Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (I LOVE this bread cookbook. . . love it!)

When I smell bread baking I am happy. If I could tuck the aroma of baked bread into my purse and carry it around with me wherever I go, I would. It would calm my nerves in long lines, traffic and in uncomfortable "large crowd" events. The funny thing is, I don't have a single memory of my mother baking bread. We had Wonder Bread and powdered donuts (by the plastic sleeve) in our house growing up. It's a miracle that I have not turned into a giant walking billboard for diabetes or heart disease given our food options. I think the baking I do today and all of its many iterations means much more to me because I have had to teach myself everything I know about the craft. Bread baking especially. To a novice bread baking person like myself--just the idea of having a critical component as "yeast" involved left me intimidated and in the dark for years. And I have absolutely no science savvy (that would be Mr. Thyme's expertise as he is a trained scientist)--I am trained in words and stories.

Not all of my bread baking moments have been happy. Even after slogging through the Peter Reinhart book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice, I still had many "yeasty" concerns. Don't get me wrong, I love his cookbook, but come on--I am not much of a planner as far as my "bread" cravings go--so his two day fermentation (albeit quite good for the palate) left me less inclined to open his cookbook--I really hate to admit this because I know there are bread aficinados out there who may banish me from the bread world for stating this.

So I have been saving a series of "All Things Dough" photos that I could barely wait to share with you from my latest adventure in dough. As you might have guessed, these photos are from the wonderful bread baking books: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. (There is also Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day--and this was the book that actually landed in my library first--though I had a failure attempt with it and was turned off from the rest of its offerings. Upon revisiting their cookbook that was first published--the Artisan one, I am now a true believer). I know I am late to the party to this Five Minutes a Day phenomenon (given that it was published in 2007)--but please bear with me as I play catch up and relish in the delight of having fresh bread whenever I want it!

In my opinion, one of the key things to baking bread in the Zoe and Jeff method is the container in which you will store your wet dough in. Their method of "five minutes" comes about because literally, that is about all the time you will need to mix your dough, water, yeast and salt together. Better yet--only one container is all you need. No need for several bowls--put all the ingredients in one big plastic container and call it a day. And, better yet--no kneading! Now, I am not anti-kneading. But as I mentioned earlier--I am not good at planning my bread desires out. So if I have a craving and it's two hours before dinner and I want fresh bread--I will usually opt for the bread machine. Nothing wrong with that. I love my bread machine!

Here are the photos of the bread love I've been enjoying--plus a little more detailed outline of what tools you might need to make baking bread from this book enjoyable.

My first loaf I baked is called the Master Recipe and is a French boule (my picutre of the finished loaf above made me so proud I nearly cried). This is a free-form loaf. Pay attention to their technique in how to shape your dough and you will be fine. The key is in a light touch--sort of how you handle biscuit dough. You must have a light, light touch. There are videos and tutorials all over the place in case you are dough-shape-timid (like I was). Their website is a gem. I have been following them on my blogroll for the past year. But again, because I am a bit slower to jump into things/trends, I had not purchased their first ABIF book until two weeks ago--when I guess my jones for bread really kicked in. 

I made two batches of dough--one with plain unbleached all-purpose flour, the other with whole wheat from the Healthy Bread book. (Both books have master recipes which will allow you to go through the multitude of other bread offerings and make whatever your heart desires.) So with my master recipe from whole wheat dough--I had caramel pecan sticky buns for breakfast the next day! Oh please. Do I really need to go into any further adjetives to describe how this worked for Sunday breakfast? I think not. In this case, the photo says it all. The remainder of the dough was used to make us an all week whole wheat bread for sandwiches and toast. (So no, I did not sit around cranking out recipe after recipe of the sticky buns, though I was mighty tempted to just keep a running supply of these on hand--my waistline would have never forgiven me!)

I want to share with you what things you should have on hand to make living with bread every day, whenever you want that much more simple. First off, as I mentioned, you will need a container. And one that you can easily accommodate in your fridge. I went for a tall, lidded, with a little release valve on top. (The release valve part is pretty important because as your dough sits at room temperature for its first two hour rise before it is transferred to the fridge for its remainder of its life--the gasses need some place to go.) I found my plastic containers at Target for $7.99 a piece. I actually bought two of these--one for the AP flour doughs and one for the whole wheat. Best investment ever. The second thing you need or that I recommend--get a scale. I have the old fashioned kind with the little bowl thingy on top and use that for nearly all my baking now. This, too, came from Target and set me back about twenty bucks. I love it!

Once you have weighed and mixed your ingredients--not kneaded--together: that's it. I placed a piece of tape on the outside of my container to see just how much rising takes place during the first two hours at room temp before placing my dough in the fridge.

Here's two hours later at room temperature (right before it goes into the fridge). Whoa. I was a little stunned by this action taking place. Crazy little yeast.

I am not paid by anyone to give my opinion here on my blog. But when I get excited about something and it has made my kitchen life that much better, I felt it was my duty to give this some attention. In making dinner and all things relative to home--I find a little short cut like this makes creating the rest of my dinner or meal planning that much more bearable. I am not always in the mood to cook. I'm human. I have my down days just like anyone else. I will tell you having these two tubs of ready-to-go dough has made preparing dinner really fun. Do I need to add that we are HUGE sammich lovers, too. Oh the sandwiches we have had!