For the Love of Bread

Challah made with brioche dough.

When my friend, Janene, lent me a book called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, I was a bit skeptical.  I love to bake my own bread and have had good success with making baguettes and Italian loaves from a recipe that start by making the dough in my bread machine and involves a few more steps thereafter.  This takes about 3 or 4 hours from start to finish, but since I'm at home this works just fine for me.  This book, on the other hand, is based around the creation of doughs that are high in moisture and don't require kneeding, punching, or multiple rises.  I started by making the master recipe from the book and it turned out really well.  So well, in fact, that I couldn't tell any difference between it and the regular bread recipes that I had been using.  Since then, I've tried several more recipes, all with great results and very little effort on my part. 

Basically, you just mix up the dough and let it rise for a couple of hours.  After that, you can either use the dough right away or just store it in the fridge in a non-airtight container for quite some time and use it when it is convenient.  When you take it out of the fridge, a quick stretching and molding of the loaf is needed and then it is left to rise for a bit.  Then, it is off to the oven.  This type of bread-making definitely cuts down on prep time, the mess of mixing a new batch of dough every time you want another loaf, and the time involved in letting bread rise (a great way for those that work outside the home during the day to still be able to eat fresh, homemade bread for dinner).  This is one book that I will be purchasing for myself and I will continue to use these bread recipes.  I even got a little more creative the other day and added my own sourdough starter to the "master recipe" (that makes a baguette or boule type of loaf) and the sourdough loaf that came of it was one of the best I've ever made.  The crust was crunchy and the crumb inside was chewy, soft, and tasty. 

If you are curious about this book and high-moisture doughs, the website for it is found here:  http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/