Celebrating The New Year With Bread!

One of the gifts I gave for Christmas this year came back to me.  🙂  As I was picking out cookbooks to give to my family, I really had a difficult time wrapping some of them up!  Very few of them did I actually have in my possession, and it would have been real easy to just keep the ones I really wanted to myself.  But I didn’t, I behaved, wrapped them up and gave them to very happy recipients.  One in particular though, was given to me as a gift, and it was one of the ones that I really, really wanted to keep for myself.

I love baking bread.  Love it! I don’t do near enough of it though, because sometimes the time gets in the way.  I think about mixing, kneading for ten minutes, rising for two or three times, the baking, and gosh.  It’s a whole day affair to bake bread! Yet we eat whatever I do manage to bake.  So when I found the book Artisan Bread In Five Minutes A Day, I was intrigued.  Was it really possible? And how could it be good?  I love hand-kneading bread- both the actual process, and the flavor and texture that results from it.  I’ve so far resisted the famous no-knead bread, but this… This book promised that by mixing up one batch of dough, I could lob off chunks and bake bread all week if I desired.   So I was really excited to unwrap my own copy of this book, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before I gave it a try.

It was as easy as it said it would be.  They suggest giving the master recipe a go first to get a handle on the process, so I did that.  Simply water, flour, salt and yeast are mixed together until moist, and then refrigerated, preferably overnight, and up to 14 days.  I divided the master batch in half so I could make two loaves of bread.  I baked the first one up just before lunch yesterday, and a short while later it was gone.

The first thing to praise is the texture- this is just like a great crusty french bread.  The crust is fabulously crunchy and thick, while the crumb is very moist, dense, and just a touch on the chewy side.  The occasional hole serves as a fantastic vehicle for butter or jam.  I did find, that for my tastes, it was just a touch salty.  However, the authors recommend kosher salt, and I used sea salt, so next time I will cut back on the salt a bit and see if that helps.  My only complaint is the size of the loaf.  One loaf wasn’t enough for my family for a meal, had we been having it with a stew or soup or something.  It was enough for a snack for us, but not as part of a meal for my family of four.

Overall though, I am quite pleased with it, and am going to bake up the second loaf today, and then I am going to try one or two of the other recipes in the book using other grains and additions- Oatmeal Bread, I’m looking at you!  I’m also going to try doubling the size of the loaves I bake and see how that works, but for a first run, this bread most definitely rivaled anything you could buy from a great bakery.  Even the small boule I made yesterday would have likely been priced in the $4.00-$5.00 range had I bought it instead of making it myself.   For the little amount of actual active work I had to put into it, I definitely recommend the book to anyone who wants to learn how to make the most basic bread.  They also have a website if anyone is interested.

I’ve debated putting the recipe up, but since my little man is dying to use my computer, I’ll not do that today.  However, if you would like to check it out, a little later on I’ll be typing it up and I would be happy to e-mail it to you to check it out.  Shoot me a note to erika@tummytreasure.com, and I’ll get it over to you.

As a side note, I’m forcing myself to re-visit the cookbook challenge.  This qualifies as my first one for 2009, so I’m happy to check one book off my list.