right away!
*in this bread, I added 100 grams of oatmeal (which for some reasons becomes invisible after baking), 150 grams of pumpkin seeds and bread spice. I produce the bread spice myself and vary a little bit every time, this bread has 4 grams of caraway seeds and 1 gram of cloves in it.
