Posts
Well, that's all about to change. In Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, a physician/home cook pairs up with a pastry chef to create a volume of easy peasy bread recipes that can be whipped up in five minutes, and stored in the fridge for two weeks. With minimal prep and only a little planning, you can have fresh baked bread!
I'd been waiting for this book from the library, and it became available just in time for Spring Break!
My first experiment was with the classic, simple, and straight forward Boule. We planned to have homemade pizza for dinner on Friday, and I thought this would be a good way to test the dough. Of course, I had to "test" it before pizza night. So, I grabbed a glob of dough, thinned it out, and threw it in a frying pan -- my version of flat bread.
IT WAS GOOD! Alright, we're on to something. Pizza time.
Oops. Don't try to be a professional baker at home unless you have professional tools. I tried to follow their directions and heat the heat the oven to 550, sprinkle cornmeal on the pizza stone (I used the back of a cookie sheet), then transfer the dough to the extremely hot pizza stone. Don't try this if you don't have a pizza peel, or your dough has holes in it.
My dough wrinkled as I was laying it out, and it became a funky, twisted branched dough blob. But, I baked it anyway, and it was great. It would have made the perfect pizza crust...chewy, crispy...Sigh. But never fear, dinner was still a few hours away, so I whipped up a batch of Olive Oil Dough. It sounded more pizza worthy, AND IT WAS!
I also made Buttermilk Cinnamon Raisin Bread. Maybe I'm too used to commercially produced bread, this looked like a loaf of ciabatta. Don't get me wrong. I looove ciabatta. But I was expecting a big fluffy loaf of bread.
However, don't let the outside fool ya. This bread was awesome -- way better than the dry, fluffy, mashable stuff from the grocery store.
