Kat of All Trades

I grew up baking bread with my mom, aunt, and cousin every Easter (and my grandparents when they were still alive). When I say baking bread, I mean a full day adventure of mixing, kneading, shaping, and baking, culminating in many loaves.

When I was young, my participation consisted of punching down the dough after it rose. As I grew older, I was able to help out with almost all of the aspects, and my cousin and I became masters of twisting and shaping the dough. It’s the perfect bread, made from a family recipe handed down through generations. Part of the treat, of course, is that you only have it once a year. It’s hard to set aside an entire day for bread baking on a regular basis.

With all my recent jamming, though, I wanted good bread. Needed it, even. The crustiness. The doughy insides. The smell of it baking. Also, there are few combinations so perfectly matched as homemade jam and freshly baked bread.

I’d been reading about no-knead breads for a while, and then my mom sent me a copy of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day sometime last year. While living with roommates, I never had enough refrigerator space to store the dough. That’s no longer a problem, though!

I like their recipe because it really is minimal commitment for prep – important when I’m busy spending time canning, gardening, and figuring out what to do with my CSA produce (more on that soon!) – and the bread is pretty freaking tasty. I mix up the dough, let it rise for two hours, and then put it in fridge until I’m ready to bake it.

I’d been getting used to the basic boule recipe provided in the book, and then all that white flour had me feeling a little doughy, which was not the goal I had in mind. I decided to give the light whole wheat recipe a try, though I double the amount of wheat flour because, well, why not? I think next time I’ll up the balance to half white, half wheat. I feel healthier that way, which is all that really matters.

The mixture didn’t seem to rise quite as enthusiastically as the pure white flour boule dough; however, it baked up to be a good loaf of bread, which I may have considered eating in a single sitting. My coworkers and knitting group seemed to be pleased as well, so I think I can call it a bread-baking success!

It’ll never take the place of Easter Bread, but it can fill the rest of the year. I’m also curious to try their gluten-free baking book!