4 pounds of dough??

For my birthday in January, my best friend sent me this fabulous cook book - Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking . I finally got around to making a recipe from there this weekend for the basic boule recipe. Oh my gosh it was so easy and fantastic and i can imagine it would be even better with some added herbs and seasonings.

Well I started the recipe and when i checked on it during the doubling process I had that "oh crap" moment when I saw how much dough it made. So I went back and re-read the recipe and realized it basically made enough for four loaves of bread! Now it does keep for 2 weeks in the fridge but I just baked it all at once and froze some as well.

If you're a new bread baker, I do recommend this it was so easy - and the yeast wasn't intimidating for newbies.

You can form this into loaves, rounds, baguettes, and season as you'd like.

Boule Bread Recipe

1 1/2 T yeast (it turns out to be 2 packets of yeast)

3 cups warm water - about 100 degrees

In the large bowl of a mixer or food processor dissolve yeast in water with 1 tsp. of salt.

Once dissolved, add 6 cups of flour. No need to knead once you mix it all together.

Tranfer dough to an oiled bowl and let rise in a warm place for an hour or longer until doubled in size.

Separate dough into four servings and place each one on a floured surface and knead over it and form into a boule/ball - don't do any longer than a minute. Do this with each loaf and let rest for 40 minutes.

At the 20 minute mark go heat your oven to 425

In the bottom rack put the bottom part of your broiler pan or a baking pan with water and place your bread stone or cookie sheet on the higher rack and preheat.

When the 20 minutes is up, dust the top of each boule with flour and place cuts in each loaf in patterns, like tic tac to, a cross, lines, whatever.

Transfer each boule gently to baking sheet in the oven - if you have a pizza paddle, this is good to have here for the tranfer - but if you dont' - no worries it works by hand.

Let bake until golden brown - about 25 to 30 minutes - i ended up letting mine go for 35 minutes but i also cooked all 3 loaves at once - it worked fine by the way.

SO GOOD with some tasty butter or some herbed olive oil!!!