Honey, Thyme, & Sea Salt Bread
Ingredients
400g of plain flour
270 ml room temp water
20ml honey
10ml olive oil
7g (1 packet) yeast
8g fine salt
A few fresh thyme springs
1 tsp flakey sea salt
One of my best breads, and super, super easy to make. No kneading, little in the way of faffing around. and looks and tastes great. "Its like a hug" in my wife's words.
You will need a dutch oven - a large deep-sided cast iron or enamelware pot with a lid, I use my 5L enamelware, but you could make it work with a bit smaller. What I do here is a bit easier than the usual technique for dutch oven baking, but it comes out perfect.
Good muti-function loaf - absolutley fresh with a little butter is great, it'll go good with soups or salads, also can be sliced for sandwiches and tosties. It'll keep about a day if you wrap it. (Unfortunately fresh bread doesn't keep that long).
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Strip the leaves of the thyme stems (the stems are tough, discard) and roughly chop. You should have about 1tbsp of leaves.
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Combine all the other ingredients, save the sea salt. Mix the honey and oil into the water, together with the yeast and thyme, then combine with the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Doesn't have to be perfect, just all mixed in. Cover and leave for 15-20 minutes.
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Mix with something stiff like the end of a wooden spoon, it should just about come together into a ball (but still quite wet). Cover again and leave for 2 hours, it should double in size.
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Put your dutch oven in the oven and pre-heat to 200 c. Note my oven is quite hot and has a fan, on an older/ cooler/ fanless oven you might want to go to 220.
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Dust a large chopping board or clean surface with a good amount of flour and tip out the dough. Fold over a few times and shape into a ball. Applying more flour as needed to stop sticking. To shape, I usually flatten it out a bit, then pull the edges together into a point that'll then become the bottom of the bread (I want a little surface tension on the top).
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Dust a mixing bowl (your second rise should be in something deep and round) and place inside. Cover with something that seals it (like a plate, not just a tea towel), leave for 30-40 minutes.
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For the final step, take your heated up dutch oven out. Drop your dough, bottom side down into it being very careful not to touch the pot with your hands. Quickly sprinkle over the sea salt and place the lid on, and put it back in the over. Bake for 40 minutes without removing lid.
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Remove and allow to rest for 10 minutes. It should be a nice golden brown, and the pressure of the bread expanding will have created a steam tear across the surface. Serve fresh