I looked through my shelves recently and realised that there were cookbooks I owned, from which I have never tried a single recipe from. I was determined to conquer at least one recipe from each book (so that I could have the excuse of buying more books), and decided to start on a bread making book – Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day.
I bought this book because of it’s interesting descriptions, good reviews, and of course, the hope that bread making could indeed be that simple. Well, I was fooled. It didn’t take five minutes a day. But having said that, the book does offer simple and versatile bread recipes, most of which take shorter time than traditional recipes. I decided to try the basic recipe – boule. The boule, otherwise known as an artisan free-form loaf, serves as the basic dough from which a dozen other breads can be made from. After mixing, the basic dough can be kept in a lidded container in the fridge for up to a week. Whenever you feel like making bread, you simply need to pull and cut out a piece of dough, and shape/make it into whatever fanciful (or simple) bread you desire. Using the basic recipe, I was able to make baguette, pita, and the lovely sundried tomato and parmegiano bread pictured above.
Boule:
(makes four 1 pound loaves)
Ingredients:
3 cups lukewarm water
1 1/2 tbsp yeast
1 1/2 tbsp coarse salt
6 cups unbleached all purpose flour
Method:
- Warm the water to about 100 – 110 degrees F. Add yeast and salt to the water in a large mixing bowl.
- Add all the flour at once and mix with a wooden spoon or a mixer with a dough hook. No kneading is neccessary.
- When all the flour is incorporated and the mixture looks uniformly moist, transfer the dough to a lidded container.
- Allow the dough to refrigerate overnight, or at least 3 hours.
Sun-dried tomato and Parmegiano Reggiano Bread
(Makes 1 loaf)
Ingredients:
1 pound of Boule dough
Olive oil for brushing the dough
1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes in oil, drained and roughly chopped
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
Cornmeal for pizza peel
Method:
- Dust the surface of the refrigerated dough with flour and cut off a 1-pound piece. Dust the piece with more flour and quickly shape it into a ball by stretching the surface of the dough around the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter turn as you go.
- Roll out the ball into a 1/4 inch thick rectangle. Use flour to prevent the dough from sticking to your working surface.
- Brush the dough with olive oil. Scatter the sun-dried tomatoes evenly over the dough and sprinkle the cheese over the tomatoes
.
- Starting from the short end, roll the dough into a log and gently tuck the ends under to form an oval loaf.
- Allow to rest and rise on a cornmeal covered pizza peel for 1 hour.
- 20 minutes before baking time, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F, with a baking stone placed on the middle rack. Place an empty broiler tray below the rack.
- Brush the top of the loaf lightly with olive oil and slash parallel cuts across the loaf using a serrated bread knife.
- Slide the loaf directly onto the hot stone. Pour 1 cup of hot water into the broiler tray and quickly close the oven door.
- Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until deeply browned and firm.
- Allow to cool before slicing or eating.
