Artisan Bread

Tamie always posts the most amazing pictures of her handy home-making endeavors and totally captured my interest with a picture of artisan bread she recently posted. She introduced me to the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, which I immediately put on hold at the library. Several years ago I played around with artisan bread from a starter with Nancy Silverstein's Breads from the La Brea Bakery. The bread was great, but it took work...work to keep a starter and several days to actually make a loaf of bread. The basic idea for this book is to use the chemical properties of the ingredients to make a fantastic loaf of bread with minimal effort - not even kneading. Plus, you make enough dough for 4 one lb loaves at a time, so all you have to do is pull of a little dough and shape your loaf when you're ready to bake. I'm still working out some of the kinks, but the bread has been great. Next week I am going to try my first whole wheat loaf.

Due to the length of the recipe I am just going to explain the basic process and trust that you will go and get the book if you're interested. There are two by the way. The original as posted above and a "Healthy" bread in 5 book.

To start you mix lukewarm water, yeast, and salt in a large tub and mix in the flour until it is combined and there are no pockets of flour (a minute or two). The dough will be really wet. Cover loosly and let rise for 2 hours. Refrigerate at least 3 hours (so dough is easier to handle).
When you're ready to make bread pull of a small amount of dough and quickly shape into a round. Let is rise for about an hour on a pizza peel (you can see mine is a cutting board) liberally dusted with cornmeal (I have it on hand for the polenta anyway).Preheat a baking stone or cookie sheet in the oven and place a broiler pan on the rack below the bread. Sprinkle bread with flour and slash (to prevent blow-outs). Quickly jerk bread from "peel" to hot baking stone and pour 1 C. hot water into broiler pan. Close oven door and bake.

Allow bread to cool and devour!



Addendum 2/9/11: I just made my first loaf that is what I wanted visually. The bread has been mighty tasty, but the shape has just been off. So I tried shaping it much more loosely and I think it gave the bread more room to rise up (instead of out).