Artisan Bread in Five

I recently bought the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. The premise is that you mix a big batch of dough and then store it in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. When you want a loaf of bread, all you do is pop a hunk out and bake it. Now the total time for this is more than five minutes, because it needs forty minutes to rise and another thirty to bake, but the time where you are actively doing something is less than five minutes since you could obviously be doing something else during the rise/bake time. There is a master recipe included to get started, then many other types of breads to keep going with it. So far I have made the boule (master recipe), European peasant bread, and olive oil bread. All three have been delicious.

Step 1:
Mix dough to store in refrigerator. (This is at the end of the batch, it makes much more dough than shown.)

Step 2:
When you’re ready to bake, form a ball and let sit to rise.

Step 3:
Bake on stone, and steam it a bit by pouring hot water in a broiler pan in the bottom of the oven.

Step 4:
Eat delicious bread.

I had read about the book in some blog a while ago but didn’t immediately buy it. I came across the authors’ website recently and saw that they were using their recipe to make naan in a cast iron skillet while camping. So of course, that is when I had to run to amazon and order it. I actually went camping the last two weekends but didn’t get the chance to try the naan because we always bring too much food camping and we just never got around to cooking that one. I did, however, use the olive oil bread to make hummus veggie pizza in my cast iron skillet for dinner at home tonight. I probably used a few too many toppings but it was great.

Next up I will be trying some of their sandwich breads (baked in loaf pans with softer crusts), the pumpernickel, some tasty looking cheese breads (Vermont cheddar, spinach feta, sun-dried tomato and parmesan), roasted garlic potato bread and, finally, the naan in the skillet.