Friday 22 May 2009

Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day: Attempt #1















After seeing this recipe scattered across many blogs, I decided to finally see what all the fuss was about. I looked up Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day and found a few videos demonstrating the master bread recipe.

Bread baking for me has always been a fun experience, I neither feared it nor had much difficulty with it, using the traditional methods. I was, however, quite intrigued by this unique method and so, without much hesitation, I ordered the book. It is actually not even in my house yet, but still on its way in the mail.

The dough is incredibly wet and I wished I had gone with my instincts and added just a bit more flour. Now, it is supposed to be a wet sticky mass initially, but after rising, it should have been pliable enough to handle and shape into a ball. This proved to be a bit tricky and I began to suspect that my weight calculations had been a bit off. I decided to add some more flour, still leaving it very wet, and letting it sit for another rise. This worked out much better, although it was still very tricky to shape properly, due to the wetness.

The finished product was a tiny oblong shaped chewy-crusted delicious loaf of bread. I was quite pleased and will certainly make this recipe again. I really am excited to get my hands on the rest of the book.

7 comments:

  1. I think that looks like an amazing loaf of bread Heather. I am such a lousy bread baker. I should try harder.

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  2. It was very good and really quite easy. The main tricky part for me was just making sure I nail those calculations when I convert British flour weights from US instructions - it is tricky because every chart I find seems to give me a different answer on how much various flours weigh. I hope the rest of the book is as good as the first recipe :)

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  3. Oh Heather my mouth is watering .
    Thank you for sharing this ,the photo is wonderful !
    I began smelling the bread baking as soon as I saw your delicious looking photo :)
    I am so impressed .
    I don't know that I could do the calculations as well as you have been able to.
    This was my first visit to your lovely blog and I had to become a follower .
    I can't wait to try some of the recipes for myself.
    I love your blog header with all the cookbooks.
    Thank you for going to the trouble to post them.
    Blessings of joy to you .

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  4. Thank you very much :) I am still anxiously awaiting the book so I can try out more recipes. In case you are interested, I have another food blog as well http://heatherfeather-lavenderblue.blogspot.com/ for all the recipes I made that don't come from my one of my cookbooks.

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  5. Wow.. thats looks so awesome! love to bake bread but never tried one yet.

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  6. It looks great! It's always nice when something turns out on your first try!

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  7. Heather, I too am in love with baking fresh loaves of bread. Yours looks fantastic! I will have to try soon.

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