hi I'm Karen well I am a contributing editor to grit magazine and a blogger at Mother Earth News Calm today I'm gonna be showing you known eat bread and noni bread baked in a cast-iron pot is the easiest way to get artisan style bread in your home kitchen it's so easy you won't believe it and it's it's a pure product you know exactly what's in it there's no preservatives no additives it's really all just flour salt yeast and water so let's get started you won't really need any special equipment to do this bread except for a cast-iron pot and the size that I like to use is a three and a half quart covered Dutch oven you'll need a couple of these dough scrapers their plastic dough scrapers and you can find those at online kitchen specialty stores two and a quarter cups of bread flour 3/4 cup whole wheat flour or gram flour we have a teaspoon and a quarter of salt and I like to use non-iodized sea salt we have two tablespoons of ground flax seed and I have a 1/2 teaspoon of yeast you want to whisk that all together in a big mixing bowl so just mix that up until it's nice and blended the next thing you want to do is add about a cup and a third of room-temperature water and you're going to mix that together and this is going to be slightly different than other breads that you've made if you've made other types of kneaded breads it's going to be a lot stickier and I like to use this big rubber spatula because it's like a third hand you can kind of mix the dough over and onto itself if the dough seems really stiff before you try to add more water let it sit for a minute or two let it relax before you start mixing again you don't have to get fancy with this and get it into a ball you just want it to be nice and mixed and holding together with no dry spots and there you have it so now what you want to do is you just want to cover it with plastic wrap and you're gonna let this sit for 12 to 18 hours so you're going to want to start this the day before you want to bake so you want to cover that and let it sit for about 12 to 18 hours set it in a nice warm spot in the house around 70 degrees and it'll ferment and build flavor and when you uncover it the next morning it'll be nice and full of bubbles okay so about 30 minutes before you're ready to bake bread you want to preheat the oven and put the cast-iron pot in to preheat so into a cold oven put your pot without the lid and preheat it to 475 so it's the next day and this dough has been sitting for 12 to 18 hours and you want to uncover it and this is what does it look like it'll be all nice and bubbly on top and you want to take your plastic dough scraper and you want to try to get this all out in one piece so just kind of loosen it from the bowl and put it onto a cutting board a nonstick type of plastic cutting board works best and take your dough scrapers and just move the dough up and over itself and form this into a nice circle so just sprinkle the top with a tiny bit of flour just so the towel doesn't stick and cover it with a lint-free tea towel you want to avoid using like a terry cloth towel because the lint would stick to the dough and you're going to let that sit for about an hour so our dough's been sitting for about an hour and we're going to uncover it and it's risen nicely you want to take your dough scrapers and you just want to kind of turn it over onto itself and form a ball take your preheated pot out of the oven you just wanted to do a little dusting of cornmeal on the bottom so it doesn't stick so you want to take your dough scrapers and pick up the D dough and just separate the scraper so that the dough will fall sprinkle a little wheat bran on the top and that's optional cover your pot so you want to bake that for 30 minutes on a lower rack so after 30 minutes we'll uncover the pot and we'll rotate it and we'll continue cooking it for another 15 minutes so 30 minutes has passed and the bread is now ready to uncover I'm just rotating the pot we're gonna uncover it and we're gonna cook it for another 15 minutes so the crust can caramelize okay all right so our bread is ready take it out of the oven so the bread should pop right out of the pot and you just want to transfer it to a cooling rack and you want to let it cool for an hour undisturbed before cutting into it it's an important part of the process of letting it cool down and the moisture is evaporating out of it so just make sure you give it that hour before you cut into it so we're back and our bread has cooled completely its cooled for at least an hour and it's ready for slicing what you'll find when you go to slice this bread is that you'll need a really stout bread knife it has a pretty thick crust on it it's a chewy crust and there you have it it's a beautiful piece of whole wheat no need bread this bread is best eaten within a day or two of making it but if you want to extend the freshness to store it in a plastic bag it also freezes really well and a good a good tip for doing that is to slice it first before freezing it put it in a plastic bag in your freezer that way you can just pull off a slice or two when you want it and toast it you can find recipes and instructions for making this bread and grits guide to homemade bread available at great calm thanks for joining me today I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you're encouraged to try bread making at home you