Saturday, December 12, 2009

Great Bread

There a couple areas of my life that I realized I have never really shared with you here on the blog. One of them is my passion for cooking. I love to cook, bake, and feed people. And I love to share recipes. I don't usually make up my own, so I will of course share the source.

Today I want to share a cookbook that has changed my life. No really! I love this book. It is called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and the bread you can make from it is awesome. That link will take you to their blog where they actually share some recipes so you can try it yourself. I do recommend buying the book, though, as it is chock full of info and recipes and great stuff.

Anyway, a while ago I was thinking that I needed to get back to making our bread again, as I had gotten out of the habit with the move and all. But with all the other stuff going on around here, I kept missing out on good times to devote to bread baking. The fact that you have to be "on" for three or more hours at a time to make a loaf of bread kept getting in my way. Enter this book and the no knead method of bread baking. Problem solved! All I do now is take five minutes to mix up a batch of dough, let it rise and then stick it in the fridge. Another few minutes to shape it, let it rest while the oven heats, bake and bread is hot out of the oven for any meal of the day, even breakfast if I want. Really, the longest thing about this method is grinding my own flour!

I love that there are recipes for all kinds of breads, even sweet breads and pizza! And their new book does the same thing, but with whole grains. OK, enough gushing. I'm going to go into the kitchen now and make some bread. I'll take pictures along the way and share them with you later to show you how great this is!

1 comment:

Sandra Dodd said...

I'm looking forward to photos.

I don't have a three-hour attention span, so I use a bread machine for the first half of that time, then take the dough out and shape loaves and set them on the stove with the oven on. Then when they rise, the only "attention span" needed is to put them in the oven and set a timer. That I can do.

Your book sounds less expensive than a bread machine, though.

I've had several bread machines, starting with a DAK when Marty was a baby, in 1989. I have hardly ever let the machine cook the bread. I want to make the loaves pretty, and touch the dough.