5 minute a day artisan bread
// July 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // House, Recipes
Courtesy of this awesome article on making really easy bread, I’ve started making some at home… from scratch.
From: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/Artisan-Bread-In-Five-Minutes-A-Day.aspx
This bread really is very easy to make. So simple that my second batch is in the fridge at home and I’ll bake a loaf tonight for use tomorrow.
Ingredients
- 1.5 tbsp salt
- 1.5 tbsp yeast
- 3 cups lukewarm water
- 6.5 cups bakers flour (10% protein)
Method
- Add salt and yeast to warm water in a large container with a coverable (not airtight) lid. I used a 5l casserole dish and it rose to fill that really well. A large saucepan or boiler might be good too, but it’s got to fit in the fridge.
- Gradually add the flour to the water mix and mix into a sloppy dough. You’re not looking for firm doughballs etc, just bring it all together. Don’t play with it too much.
- Cover and leave it for at least 2 hours, but as long as 5 if necessary.
- Put it in the fridge for at least 3 hours but for as long as 2 weeks.
When you’re ready to bake some bread:
- Cut some dough out of your container. The original recipe asks for 4 loaves out of this recipe, but they’re small loaves – use your own proportions after a little play.
- Dust your hands and the dough with some flour.
- Gently form it into a ball by folding the edges around onto the bottom. They’ll seal together during rising and baking. Put this on a floured/polenta’d pizza peel or cookie pan etc. You’ll want to be sliding the dough off this onto your baking stone.
- Let it sit and rise for 40-50 minutes.
- 20 minutes before it’s ready to go in the oven, turn it on to 230 degrees centigrade and get it warming. You’ll need to have your baking stone on the middle shelf and a dish to put hot water in under that.
- Boil the kettle – you’ll need to add water to that dish in the oven and it’ll have to be hot or the dish will crack (like mine did last night).
- Slice some cuts in the top of the bread. This is to allow the bread to expand while cooking and makes it look good too.
- Slide the bread into the oven and onto your baking stone.
- Add about a cup of hot water to the dish under your baking stone. It’ll start steaming etc, close the oven door!
- Let it cook for about 30-35 minutes. It’ll go gloriously brown and smell awesome.
- Take it out and let it cool down on a rack before cutting.
I found that baking it at night and letting it cool on the rack under a tea towel and slicing it in the morning worked really well.
This bread is so tasty and easy to make that I’m sure you’ll be jumping on the bandwagon too. It’s so awesome.
You don’t need to wash the dish you’re storing the dough in either. When making the next batch, just make sure you incorporate the old remnants of dough into the new one and it will start developing awesome sourdough flavours.
Follow Up – 6th August 2009
This has been such a winner. Both my kids love it, my wife likes it but claims it makes her itchy??? I’ve got a heap of people from work loving my home-made bread each day and a few of them even venturing out and making it themselves. It’s awesome.
I also made some of the dough into english muffins (as per some of the comments in the original post) and they were great. Not quite 100% traditional, but nothing hand-made ever looks 100% like the mass-produced crap from a supermarket – and if you’re aiming to have it look like a supermarket job, then why bother?
