I baked two loaves of bread today: one this morning, and another one for dinner.
No, I didn't spend a whole day in the kitchen. Each loaf took roughly five minutes. In fact, the second one went into the oven as kind of an afterthought, since it occurred to me, between handfuls of diced potatoes and sliced carrots going into the soup pot, that freshly baked bread might be a nice addition to the evening meal.
No, I do not have a bread machine.
And no, I've never baked bread before.
While I love the idea of losing yourself up to your elbows in a soft mound of dough, the trance-like condition that the rhythmic working of the dough with your hands is supposed to induce, and especially eating the heavenly results of these labors, I cannot see myself participating in this lengthy ritual on a regular basis.
Unless something revolutionary showed up, I was doomed forever to spending six bucks on a loaf of bakery bread at Whole Foods.
Something revolutionary did show up. It arrived in my mailbox inside one of the issues of Mother Earth Magazine. A ridiculously easy technique that, well, revolutionizes home baking: five minutes a day for fresh-baked bread. I know you don't believe it. I was a skeptic myself. In fact, I waited until the next issue of the magazine arrived to see what other readers thought of this technique, before I attempted it myself.
I donned a kitchen apron, something I've only done once before while canning peaches, and enlisted my daughter's help. Strictly following the recipe, I obtained a five-quart bowl, and proceeded to stir together water, yeast, salt and copious quantities of flour.
It looked bubbly, smelled yeasty and took about five minutes.
At the end of the stirring process, my five-quart bowl looked a little more than half-full. I eyed it dubiously, and, hoping for the best, covered it loosely with another inverted bowl. My daughter and I mosied over occasionally checking on the dough's progress. It continued its upward climb along the sides of the bowl. At last, the bowl could contain it no more:
The dough erupted from the cramped confines onto the kitchen counter. Clearly, larger quarters were called for. I plundered the forgotten corners of my kitchen cupboards searching for a suitable container, and came up with a stainless pot more than twice as large as my poor five-quart bowl.
As gingerly as I could, I dumped the monstrous heap of dough into its new home:
I worried that if I handled it too roughly, I would disturb the yeast and impair its growth. Unfortunately, moving the dough gently proved impossible.
I needn't have worried. The dough took readily to the new home, and continued to rise...
... and rise ...
... and rise ...
until at last it flattened a bit, and started to collapse in the middle. I put the whole thing in the fridge for a good night's rest.
Other than stirring the dough, moving it to a larger container and then spying on it from time to time (these last two steps uncalled for by the recipe, one added by necessity, the other by curiosity), I did nothing else to it. No intimate kneading, no punching it down, no folding in halves, no covering with a damp towel.
And this morning, I scooped up a stretchy hunk of dough, and, with floured hands, quickly folded it into a ball, set it aside to rest, and popped it in the oven. There it is: a thing of beauty; the taste of heaven.
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