First of all, what do you mean by artesan bread?
The term used to be used for hand made breads made from a starter rather than commercial yeast...but it seems lately to be any bread that is hand formed and not made in a loaf pan.
so...before I can answer I need to know what you mean.
Of course a bread made from a starter can be baked in a loaf pan....and also a bread made from commercial yeast can be baked free form.
So....what is "artesan bread"?
Linda C

I have Cuisinart bread maker and from the book that was included I tried Cranberry Pistachio Boule using their Artisan Dough Cycle and directions.

The recipe is following:
1 1/3 cups cold water, 3 tbsp maple syrup (I used honey), 2 tbsp walnut oil (I used olive), 2 tsp salt, 1 3/4 cup of bread flour, 1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour (I used rye), 3/4 cups walnuts, 2/3 cups cranberries.
The machine makes the dough and then you hand shape it, let it rise on the baking pan and then bake. I hope that my few substitutes were not the culprit :-/

Have you tried the "5 minute Artisan bread"? If you already have, sorry for a repeat of this recipe.

I have been making this bread for about 3 months now. Having fun with it. Grandkids love it, and has also helped in processes of making the bread. I bake on a cookie sheet not a stone. Works great....its fast and good. I do let it rise longer when it comes out of the refrigerator, maybe at least 2 hrs. approx.

The longer your bread dough sits in the refrigerator the better it gets, more like a sour dough. But it can be baked the day the dough is made.

You can do a search on "You Tube" to see videos of the bread making.

=============================================================

Adapted from "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day," by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François (Thomas Dunne Books, 2007)

Time: About 45 minutes plus about 3 hours resting and rising

1 1/2 tablespoons yeast

1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt

6 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour, more for dusting dough

Cornmeal.

1. In a large bowl or plastic container, mix yeast and salt into 3 cups lukewarm water (about 100 degrees). Stir in flour, mixing until there are no dry patches. Dough will be quite loose. Cover, but not with an airtight lid. Let dough rise at room temperature 2 hours (or up to 5 hours).

2. Bake at this point or refrigerate, covered, for as long as two weeks. When ready to bake, sprinkle a little flour on dough and cut off a grapefruit-size piece with serrated knife. Turn dough in hands to lightly stretch surface, creating a rounded top and a lumpy bottom. Put dough on pizza peel sprinkled with cornmeal; let rest 40 minutes. Repeat with remaining dough or refrigerate it.

3. Place broiler pan on bottom of oven. Place baking stone on middle rack and turn oven to 450 degrees; heat stone at that temperature for 20 minutes.

4. Dust dough with flour, slash top with serrated or very sharp knife three times. Slide onto stone. Pour one cup hot water into broiler pan and shut oven quickly to trap steam. Bake until well browned, about 30 minutes. Cool completely.

Yield: 4 loaves.

Variation: If not using stone, stretch rounded dough into oval and place in a greased, nonstick loaf pan. Let rest 40 minutes if fresh, an extra hour if refrigerated. Heat oven to 450 degrees for 5 minutes. Place pan on middle rack.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

I often bake "free form" bread because I like lots of crust and a round free form loaf has LOTS of crust.

If you have a very slack dough that spreads out while rising on your pan, some bakers use a "couche", which is traditionally canvas, a cloth that you flour then fold to hold your bread in shape. I know King Arthur Flour sells a canvas one for about $20, but I just use a floured piece of parchment paper. If it's not sturdy enough after folding I prop up the sides with oven proof custard cups for support until baked. Low tech and cheap, LOL.

Annie

In reading your recipe...I think it needed a bit more flour....that's a lot of liquid for only 3 1/2 cups of flour
And/or perhaps more kneading....rye flour takes a lot to develop the gluten properly.
But, Annie's Rube Goldberg couche will work too...I never thought of the custard cups! LOL!
Linda C

Often artisan breads are really, really, slack doughs - meaning there is a high ratio of water to flour than in other doughs - that is why they are so chewy and full of those nice big holes (called "voids").

It is important to not work out those voids or punch down the dough before forming the free-form loaf. Instead, try to gently roll the dough with your hands (not with a rolling pin) into a round shape, stretching the dough as you pull it over and into the underside of the loaf. This taut skin of dough helps the loaf hold it's shape better and not spread out flatter than you wish.

Using a bench knife or dough scrapper helps in working with wet dough. Watch "working with high hydration dough" also on You Tube.

Here is a link that might be useful: link to shaping wet dough and using a couche

Thank you all so much. You guys are the best. I knew I will get some great ideas. In the end, "picture is worth thousand words" came true. Thanks Teresa for you link. I looked around and found another youtube clip that was even more instructional for me, link will be below.

My conclusion this far, I did not properly shape the bread to produce the outer skin layer. I also do not have a scraper, and think I need to add that to my kitchen, as I would like to try this type of bread and succeed with it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Working with High Hydration Doughs

As LindaC mentioned, the biggest change you made was switching rye for the whole wheat. Their characteristics are totally different and that little change is actually a pretty significant one.

The gluten structure of rye is more delicate so gentle kneading is best. If you knead too much, the gluten strands break and the sugar chains exude moisture into the dough, leading to an unappealing gumminess.

Rye flour is sweet and those sugars will continue to develop at higher temperatures than wheat. What this means is rye breads with greater proportions of rye baked at the usual temperatures are more likely to collapse in the oven. That's why sourdough and rye are "made for each other." The acid in the sourdough balances the excess sugar.

A dough with a lot of rye in it needs to rise for a shorter time and bake at a higher initial temperature than a wheat loaf.

And, because it's rye, it benefits from resting for a day before cutting.

Carol

Occasionally, a picture is worth a thousand words, so I'd suggest checking your local library for a King Arthur Flour DVD - ARTISAN BREADS. I don't believe it's available through KA anymore. Those tips, tricks, instructions were really helpful to me. If your library doesn't have it, check inter-library loan - even our dinky little library has it.

-Grainlady

Could she have partially avoided the downsides of the rye by doing a half wheat-half rye mixture of flours? Then it wouldn't have been so picky about how it was treated and baked?

I used to have the same trouble every time I tried to make French bread...Wide flat loaves, and the crust was too soft, too. The 5 minute Artisan bread is the first time I had success. I now do my breads wetter and using that shaping technique and am getting great results nearly every time.

I have made bread for years, but the softer sandwich kinds. The Artisan breads are a fairly new endeavor. There are so many books with so many instructions that I get lost. That's why the 5-minute recipe helped me a lot. I also will look for that video. Seems the older I get the more visual (and simplified) instructions I need. --I'm only 48, so am afraid that down the line I'll be back to sticking with the picture book side of the library!

I think of Artisan bread as being a little more rustic.

Most of the breads I make are made with a "wet" dough. Even bread with a higher ratio of water can be shaped so that it rises and doesn't spread out. You just need to pinch it tighter when you shape it.

wet dough pictorial

I've been making that 5 minute artisan bread also. I was a total skeptic, but it's fast, easy and good, and the only way we get fresh bread during the week. I don't mess with cornmeal, I just plop it on parchment paper on a cutting board and slide it onto the stone. Really good dipped in a puddle of balsamic, olive oil and garlic....mmmmm.

"even our dinky little library has it." lol, now I have to look for it for my dinky little library.

Okay, I have a question. I don't have a bread machine, and I often see great sounding recipes for bread machines. How do I make them by hand? How do you determine rise time, kneading and all that?

punamytsike, that Cranberry Pistachio Boule sounds really good. You must have subbed walnuts for pistachios? I would love to make that bread if someone could tell me how to adapt it to a "by hand" method.

Thanks!

Linda

Linda, bread is the most forgiving thing to make. It is basically just flour, water or milk, yeast, salt and then whatever else you want to add. Any bread machine recipe can be made by hand or in your food processor. You might need to adjust the liquid, but then again you need to do that with almost every bread recipe. Bread is basically "by feel" .

Ann

I agree with Ann T, bread is very forgiving. After all, people have been baking it for centuries without stand mixers or food processors or bread machines, and I think every country, ethnic persuasion and group has some type of native bread.

I find it much easier with the bread machine because of my carpal tunnel but I baked bread for years with no equipment other than a bowl and a wooden spoon and my hands and it was always pretty good too.

Like Ann T, I nearly always adjust the liquid or the flour in my bread. So many factors are involved, like the brand of flour or even the year the wheat was harvested, the humidity, many things. It's really pretty easy to tell if a dough is too dry, a bit harder to tell if it's too wet because some doughs are very slack. Still, it's pretty much all good, just jump right in and bake it!

As for that "spreading" dough? As far as I am concerned, there's no such thing as too much crust. My boss agrees, she only eats the outside, she tears out the middle and uses it for bread crumbs because she only likes the crust!

Annie

Linda,
If you want to convert a bread machine recipe to a made by hand recipe, try this:

in a bowl -
put in the water or other liquid called for

add in the yeast, whisk to dissolve, let sit 5-10 minutes to "proof" the yeast and made sure it is viable

add any sugar, honey, maple syrup or other sweetener called for in the recipe, stir well

add half of the flour called for in recipe, add salt and mix well, stirring with a strong spoon or heavy duty whisk
also add in any dry herbs or spices now

add in any butter, oil, or other fat called for - if melted butter, make sure it is only just warm, not hot - add in any egg(s) listed in recipe

add in rest of flour and any other ingredients, chopped herbs, nuts, dried fruits, cheese, etc.

stir well with spoon or mix with your hands until dough is a rather shaggy mass

turn out dough onto a clean, floured flat surface and knead for 8-10 minutes adding only small sprinkles of flour if the dough sticks to your hands and the kneading surface
[if you forgot those nuts, cheese, or raisins, you can knead them in now]

when dough has been kneaded sufficiently it will come together into a nice firm ball (rather than a shaggy mass) and spring back when poked with a finger

grease or oil a large bowl (or use the one you mixed in), put dough in, turn it around in the oil to grease the top of the dough and turn it oiled side up in the bowl; cover with a bowl cover (shower cap type), plastic wrap, or wax paper, then cover with a clean kitchen "tea" towel (dampened with hot water if you are making whole wheat bread) and set the dough to rise until doubled in bulk

turn out dough, knead 2 minutes, divide into portions according to recipe or not - form loaves and put in greased loaf pans or not - cover again with wrap, and let rise until doubled in bulk

preheat oven, bake bread until done, let cool at least a few minutes before cutting - and enjoy!