Adventures in Bread Making

I love bread with dinner. Warm bakery bread. Artisan bread. Sourdough bread. Yum.  I love warm bread with soup and pasta, but I hate going to the store just for artisan or sourdough bread. I really wish I was savvy enough to make my own, but it seems so daunting and time-consuming. And then the thought of it tasting like crap err not good, after all that work. I ran across this book at our local library, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Really?!?  Could it be so? I have a love affair with bread that borders on obsession, so I checked it out and brought it home.

I am such the procrastinator that it sat. Well, actually it sat in many linear spaces, but was never opened. Not even during its short transits.  I thought about opening and actually reading it as I moved it out of my way, but thought–later. I’ll have time later. So much faith in that thought that I renewed the dusty book.

Well,  its moment finally came. I opened it and read some of its content. The book was so convincing that I was determined to attempt bread making. After all, I made my fist pie crusts in November, which was ridiculously easy. Not time-consuming as I had believed and was very tasty (or maybe my family just loves me so much they will say anything to make me feel good).

Well, after reading just the first few, very short chapters, I realized I don’t have a lot of the needed tools. The day I opened the book in determination to conquer the bread making feat turned out to be an epic fail in the my struggle against procrastination.

That was short-lived. Instead of going out and buying recommended tools, I made do. Some of the tools will certainly make for better bread, but I wanted to be sure that I still would want to do this after making a few loaves. After several attempts, I would say it’s a go. I really recommend this book–though five minutes? Not really. Five minutes to make the dough. Then it sits. It sits on the counter. It sits in the fridge, and then on the counter again. It does take a lot less time and is a lot easier than I thought it would, but I am far from perfecting it. Oh and I’ve added “exploding a baking dish in oven” to my repertoire of kitchen disasters. Still not as exciting as the “boiling egg in microwave, which resulted in blowing up microwave and having egg/water solution ooze out of cracks debacle,” but pretty high on the list.

This book will have you baking bread  successfully, without an expensive bread machine. It’s concise and organized in a way that a newbie can get to making bread pretty quickly.  Definitely let your dough sit overnight in the refrigerator–much easier to work with. And I also agree the bread tastes better when the dough has been in the refrigerator for longer than 1 day. We’ve only tried one recipe, but have used it to make pizzas, calzones, and bread sticks, in addition to the round artisan loaves. We recently purchased a bread stone, which does help in the bread making adventure, so I would recommend that.  I can’t wait to try more dough recipes in the coming year.

Here is my first little loaf.

This is the first pizza I made. Normally my husband makes the pizza, using store-bought dough. He’s kind of a pizza snob expert (he worked as the manager of a pizza place while going to college) He is a definite critic. It passed 🙂

I’m happy to have tried. I’ve been doing so many new things in the kitchen lately and it’s been proven to be a great thing. I guess I always felt intimidated. I’ve been pinning away on pinterest, and trying loads of new recipes and new kinds of foods, like these apple fritters, from seemingly greek. {{Oh my! you must try these. Seriously easy–seriously good! My family ate them up like nobody’s business 🙂 }} Thinking about all the new things I’ve been trying,  when I saw a quote by author, Neil Gaiman, for New Years, I thought I would share it, because its idea is important.

Not sure I’m changing the world with the making of bread and pizza, but it has changed things around here.  I guess when you think about it on a deeper level, maybe I’m changing my kids’ worldviews and perspectives.  But I’ll save the social commentary for another site.

What are some new things you would like to try this year?

Happy bread making! And more importantly, happy mistake making!