Think a working person doesn’t have time to bake their own bread?

This is actually a fantastic recipe for

working home-bakers. Just take (literally) a couple of minutes in the morning to mix the dough together,
cover and set dough to rise. When you get home at the end of the day, it takes only a few minutes more to
pop the risen dough into your skillet and into the oven. In less than an hour, you’ll have a gorgeous, golden,
warm loaf of homemade bread on your table Couldn’t be easier to work into a working-day or any-day
schedule!

Ingredients

 4 1/2 cups of all purpose flour

**you can use whole wheat in equal amounts, bread will just be more dense

 2 1/2 tsp salt for dough

with additional 3-4 tablespoons sea salt to cover the top

 1 tsp dry yeast

 2 cups lukewarm (neither hot nor cold) water
 1-3 tbsp mashed, roasted garlic – depending on your preference (1-2 heads of garlic)

make your own roasted garlic in just 30 minutes or buy, jarred, in supermarket

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl no smaller than 3 quarts to give dough room to rise.

Add water 1 cup at a time, combining all dry ingredients with first cup of water before adding second cup.
Important so take your time to incorporate first cup completely before moving to second.

Add the mashed roasted garlic and, with your hands, incorporate evenly into the dough.

Cover and let rise at room temperature anywhere from 8-12 hours – overnight or morning to evening.

Right before uncovering the risen dough, flour a clean cutting board or counter surface lightly and prepare
kitchen scissors with blades dipped in flour. Then preheat oven to 400 degrees and put cast iron or
enamelware skillet in over to preheat at the same time. I like to keep the pan in the oven for about 15
minutes so usually a few minutes after the oven has preheated.

WITH OVEN MITTS, remove hot pan from the oven, wipe bottom of pan lightly with olive oil and set on
stove top.

Turn out risen dough onto floured surface, a rubber spatula can help here, and gently – you don’t want to
accidentally punch down the rise! – shape into a ball. Transfer dough ball from the floured surface to hot
pan, a dough scraper is helpful for this.

Use prepared kitchen scissors to cut a cross in the top of your loaf, sprinkle generously with sea salt and
bake for 45-50 minutes until the loaf is a beautiful golden brown and the bottom, tapped, makes a slightly
hollow sound.

Remove from pan immidiately and allow to cool for at least 10 minutes on a wire rack before cutting. This
is important because, with cast iron, the bread will continue to cook if left in the pan.

Serve and enjoy this beautiful bread all on it’s on or with – EVERYTHING!