{"id":993,"date":"2020-02-24T08:30:42","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T13:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/?p=993"},"modified":"2020-02-23T23:29:28","modified_gmt":"2020-02-24T04:29:28","slug":"get-that-bread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/2020\/02\/get-that-bread\/","title":{"rendered":"Get that bread"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Quite some time ago, I committed to combining my professional blog posts here with the ones I make about crafts<\/a> and recipes<\/a> and things like that. And yet, I sometimes go multiple years without making a craft post, when I never ever go multiple years without crafting something<\/em>. I’m just bad about documenting it, not only here, but on Ravelry<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s easier when I feel like I have something worth documenting! In this case, I want to tell you about my take on the New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day<\/a> recipe. It’s worth saying at the outset: they make their main recipe available online<\/a> without the purchase of the book. There are enough useful tips and other recipes in the book that I still found the new edition worth buying (at Half Price Books, admittedly), on top of the original I already had, but your mileage may vary. Also worth saying: they tell you how to do their bread in a Dutch oven online<\/a>, too. (And not<\/em>, that I’ve found, in any of their books.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The things I want to add to the discussion: 1) a couple of hacks for people who, like me, do not have a kitchen fan that vents outdoors (I promise I’ll explain why this matters) and who like at least a little bit of whole grain in their bread, plus 2) photos of some of the steps they don’t show as clearly in the book, that I felt like I had to figure out on my own. I’m still experimenting (always!), but I have a base recipe\/approach that I like and that I think is good enough to share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My approach<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first part of the recipe starts their way: if it isn’t your first batch, keep back just a little bit of dough from the previous batch (a couple of ounces is all I bother with), to help it develop the sourdoughy flavor more quickly, and add it to your 3 cups of ~100 degree F water, 1Tbsp of yeast, and 1Tbsp of Kosher salt. Like they say, you’ll want 32 ounces of flour, but here’s the mix I use: 10-12 ounces of whole grain (my last batch was 4 ounces of oat flour and 9 ounces of King Arthur whole wheat flour) and the rest is King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose flour. The brand of the white flour is only important if you’re going to put in more than, oh, maybe about a cup of whole grain (and especially if any of it is non-gluten-containing, like oat): King Arthur has a fairly high gluten content, enough that you can get a nicely-textured bread, even with a third of your flour being whole wheat, without requiring any additives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Side note about the mixing process: for anyone reading this who, like me, has hand or shoulder pain, a KitchenAid stand mixer (not the very smallest one, but yes, their standard model) with the paddle (not<\/em> the dough hook!) will mix all of it up really nicely. My mixer was a hand-me-down from my mom, who didn’t use it anymore, and even if I only ever use it for bread, it’s worth the counter space! (I use it for other things, though.) I made the previous version of this recipe for over a year, back when I lived in Alaska, but I eventually stopped because I dreaded the process of mixing the dough by hand. The mixer has been a game changer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once it’s all mixed, you put the dough into a large container (if it’s designed to be airtight, use a nail to poke a hole in the top of the container, or else leave the lid loose so that gases can escape) and let it rise until it flattens out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n