No-knead bread with preferment

This is a very simple bread recipe based off this one. Credit goes entirely to Brian Langerstrom for such a great recipe that initiated me in the world of bread making.

Process

The "Poolish"

This is the preferment, it's the foundation for a great bread using this technique. The poolish requires at least 16hrs of fermenting, up to 24hrs.

The "poolish" mix

Now we create the initial mix using our preferment.

Once you pour all the ingredients into a bowl, stir everything together to get a homogeneous mix.

Making the dough

This will be our main dough, this will become our bread.

Stir using a sturdy metal spoon (or an electric dough mixer if you have one) keep stirring until the mix starts to look homogeneous

If you don't have a mixer, it will get to a point that your spoon won't help anymore. Use your hand instead, use clean water to make it wet and start squeezing and releasing the dough while rotating the bowl, this is a similar motion to what the electric dough mixer does.

Once this is done, cover it up and let it rest for 30 minutes

First fold

After 30 minutes, uncover your dough, make your hand very wet and using your fingers pinch it from one side, carefuly stretch the dough and fold it on itself, do this between 8 and 10 times.

If the instruction to fold the dough is not clear, I found this video that should be helpful enough.

After the folding process, make your hand wet again, carefully grab the dough from one of the "sides" and try to lift it up, rotate it 90 degrees and place it back into the bowl. Imagine making a motion to make the dough round and smooth, that's what we need to accomplish

If this isn't clear either, check the video by Brian that I've linked at the beginning of this post

Cover it up and let it rest for another 30 minutes

Second fold

Basically repeat the folding process once again, fold it, round it, cover it again and this time let it rest for 1 hour.

Third fold

Flour up the surface where you are going to manipulate the dough. Take the dough out and place it onto the surface. You can replace flour by water if you want, it's just so the dough wont stick too much on the surface.

Repeat the folding process once more until the dough becomes firmer.

After folding, wet both hands and pinch it from opposite sides and do the folding but in a criss-cross motion, do this 4-5 times.

Rounding

Right after the last folding, flip the dough so the criss-crossed area is facing down onto the surface.

With both hands grab the dough and gently drag it in round motion while pressing it down onto the surface (make sure there's still enough flour so it won't break/stick), this will help seal the criss-crossed parts of the dough and make it rounder.

Proofing

Prepare a proofing basket (or a bowl with a rag, clean old t-shirt or similar) and liberaly flour the fabric so the dough won't stick.

Do another rounding motion of the dough upon the surface, lift it, flip it then place it into the proofing basket or bowl.

Cover it and let it rest for another 45 minutes.

In the meantime, fire up the oven at 250C, put the dutch oven inside and let it pre-heat for 30-45 minutes.

Baking it

Take the dutch oven out of the oven and place it close to your basket/bowl with the dough

Grab the basket with the dough and flip it over the dutch oven, so the dough will gently fall inside the dutch oven

Grab scissors or a razor and make a few cuts around the dough, this will help it to develop and grow in size even more.

Put the lid back into the dutch oven enclosing the dough within it. Put back the dutch oven inside the pre-heated oven

Wait 18 minutes then take the lid of the dutch oven out

Depending on your oven, wait 45 minutes, an hour, or until the bread is well baked, it should have a dark color, golden and brown-ish, sort of.

After you are satisfied with the color of your bread, take it out from the oven and let it rest in the counter for at least 1 hour. That's it!