Category: Special techniques

Almond Bear Claws

jeff 60 Comments

bearclaw07

A couple of months ago I got a request from one of you for a recipe for bear claws. What fun, my boys absolutely love them, as much for the appearance as for the taste. There are many styles of bear claws, but this one is easy and most of all the kids will get a kick out of it.

Thank you for the requests, we want to hear what you’d like to make with all the dough. If you have an idea for a bread post, just drop us a note in the comments. It may take us a while, but we will try our hardest to make it. Read More

Olive, Garlic and Fresh Herb Focaccia on the Grill!

jeff 84 Comments

grilled-foc-011

Today promises to be 95 degrees with humidity that makes my hair as wide as it is long! In other words it is WAY too HOT to bake in my kitchen. As you’ve probably noticed, Jeff and I continue to bake all summer long and most of it happens on our gas grills. With a little experimenting we’ve discovered that you can “bake” just about anything on the BBQ, click here to see some of our other favorites! For this focaccia, which is traditionally done in the home oven with lots of olive oil drizzled on top (page 150), I used a metal pie plate to keep all the oil and toppings in place. This technique is great for indoor or outside baking.

Do you Kindle? Do you know what a Kindle is? Recently Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day became available on Kindle, which is an electronic wireless reading device, that allows you to look at books on a screen. It seems like an amazing way to carry an entire library with you all the time. I’ve never seen one and I’m very curious what you think of this concept??? If you have one, do you use it for cookbooks?

To make the focaccia, Read More

Blueberry Lemon Curd Ring

BreadIn5 57 Comments

danish ring

Many people have written in to ask about assembling the Blueberry Lemon Curd Ring from page 228. I already had a bucket of Brioche dough, and some lemons rolling around in my refrigerator, so this ring was simple to throw together. The brightness of the lemon and berries is perfect folded into the rich Brioche dough. The ring is simple enough to make on any day of the week, but so impressive that you can serve it on special occasions.

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Instant Gratification- the Indian flatbread Naan!

BreadIn5 147 Comments

Naan Indian Flatbread Recipe | Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

Also, see a video of this method for naan. The video shows an outdoor camping stove, but it works the same way inside on your gas, electric, or induction range…

This is the fastest bread in the book and naan is absolutely delicious and it takes no forethought. The traditional Indian flatbread is made in a blazing hot tandoor oven and then brushed with melted ghee (clarified butter). We assumed that most of our readers would not have a tandoor oven so we decided to make this in a cast iron pan on the stove top. We cook the dough in ghee or butter so that it has the same flavor as the traditional bread, with so much less work. This bread can be made using just about every dough in the book; spinach feta, whole wheat, master, olive, and herb–even brioche dough, which can be fried in butter, drizzled with a little maple syrup and finished it with powdered sugar. It was just like the fried dough at the State Fair and only took a couple of minutes. Read More

Baking Bread in a Closed Clay Pot (“Cloche”)– the best crust yet!

jeff 160 Comments

cover-cloche-baked-boule.jpg

So many people have asked about baking dough inside a closed cast-iron pan (see a post on that). The cast-iron pan method is based on a much older method, where bread is baked inside a closed clay pot (or “cloche,” meaning “bell” in French).  Both methods depend on trapped steam from the dough to create a perfect crust, but the clay pot has the added benefit of being porous, so moisture is trapped, but also conducted away from the surface as the bread bakes.  I tested the Sassafras brand “La Cloche” product, and I’m very impressed with the crust I’m getting –take a look at the picture above; this crust is thin and shatters when broken (the burned bits are perfect in artisan loaves; that’s how you know you’ve baked long enough).  Keep in mind that these crust results are hard to re-create with loaves very high in whole wheat (because of oils in the wheat’s germ).  The bread above is about 15% whole grains– it’s a light version of the Peasant Loaf on page 46 of the book.  Whole grain breads perform beautifully in “La Cloche,” but the crust tends to be softer and thicker.

For crust aficionados, I think the “La Cloche” results are a little better than what I get inside closed cast-iron.  I didn’t put these two methods in our first book, because we wanted to keep things as simple as possible.  But with results like these, they’re going into he second one (publication date is 10/13/09)! Read More

Baking Bread in a Dutch Oven!

BreadIn5 563 Comments

dutch oven bread

Here is yet another way to get a fabulous crust on your bread without using any steam in the oven. An unsophisticated disposable lasagna pan is an option but here’s another idea. Baking bread in a Dutch oven is a very old idea. All the iron-pot methods are based on the old European technique of baking inside a closed clay pot. Most people don’t have one of those, but enameled cast-iron pots are readily available—and they trap all of the internal moisture in the dough and that creates the steam you need to get a crisp and shiny crust. It really is fantastic and it works perfectly with our stored doughs from the book. Read More

Fresh Pita – the fastest bread in the land!

BreadIn5 102 Comments

pita

(photo by Mark Luinenburg)

Pita bread is a simple, unadorned flatbread that dates back to antiquity. You simply roll out your favorite non-enriched dough as thin as possible and bake it on a hot stone. There is no resting time or other ingredients to prepare, so you can have it in a matter of moments. Despite its simplicity pita is one of the tastiest breads around. Perhaps it is all of the surface area and the soft chewy crumb? During the winter, this is great on a hot baking stone in the oven (without steam), but in the summer you can do it on the grill, directly on the grate.

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Great Crust without the Steam!

BreadIn5 191 Comments

without steam

For what ever reason some ovens just don’t trap steam very well. This is true of professional equipment, but some home ovens behave this was as well. The reason to care…if you don’t trap steam in the oven for the first 10 minutes of baking you will end up with a dull, lackluster crust, even if you use a good baking stone (which is essential for great free-form loaves).

There are a couple different ways to achieve this, including the tried and true misting bottle. You use a food grade spray bottle and mist the bread every minute for the first 10 minutes. This requires you to stick close to the oven and open the door repeatedly to spray. A bit more work than I’m generally willing to do, but it will give you a nice result. Here is a much easier way: Read More

Bacon and Eggs in Toast!

jeff 149 Comments

eggs in toast

It is the quintessential breakfast combination; bacon, eggs and toast. But I had no bread to make toast (seems hard to believe, but true). In a desperate race to get my kids to school on time I decided to bake the eggs right into the dough. Not only was it fast, but my kids may never settle for regular eggs and toast again. I threw a bit of Emmenthaler cheese and bacon into the mix and 15 minutes later breakfast was ready!

Jeff and I finished up the manuscript for book #2 yesterday. We are thrilled to be done with this first phase of the book. Now we look forward to months of testing recipes, editing copy, testing recipe and editing more copy! First we will CELEBRATE! 🙂

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