Monday, September 28, 2009

Adventures in Breadbaking!

I bought "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day", by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois, from Amazon a couple weeks ago after reading a good review of it somewhere online. I was immediately sceptical of course - who wouldn't be with a title like that?
A little background - I've been home baking off and on for almost 40 years now, starting back around 1970, when I was in the Navy. So I thought I had a pretty good handle on what was and wasn't possible in a home oven.
Well, I was wrong! Their method is an elaboration of the well known New York Times method of no knead bread making, and the results are incredible!
(mouse over for description)


Deli-Style Rye

European Peasant Bread

It involves mixing the dough for a weeks worth of baking all at once. You keep it in the refrigerator, and pull out a loaf-sized chunk whenever you want to bake fresh bread. There's no kneading involved, you just shape the dough and let it rise, preheat the oven and bake. No attention needed for 90% of the process - though you do have to stay close.

3 comments:

  1. Gorgeous loafs! Since I'm cooking and blogging my way through Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food, I'm really interested in good bread. I'll be tackling Alice's bread chapter, but would sure like to know a "softer, easier" way! This may be it. I'll check your links. Thank you! Sally who is blogging at makingstuffmakingalife,blogspot.com

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  2. did you use the dutch oven method?

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  3. Hi John! Guess I could have elaborated a little more, huh? No Duch oven, although I have done that. Just baked on a pizza stone preheated in a 450 degree oven. The secret is letting it rise on the counter for a couple hours then refrigerating it overnight before forming, rising, and baking.

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