Monday, June 14, 2010

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day



I have been wanting to try this method out for a while now.  I have heard nothing but praise for this book.  I love making bread, I love eating freshly made bread, I also work full time.  I have always wanted to make all of our bread from scratch, but just have not found a good way to make that happen in real life.  That is where this method comes in.  I will not give away the whole technique, but the basic idea is that you mix up a big batch of wet dough in the beginning of the week.  Each day you tear off a piece, shape it, allow it to rest a bit at room temperature, and bake it.  The five minutes is actual hands-on time.  The resting period is about 40 minutes and the baking time is 30 minutes.  I managed to make a delicious loaf of bread today despite working a full day and dealing with getting my camera repaired.  I had fresh bread on the table with dinner!
The authors insist that you start with their master recipe and become familiar with that before moving on to the other breads.  The master recipe is very basic and makes it easy for you to focus on the method rather than on the ingredients.  
The result:  I was skeptical from the time that I mixed the dough yesterday.  I knew that the dough was supposed to be wet, but should it be that wet?  Then when I went to pull off my piece today I had the same thought.  Yep, I guess it was supposed to be that wet, because once baked it yielded a moist, light, perfect loaf of bread with a thick, hearty crust.  I am a complete novice when it comes to this method of bread baking yet I was able to pull bakery quality bread out of my oven on the first try.   The book is also really cool because the first several chapters are dedicated to explaining the technique, how it differs from traditional bread baking, and why it works.  I love learning this kind of stuff, so I had a lot of fun reading through that part.
I am excited to move onto the other recipes in the book and experiment with more flavors! This book is a definite keeper!

1 comment:

  1. This looks so good you will have to teach me!

    SDM

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