Spectacular And Easy - The Perfect Home Baked Loaf Of Bread !

This recipe has been created by Jim Leahy of Sullivan Street Bakery in N.Y. City

If you are into food - good food that is - well than you must love bread. Bread is the smallest common denominator amongst gourmets and gourmands around the world. I have not met a person that is into food, that does not appreciate a good piece of crusty bread. And some of us have tried to get that perfect loaf of Poilane bread out of our ovens and have failed miserably, just to learn that one cannot bake real good bread at home! What if I told you that there is the most simple recipe/method to bake the nearly perfect loaf of bread right there in your kitchen. Only four ingredients and less than 5 minutes of real work! And the result is better, than what most professional bakers around you can produce!
Yes! A fantastic and easy recipe invented by Jim Leahy of the Sullivan Street Bakery in New York City! All you do is mix some instant yeast, bread flour, salt and some water to form a rough dough. Cover it tightly and let it sit undisturbed for 18 to 24 hours. Then you form a ball with the dough, let it rise for another 2 hours while you preheat an oven and a cast-iron pot (can be a LeCreuset Dutch oven or any other heavy pot you have with a lid). After that you invert the dough ball into the hot pot bake it in the oven covered with a lid for 30 minutes. Bake it for another 20 to 30 minutes uncovered until the loaf is a handsome dark brown. You have to let it cool before slicing, but when you do, beware. A taste of those slices of bread will make everybody around you become singularly fixated and before you know it the entire loaf will be gone.

The Nearly-Perfect Loaf Of Bread

3 cups unbleached bread flour - any brand (some more for dusting)
2 teaspoon fine salt
1 teaspoons of instant yeast - preferably SAF
wheat bran as needed

1.
In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water (that is 1 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons) using your fingers stir until blended. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at for at least 18 hours, preferably 24 hours at room temperature.
2.
Flour the work surface and with the help of a plastic spatula, pure the dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour, pat the dough into a square, fold it to the middle from all four sides and and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran and put dough seam side down on to the towel and dust with more flour and bran. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for 2 hours.
3.
A half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 500 degrees (maximum). Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 20 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.