stand-mixer & bread-oven techniques

I've been fooling around with bread this week and have decided to retire my bread-making machine. I loved that it didn't require me to proof the yeast, but I was never happy with the way it baked and always ended up baking in the oven. Thanks to the no-knead bread recipe, I've learned about keeping and maintaining a cast-iron bread oven which yields a gorgeous crispy crust bread.

I have some bread cookbooks and they offer very involved recipes. Multiple work surfaces and stages and lots and lots of kneading and of course the dread "proof" stage. "What if," I thought "we used bread-machine recipes in the stand mixer and baked in the bread oven?"

So, I've been trying this. I made the egg bread and it was great. (I've updated that recipe, btw). Today I made Potato Bread.

My basic approach is:

• :: take a bread maker recipe
• :: put it in your stand mixer
• :: run mixer on low for 20 minutes
• :: pull dough off hook and out of bowl
• :: flour inside of bowl
• :: return dough to bowl
• :: leave bread hook in place
• :: let rise until double (about 2 hours)
• :: pop bread hook back in (see pic)
  
• :: knead for 4 minutes
• :: turn on oven to 400-425
• :: put empty bread-oven into oven to preheat
  
• :: let dough rise until double (about 20-40 minutes)
• :: put dough into hot bread-oven
• :: bake for 20-30 minutes or until it sounds hollow when thumped.

edited Friday afternoon to clarify the last few steps