Table bread

 
Pers baking day, today he is baking a straightforward white table bread. This is a little bit special dough to handle but if you do it right the resulting bread is very nice. So some words of precautions, this is a very very wet dough that needs a lot of kneading at high speed to change from floating to a somewhat more jelly state. It also requires a strong, high protein, flour. Best is to use Manitoba Cream if you can find that in the shop. In Sweden it should be easy to find. It is important to use a flour with a high protein percentage, otherwise it may be difficult to get the dough together. You also need a machine that can knead the dough at high speed.

Table bread.

500 grams flour (high in protein)
500 grams water (room temperature)
12 grams yeast
12 grams salt
5 grams butter (room temperature)

Resolve the yeast in the water and then add the flour and salt. Knead the dough in the machine at highest possible speed until the dough start to leave the bowl. This can take between 15 to 20 minutes depending on what kind of machine you use, sometimes it may take longer time but it is important that you work the dough until it starts to bang the walls of the bowl. As soon as it shows signs of leaving the bowls bottom add the butter and let the machine go for about 4 minutes more.

When the dough is ready transfer it to a plastic bowl or container that has been oiled with some neutral food oil. Cover with a lid or plastic wrap. Let the dough rest for about one hour.

Put plenty of flour on the baking tray, this is a very wet dough and will stick to everything it can stick to if you don't cover the surface with flour. It is important to handle the dough gently so that the bubbles stay inside the dough. Carefully let the dough pour out of the plastic container on top of the flour. Fold the edges on to the centre of the top of the dough, so you end up with a flour covered round dough. Cut the dough in two pieces and carefully close the wet area by pushing the flour covered sides up over the wet surface so that you end up with an almost loaf shaped dough. Put the dough pieces on a baking paper with the closed area down. Use your hands to shape the loaves by carefully pushing the dough, sort of under itself, from the sides. Let the loaves rest for about one hour. After 30 minutes preheat the oven to its highest temperature. If you have a pizza or baking stone place that in the lower part of the oven, otherwise put a baking plate in the oven to make it hot.

Transfer the loaves to the stone/plate gently, spray plenty of water with a squirting bottle in to the oven. Put the oven temperature to 250 C. After 10 minutes lower the temperature to 200 C. Let the loaves stay at least 30 minutes in the oven after that. I like a crispy crust so I let them stay around 50 minutes in the owen. It is also good to open the hatch after 20 minutes to let some steam out, and then repeat that with 10 minutes intervals until the bread is ready. Let the loaves get cool on a grid.

This is what I use, I use a scale because I like to get the same starting point every time I bake this bread. Of course you can also recalculate into volumes instead of weight.

This is how the dough looks like after 5 minutes of full speed kneading.

This is how the dough looks like when it is close to ready. As you can see the dough has started to leave the bowl. Now I put the butter in and let it go for 4 minutes.

The dough is ready.

Lid on, now rest for one hour.

After one hour.

Baking tray is waiting, much flour.

After folding the "wet part" into itself you get a flour covered dough.

Loaves shaped, somehow.

Loaves after one hour.

Loaves after 50 minutes in the oven.

This is how they came out this time.