Tag: baking bread

Faye loves finding new and interesting books at our library. One she found was Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day which details a bread baking technique far different from anything she and most people are accustomed to. She liked it so much we have eaten little store bought bread for several months. Santa brought Faye The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. This weekend I finally delved into the bread-making process.

On Friday I made a batch of dough following the Deli Rye dough recipe. The ingredients are few – water, yeast, salt, caraway seeds, rye and all-purpose flours. The process is quite simple – mix everything without kneading and let rise at room temperature. This took less than 15 minutes. Because our kitchen is cold at this time of year we let it rise for two hours. Here’s a look at the dough.

Then put the dough container in the fridge. It stays good for up to two weeks. Yesterday I made a loaf of bread. Again, the process is quite simple and again, you do ot knead the dough. Cut a 1 1/2 lb chunk of dough, work it into a ball, fold two sides under, fold the other two sides under, place on parchment paper, and let rise at room temperature for approximately two hours. This step took maybe five minutes. My dough was very wet and sticky, making it hard to work with. Next time I will probably add more dough than the recipe calls for. Here’s the dough ball.

There is a great web site with new recipes, baking tweaks, all kinds of great information. You can bake bread in a crock-pot and on the grill. We have not tried these techniques yet but look forward to doing so when the weather warms up to the point at which we don’t want to heat up the kitchen.

A cool technique Faye found is that you can bake the bread in a Dutch oven, which is the technique I used. Set your oven to 500F and put the Dutch oven in to preheat for 20-30 minutes. Once it’s preheated, remove it, put your dough with parchment paper inside, cover and return to oven to bake for 15 minutes.

Remove the Dutch oven, remove the lid, change the oven temperature to 450, and return the uncovered Dutch oven to bake for another 20 minutes. Check at that time to determine doneness and remove or return as you judge necessary. If ready, remove, remove from the Dutch oven, remove the parchment paper, and let cool on a rack for at least an hour. Mine was a tad over done.

Still quite edible, quite tasty, great texture, and far more satisfying than the bland ass shit that most store bought breads are. Plus, no additives, preservatives, or any other -tives.

If you like bread (even gluten-sensitives and -intolerants can find recipes in the book and online) I encourage you to check this out. I’m not a shill or a marketer for Artisan Bread in Five. This really is good stuff.