From the library: The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois

A change of pace from my usual reading. . .

A couple years ago, I tried some recipes from the original “5 minute” book, and wasn’t too thrilled, but I’ve gone back and given this one a try.

The background:  Hertzberg is a scientist and amateur baker who collaborated with Francois on a simplified “artisan” bread-baking method.  The basic concept:  a very wet dough, with a batter-like consistency, doesn’t need kneading, and can be mixed in bulk and baked in batches.  So their “five minutes a day” is based on average active work time if you mix up a large batch of dough/batter, store it in the fridge, and take out portions each day, shape, and bake — for instance, during the course of getting ready in the morning.  The typically “artisan” bread crust is obtained with steam in the oven, with various techniques.

Nothing here is novel — my second cookbook, dating from 1991, includes a no-knead recipe.  The concept of steam is also not new.  The idea of storing dough is not extraordinary.  But they put it all together well.

They’ve also improved on the first book — added weights to the volume (cup) measures, and cut down on the salt. 

At this point I’ve only made the basic white bread recipe and the challah recipe, both in the form of rolls, and was pretty pleased with them, and, as long as you’re hanging out around the house, the wait times for rising and resting and baking aren’t an issue.  Of course, for the “artisanal” effect of the crispy crust, you have to eat it right away rather than storing it, though the challah is a soft-crust bread so it doesn’t matter.  (Challah is more or less equivalent to zopf, a German braided bread.)

Looking at the Amazon reviews, there are a lot of favorable ones and a mix of “so-and-so’s book is better” (plus a few of “it just didn’t work for me).  Would I use their recipes completely as replacements for my usual breads (e.g, bread dough in the breadmaker)?  Probably not.  But it’s a rare instance when I’m considering buying it rather than just photocopying the key pages and adding them to my recipe binder.