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Saturday, March 7, 2009

Awesome Bread!

I normally use fresh milled whole wheat flour to make bread, but at times we like to have the artisan-type bread which includes white flour (nice crunchy crust on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside). Well, a couple of months ago I found this book at my library...Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.
It may sound like a hoax, but this is for real! The basic idea is that you mix the dough and let it rise at room temperature. You then put the dough in the fridge. Whenever you want to bake bread, you take out some of the dough, shape and let rise. Then put it in the oven. The "five minutes a day" is in reference to how much hands-on time there is on baking day....and they are right that it amounts to about five minutes. However, there is rising and cooking time which comes to about an hour and a half. I love the fact that I can have dough in the fridge and pull it out and use it any time! This dough is very wet and needs to be to work right, but I have found that even when it is wet because it is cold from the fridge it isn't hard to work with. Here is a picture of a newly formed loaf before rising:
Here is the risen dough that has just been slashed and is ready for the oven:Here is the final product! So yummy! And yes, this came from my oven and not the store!

1 comment

  1. That's gorgeous! What a crunchy looking crust!!

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