Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (Booking It)

Today at Life as Mom we are discussing our experiences using Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking.  I have owned this book and its companion book (Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients) for a few years now. (Here's my original post about it.) I have to say that these are my favorite bread books! For Booking It we are supposed to try at least three recipes from the book.  Well, when I went through my book I realized that I had tried far more than three!  Here are the recipes that I have done before.  Every single one of these has turned out wonderfully!

Boule (The Master Recipe)

Light Whole Wheat Bread

Vermont Cheddar bread

Spinach Feta bread

Bagels (Yes, I have even made bagels!)

Olive Oil Dough (Great for pizza crust!)

So for Booking It I thought I would branch out and make some new recipes.  I decided to go all out a make the Chocolate Bread and then try to be a bit more healthy and make the Sunflower Seed Breakfast bread.  Here are some pictures and the results!

{Sunflower Seed Breakfast Bread}

Ok, the sunflower seed bread was good, but not great.  I really like the other recipes more that I listed at the top of the post.  This bread contains eggs and is not a crusty bread.  I thought the sunflower seeds gave it a different type of taste.  Not bad...just different.  Still trying to decide if I like it.

I realize that this is not th greatest of pictures, but this is the chocolate bread.  Now this was pretty tasty! Almost like cake, but not as sweet and definitely a dark chocolate flavor.  My boys loved it.  However, my vote still is for the crusty breads that I listed at the beginning.  The enriched breads that contain butter and eggs (like the sunflower and chocolate) are good, but not the type of bread I crave.

This bread book is SO worth having!  If nothing else it teaches you to make the dough one day and bake on another, which makes the chore of bread baking not such a chore!  It can save you money...no more going to the store to buy artisan bread for $4-5.  You could make several loaves for only a couple of dollars!