Baking bread - cold rise method

Let's face it, there are few things that bring us more pleasure than the smell of freshly baked bread first thing in the morning. The only issue with that is that baking bread the conventional way could take up to two or three hours, depending on the time it takes the dough to prove. So here's a simple alternative.
Prepare your dough in the evening as you would normally, but half the amount of yeast you use. So that would be something like two to three cups of flour, a teaspoon of salt and a few tablespoons of olive oil. Mix half a packet of dry yeast in a little warm water with some sugar and add to the dry ingredients. Mix by hand until you have a soft and slightly sticky dough. Place the dough in a large bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Up till here, everything is much the same as before. Now, normally, you'd place the dough in a dark warm place to double in size for about an hour. Instead, place the bowl in the fridge and go to sleep!
The proving process will continue in the fridge, just much slower. Also, the yeast will have more time to flavour your bread. And if you're like me and you wake up at some stage in the small hours to go to the bathroom, remove the bowl from the fridge flatten it down, shape it on your baking tray and allow it to return to room temperature. Then go back to bed. By the time you wake up, your bread would have risen to the desired height and all that is left is to bake it and make a whole lot of people in your house very happy.
For this particular loaf I made this morning, I placed a tray in the bottom of the oven with water (to create steam) and every ten minutes or so I removed the bread and sprayed it with water, thereby ensuring a hard, crispy exterior. Yum!
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