Italian Olive Oil Bread

I love baking, but after the holidays, me and sweets are on a break. So for now, I am all about breads to make sandwiches with my favorite toy- the panini press. I truly believe that a crusty bread needs a preferment, which is a starter used in bread making. The longer the yeast has a chance to set with the starch and ferment, the better and more enhanced flavoring you will find your bread to be. This recipe is using a poolish starter which calls for equal parts water and flour plus the yeast.

Preferment/Poolish:
1 cup water
1 cup bread or all-purpose unbleached flour
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast

Mix preferment in a dish with a wooden spoon, and cover with plastic wrap or a cover.  let it rise at cool room temperature for anywhere between 6 and 24 hours. You will notice it will triple in volume and then collapse a tiny bit. The mixture will also be sticky and wet when you go to use it.

Ingredients:
All of the preferment
4 1/2 cups bread flour or white whole wheat flour (or a combination of the two)
1 1/2 teaspoon King Arthur’s Pizza Dough Seasoning
1 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups water
1/2 OLIVE OIL

Directions:
Sift together flour, pizza dough seasoning and salt and mix with your hand. Move the ingredients to the sides of the bowl, creating a large well (or an empty space/hole) in the middle. Pour the preferment,water, and olive oil over the flour into the well.

Mix together the ingredients , your hands work best, but you can use a mixer to form the dough. When using a mixer, be careful not to over work the dough, this will break the gluten stands and ultimately cause the bread to not rise and bake correctly. Gradually incorporate the flour  from the sides of the bowl until a soft dough is formed.Doing it all at once will be too difficult. So, go bit by bit, if it’s too liquid, just add a bit more flour and if it’s too sticky, add a bit more water.

Next is kneading. Remove the bread from the bowl and place on a lightly floured surface. Knead the dough  by pushing your palms into and then turning it one quarter. Keep kneading and turning dough quarter turns for about 5-10 minutes, or until the bread is supple and non-sticky. Take a piece of the dough and do a window pane test. This will determine if the dough and gluten has been worked enough. Pull off a small piece of dough off mix and gently stretch the dough to see if it appears thin and translucent. If the dough tears easily when doing the windowpane test, continue kneading a few more minutes and try testing again.

Place the bread in a lightly greased bowl and cover with a damp dish cloth. Let it rise for about 1 hour in a warm location. The dough should double in size.

Sprinkle a flat surface with flour. Prepare a baking pan by lightly oiling it With your hands, remove bread and place on floured surface. Punch it down once, hard, with your palms. Now, re-shape it into a loaf.

To shape the loaf, take half the dough and roll it out to a rectangle of desired size and roll longest side up (like you were rolling cinnamon rolls). Pinch seam together and then pinch ends up into the seams. Put the loaf into the prepared baking pan. Cover with dish towel and let rise for about 1 hour. It should double in size.

Using a pizza stone and placing bread pans on top of it will make the bread more crispy.  You can also make two  round loaves and place them directly onto the stone. Make sure the stone is in the oven prior to pre-heating.

Before placing in the oven,  score bread. Use a paring knife and quickly slash the bread in a slight diagonal from one end to the other (leaving about an 1″- 2″ on each side). Scoring not only serves as decorative finish, but controls the expansion of the loaf druing baking. Brush the loaves or spritz with water. The water will cause an initial steam to the bread, giving it a bit more crispness. Put in oven at 475°F and bake for 20-30 minutes.  Allow to cool completely before cutting.