Breadmaking
For about three months now I’ve been making my own bread. The recipe I’m using is from a book called, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery that Revolutionizes Home Baking (St. Martin’s Press, 2007). The clunky title is somewhat misleading, because it doesn’t really take five minutes, more like an hour and fifteen minutes, but most of this time is inactive. The premise of the book is that it’s possible to make bread without all the kneading and rising needed to make a traditional loaf. You simply stir yeast with warm water, mix with flour, then let the whole thing rise for 2–3 hours. The dough, which is quite sticky, is stored in a container in the refrigerator. When you’re ready to bake it, you remove a chunk of the dough, sprinkle flour on the top of it, shape the loaf, and pop it into the oven for thirty minutes. The original recipe calls for 6 1/2 cups of unbleached flour, but I’ve been making the “European Peasant Loaf” by substituting a half-cup of both whole wheat and rye flour.
Being a traditionalist I must say that I feel I’m somewhat cheating, but it makes a good loaf of bread and I’ve been enjoying it. Vicki, who makes bread the traditional way, thinks it’s pretty good also. The authors of the book, Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François, have just come out with a new book, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients—they love long titles. There’s also another new book out on no-knead bread, My Bread, by Jim Lahey of the Sullivan Bakery in Manhattan. His recipe has been quite the rage ever since NY Times food writer Mark Bittman wrote about him in 2006. There’s no kneading, but his bread rises for about twenty-four hours before it is cooked in a heavy pot. Reviews I’ve read about this recipe rave about the quality and texture of bread made this way. Maybe I’ll give it a try one of these days.