Artisan Bread: boule (basic dough recipe)

If you only buy one cookbook this year, buy this one.

You can read about this very recipe and more on the authors' website.  I borrowed my dad's copy of the book, and need to buy my own before his gets completely covered in sticky dough spots on my favorite pages. . .

But, you lucky blogstalkers, you, I am slowly but surely making the recipes from this book into recipe cards, for the selfsame reason of floury pages: recipe cards are cleaner and more accessible.

I usually make baguettes or ciabatta with this recipe.  And after you use all of your refrigerated dough (it usually makes enough four loaves), you don't clean out the container--just mix another batch of dough and dump it in to cultivate some wee yeastie beasties . . . the bread gets more and more of an authentic sourdough taste.

You'll understand the history, process, and chemistry of baking artisan bread if you read the book, and I do think that reading about all of these things gives you an edge in baking the breads that the authors describe--plus there are pictures.  But in the mean time, here is the recipe card for one of the "master recipes."  This is the simplest one, and the one I use the most, along with the flatbread and olive oil dough recipe.