Let's talk about bread

Bread is more than important onboard l'Olonnois, it is crucial!!  With jam for breakfast, with ham and cheese for lunch, with chocolate for the french "gouter", with pate, tapenade or guacamole for aperitive, with cheese after a light dinner... bread is eaten at any time of the day. After years of using my beloved bread machine at home, I am now learning to make bread by hand. After several attempts and only one "failure", I think it is time for me to share my tricks :-)

Since the oven is relatively small in the boat, my breads are made with 500g flour only. But I guess using 1 kg flour and doubling all the other ingredients should work as well.

Ingredients:
- 500g  flour (oat, corn, sarrasin, epeautre, wheat... whatever you feel like using. The secret is that at least 1/3 of the flour mix contains gluten.
- 2 packets dehydrated yeast, i.e. 12 g.
- 250 ml water (sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less).
- 2 ts salt
- 1ts sugar
- 1 tbls olive oil

Warm the water a little. I would say around 30 degrees. Set aside half the water and poor the yeast on the other half. Mix well. The yeast will need time to"activate", about 10 minutes at normal temperature. During this time, you can "slowly" prepare all the other ingredients.
When the 10 minutes have passed, add the rest of water to the yeast, and then flour, sugar and olive oil. Mix well together with, for example, a big wooden spoon. Add then salt. The salt should never come in contact with the yeast, this would "kill" it and the bread would not rise. Continue mixing and adjust the quantity of water if needed. At this stage, the dough should be sticky. Now comes the handy work, knead the dough for 10 to 15 minutes. At the end, the bread dough should be a little elastic.

Make it as a ball, put in a bowl and cover with a clean table cloth. Let is rest for about 1h, until the dough has doubled volume. Knead just a little, so that all the gas/air in the dough is evacuated. Form a ball and put it on an oven plate covered with baking paper. The dough should then rest for another 30 minutes. When the air temperature is a little cold, I would boil water and place it in a bowl and under the oven plate containing the bread. This helps greatly for the bread to rise.

Warm up the oven to 240 degrees and bake the bread for about 20 minutes. If you like crispy crust, do not forget the "coup de buee" just before you set the bread in the oven. You would then have to put a little bit of water on the bottom of the oven, making dense water "fog". Close the oven as fast as possible and let the magic happen!

 
Once baked, the bread should be cooled at air temperature.