Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Cookbook review: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day



Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day is the perfect book for hesitant bread-makers. Essentially it uses one basic no-knead bread recipe, which you can make in bulk, store in the refrigerator, and then customize for dozens of variations.

The "five minutes a day" is making the dough in bulk, and then pulling off a loaf's worth at a time. The catch to this is that you need room in your refrigerator to store that much bread dough, which I typically don't. The good news is that yes, you can store pre-made bread dough in the fridge, and then turn it into everything from challah to sandwich bread to pizza dough. Pre-mixed, pre-risen, high-moisture dough keeps well in the refrigerator.

It also doesn't require a sponge or starter. Which is great, because I never had much luck with those.

So I'll definitely be trying this approach in smaller quantities. Just as soon as I make some room in my fridge.



3 comments:

  1. You know...recommending all these books doesn't help us broke folks. Slam one or two, okay? :)

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  2. I picked this up from the library a few weeks ago and loved it. You don't need a ton of room in the fridge though. Once the dough has risen for two hours I transfer it to a 5 quart rectangle tupper-wear (well, Meijer-wear) and crack the lid. It doesn't take up too much room in my icebox. (I make the 6 cup of flour master recipe.)

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  3. I've been trying to find a good basic bread recipe that I was happy with for about the last six months. I just made their basic recipe and it turned out better than any other bread recipe I have tried so far.

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