Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

This post is really more of a pitch for a new favorite cookbook than it is a recipe. But I'll include a recipe below.

A few months ago our friends Steve and Laura stopped by late one evening. They brought with them the most stunning loaf of bread. They related how some friends had taught them to make the bread using the book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

Being the frugal and conservative soul that I am, I found the book at the library and tried it out. It was instant love. Our family loves homemade bread, and we have long dreamed of making the kind of bread you find in Italian bakeries. This book proved just the ticket.

I've settled into a couple of favorite recipes, although I'm sure I'll eventually try others. For the most part, this book lives up to its title: you can mix up the bread, let it raise for a couple of hours, and then either bake it immediately or store it in the fridge for use a few days later. Or, since the recipe makes a large quantity even by our family's standards, you can do both. I often make an initial batch on Sunday and then bake the rest later in the week. Here's what the pre-baked product looks like:

And yes, having a pizza peel and a pizza stone really helps.

To be clear, I ordered the book through Amazon not long after it was due at the library. The recipe below is for peasant bread. In the book it's listed as roasted garlic potato bread; I made it with roasted garlic the first time, but wasn't awed by the results. Now I make it without and (gasp!) use instant potatoes. 

 Roasted Garlic Potato Bread
From Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day
By Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois

3 cups lukewarm water
1 1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons Kosher salt
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup mashed potato
6 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (I confess that I usually use the pure white stuff)
Cornmeal for the pizza peel

1. Mix the yeast, salt, sugar and mashed potatoes with the water in a 5-quart bowl or a lidded (not airtight) food container.

2. Mix in the flour without kneading, using a spoon or a 14-cup capacity food processor with dough attachment, or a heavy-duty stand mixer (with dough hook). If you're not using a machine, you may need to use wet hands to incorporate the last bit of flour.

3. Cover (not airtight), and allow to rest at room temperature until the dough rises and collapses or flattens on top, approximately 2 hours.

4. The dough can be used immediately after the initial rise, though it is easier to handle when cold. Refrigerate in a lidded (not airtight) container and use over the next 7 days.

5. On baking day, dust the surface of the refrigerated dough with flour and cut off a 1-pound (grapefruit size) piece. Dust the piece with more flour adn quickly shape it into a ball by stretching the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go. Allow to rest and rise on a cornmeal-covered pizza peel for 1 hour (or just 40 minutes if you're using fresh, un-refrigerated dough).

6. Twenty minutes before baking time, pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees with a baking stone placed on the middle rack of the oven. Place a broiler tray for water on any other shelf that won't interfere with the rising bread.

7. Sprinkle the loaf liberally with flour and slash a cross, "scallop," or tic-tac-toe pattern into the top, using a serrated bread knife. Leave the flour in place for baking; tap some of it off before eating.

8. Slide the loaf directly onto the hot stone. Pour 1 cup of hot tap water into the broiler tray, and quickly close the oven door. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until deeply brown and firm. Smaller or larger loaves will require adjustments in baking time.

Allow to cool before slicing or eating.

Homestyle Asian Cookbook

I am well aware that we are supposed to be getting rid of some of our cookbooks. But this one was a gift, and we truly love it.

We invited one of our neighbors and her mother to come over for cooking class. This is the same neighbor who taught us how to make eggrolls. This time she (and her mother) taught us how to make chicken adobo and other wonderful Filipino dishes. To thank us for letting her slave away in our kitchen, the mother (who was here on a supposed vacation from Iowa) sent us this book. I can't tell you where to buy it; I can't find it anywhere, even on the internet. But if you can ever come up with a copy, you will be glad you did.

As the title suggests, the meals included are homestyle. They're things that an average Asian family might eat for dinner. We love the range of cuisines covered in the book. There are recipes from India. Thailand. Singapore. And of course your average Chinese and Japanese dishes as well. They are organized by type of food (soup, appetizers, salads, etc.) rather than by country, which I like. There are beautiful photos of every dish, and for those of you with an international perspective, measurements are given in both metric and English units.

If I have one criticism of the book, it's that it doesn't tell a story about every recipe (and I obviously like stories about recipes). But that particular characteristic makes it more homey for me; it's unpretentious and straightforward. These are meals you should make at home. The publisher is Bay Books. I hope you can find it.

Puzzle Cake

I'm not sure why this cake is called a puzzle cake, unless it's because of the interesting contrasting colors on top of the finished product. This came from another of our virtually unused cook books, Old Fashioned Family Cookbook, by Clarice L. Moon, published by Ideals Publishing, Corp. I believe I acquired this series as a reward for subscribing to a local newspaper. For each month I continued my subscription, I earned another cookbook in the series.

 As you might expect, the recipes in this cookbook were not incredibly novel or exciting. They are, well, traditional. As a result, I found that I already had favorites of many of the dishes included (jambalaya, for example, or tuna casserole). Others were completely unappealing (take salad dressing cake or ham loaf). I also don't love the format--few photos of the end result, and the photos aren't usually any where close to the recipe in the book. But puzzle cake looked like it had potential, so I tried it last Monday night. The result was acceptable. No one has been begging for this dessert since then, but no one turned it down, either, and most of the plates were clean when we were finished even though one of the kids came to a stark realization that dates are a dried fruit (gasp!), not the nuts she had believed them to be as we have used them in other recipes for years.

Puzzle Cake

1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed

3/4 cup softened butter

Mix together the flour, sugar and butter until crumbly. Set aside one-half of the crumb mixture. Spread remaining crumb mixture in an 8 x 12-inch pan and pat down. Bake in a 350-degree oven for ten minutes. Remove from oven and spread on Filling (see recipe below). Sprinkle reserved crumbs on top. Bake for an additional 25 minutes.

Filling
1/2 cup chopped dates
1 cup shredded coconut
1/2 cup chopped nuts
2 egg whites
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine dates, coconut and nuts. Whip egg whites until stiff and add sugar and vaniilla. Fold in the date mixture.

The dessert was good, but probably not worth keeping the cookbook over. Nevertheless, there are a couple of other basic recipes that might serve me well--like a good basic biscuit recipe or a couple of ideas for breakfast cake. Stay tuned for the final verdict.

Guide to Microwave Cooking

Guide to Microwave Cooking by Cynthia Kanneberg, Ideals Publishing Corporation, October 1978

I'm old enough to remember when most people didn't have microwaves. I don't think my family acquired one until at least late in my high school career. I remember the promise they held for making meal preparation effortless and lightning fast.

We use our microwave many times a day. We warm things up in it. We melt things. We thaw things. We even boil water. But the truth is we never really cook in it, as in prepare an entire meal or even an entire dish. And when I browsed this cookbook, on our shelf since we have no idea when, I could see why. The book includes many tantalizing recipes (orange-almond rice ring, corn and crab soup, for example), but somehow the idea of cooking them in the microwave made them seem cheap and unappetizing. I couldn't even bring myself to try them. Perhaps if the cookbook had also included stove top instructions (defeating the purpose of the book, I realize), I could have been a good sport about it.

So this book has been officially weeded. If you don't share my microwave hang up, let me know and it's yours. It's also available on Amazon for as little as $.01 used, $.89 new. Mine is a mint condition, hardcover copy that is yours for the taking if you act now.

Soft Bread Sticks

Before we move completely away from the Lion House Recipes Lite cookbook, I thought I would share this recipe from the same book, which I made as an accompaniament to the super hamburger soup. These breadsticks were a huge hit, and will no doubt be appearing regularly on our menu in the future.

These are fairly easy to prepare, although they require a little planning ahead (as with any yeast bread).

Soft Bread Sticks

2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

1 cup warm water

3 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

3 cups flour

Yellow or white corn meal

1 egg white

1 tablespoon water

Dissolve yeast in warm water in a large mixing bowl. Stir in sugar, salt, and oil. Add 2 cups of the flour and beat until smooth. Add enough remaining flour to make a soft dough. Knead on a floured surface for 6 to 8 minutes, until smooth and elastic. Spray bowl with nonstick cooking spray; place dough in bowl, turning to coat all surfaces with spray. Cover and let rise in a warm place until double in size, about 1 hour. Punch dough down and divide into 12 pieces. Roll each piece into a rope about 10 inches long. Spray a baking sheet with nonstick cooking spray and sprinkle with cornmeal. Place bread sticks one inch apart on prepared sheet. Let rise, uncovered, until double in size, about 45 minutes. Beat egg white with 1 tablespoon water; brush over bread sticks. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place a large shallow pan filled with boiling water on the lowest rack of the oven, and put the baking sheet with the bread sticks on the middle rack. Bake bread sticks for 10 minutes, brush again with egg white, and bake 5 more minutes or until golden brown. Makes 12 bread sticks.

Note: I doubled the recipe because I knew everyone at our table would want at least two breadsticks. One egg white was sufficient for both batches. As an experiment, I basted the breadsticks with butter mixed with Johnny's garlic seasoning just as they came out of the oven. It made them taste like Olive Garden breadsticks. They are also good with just butter or not basted at all (this is a "lite" cook book, after all).

The Cook Book Challenge/Super Hamburger Soup

We have a problem at our house. We are addicted to cook books. We have a special place in our kitchen for our cook book library, but it is overflowing. We have already weeded out the duplicates--cookbooks that Bob and I both had copies of when we married. But we've slowly acquired enough that there's no more room in the cook book cupboard.

You see what I mean. Some of these cookbooks have never actually been used; others have not been used for a very long time. Our challenge for the next year (or two): weed out the collection by trying recipes from each and every one of them. Those that have at least one worthwhile recipe will be kept; others will be tossed (or more likely, given away).

The first candidate is Lion House Recipes Lite by Melba Davis, published in 1996. The Lion House is a cafeteria-style comfort food restaurant in Salt Lake City. It has nostalgic value for a lot of locals, and also is known for the quality of its homestyle food. I think my sister gave me this cook book several years ago as a gift--it's a copy signed by the author, even. But it's been severely underutilized in our house.

This book may be out of print, but there are a number of copies available on Amazon for as little as $2.98 plus shipping. I tried the Super Hamburger Soup because it sounded hearty but healthy, and also because it used ingredients that we had on hand. There are a number of other recipes that I marked to try in upcoming weeks, though. So I think this book is already a keeper.

We all agreed that the soup was good, but not destined to become a family favorite. The hamburger made it a little boring. But it was delicious on a cold night and filled everyone up--not always easy to do on soup night.

Super Hamburger Soup

1 1/2 pounds extra-lean ground beef

2 onions, chopped

4 stalks celery, chopped

1 green bell pepper, chopped

2 cans (14.5 ounces) chopeed stewed tomatoes, undrained

1 can (6 ounces) tomato paste

4 cups water (I substituted beef broth because I was afraid the soup wouldn't be flavorful enough)

4 medium carrots, sliced

2 large potatoes, diced

1 can (16 ounces) corn, undrained (I substituted two cups of frozen corn)

1 can (15 ounces) red kidney beans, undrained

1 can (15 ounces) baby lima beans or garbanzos, undrained

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

2 zucchini, sliced

Cook ground beef, onions, celery, and green pepper in a large pot until meat is brown and crumbly and onion is translucent. Drain. Add tomatoes with liquid, tomato paste, water, carrots, potatoes, corn, kidney beans, lima beans or garbanzos, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer, covered, about 20 minutes. Add zucchini and cook another 10 to 15 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Makes 12 servings.

The recipe encouraged experimentation with herbs such as basil, marjoram, thyme and bay leaves in order to add more flavor; I added a little bit of each of them (well, actually quite a lot of basil), and it made for a richer soup.

Now on to the cook book challenge!