Dutch Oven Artisan Bread

Evenly cover the dough with salt and yeast. Then, grab the dough stretching out and upward then folding over the center. Working your way around the dough, adding in a few squeezes to help evenly distribute the yeast and salt. Mix the dough this way for 4-5 minutes. Scrape excess dough from your hands. 

Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and let sit for 20 minutes.

Remove towel, then stretch and fold the dough 6-7 times. 

Cover dough again and let rest for 60 minutes, then stretch and fold dough 6-7 times.

Place kitchen towel back on bowl and place in a draft free warm location and let sit until tripled in size, 1-2 hours.. 

Lightly dust working surface with bread flour and pour dough out of bowl onto working surface. Dough will be sticky and jiggly, so handle with care.

Dust your hands and top of loaf with bread flour. Then carefully fold dough over itself into thirds, 4 times. The dough will start to take shape as you mold it with your hands into a large round ball. The seam will be on the bottom. 

Dust a proofing basket with flour and gently transfer dough into the basket. Cover with kitchen towel and let rest for 1 hour.

Halfway through resting time, preheat Oven to 475 F (245 C) and place a 3.5 qt dutch oven on middle rack. 

The next step can be done in two ways. Remove the hot dutch oven from the oven. Then, either flip the dough from the proofing basket onto a sheet of parchment paper, then carefully lower the dough into the hot dutch oven by holding the edges of parchment paper. Or flip onto counter and the lower by hand. Be careful since the dutch oven is hot. Make sure the seam side of the dough is on the bottom. Reshape in pot as needed.

Place lid on the dutch oven and return to middle rack of oven. Bake for 50-55 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Check at the 45 minute mark.

Remove dutch oven and place on counter for 15 minutes with lid off. Then remove loaf and let sit on a cooling rack for additional 10 minutes before slicing.