I say almost because I did make a few changes. I used 4 cups whole wheat flour and 2.5 cups all-purpose. And after reading a few comments, I only added 1 Tablespoon salt instead of 1.5 and dissolved it in the water before adding the yeast although I read on the "official artisan bread in 5 minutes a day blog" that salt is needed to stop yeast overgrowth but that the amount really is up to personal preference. I'm not going to write down the full recipe because of copyright issues but it is out there in a number of places if anything isn't clear from the video you can just google it.
Also, it doesn't say in the video but I baked it at 450. I don't have a stone so I used a cake pan (it was quite a bit bigger than my loaf) and we only have one shelf in our oven so I used a loaf pan to hold the water next to the bread. I have heard that you can pick up a clay stone from a home improvement store for much cheaper than a stone and I might give that a try because I don't think I could fit a stone and a water pan on the same rack. I think the crust was nice already but that might make it even better.
A few hours later we had our first little loaf. It was so easy and tasted great. Craig said it was even better than the bread I spend all day making. We ate most of it with dinner and I had the rest for breakfast the next day. That night I made another loaf to go with soup for dinner but I still have at least three loaves worth left and supposedly it just gets more and more flavorful with time. The blog also said that you can use the same bowl to make your next batch to keep some of the flavors going, similar to a sourdough starter, except that you use more yeast. I would have taken a picture but my battery was dead and by the time it was charged, there wasn't much left to see.
Things I liked:
- Ease: It was super super easy.
- Few ingredients and no sugar.
- Tasty and moist.
- Little loaves, they don't last long enough to get dry.
- It's soaked so less phyates to worry about.
Things I didn't:
- Little loaves. I think it would work for sandwiches but I would have to make two little ones for each of us unless we wanted to starve before dinner. But overall, that isn't a big deal.
-It isn't fully whole wheat. But I didn't have a problem with the 2/3 wheat so I will try 100% and see how it goes.
- The soaking isn't perfect. You have added salt already which supposedly slows down the neutralization process and there isn't an additional acidic component but with enough time neither of those shouldn't be a problem. I might add a little whey or yogurt next time though, just to ensure that my first load or two is good. And my other bread recipe wasn't soaked at all so this is still a big improvement.
- How I can now eat a whole loaf of bread in minutes :-)
We spent some time this weekend at Barnes and Noble and I took a look at the book. Basically, it has a few basic dough recipes and a variety of things to do with them. The blog shows you some of that as well. There was a whole wheat recipe but it had more ingredients, including a sweetener, so I would prefer to avoid that if possible. I will try and see how the things I find on the internet work first but I might eventually splurge on the book. You should definitely make this something, whether it is a monday or not.
I was under the impression that you can't copyright a recipe, for whatever that's worth.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've heard that and I see lots of people who share things from cookbooks. If it is a book that has a lot of recipes, I don't feel bad giving out one then saying, "go get so and so cookbook, it's great". But this book only has a few actual recipes in it, so I felt bad...not bad enough not to tell you not to google it, just bad enough not to put it on my site myself.
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