Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day

I've always had a love/hate relationship with bread. I love good bread. I am very picky about my bread. But man, do I hate making it. Proof, mix, knead, rise, punch, rise, shape, bake. Set aside 4 hours, at least! Make sure the house is warm enough (we keep it chilly in here in the winter). And then, hope and pray it turns out good after all that work. Usually it just turns out ok. Sometimes it's only good enough to stash in the freezer for breadcrumbs (talk about disappointment).

So when I heard about the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day technique, I was hopeful, but skeptical. Now I'm only on my first batch, but so far I'm smitten.



Look at that beauty! It was supposed to be ciabatta. Obviously, it's not flat enough, but that was my fault. But, it tasted fantastic, and really, it took about 5 minutes to make the dough. You can keep the dough in the fridge for up to 2 weeks, and just grab a chunk when you need bread, and then you can have bread in an hour! Just turn and shape the dough a bit, let it rise for about 30 minutes, and let it bake for another 20 minutes. So by the time your soup or stew is ready to go, your bread is done.

Even if this is as far as I get, and all I can make are misshapen loaves of ciabatta, I'm still sold (although there are recipes in the book to make everything from pizza to rye bread to cinnamon rolls, using different master dough recipes, I can't wait to try!). And it's so much cheaper than forking out $4 for a loaf of artisanal bread at the store!

For those interested, here's a link to a youtube video, and here's the book on Amazon.