Revolutionary Bread Making!

I must admit that I was skeptical, even when I tried the wonderful homemade artisan bread that the pottor and my pottery teacher Akiko served at her West Seattle house. She explained to me how easy the recipe was to make such a tasty loaf of bread. The idea was really inspirational but it has slipped off my mind over time.

A few weeks ago I ran into this book (”Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day,”  by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François) by accident while shopping for "The Grand Central Baking Book"on Amazon.com.

"Oh, this is the "file minutes a day" book that Akiko mentioned before!"
This time, I immediately hit "purchase" button for a copy.

Wow. How possibly could bread making be this easy? The copy on the book cover was not exaggerating. Literally, it was a jaw-dropping experience. I had never been into baking (especially bread) because of the long, complicated steps you need to go through, but this book instantly converted me to a pseudo baker & fresh bread aficionado, who now looks forward to getting home and rushing into the kitchen to take the stored dough out of the fridge. Rising time - 40 min. Baking time - 30 min. But the prep time - 5 minutes!

Look how "Professional" the bread looks and acutally tastes like the ones fresh from the bakery too :-)

The recipes below are abstracted from the book ”Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day,” by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François, with my own notes added.

Ingredients: 3 cups lukewarm water, 1-1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast, 1-1/2 tablespoons kosher or other coarse salt, 6-1/2 cups unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose white flour, measured with the scoop-and-sweep method, Cornmeal for pizza peel

1. Add yeast and salt to the lukewarm water in a bowl or in a resealable, lidded (not airtight) plastic food container or food-grade bucket. You don't have to worry about dissolving all the dry ingredients.
2. Add the flour at once, measuring it in with dry-ingredient measuring cups, by gently scooping up flour, then sweeping the top level with a knife or spatula; don't press down into the flour as you scoop or you'll throw off the measurement by compressing. Kneading is unneccesary! You're finished when everything is uniformly moist, without dry patches. This step only takes up to 30 seconds.
3. Cover with a lid (not airtight). Allow the mixture to rise at room temperature until it begins to collapse (or at least flattens on the top), approximately 2 hours.You can use a portion of the dough any time after this period. Store the dough in the container in the fridge.
4. On the bake day: Sprinkle the surface of your refrigerated dough with flour. Pull up and cut off a 1-pound (grapefruit-size) piece of dough, using a serrated knife. Hold the mass of dough in your hands and add a little more flour as needed so it won't stick to your hands. Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go. Most of the dusting flour will fall off; it's not intended to be incorporated into the dough. This process should be 30 to 60 seconds.
5. 20 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 450°F, with a baking stone (or a cast iron pan, or dutch oven, or cookie sheet - in my case, the cast iron worked perfectly.) placed on the middle rack. Place an empty broiler tray.
6. Place the shaped ball on the cornmeal-covered pizza peel (or parchment paper). Allow the loaf to rest on the peel for about 40 minutes at room temperature.
7. Dust the top of the loaf liberally with flour, which will allow the slashing knife to pass without sticking. Slash a 1/4-inch-deep cross, "scallop," or tic-tac-toe pattern into the top, using a serrated bread knife.
8. After a 20-minute preheat, slide the loaf onto the preheated baking stone(or whatever the base you choose). Quickly pour about 1 cup of hot water from the tap into the broiler tray and close the oven door to trap the steam. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the crust is nicely browned and firm to the touch. Allow to cool completely, preferably on a wire cooling rack.

For the full instructions, you check this site.

The steps seem sort of long, but they are not. Very simple, and once you have the dough stored in the fridge, you can enjoy fresh baked loaves of bread anytime you want!

Using the same dough, you can bake baguettes as well. I'll give it a try this weekend!