Who Kneads It?

I borrowed this book from the library last week, Five Minute Bread by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.

I contemplated buying a pizza stone during the week since after the oven thermometer, the baking stone was listed as the next needed Equipment.  But with all the feedback I read on the internet (about pizza stones cracking and all), I decided that I could survive without the pizza stone and would rather buy flour and just start baking.

Yesterday, MyGirl and I went to Target to get a 5 litre container.  (Apparently, I didn't have that big a container in the house.) 

We also got a kilo of flour from Coles.  (I figured it would be simpler to remove 100 g of flour from a bag rather than measure out 900 g from our flour container.)

Last night before dinner, I mixed up a batch of the Master Recipe : Boule (Artisan Free-Form Loaf).  We let it rise for a while (as much as it would given the cold autumn weather).  Then we placed the dough in the new container and placed the container in the refrigerator.

This morning, I measured out 450 g of dough as instructed, shaped the dough into a ball and placed it on a silicon-mat lined baking tray.  I preheated the oven and waited.

The dough did not rise as much as I would have wanted (or imagined) but I figured I couldn't force the dough to rise even if I wanted to.  It would just have to do. 

Into the oven went the dough with a small pan of water on the rack beneath it.

When the timer went off (actually, it was more when the smoke alarm both downstairs AND upstairs went off), I pulled out the bread from the oven.

The boys were still asleep, totally oblivious of the freshly baked bread and the numerous smoke alarms.  I sliced the bread and called MacGyver and MyGirl.  

The single loaf we baked was sliced into five.  

MyGirl and I had already eaten our slices when by the time I got my camera.

MacGyver arrived and had the edge piece.  We seriously considered dividing up the last two pieces.  The sleeping boys would not know they had missed out on the bread if everyone kept their mouths shut.  

But no!  Justice and fairness prevailed.

I put one slice each on the boys' breakfast plates.

In the afternoon when MyGirl and I decided to bake something in the new heart pan we'd acquired, I decided to use up more of the dough and bake another two loaves.

The recipe is definitely a keeper.  

I found this in the internet today which will eliminate your need to head for the library or the bookstore to get the recipe -->   Five Minutes a Day for Fresh-Baked Bread

Happy baking!