Fresh Bread

I love bread.  It's one of my favorite foods.  I love to bake bread too.  One of my favorite things about it is the way it makes the house smell - all warm and yeasty....yummmm.

Since E was born, I haven't had much time to do anything in the kitchen, and I consider it a success when I am able to get dinner on the table before 8:30 PM.  Yesterday I was feeling good, and ambitious, and decided I would make some bread.

Thanks to my friend Jenn, I have this great 5 Minute Artisan Bread recipe.  It makes enough dough for 4 loaves, Hubsters likes it too, and it is one of the easiest bread recipes I've encountered.  No need for kneading.  Just mix and let it rise.

This is the story of my bread making journey from yesterday.

Here is what I started with:

Yup, not much and pretty simple.  Then it looks like this:

Again, can it get any easier?  Then you start the mixing of everything.  First the yeast into the warm water, which turns into yucky looking water, but you know it's for the best.

Then add the flour and salt.

Then comes the dough whisk to the rescue.  Never heard of a dough whisk?  Neither had I until I read this book and watched this video (from where the original recipe comes).  It looks like this:

And it turns the flour/salt/water/yeast mixture into this:

and then this:

in less than a minute.  And another great thing about it...there is hardly any dough death (the dough that is lost from stirring because it sticks to the spoon).  See, minimal:

Anyway, once mixed, pop the lid on and let it rise for 2 hours at room temperature.

 

After a two hour rise it looks like this:

Then it went into the fridge to chill until it was time to make the loaf for dinner.

When making the loaf, I just pulled out a grapefruit sized piece of dough, and formed it into a nice round ball.  Then it sits for 40 minutes to rise.

After it sat for 40 minutes, I slashed the top, popped it onto my baking stone in the oven, threw in some water in a metal pan for steam to create the crunchy crust, and let it cook at 450 degrees for 30 minutes.  And then I got this:

It was good and Hubsters and I restrained ourselves at dinner and didn't eat the whole thing!