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1
Put the water, milk & yeast into a small container & mix. Leave for 10 minutes.
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2
Put the oil, salt, brown sugar, biga & flour into a large bowl. Add the yeast/water mixture and stir with a wooden spoon for 1 minute.
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3
Using a mixer with a dough hook (I have hand mixer with two dough hooks), mix for 8-10 minutes. The dough will be very sticky & is not suitable for kneading by hand (I thought about it but don't be silly like me!).
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4
Cover & leave in a warm place until nearly doubled (this took me about 1 & 1/2 hours).
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5
Scrape out of the bowl onto a very well floured bench & gently split into 3 equal portions (I used a very sharp knife). Gently fold into loose rounds & leave to rest for about 1 hour. You need to be gentle as you don't want to knock the air out of the mixture.
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6
Gently shape into the form you want, being careful not to knock the air out of the dough. I gently stretched two of these into slipper shapes, and cut the other into 6 rolls, and rested each of the three portions on separate pieces of parchment paper. Being careful, put small dimples on the tops of the loaves & leave until doubled (about 1 & 1/2 hours for me).
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7
Just after doing this heat your oven & baking stone to 240 degrees Celsius.
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8
Once the loaves have doubled, bake as many as your stone can handle (mine was one portion at a time) for 5 minutes on 240 degrees Celsius. Lower the temperature to 200 degrees Celsius & bake until the base sounds hollow when tapped (about 30 minutes in total for a loaf, 20-25 minutes for the rolls).
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9
To get a nice crust spray the oven (taking care not to get the bread in the process) with water once or twice during baking.
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10
Once cooled these loaves freeze easily - I normally put them into a freezer bag with a twist tie & pop them in the fast freeze section of my freezer. I then let them defrost on the bench, or if you make rolls you can let them defrost & pop them into the oven on 200 degrees to warm them through.
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11
For Vegan use only the water.
