Baking bread

Michael and I got the crazy idea yesterday that we wanted to make bread. I'd had the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day for about a month and was waiting for him to get home from DC before we tested it out. I'm happy to report that this bread recipe resulted in a delicious loaf of basic, crusty bready goodness. From the basic 'master recipe' you can make all different kinds of breads so we're looking forward to experimenting. I'm already planning to make sandwich bread, baguettes, and pizza dough. The '5 minutes per day' is a bit of a misnomer but it was SO easy to do and totally worth it. When you make the initial batch, it really does only take about 5 minutes to mix up....just some yeast, lukewarm water, salt, and flour. That has to rise for a couple of hours, then you put it in the fridge. If you're wanting bread that same day (like us, the impatient people we are), it should sit in the fridge for another 3 hours. THEN when you take it out and cut off the portion you want, it sits for another 40 minutes out in the room temperature kitchen before being baked for 30 minutes. We started this around 5 so we weren't finished with our loaf until 12:30 in the morning, but it was SO worth it to have a slice with strawberry jam for breakfast this morning. The recipe makes 4 loaves, so we've got a 2 week window that the dough will be good to make more bread. According to the book, the longer the dough has to mature, the better the bread will be, so that's another plus! But I can totally see us mixing up the dough on weekends to use throughout the week...who wouldn't want to come home to a just baked loaf of bread to have with dinner? All I'd have to do on weeknights would be to shape it into a ball and throw it in the oven...it almost seems like too little work for such a yummy result. If I can make this, anyone can, so if you've ever wanted to make your own bread, I highly recommend this book!





The dough once all the ingredients were mixed up.



Um...late night bread making makes my hubby a little loopy.



After its rest in the fridge, I form the dough into a 1 lb ball.



Before it goes into the oven, we scored it with a knife.



Fresh out of the oven! There's nothing like fresh bread scent...yankee candle's got nothing on this. Mmmm!



Close up once we dug into it this morning. Soft and chewy on the inside, crunchy on the outside...perfect.