• 8 cups unbleached bread flour or unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 cups dried bread crumbs collected from any kind of bread
• 2 tablespoons instant yeast or 2½ tablespoons active dry yeast¹
• 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon salt, preferably sea salt
• Approximately 2¾ to 3¼ cups water (½ cup buttermilk may be substituted for some of the water if you want to make a softer, loaf-pan bread)
• Polenta, cornmeal, or semolina for sprinkling on the pans

To Mix and Knead

Mix all the dry ingredients including either yeast in a bowl, then add the water, reserving a little for adjustments during kneading. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead it for between 10 and 12 minutes. The dough will have a coarse look because of the crumbs but will be cohesive, stretchy, tacky but not sticky, and resilient. (In all of the recipes I use these words knowing that they will not mean anything to you until you actually make the dough. They will then take on a new meaning. In our bakery, the one catchall word for a perfect dough is vibrant. But vibrant is such an abstract term that it cannot be used to describe what to look for in dough. After making bread for a while, you will have your own mental equivalent of the idea of vibrant dough.)