Dan’s Como Bread

And these two beauties.  

 Here’s how we made them.  And by we, I mean Dan.

Special equipment: kitchen scale and kitchen aid mixer
 First, we needed to make the starter.  Like a sourdough, como bread needs a ‘mother dough.’  Unlike sourdough, this starter can just be made over night and, as far as I could (or couldn’t find with Google), there’s no real need/distinction/recorded use of years old starters like sourdoughs.

 

 Then the barley malt syrup.
And room temperature milk, unique to como bread (I think).

 135 grams of flour.
Mix until smooth.

 

Cover tightly with plastic wrap and store in a warm place over night.  I say ‘warm place’ because we keep our house as cold as we can stand because electric heat is the worst for our budget.  55 degrees is not an unusual temperature for our thermostat, which is fine for us, but it does not make happy starters.  Dan’s home office has a cadet heater so we just turned that on, closed the door, and let the little starter do its thing over night.
The next morning the little starter should be all bubbly and happily doing its yeasty thing.

The rest was all done by Dan while I was at work.  He did such a great job of taking so many photos of the process for me!  I love that guy.
Next, he took the starter, put it in the kitchen aid and added some water to thin it out so it could mix better with more flour.

 

Then he added the dough hook attachment to let the mixer do the rest of the hard work.

 Mixed until smooth
Then he took the ball and kneaded it a few times on a floured surface for about a minute.  When he explained this step to me, he apologized that he forgot to get a picture of the flowered surface before kneading. Aww.

 

1 tsp active dry yeast
1 tsp barley malt syrup
1/3 C warm water
2/3 C room temperature milk
135 grams flour

Dough

2 C warm water
860 grams flour
1 T salt
cornmeal for the baking stone

To make the starter:

In a large bowl, mix the water, yeast, and malt syrup and let it sit for about 5 minutes. 
Add the milk and flour and stir until combined.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit until it is very bubbly overnight 

To make the dough:

In the bowl of a stand mixer, mix the starter and water with a dough whisk or the paddle attachment.

Add the flour and salt, mix first by hand until all ingredients are blended, and then switch to the dough hook and mix on medium for about 4 minutes. The dough should be slightly sticky and elastic. 

Remove the dough from the mixing bowl onto a lightly floured surface and knead by hand for about a minute. 

Move the dough to an oiled dough rising bucket or large bowl, and cover with plastic wrap. 

Allow the dough to rise until doubled in size, about 90 minutes. 

Divide the dough in half and shape into boules (round loaves) and place them in a floured linen towel and cover in plastic wrap.

Allow the dough to rise until doubled, about an hour. 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. 

When the loaves are ready, sprinkle the baking sheet with cornmeal

Bake the loaves until golden brown and the interior reaches about 200 to 210 degrees F. The bottom, of the loaves, when tapped, should sound hollow. 

Allow the loaves to cool completely on a wire rack before digging in!