Crumby Day Rustic Bread

Preferment Ingredients
1 lb. bread flour (3 1/2 cups)
9.5 oz. water (1 1/4 cups)
1/2 tablespoon salt
1/8 teaspoon instant yeast

Preferment Instructions:
1. Put the yeast in warm water (85 degrees) and stir. Sift flour and salt together in a bowl and pour in the yeasted water. Mix until the flour is hydrated, adding more water only if necessary. 

2. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave the pre-ferment out at room temperature overnight (up to 16 hours).  If you need more time before baking put it in the refrigerator.

********************************************************************************

Final Dough Ingredients
10 oz. bread flour (2 1/2 cups)
6 oz. whole wheat or rye flour or a mixture of them (around 1 1/2 cups)
12.5 oz. water (1 1/2 cups)
1/2 tablespoon salt
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
all of the preferment

Final Dough Instructions:

1. Put the yeast in warm water (85 degrees) and stir

2. Sift all of the dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl

3. Make a "well" in the center of the flour and pour in yeast mixture

4.  Using a wooden spoon and stirring  from center, fold flour mixture into water mixture

5. Using your hands once the water is absorbed, start kneading the rest of the flour into the dough.  You may need to add another tablespoon or two...I typically don't need to though.  If you're at high altitude you will need to add about another 1/4 cup of water to compensate for the drier conditions.

6. Once the final dough has absorbed all the ingredients, begin to chop the pre-ferment up into small pieces and mix or knead it into the final dough until they are thoroughly combined. Mix and knead dough by hand for about 10 minutes. At the end of that time the new and old dough aren't perfectly combined-- you can still see a few streaks of the lighter colored pre-ferment in it-- but they are sufficiently combined that loaves bake evenly.

7. Place the dough back in a greased bowl and ferment for 2 1/2 hours, punching down or *folding the dough twice during that time (every 45 min).

*Folding the dough consists of taking the dough out of the bowl, spreading it out a little on a clean surface, folding it in thirds like a letter, rotating it 90 degrees and folding it up again, and then returning the dough to the bowl and covering it again. Like punching down, folding degases the dough some, but it also encourages gluten development.

8. At the end of the fermentation, divide the dough into two pieces and preshape each into a ball. Cover with a clean towel and let each rest for 5 to 10 minutes before shaping into the final shape. 

9. Once shaped, cover the loaves with a clean towel and set aside for a final rise, approximately 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours.

10. 20 mins before the end of the final rise, begin preheating the oven to 450 degrees. If you are using a baking stone, preheat it as well.

11. Right before placing it in the oven, score the loaves. Place them in the oven and use whatever technique you use to create stream in the oven (squirt bottle, skillet full of hot water, etc) to encourage proper crust development.

12. After 20 minutes of baking, rotate the loaves 180 degrees so that they'll bake evenly. Bake until an instant read thermometer reads around 200 degrees, which took approximately 35 minutes for  ("football") shaped loaves.