Morning loaf bread
This is the best bread ever, with only four ingredients.
1. Measure, with a kitchen scale, all dry ingredients into a big (3 to 4 L) glass bowl and mix together with a wooden spoon.
2. Add the water to the dry ingredients bowl, measure with the kitchen scale, and mix together (using wooden spoon) until all the dry ingredients are wet and incorporated. This should take 2 minutes.
3. Cover the mixture with the bowl lid or plastic wrap and let it sit on the counter for 2h until the dough doubled in size. If the ambient temperature is cool/cold, it could take 2.5 or 3h.
4. After the waiting/first rise period, put flour on your hands and on the dough (so it does not stick to your hands and you can work the dough), open the lid of the bowl or remove your plastic wrap, and fold your dough 4-6 times on itself in the bowl creating a ball of dough. The best technique to use is to fold the dough over onto itself, then rotate the bowl 90 degrees and repeat until you reach six folds.
5. Close the lid again and let rise for another 1.5h - 2h
6. Repeat step 4.
7. Put flour on your hands and on a silicone mat or parchment paper or directly on your counter if you like, take the dough ball out the glass bowl and place it on the floured mat/parchment/counter.
8. The dough now needs to relax for 5 minutes so you have time to clean your dishes and prepare your pan (see step 9).
9. You need 1 rectangular pan per bread. Butter the pan. I usually melt the butter in the microwave before brushing it onto the pan, it's easier than when the butter is hard and it puts less.
10. After you do that, or after 5 minutes, your dough is relaxed enough to form a rectangle long and wide enough for your pan with it. Do this by putting flour on your hands so it does not stick to your fingers and by extending the dough all gently to ensure you are not removing all its gas. In height, it should be about half the pan.
11. Wet a dish towel or any tissue with hot water and remove the excess water so it is just humid and put it on your pan to cover the bread so it keeps its humidity and stays moist during the next waiting period. Let rise like this for 1 hour or until you see the dough has doubled in size and start to pass to be at the pan height or a little bit above.
12. 30 minutes before the end of the waiting time, start the oven at 450C.
13. 2-3 minutes before the end of the waiting period, boil water with a kettle and put it in a metal container and put it in the oven ( this is important to keep your bread moist during cooking as our home ovens are not made like professional baking ovens with water). This metal container could also just be another bread pan empty to which you will add the boiled water.
13. After the waiting period, remove the wet clothes from the bread, spray some water onto your bread, and put the bread in the oven at 375 C for 45 minutes.
14. When it's ready, remove the bread from the oven with oven mitts as it's hot and place the bread on an elevated surface of a rack, not directly on the counter as it will become wet and soggy under it. When the bread has cooled down, you can now put it on a basket out the counter or a bag, whatever you want.
15. But please enjoy a slice when it's hot first, with butter, YUM-YUM.