The Staff of Life

There was a time when I made sourdough bread every week and we stopped buying bread at the store. We got the sourdough starter in San Francisco--most likely from a touristy store in Fisherman's Wharf--and I churned out bread, cinnamon rolls, and pancakes.

I stopped (probably because college life got in the way) and didn't bake bread very much until I received some sourdough starter from the Culinary Center in Monterey. That starter was so rich, it was as if you could taste the complexity of the Pacific ocean in every bite. I took to kneading the bread in a stainless steel bowl which allowed me to use less flour and helped contain the mess. I shared the starter with others and after many loaves (and some neglect), mine eventually died. When I checked to see if any of my friends had some left, I found out theirs had died too.

I hadn't baked bread in years. Until today.

Ilona and Jeni and others discovered Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Dayand it sounded like such an unbelievable concept. Fresh, home made bread that's fast, neat, and convenient? Yeah right.

Well, it's true. Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François have made artisan bread accessible to all.

I made a batch of the basic recipe last night with regular ol' ingredients like unbleached AP flour, active dry yeast, kosher salt, and water. Tonight I took out a pound of dough, shaped it, and baked it using the Dutch oven method.


AB in 5, Dutch Oven method

It's a good thing it wasn't cool enough to cut for dinner because I might have eaten the whole loaf.

The funny thing is, when I was shaping the boule I missed kneading the dough. I thought it was too bad that this method took that step out of the process.

I'm over it.


Who needs to knead?