Five Minute, Artisan Bread

I admit, that I enjoy cooking great meals. Homemade bread with a great crust however, has always alluded me. I love it, but can’t seem to make it. Sure I can made great quick breads and bread use a bread machine, but somehow I always find myself attracted to the fresh bread at the grocery store like a magnet.

I have spent hours in the kitchen kneading and watching dough rise but still couldn’t seem to make anything close to what I wanted. Now that I’m taking some time off from work I set out to find the right recipe, and I am very happy to say that I think I found it. I actually made good, artisan-quality fresh bread that requires little time commitment. Leave it to me to find this now, when I have plenty of time for the usual kneading and waiting for the dough to rise. I found out about no-knead bread. The first time I tried baking using the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day method.

This method uses steam to make a chewy, crisp crust just like the batard loaves I would by at Whole Foods. This bread is not airy and full of holes, and it’s not lightweight and squishy on the inside. This bread is substantial and worth the small amount of time required. Just a few minutes mixing 4 ingredients in a bucket, no kneading, refrigerate up to 14 days depending on the type of bread you make, then shape it, let it rise, and bake it. The Five Minutes refers to the amount of actual hands-on work for making the basic loaf of bread. You want a baguette or a batard to have with soup or appetizers, or you want a nice pizza dough, or you get a phone call saying someone is coming over for dinner and you want a nice loaf for the meal, and you can have any of those with just a few minutes of active work. You still have to plan for rising time and preheating the oven, which are not factored in to the equation, but overall this method is one of the easiest I’ve ever tried.

I baked my first loaf on a pizza stone. I just placed it on the hot pizza stone because I don’t have a peel and it worked fine, although the pretty slits I made in the dough didn’t make it.

If you haven’t tried this before the authors Jeff and Zoe have some You Tube videos demonstrating the technique, which are very helpful for bread baking.