Multi-purpose Bread Dough

Ingredients

• Flour - 100%
• Water - 80%
• Yeast - 1–2%
• Salt - 2%
• Olive - 1%
• Sugar - 1%

Method

1. Mix all ingredients in a medium mixing bowl until well incorporated. There should be no flour left in the bowl and dough should be slightly shaggy and not smooth.
2. At this point you have two paths you can take to finish the dough. 1.) Place the dough in a bowl, cover the dough in plastic wrap and place in the fridge. You can leave the dough as is for 24–48 hours covered in the fridge without any kneading. This is the most hands-off way and produces a bread with great flavor. Or, 2.) Perform a series of three stretch and folds on the dough every 30–45 minutes until the dough is smooth, elastic, and ready to proof before baking.^[1]
3. After you’ve proved your bread using one of the two methods described above it’s ready to use. There are a handful of directions you can take the dough at this point.
4. If you’re making something like pizza dough, dived the dough into equal sized portions and shape into balls and let proof one more time for 1-2 hours.
5. If you wanted to make something like focaccia, you can just dump your dough out onto a sheet pan covered in olive out, stretch it out as much as you can to try and fill the pan, and then let prove for another hours and then bake.^[2]

Notes

This is much more of a method than an actual recipe. After you make this dough a dozen or so times, you’ll start to see how most steps are pretty flexible in terms of time, shaping, etc.

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