How to make Bread

This is summarized from a more verbose article. Several improvements here:

  • Time required is important. People have jobs.
  • Most articles have many words, no clear sections. Important things like the order of the steps are hard to extract.
  • List of ingredients is useful.
  • Translate units to SI. Ooohh look at me, I live in Europe.

Time required

  • 8 Days for the starter
  • 5 hours for the sponge
  • 4 hours rising
  • 20 minutes baking
  • 10 minutes kneading

In other words:

  • Total: over a week
  • With Starter: 10 hours
  • With Sponge: 5 hours

Ingredients

Required

  • Starter: around 250 ml
  • Flour: more than 1 L (750 for sponge, more for dough)
  • Salt: 2 spoons
  • Oil: several spoons to grease things

Optional

  • Cornmeal to prevent sticking

Making Sponge

  • Mix 750 ml flour and 250 ml water with starter
  • Rest for 2 - 8 hours

Post sponge

  • Mix in salt and flour until you can't stir it no mo
  • Knead for about 3 minutes
  • Rest for 5 minutes (good time to clean out the bowl)
  • Knead for several more minutes
  • Transfer: to a greased bowl
    • Flip once
  • Rest for rise for 1.5 - 2 hours
  • Divide in half and shape
  • Transfer to cooking pan (covered with cornmeal if you got it)
  • Rest for about 2 hours
  • Decorate with slices and cuts
  • Bake at 235 for 20 minutes

To do

  • Consider this this NYT article more carefully. Specifically:

    • They recommend kneading a lot longer, around 20 minutes total, until stretching it into a thin layer forms a translucent "window".
    • Less kneading, more "folding" in their language, all done in a bowel, with what seems to be wetter dough.
    • They recommend using autolyse, see below.
  • Add autolyse to the sponge by mixing the flour and water in a 4:3 ratio and waiting for 30 minutes. This is supposed to start the gluten separation.