Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day

When Sewing Bee (aka Turtle, aka Pumpkin's godmother) was out visiting us, I was telling her all about (and feeding them bread from) this great cookbook my MIL gave me at Christmas, Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. She was very enthused, so we baked some up and mixed up a new batch for the frig so she got to see the whole procedure. I'd told her I meant to post it, but just hadn't gotten around to it, but lo and behold if I didn't find an email from her in my inbox today with it all typed up, including a YouTube link about it. So without further ado, here is:

Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day

In 5 qt. lidded plastic container: (Ice cream pail works great.)

Mix together – leave lidded on counter for 2 hours or up to 5 hours then refrigerate.

3 cups warm water
1 ½ Tbl. yeast
1 ½ Tbls coarse salt (1 generous Tbls fine salt)
6 ½ cups flour

Leave in the fridge for up to two weeks. Bake when you need bread or the night before it serves great the next day. Recipe says it can make 4 loaves. We tend to make 3 loaves per batch. [MHH - I agree. I only ever get three loaves, too.]

To Bake: Break off about 1/3 of dough with floured hands. Turn it to cloak it. (Turn it under at the sides all the way around to make a round loaf.) Sprinkle pizza peel (or flat [rimless] cookie sheet) with corn meal and lay bread on that area. Leave for 20 minutes then turn oven to 450 degrees and put a broiler pan and pizza stone in the oven. (Broiler pan or jelly roll works great.) [MHH - pizza stone on lowest possible rack.] Set timer for 20 more minutes while oven heats up and bread keeps rising.

Before you put it in the oven dust with flour and slash with a knife. When timer goes off slide bread in the oven off the peel and pour 1-1 ½ cups water into the hot broiler pan. Bake 35 minutes.

MHH - There are a ton of variations for this recipe in the cookbook, including foccacia (which I made today, but with grape tomatoes instead of onions). It really is super easy and convenient and the bread is FABULOUS with olive oil and vinegar.

Here's the YouTube video; it's an appearance by the authors on a MN morning show. It shows how easy it is to mix up and how to "cloak" the dough when making a loaf.