I’ve wanted to post a pizza recipe for a while and I have some notes and photos with a dough enriched with grains but I’m not happy enough with it yet. While I’ve been perfecting the pizza recipe, I’ve also been perfecting the dough and loaves. Since posting my first bread recipe, I’ve tried to make the process a little less haphazard and to measure things out more carefully. I’ve also decided to try making the dough using only all purpose flour and, to my surprise, the dough behaved differently enough after the chilling period to warrant its own post. It is much stickier and much harder to work with than the light whole wheat dough. The directions here take this into account.
Also, I finally overcame my brutish ways and started to use parchment paper rather than plopping the dough from a cutting board into my palm then into the preheated pot. I cut the parchment paper to fit on the bottom of the cast iron pot uncrinkled. It helps to trace the bottom of the pot on parchment paper before cutting it. I let the dough rest on the parchment paper and then transfer the dough, parchment paper and all, into the pan once it is preheated. I have a 9-inch cast iron dutch oven with lid and the diameter of the parchment paper is around 6.25″. If you’re also using a small pot like mine but want to use a whole one pound of dough for the loaf, you might want to append two tabs to the parchment paper circle to help you lift the rested dough into the pot better.
I think that I tend to overbake my bread because I like the crust to be very crispy. If you’re not a crisp-fanatic like me, check out the notes about timing in the tips section.