My friend Wendy gave me a wonderful book... "The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. I love baking bread but this is SO easy that I may never make bread any other way!! No kneading, no machine needed. Couldn't be easier.
You will have to get the book (or go to their web site, linked at the bottom of this post) to see the hundreds of variations, but I will share the Master Recipe here and probably, over time, share many of the other ones that I try.
All you need is a large plastic bucket (I bought a 6 quart rising bucket). Before I bought the rising container I used a one gallon plastic ice cream container and just halved the recipe.
Master Recipe
3 cups lukewarm water (under 100 degrees F)
1 Tbs Yeast
1-1 1/2 Tbs salt
6 1/2 cups All Purpose Flour
Add the yeast and salt to the warm water in the container. Don't worry about it dissolving. Add your flour and mix with a wooden spoon until it is all moist. If it gets difficult you can use your hand to mix it but do not knead it. This should only take a minute or two. The dough will be wet and loose.
Cover the container with the lid but not tightly... leave it loose on one side. Allow to rise at room temperature until it starts to collapse on top...two hours or so. Then refrigerate the dough up to two weeks to use as you will.
When ready to make your bread you simply flour your hands a little and scoop up a ball of dough. You can flour the surface a bit and even use kitchen scissors or a sharp knife to cut out the dough.
Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides. The bottom will be a bit messy like a bunch of loose ends but don't worry, that's fine. The entire process should take you less than a minute. Remember, you are not kneading, you are simply smoothing out the top with a gluten "cloak".
Now you can put your dough in a bread pan (lightly oil the pan) or free form. If you free form you can use a pizza peel and do it on a pizza stone or use a cookie sheet and parchment paper.
Let your dough rest for about 40 minutes...longer if your kitchen is cool. Turn on your oven so it gets good and hot.
When the rest time is over you will want to slash your bread so it can do the majority of rising in the oven as it bakes.
Bake your bread at 450 F for 35 to 40 minutes.
You can buy these buckets online...
The dough is quite wet and loose...
After a couple of hours your dough will be very high and airy...once it starts to flatten on the top it is ready to cover and refrigerate for up to two weeks...if it lasts that long! You will be baking a lot!! :-)
I took this photo right out of the book. The dough is sticky but easy to work with. Don't use a lot of flour, just enough to keep it from sticking to your hands.
I ordered this bread lame but if you have a very sharp serrated knife or even a razor blade (this lame utilized a sharp razor blade), you can slash your loaves.
As you can see, the bread is not fully risen when you slash it and put it in the oven...most of the rising occurs while baking.
If you want to see recipes and tips from this book please visit
