I've heard about this easy method for making awesome bread lately, and finally checked it out on make happy. I love experimenting with bread recipes, but to get a really amazing artisan loaf like this, it tends to be rather time consuming. Not anymore!!
Easiest.Bread.Ever.
You mix up a big batch of dough- only four ingredients for the white bread:
water
flour
yeast
salt
This is why I started with the white. The wheat requires more ingredients, some I didn't have on hand. But I'm excited to try it next.
The recipe makes enough dough for 3 or 4 loaves of bread! After mixing, you let it rise a couple hours, then stick it in the fridge and just pull off chunks whenever you want a fresh loaf! It keeps for 2 weeks! Brilliant.
Here is my first loaf. I shaped the dough a bit, dusted with flour and made slashes in the top. You bake it with a pan of water in the bottom of your oven and the steam makes the crust all gorgeous.
It was so yummy.
I dipped it in my new aged-for-25-years balsamic vinegar while still warm... amazing.
I decided to copy Marisa and try a garlic cheese loaf. I love the versatility of this dough... there aren't a lot of rules. I like that. I flattened out my dough, the covered it in a mix of melted butter and Johnny's Garlic Seasoning (Costco), then grated aged white cheddar. This is actually my second garlic cheese loaf... I used too much cheese for the first one and it was super oily when it came out of the oven. So don't use too much cheese. :)
Then I rolled it up and tucked it into a parchment lined loaf pan.
Here it is! All melty, cheesy, garlicky goodness.
This was my favorite.
There is a whole book (or two...) you can buy about this method. There is a huge wait for it at the library, so I suppose I should just buy it. I think this dough would make awesome pizza crust too. Anyone else tried this?
Edited 2/25/11: Click here for the recipe, then scroll down to the section that says "free recipes", and click either the 'White Boule Artisan Free-Form Loaf' or the 'Wheat Artisan Free-Form Loaf". A few people mentioned having trouble finding the measurements and full recipe. Let me know if that helps!
The "Bread in Five" guys have a blog, too, with all sorts of variations. There should be a link from the main page you linked in the post. I saw one chocolate bread. . . but I don't want something like that to be too easy. :)
ReplyDeleteI tried the wheat yesterday. I didn't have any vital wheat gluten, so I left it out entirely and substituted bread flour for the all-purpose. It worked great! Could be a little softer—I think that's what the gluten is for—but it was definitely fine as-is.
I also made a wheat cinnamon loaf. Not quite as good as the white cinnamon loaf, but very nice toasted with peanut butter!
Oh, wow. A "bread in five" blog. This will just feed my obsession. As if I need more reasons to eat bread. Thanks for the tip! ;)
ReplyDeleteGood to know about the wheat. I've been meaning to get the wheat gluten so I can try it.