Artisan Bread

I had heard about this cook book called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day , I love learning new ways to bake bread and this just seemed like a great system! So, I had a giftcard to the bookstore from Christmas and got it a couple weeks ago. At first I was going to wait until I had all the perfect supplies (the dough riser bucket and pizza peel) but I decided today that I couldn't wait! So, I didn't have a big enough bowl - so I mixed it up and then split it into two bowls. It worked fine. I used my stoneware bar pan from pampered chef instead of a pizza stone or bread stone and for my pizza peel I used a flat cookie sheet. It sounds like a lot of time, but really it's no more time than any other bread recipe and the amount of acutal labor you put into it is wayyy less. Just pick a time when you are going to be home and go for it! It turned out sooo yummy! Try it and let me know. The cookbook has many, many other recipes, so I'm sure you'll get a lot of posts about bread even more now! :) Enjoy!

This master recipe is adapted from Artisan Bread In Five Minutes a Day

3 cups of lukewarm water

1 1/2 tablespoons yeast

1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt

6 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour, more for dusting dough

In a large bowl or plastic container, mix yeast and salt into 3 cups lukewarm water (about 100 degrees). Stir in flour, mixing until there are no dry patches. You can mix this with a wooden spoon or in a large mixer, like a Kitchen Aid, with a dough hook. You do not need to knead this just mix well. Dough will be quite wet. Cover, but not with an airtight lid. Let dough rise at room temperature 2 hours.
Bake at this point or refrigerate, covered, for as long as two weeks.

When ready to bake, sprinkle a little flour on dough and cut off a grapefruit-size piece with serrated knife. Turn dough in hands to lightly stretch surface, creating a round loaf. You do not kneed the dough at this point. Just form it into a loaf. Place the dough on pizza peel sprinkled with cornmeal; let rest 40 minutes. (or 1 hour and 40 minutes if you took it from fridge) Repeat with remaining dough or refrigerate it.
Place broiler pan on bottom of oven. Place baking stone on middle rack and turn oven to 450 degrees; heat stone at that temperature for 20 minutes.
Dust dough with flour, slash top with serrated or very sharp knife three times. Slide onto stone. Pour one cup hot water into broiler pan and shut oven quickly to trap steam. Bake until well browned, about 30 minutes. Cool completely.

This is what the dough looked like after the 2 hour rise and after I took a portion out - but you can see it rose all the way to the top of the bowl.

This is the dough after I shaped it and but it on the makeshift pizza peel with cornmeal for it's final rise. At this point I was skeptical - it took look like it was going to be good.

This is my final product! Doesn't it look yummy? It was! It tasted just like artisan bread that you buy from the store for what $4 at least? What a savings! I now have dough in my fridge that I can bread with whenever I want in the next 2 weeks! And, it was way fresher! In closing the authors of the cookbook have a website -
http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/