I'd try mixing all the dry ingredients, then take a portion -- 1/2 cup or 1 cup -- to mix with the liquid and let sit.

PM's idea isn't bad, except the salt. Salt shouldn't go in your preferment, since it retards fermentation. It won't ruin it. But it'll affect your timing, and to a smaller extent the flavor.

Don't overthink it. Look at the quantities used in the recipes for sponges. Look at the amount of yeast you need for your recipe. Match it to the recipe you've been using and like to get an idea of how much flour and water. This doesn't require precision math. Round to easily measured amounts.

I'd stick with flour, water and yeast for the preferment. Note down on your recipe (or attached sticky note) how much you put in the preferment, or write over your quantities with that amount subtracted.

Note: Older recipes may say to put some kind of sugar in the preferment to prove the yeast (i.e., that it's alive). This is unnecessary with modern yeast granules. The starch (sugar) in the flour, even whole grain, is sufficient to feed it. Even if the yeast is old, enough is probably alive enough to rise. Your preferment should at least double. If it's rising but not that much, give it longer for the yeast to multiply and burp, and if it looks hungry after six hours, give it a little more of the flour.

I've been known to make an oops from forgetting what I was doing and going by the written numbers. That means either going improvisational, or doing better arithmetic to get the proportions back together. That ups the yield but there's nothing wrong with it.

You can also do a soaker. This should always be done if you're making whole wheat bread. For that, you take the remaining quantity of water (and/or orange juice if called for) and stir it into the rest of the dry ingredients. If it's an enriched loaf, don't add the milk or eggs. Sometimes it seems like the bit of water left after you put so much in the preferment isn't enough, but if you stir well, and give it a minute, you should get the damp well enough distributed. As it soaks in, it'll seem damper.

For whole wheat/whole grain, the orange juice--or even better, a pinch of Vitamin C crystals--will help neutralize antinutrients which can interfere with iron and other minerals you need. A soaker for 8 hours or more is the recommendation for this to work.

All in one day is a hard ask. I like to set my preferment and soaker after dinner, combine in the morning, and have a good long rise if I'm making whole grain bread. It's usually ready to bake by midafternoon.

You can make a soaker for white flour. It's especially helpful if you have "stuff" in the dough, like seeds, for example, but there's no need to do it for an extended period.

Most of all, don't be scared of bread. I did a lot of very iffy experiments when I was first growing my own starter. Almost all were edible. :) Bread recipes are very forgiving and you can tweak them to be just what you like. Do write down what you do in case you want to repeat it, but bread is the chicken of baking. You can do just about anything to it. :)

Yeah well I've been baking bread for about ten years, and few of my loaves are any good. Practice doesn't make perfect in my case. When I find a recipe that works for me, I feel pretty lucky. I experiment galore and most of the time it is a fail. I've got Beth Hensberger's Bread Machine cookbook, which I only use on the dough cycle, I bake in a pan in the oven, and it must have close to 300 recipes in it, and only a handful that I have tried have worked for me. My artisan loaves are particularly bad.

Oh, dear! I forgot you were baking challenged! OTOH< maybe the problem is the book? "Artisan" breads are not fun. They're a wet mess that transforms into a broken crumb (big holes) and tough crust. People like them, and once you have the hang of it, they're easy to churn out, but they're not easy to perfect.

It sounds like the one recipe you have with the double sized ferment is something that comes out right, yes? If that's true, let that be your bread for awhile. Make it a dozen times. Make half the preferment size and let it grow for two days to get the tastier one only. Feel the rhythms of making this bread. Then change one thing. Like roast some small garlic cloves, dust them with flour, and when you're shaping your bread, roll them up in the dough. Or substitute a quarter of the wheat flour with rye flour or, if it started white, with whole wheat. That kind of thing. But start with a bread you know you can successfully make!

The other thing is maybe the problem is the machine itself. Even if you're not using instant yeast (which I don't like), since you're baking in the oven, the machine is an element between you and your dough. Get yourself a Danish dough whisk. That's all you need to mix up one loaf of bread dough in a few seconds. Any mixing bowl will do you, but I love this glass, easy to get in the DW, covered measuring bowl. You don't need that. Just the whisk. The Danish dough whisk costs very little and is amazingly efficient. One of the best inventions ever. And having your hands in the dough at all steps is more informative than any book.

Yeah, I have contemplated getting fancier break making supplies. My purchase a couple of years ago of a cloche wasn't much of a success. The bread stuck on it and it wasn't noticeably better. I like artisan breads, although the one I use with the "old dough" is my "go to." I would like to branch out though. I have a couple of other "go tos" such as a go to rye, a go to raisin and a go to oatmeal and a go to 9 grain, a go to Italian basic, and Annie's cherry yogurt. I have a tolerable pumpkin or squash loaf. So I'm wanting to try this flax whole grain dried fruit recipe from the back of my Hodgson Mill's flour that says, "Easy rustic bread." It seems like it would make a good breakfast bread. But I'd like to repeat the consistency that I get from the other bread with a sponge step.

Have not really figured out how to get great yeast. Don't make bread often enough to keep a sourdough going. We barely get showered and laundry done around here most of the time.

Questions: How would you describe your Italian basic? Is there salt in it? Is the crumb spongy? Big holes? Little holes? Even? Does it slice well? Is it crumbly?

The cloche may need seasoning with oil to keep it from sticking.

If the artisan bread is working for you, that's great! I thought you said the loaves were bad, but maybe you meant the appearance?

Any bread that comes out successfully, which is what I assume go-to means, can be the basis for small, well considered tweaks. Exactly what you want to do with the Hodgson rustic bread. You absolutely can do a preferment, just as I described. Take a portion of the flour and water out of the recipe to make your preferment, subtract from the rest of the ingredients, recombine for baking and proceed as directed. Just do it!

I couldn't find your recipe on their website. If you need help with the exact proportions, please post it.

Re the breakfast bread, keep in mind that gluten is the elastic that expands when bread rises. Anything that isn't gluten, like flax or fruit, is interfering with that. Both the weight and the mere presence of such things are trying to make your bread into a brick. The good news is that the preferment you want to do should increase the strength of the yeast. The bad news is that the bran in whole grains can cut the gluten and rob it of its ability to hold the loft.

If your recipe calls for a combination of AP and whole grain flour, make your preferment with the AP and soak the whole grain. Don't overhandle once combined. Give it a nice warm spot to rise and allow it sufficient time.

Re sourdough, once you have an established yeast, it can live in your fridge without bothering with for months. You can also keep it dried. Either way, if you don't feed it at least once a week, you'll need to spend a few days feeding it up before baking. You can get Carl's Oregon Trail sourdough starter for a dollar donation plus an SASE. Just google it. But keeping sourdough does require a little attention now and then, and it might not be for you. Modern yeast granules are very reliable and strong. The best of them are Active Dry Yeast (not instant, which work fast and die fast), and the best brands I'm aware of are Fleischmann's, KAF (King Arthur Flour) and Red Star.

I've tried almost every artisan bread recipe in Beth's book. The only one that really works all that well for me is pane Italiano and pane au siegle, which has rye in it. That's the one with the sponge. The panne Italiano has semolina flour and potato flakes. Great taste. I like holey crusty bread but have not been able to achieve it. I'll settle for a nice chewy crust with a good crumb. I really appreciate all your help Pllog. Sorry I'm not a better student. I only make artisan bread because I like eating it and can't really afford it. I only cook because I like eating. I know bread is supposed to be all earthy, etc., but I really just want to get it over and done with minimal attention. Probably why my bread is so mediocre. I liked leaving most of the work up to the bread machine.

I was on Hodgsen's Mill web site today and I didn't see that recipe either. I'm gonna have to recheck the recipe, maybe it came from Bob's Red Mill. I dunno, it is printed on a little scrap of cardboard that I cut off a box of something . . . I'll post it when I have time.

I'm more than happy to help you through your baking issues, L. I really do think, however, that the book is the problem. I wish I knew a good book to recommend. I love Daniel Leader but his books are notoriously full of errata and not the kind of thing you should undertake without knowing bread better. I don't you don't really care to become an expert, but if you can stand to get your hands in it, you'll come to understand it better, sooner. BTW, the Danish dough whisk costs less than $10. I wasn't recommending a big monetary investment, just something that could really help.

The secret to artisan bread is water, folding and time. Many people start with a dough so loose it could be a batter. They dump it on a baking surface and use a bench scraper to get underneath the goo and fold it over. As it's folded, the gluten starts to develop, and some water escapes, so it becomes more like wet dough and can form something of a ball that can be put in a dough bucket or bowl. Then it's set to rise for a long time. Often the baker will leave it in its rising vessel and after an hour since just reach in to stretch out an edge and fold it over the top, rotate and repeat all around, then turn the dough over. This may only be done the once, or it may be done several times through the rise.

This very wet dough is what gives the holes in the crumb. Each space in the crumb is a bubble where the yeast burped. When the structures between the bubbles are too weak, they break giving a bigger bubble, same as when you get big bubbles in a bubble bath. This can happen from weak gluten; insufficient kneading, low protein content, or bran or other sharp ingredients cutting the gluten strands. In the super wet dough it's the sheer quantity of water that weakens the bubbles. The big bubbles happen on top, just like in the bath, but I don't know the physics behind that.

The preferments and long rises give the ingredients the time and space to develop flavor and structure. Gluten will develop without kneading, stretch and fold, or anything else, if you leave it long enough to develop. That's generally done in the fridge so the yeast can quiet down with the gluten becomes gluteny. It's great that you want to do that.

Time to start a new post.

Since you like "artisan bread" and you want to just get things over with, you might want to check out the original Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I've read a lot of it, but never baked with it. Others in the forum have, though, and I think it's generally well thought of. The trick is to have a dough bucket in the fridge which always has dough ready to bake in it. A constant large preferment. You can then take your basic dough and make artisan bread, pizza, etc., or use it as a basis for making any other bread you want.

This might suit you very well given that you just want to get it to the eating part.

I didn't think of it until after I wrote the above, so sorry to put the real answer so far down.

It's age that gives a dough the surperior flavor....you can make your usual recipe and put the whole thing in the refrig....bake half of it and leave the rest in the refrig for 2 or 3 more days....then bake the second half.

Have you tried that new york times recipe....where you bake it in a cast iron dutch oven....or a cloche if you have one? Takes 24 hours start to finish, but it's goo-ood!

I was wrong about Hodgsen's Mill, it is a King Arthur Flour recipe, using sprouted wheat flour. Here's a link to the recipe. It's sort of along the lines of the "Five Minutes a Day" way of baking the artisan breads. I would use white whole wheat flour though. I don't know if it would make that much difference. The biggest difference I noticed with the sprouted wheat flour was the taste, it was better, not so bitter. https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/sprouted-wheat-easy-rustic-bread-recipe

Also I want to make round rolls, not a big round loaf. That's my biggest concern with those wet rustic loaves. My experience has been that they sag and flatten out. That's why I bought a romertopf pot to keep my artisan loaves contained and shaped, but that bread stuck and wasn't all that great. Since then I've been sticking to regular loaf pans and just accepting less than artistic results.

Photos of one of my artisan bread fiascos. I tried the same pan again later another time with parchment paper, not that elegant looking either, quite the pain to fit it in and the bottom got all wrinkly because the pot is oval shaped and the paper is square so has to smoosh a little to fit in, and the wrinkles transferred to the bread. The texture wasn't better than a regular loaf pan either, so I quit fussing with it and trying to season it, which I also did. I am really swamped with life, I don't have that much time to putz around in the kitchen seasoning pans. I've put enough time in on some other cast iron ones and they haven't turned out all that great either. I don't need any more directions on seasoning either, I have tons of it and have spent lots of time doing it following the instructions both from here and other sites.

I don't have room for the plastic container in my fridge. That's why I am so excited about having success with the sponge method. I can still do it in the bread maker and I can still mostly forget about it and leave the messing with dough to the machine.

P.S. I see a lot of folks in the recipe comments had trouble with the loaf sagging. I think I'll have to abandon my idea of making rolls and just bake it in a loaf pan. I wonder if I could do rolls in a muffin tin? Would that work for loose dough?

Put a layer of wheat bran in the bottom of the rumertopf before you dump in your dough....

Good recommendation with Reinhart, though perhaps that takes more of a commitment to reading and thinking than you have the oomph for.

Good recommendation for the scale, too. I learned without one, but from my mother, and it includes being able to know by look and feel if your hydration (water to flour ratio) is correct and how to fix it. If you're measuring, a scale is far more accurate and requires much less of that look/feel/know what to do.

Agmss was right on with how to pull the ingredients out of the recipe to make the sponge. Much better description than mine.

Linda's suggestion is good. That terracotta is not seasoned. I believe you that you followed the directions and tried to season it, but it's obvious, visually, that it's not adequately seasoned. Also, even when it's seasoned, you should oil the terracotta before baking, bran in the bottom or no. Nothing beats time and use, but even after thorough seasoning and many many loaves, my terracotta bread baker still needs oiling.

Looking at the crumb in the picture on the KAF site, this is a very iffy recipe. There isn't much structure or integrity, and I don't think the average home baker could make it come out even this well. I don't know much about what sprouting does to the wheat. Baking with white whole wheat is the same as with red, it's just sweeter. If you're using whole wheat, you really really should do a soaker.

Rather than trying to make this, which looks like a very problematic recipe, you could adapt one of the recipes you do already that works pretty well for you, and make it into the rolls you want. Do you want the enriched loaf (with sugar, fat and eggs?), or just a loaf with the fruit and flax?