Thanks to our friends Matt and Genna, we received the book Artisan Bread in 5 minutes. We made our first loaf last weekend (a Deli Rye), and the results are to the right. It took about 20 minutes to make the dough, plus 2 hours to rise, and then 30 minutes to bake. You can keep the dough in your fridge for up to 15 days. Then you just pull out a grapefruit-sized chunk anytime you want fresh oven-baked bread. I sound like an infomercial.
One drawback of moving from Brooklyn to Ithaca was the drop in culinary choices. (Although I did hear a stat that Ithaca has more restaurants per capita than NYC). But while we’re not going to new restaurants every weekend, we are spending a lot more time in the kitchen. And once you’ve worn through the recipes your mother passed down, you start to get creative. And with that creativity, comes some gratifying evenings at the dinner table. And at the end of the day, a great meal crafted from your own hands is more rewarding than one you paid someone else to put together. I’m pretty sure that’s a universal law. Like gravity. I wonder if Newton baked his own bread?



4 comments
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April 17, 2010 at 7:02 am
Genna
Beautiful!!! Nice job!
April 17, 2010 at 3:41 pm
Karin
Nice entry. Well written. And, the bread WAS delicious. I was a fortunate receiver of one of the grapefruit-size chunk, but you could have at least said “great recipes passed down from your mother”….
April 20, 2010 at 8:15 am
Jesse Schmal
Those are some awesome photos of the process, dude. “Dough.” “Bread.” Oh baby.
If you want a wild night at home with the family, I’ve got 2 words:
Homemade.
Tortillas.
April 21, 2010 at 7:53 pm
ethanash
Oh, I like the way you think. Look out kitchen!