Boule Bread Recipe

It's amazing how easy and delicious this recipe is. Once you get the hang of it, you'll probably ask yourself why you ever bought bread from a store in the first place.

Ingredients
- 1 1/2 Tbs, instant yeast
- 1 1/2 Tbs, kosher or sea salt (1 Tb table salt is okay)
- 6 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour (for even better results, use bread flour)

1. In a large container, pour yeast and salt into 3 cups wrist-warm water.
2. Stir in flour, mixing with a large wooden spoon for 1-2 minutes. The mixture should be consistent, but not necessarily pretty.
3. Cover, but gas will be produced so do not seal airtight. I usually just put a large dish over my bowl.
4. Let the dough rise at room temperature for 2 hours or just stick in the fridge overnight. You can refrigerate the dough for up to two weeks, adding a few drops of water if the dough becomes very dry.
4. When ready to bake, sprinkle flour on your hands and on top of the dough so it's not too sticky, and cut off a large handful. The size really doesn't matter much.
5. Hold the dough at the bottom with both hands. Stretch the dough with your hands, pulling from the top and stuffing the excess under the bottom. Rotate the dough 45 degrees each time you do this. The top should look neat and stretched. It should take no more than 1 minute.
6. Flour a cookie sheet and rest the dough on it for 40 minutes.
7. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. (Use an oven thermometer to verify the temperature and give yourself at least 20 minutes to preheat if you're using a pizza stone.)
8. After resting, reshape the dough if you want -- you can flatten it, make it more oval-shaped, or just leave it as a big round ball. Dust the top of the dough with an abundant amount of flour to achieve a 'gluten cloak.' Slash top with serrated bread knife 2-3 times.
9. Stick the dough into the oven. I slide the dough onto a hot pizza stone, but you can just stick the cookie sheet in the oven if you don't have one.
10. Immediately open the broiler, and pour 1 cup of water into the broiler pan and shut oven quickly to trap the steam. This prevents the bread crust from getting too hard.
11. Bake for 30 minutes. The crust should be brown and your kitchen should smell delicious.
12. Let the bread cool on a rack before cutting -- it still isn't finished cooking!
13. Once the bread has completely cooled, slice with a bread knife and enjoy!

Adapted from the recipe in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.