More Goodies from "Artisan Bread"

I'm definitely going to buy the Artisan Bread book! I made sticky pecan rolls this morning for Easter brunch and herb dinner rolls for Easter dinner!  I'm channeling my inner Martha today...

Book Review: "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day"

A friend recently saw my "bread fail" post and recommended that I check out this book: "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day". The approach is very simple. It consists of making a large batch of bread dough (enough for four loaves) and refrigerating the dough. According to the authors, the dough stays good in the fridge for two weeks.  When you have time to make a loaf of bread, you can just cut some of the dough off the large batch of dough sitting in your fridge and bake it!

The book has a "master" recipe for simple loaves, which I'm starting with, and then a lot of other great sounding bread with nuts, fruit, and herbs added. There is a short video on Amazon.com with the authors showing their basic recipe, which you can watch here if you want to give it a try.

I'll do a follow-up with a picture after I bake some bread!


Success!  Not bad for a first try!!

Bread Fail

I tried out some bread yesterday and I got a pretty bad result. The bread is edible but it is totally boring, dense, and flavorless.  It was milk bread--which my cookbook told me was "easy". It wasn't difficult but the other recipes don't sound like much more work and  I think my next bread attempt will be something that will give a bigger payoff for my work.  I'm eyeing a rustic french bread recipe.  The issue with these recipes is the multiple rounds of rising time require you to be hanging around the house most of the day.  I'm thinking it might be a good thing to try the next day I work from home because each step takes only a few minutes with hours of waiting in between.

In any case, I got to try out the dough hook on my kitchenaid...and for now I'll try to remember that practice makes perfect. :)

Apple Banana Bread

I made some deeelicious looking banana bread today.  I love banana bread because it uses food that might be a tad too ripe to enjoy fresh.

I didn't have quite enough overripe bananas so I substituted applesauce for the rest of the bananas.  If the smell is any indication...we're in for a real treat :)