Bread - Round 2

When I made bread a few weeks ago there was also another recipe/method I wanted to try and it took me until today to get a chance to try it. This round was based on The Master Recipe from Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a Day. The advantage of this recipe is that it makes enough dough for 4 - 1lb loafs, you can store the dough in the fridge for up to 14 days so you don't have to bake it all at once, it is much quicker (2 hour rise time vs 18 hours) and it says in the recipe that you can use a heavy duty stand mixer with a bread hook instead of mixing it by hand.

 

 

The Kitchen Aid was definitely up for the challange!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Basic bread ingredients are pretty much the same...water, flour, yeast and salt...

3 cups lukewarm water

2 packets of yeast

1 1/2 Tbsp coarse salt

6 1/2 cups unsifted, unbleached all purpose flour

 

 

 

 

 

First the water, salt and yeast go in the mixer.

 

 

 

Then the flour is added all at once.

 

 

 

Mix it until everything is moist without any dry patches. Only took my mixer about 90 seconds.



 

Then allow to rise for 2-5 hours lightly covered. After rising the dough can go into the fridge or be baked.

 

 

 

To bake at this point you sprinkle the dough with flour and using a serrated knife cut off a grapefuit sized piece. Then after flouring your hands you form the dough into a ball by stretching the dough down to bottom so that the top is smooth and the bottom is a gathring of the edges. The loaf then needs to rest for 40 minutes.

 

 

 







 

 

20 minutes into this rest time, the baking stone and a steam pan go into the oven and preheat for 20 minutes with the oven preheating to 450 degrees.

 

 

 

 After 20 minutes, even if the oven isn't up to 450 degrees, add hot water to the steam pan and place the bread on the stone. Bake for 30 minutes.

 

 

 

And you have bread!!!

 

 

 

 

After tryng both methods of the no-knead bread, I think I prefer the Artisian Bread in 5 Minutes a Day for the time factor. When I bake the rest of the dough (tomorrow?) I am going to try the baking method I used with the other recipe using the cast iron dutch oven and see how that compares. Over all I am very happy with how both methods turned out and an looking forward to trying more recipes out of the Artisian Bread in 5 Minutes a Day book.