Ridiculously Easy Artisan Bread
By Sari Huhtala
If bread making isn’t your forte, and time is not on your side, or the thought of standing at a counter stretching dough in your hands for 10 minutes to create the perfect elastic, springy texture doesn’t appeal to you, then you’ll find this artisan bread recipe to be right up your alley. If you have two minutes of time on your hands, you can make this bread.
Easy artisan bread
- 2 cups spelt flour
- 1 cup rye flour
- ¼ cup raw sunflower seeds
- ¼ cup uncooked rolled oats
- ½ tbsp salt
- ½ tsp dry yeast
- 1 ¾ cup + 1/8 cup room temperature water
Place all dry ingredients in a bowl, including yeast. Add water and stir to mix thoroughly. Cover the bowl and set aside to ferment overnight or between eight to 12 hours.
After the fermentation period, place bowl in fridge for an hour or more. Then, remove the dough from the bowl and use hands to shape into a ball. You do not need to knead the dough. Place the ball of dough onto a parchment paper-covered cookie sheet or even a stone pizza pan. For more visual appeal, sprinkle oats, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and/or flax seeds over the dough and press lightly to make seeds stick. Cover the dough with a clean cloth and let sit for one hour on counter. Bake at 400 degrees F for 45 minutes.
Option: After fermentation, you can place the dough, covered, into the refrigerator for up to two days rather than baking it right away. I like to slip the dough into the fridge for a couple of hours before rolling into a ball, as I find it makes the dough hold its ball shape much better when it is cold.
Variations: This is a pretty forgiving bread recipe, so feel free to experiment using different flours and seeds – just keep the quantities the same. If you do not have rye flour on hand, this bread also turns out lovely using spelt flour in place of the rye flour. You can also substitute sunflower seeds for more rolled oats, or even steel cut oats, if you do not have sunflower seeds.