Bread unfit for kings, but toast for the peasants.

I think I figured out why this bread is called Peasant Bread… it wasn’t good enough for the king so the peasants ate it. I mean sure it’s OK. Best I’ve ever had? Nope. The suggestion is to bake these in glass bowls in your oven. Um… no thank you? I opted to use some baking dishes instead. Sure my loaves weren’t super round and pretty, they also didn’t rise that great. We ate it warm with dinner, warm with butter, it was pretty dang good I have to admit. But the next day? We sliced it and toasted it with butter and cinnamon sugar? Oh my yes, we polished off both loaves! So maybe it is fit for kings, if the king has a toaster. I hope the peasants had toasters…. Or maybe they toasted it over candles or whatever they could burn… this is getting dark… Maybe I just need to try it again and try the boiling water/cold water method and it’ll rise perfectly. I’m always up for new things.

Peasant Bread
Ingredients:
4 cups unbleached all-purpose or bread flour
2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 cups lukewarm water (made by mixing 1.5 cups cold water with 0.5 cup boiling water)
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons instant yeast

Make it:
Mixing the dough: In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, sugar, and instant yeast. Add the water. Mix until the flour is absorbed. (If you are using active dry yeast, see notes below.)
Let it rise. Cover bowl with a tea towel or plastic wrap and set aside in a warm spot to rise for at least an hour. (In the winter or if you are letting the bread rise in a cool place, it might take as long as two hours to rise.) This is how to create a slightly warm spot for your bread to rise in: Turn the oven on at any temperature (350ºF or so) for one minute, then turn it off. Note: Do not allow the oven to get up to 300ºF, for example, and then heat at that setting for 1 minute — this will be too hot. Just let the oven preheat for a total of 1 minute — it likely won’t get above 100ºF. The goal is to just create a slightly warm environment for the bread.
Preheat the oven to 425ºF. Grease two 1-qt or 1.5-qt oven-safe bowls with about a tablespoon of butter each. Using two forks, punch down your dough, scraping it from the sides of the bowl, which it will be clinging to. As you scrape it down try to pull the dough toward the center. You want to loosen the dough entirely from the sides of the bowl, and you want to make sure you’ve punched it down. Then, take your two forks and divide the dough into two equal portions — eye the center of the mass of dough, and starting from the center and working out, pull the dough apart with the two forks. Then scoop up each half and place into your prepared bowls. This part can be a little messy — the dough is very wet and will slip all over the place. Using small forks or forks with short tines makes this easier — my small salad forks work best; my dinner forks make it harder. It’s best to scoop it up fast and plop it in the bowl in one fell swoop. Some people like to use flexible, plastic dough scrapers for this step.
Let the dough rise again for about 20 to 30 minutes on the countertop near the oven (or near a warm spot) or until it has risen to just below or above (depending on what size bowl you are using) the top of the bowls. (Note: Do not do the warm-oven trick for the second rise, and do not cover your bowls for the second rise. Simply set your bowls on top of your oven, so that they are in a warm spot. Twenty minutes in this spot usually is enough for my loaves.)
Bake it. Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to 375º and bake for 15 to 17 minutes longer. Remove from the oven and turn the loaves onto cooling racks. If you’ve greased the bowls well, the loaves should fall right out onto the cooling racks. If the loaves look a little pale and soft when you’ve turned them out onto your cooling racks, place the loaves into the oven (outside of their bowls) and let them bake for about 5 minutes longer. Remove from oven and let cool for 10 minutes before cutting.