Baking Blind or The Easiest Bread

Since I wear contact lenses most of the time, most people don't realise that I have very bad eyesight. I have -7.50 dioptres in each eye, putting me in the high myopia category. But I am stubborn and don't like to be limited in what I do by something as ridiculous as being able to see. I regularly get up, make coffee in the morning, shower and make breakfast for the children without my glasses on or my contacts in. In my own house, I know where everything is, so pottering around in the morning isn't a problem.

This morning I made bread. The easiest and best tasting bread there is. If I can bake it, half blind, then anyone can bake it. It really is that easy. Early this year I read a recipe for perfect but simple bread in Living At Home magazine, a German interiors magazine I sometimes buy. Then I saw that the brilliant Helen from The Busy Mamas had posted the same kind of recipe years earlier. Both breads looked amazing and the recipes were very similar, baking the bread in a cast iron pot. But one thing was stopping me from baking them. I do not own a cast iron pot. Despite countless hints that I love Le Creuset, I have never been given a present of one of their pots and unfortunately I am very, very bag at self-gifting. 

A week ago I decided to have a go at baking this bread anyway, using my heavy-bottomed stainless steel pot. It has stainless steel handles and a stainless steel lid, so I knew it could take the heat of the oven. I just wasn't sure how the bread would be. Luckily, it worked. Now all five of us are hooked on this bread and my neighbour is asking for the recipe too. We have made plain wheat bread, we have made a rye-wheat version and we have added walnuts to one loaf. All of them turned out perfectly - crusty, airy and flavoursome. 

My verson of the recipe goes like this:
500g strong flour (wheat (type 1050) or 175g rye (type (1150) and 325g type 1050
15g fresh yeast
11g sea salt
340ml lukewarm water
Optional: seeds, walnuts, herbs

Add the flour, salt and yeast (cumbled, if using freah yeast) to a large bowl and stir. If you are adding nuts, seeds, etc., add them at this point. Pour in the lukewarm water and swiftly mix the ingredients to a dough, as if you were making a scone dough. Cover the bowl well with clingfilm and leave to prove for anywhere between 12 and 25 hours. I have generally left it for 16 to 18 hours.

The dough when mixed

The dough after 16 hours

When you are ready to proceed with making the bread, set the oven to 230°C (without the fan on) and place the empty pot and lid into the oven to heat up. The pot acts as an oven within the oven, with the steam from the dough being trapped by the lid. That is what gives gives the loaf a good crust. 

Remove the dough from the bowl. Don't worry if it is quite wet. Place it on a floured surface (I use a chopping board) and form it into a round loaf. Cover it with clingfilm and leave it for half an hour. 

Our Walnut Loaf

After half an hour has passed, remove the pot from the oven. Be very careful. It will be extremely hot. Remove the lid from the pot using oven gloves. Lift the dough and plop it into the pot. Put the lid back on and put the whole lot back into the oven, still at 230°C. After half an hour baking, remove the lid. Bake for a further 30 minutes then remove the pot from the oven. You should be able to just turn the bread out of the pot. It doesn't stick. Leave to cool on a wire tray.