I spent yesterday puttering around in the kitchen, making two different loaves of bread, a pot of squash soup, toasted squash seeds (as a garnish for the soup), and a plum cake. I could go on and on about the mediocre soup, the awesome seeds, and the excellent cake which the child wouldn't eat. But I won't. I need to proselytize instead.
On a hunch not too long ago, maybe as a result of a stray comment from Mad, I bought a copy of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It's seriously easy, and seriously wonderful. The basic recipe has four ingredients (flour, water, salt, yeast). There is no kneading, and no special equipment is needed. The five minutes a day part isn't hyperbole. And, as I said to my husband last night, there's no reason to buy bread ever again.
You could run out and buy a copy of the book - but if you don't want to spend the money, you're in luck! The good grey lady ran the recipe and it's available on the internet - for nothing! (Is it any wonder that newspapers and book publishers are struggling?)
In essence, you make a big batch of wet dough, let it sit for a while, yank off a piece, tidy it up and let it rest, and then fling it into a hot oven. The leftover dough goes into the fridge until you're ready for another loaf. That's it. A perfect crusty little boule.
What are you waiting for?
Tangentially, "the staff of life" popped into my head as the right name for this post and because I am wont to do so, I googled it. The phrase, that is. Luckily for me, I found a blogger who had tried to chase down that phrase already, because I was getting lost in the biblical and the Latin and the Hebrew. It's confusing, the staff of life.
7 comments:
I love that no-knead bread. Why DO I not make it every day? It is a mystery....
And making gf bread for The Baby is no hassle, either - I just need to load the breadmaker. I think I might just be lazy.
I've heard great things about that book. Hmmmm, maybe I should look for it!
Oh, Magpie. I know I am relatively new here, and I do try not to disagree too strongly with people in blogland, but that 5-minute bread is no good. I agree it's better than no bread, but it is wine-y, its crumb is sticky, and its crust tends to be too salty. Three out of four of us in my household agree:
tinyurl. com/ylala27
(I put a space in there b/c otherwise my comment might not go through.
What am I waiting for? I'm waiting for someone to make me some!
mouth ... watering. Did you see the piece in the Sunday mag, too, about the guy in Madison? I'm ready to drive 2+ hours for one of his loaves.
I love those cooking days . . . especially if there is a good mix of new recipes. The recipe for quick bread reminds me of last fall, when I was hooked on a quick loaf from the King Arthur Wholegrains book.
I've been thinking a lot about the ethics of recipe sharing in blogworld, especially since the advent of domestic sensualist blog. Is it okay to share recipes if you give attribution? And how much does anyone actually OWN a recipe? I've never made anything without tweaking it a bit; does that mean it is mine? I know it is a bit self-serving, but I like to think that calling attention to a specific cookbook or cookery writer offsets/compensates for "sharing" some of their work. But then I'm the sort of person who buys a lot of books . . . no matter how much I read off of the Internet.
I'm going to try this. But I'm waiting for the weekend...
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