What would you say if I told you that you could save $200 a year just by making your own bread? $200 smack-a-roos that could be used for things like new tires, a utility bill,
or a splurge on a new purse? On average, a loaf of bread at my local grocery store costs around $4.50 a loaf and if you buy a loaf a week, you’ve spent $234/year.
At a cost of $.40 per loaf, making your own bread is an affordable way to save additional cash. By the end of the year, you would have only spent a little over $20 dollars.
That’s a big difference, especially for those of us being directly squeezed by this economy.
Now, I know that the first thing that pops into your mind is: that’s nice that you could save that much money, but who has the time? Who wants to deal with finicky yeast, and then knead, and knead,
and wait for dough to rise, etc? Well, I found a cookbook that has made me a believer that I could make homemade breads; great breads; breads that look like I went to a specialty baker; breads that I could make every morning if I wanted to; breads that take 5 Minutes a Day.
Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking
, by Jeff Hertzberg, M.D. and Zoe Francois has become my favorite cookbook topic of late. Anytime someone mentions cooking, I have to reference this cookbook and how it has removed my fear of baking great, flavorful breads.
I consider myself a baker as I love to bake cookies, brownies and cakes. However, the one area I was honestly scared to venture into was baking breads that required yeast, or for that matter, kneading.
When I would follow a recipe for making bread, I was never sure if the water was at the right temperature for the yeast to activate, nor how long I was supposed to knead the dough before it would become too tough.
I never knew how my breads would turn out and so I, not being a risk-taker by nature, chose to avoid that area of baking altogether.
For this article, I selected 3 of
Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day’s recipes.
The first is a basic
Boule recipe that could be used to make anything from baguettes and herbed breads to ciabatta.
The second recipe is an
Oatmeal Pumpkin Bread that is moist and delicious and great for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
The final recipe is for a
Brioche that I have used to make danishes, King Cakes, and a Cinnamon Breakfast Roll(image featured above) smothered in left over
White Chocolate Cardamom Fondue.
To be fair, the 5 minutes a day is a little misleading. The 5 minutes accounts for the time it takes to actually mix the ingredients for the bread.
Like with all yeast breads, you have to let the dough rise, but the assumption (as I have also found to be true) is that while the breads are rising, you will find things to do other than watching the bread rise.
For your first batch of
Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day
, you will probably be like me and continue to fuss and check on the rising bread. After your third batch, you realize that the technique is fool-proof. You just mix the yeast, warm water, and salt. Add any additional ingredients. Add the flour. Set it aside to rise. Refrigerate and poof, you have dough that is ready to be made into bread and each recipe provides enough dough to make at least 3 loaves of decent sized bread.
For all of these recipes, I have provided the ingredients and directions to make these recipes, but I really feel that this cookbook should be a part of your personal cookbook collection as it delves into techniques and variations that are too vast to be covered in this article. I think just trying these simple recipes will get you as hooked as I am to baking breads, not to mention, saving you enough money to pay for a day at the salon.
Happy Baking,
dGizmo