Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day

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The “black and white” pumpernickel/rye braid is a New York specialty that brings back fond memories for me.  Mark Luinenburg’s photo above is downright savory; you can almost hear the caraway seeds crunching in your mouth.  Pumpernickel is a kind of rye, and we included a whole grain version in Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which also has a rustic Bavarian-Style pumpernickel based on the same dough.  Let’s throw together the recipe for this healthy and hearty dough, plus talk about a new feature on our website:  The FAQs–Frequently Asked Questions tab…It’s simple to mix the dough for whole grain pumpernickel, just like all our doughs, same exact method as the Master Whole Grain Recipe, but with these ingredients:

2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

2 3/4 cups whole grain rye flour (most supermarket rye is whole grain)

2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon kosher salt (increase or decrease to taste)

1 1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast (or 2 packets)

1 tablespoons caramel color powder or 1/4 cup homemade liquid caramel color

1/4 cup vital wheat gluten

1 tablespoon caraway seeds

2 tablespoons molasses

4 cups lukewarm water

As I said, mixing instructions are in the link for the Master Recipe

After mixing, it sits on the counter for about 2 hours, then into the fridge for use over the next 7 days.  Tear off a piece as you need it, shape it, and then rest on the counter, covered loosely with plastic wrap, for 90 minutes.

The Bavarian style would be to rise it in a banneton (aka brotform in German) click to purchase at Amazon; instructions on using a banneton are in this link in our webite.  The result looks like this (in glorious black and white, again by Mark Luinenburg):

If you want the black and white braid, you’ll also need some plain rye dough.  One easy plain rye is our white-flour Master Recipe from the first book, but replace 1 cup of unbleached all-purpose with 1 cup of rye flour.

Make three dough strands of the same length, two rye and one pumpernickel, but make the pumpernickel strand twice as thick.  Braid them together (see the challah post for braiding instructions).  Then 90 minutes on the counter under plastic wrap.  Brush with water and sprinkle with caraway seeds if you like, then into a preheated 450 degree oven for about 30 minutes with steam (dump a cup of water into a preheated broiler tray, or just bake under an aluminum foil lasagne pan for the first 2/3’s of baking.  Loaves are done when firm and very brown.
Voila!  Let it cool completely before cutting, or it will seem underdone.

About the FAQs tab: So many people have asked us for this and I’m not sure why it took us so long to get around it.  We continue to personally answer reader questions in the “Comments” sections of our website.  But we wanted a place to put the questions that we hear over and over.  It will probably be an easier way for many of you to use the website.  Please let us know what you think.  It’s the “tab” located near the top of the website, right under the picture of the books.

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As your dough stores in the refrigerator, it might develop a uniform gray discoloration on its surface.  This is not mold and can be safely ignored– it won’t affect the final baked result.  If it becomes hard and leathery, that suggests that there’s too much air-space in your container (or that it isn’t sealed well enough).  You can decrease the effect of air that gets into the container by transferring into smaller containers as the dough is getting used up.

If you see patchy light or dark areas on your dough, whether smooth or fuzzy, that could be mold and the dough should be discarded.  You are not likely to see mold if you follow our directions for maximum storage life, and keep the dough in the refrigerator.

Return to FAQs page

This past week I got together with 3 enthusiastic bread bakers.  I’d brought two buckets of dough to work with; the master recipe from ABin5 and the gluten-free brioche from HBin5. From those two buckets we baked everything from an epi and sticky buns to flatbreads like pita, pizza and naan.  Charlie, Anne and Carole are very creative and not at all intimidated by bread baking, although they are fairly new at it. I was there to teach them about baking and yet I came away with all kinds of new ideas and inspiration. Out of a request for quick breakfast ideas to feed their kids (some of whom are on gluten-free diets) we experimented with making the gluten-free brioche into a naan. Rolled out in sugar and fried up in butter it was fantastic. The brioche cooked in this way had a crisp caramel coating with an almost pudding like interior. It was so good and easy that it got me thinking about making a more traditional version of naan with the gluten-free crusty boule dough I had left over. It was every bit as delicious as the naan made with our wheat doughs and still as quick.

I also experimented with freezing the gluten-free doughs. Several of you had wondered if this was a possibility since we only recommend refrigerating it for 5-7 days. At the bottom of this post you will see how that experiment turned out.

Gluten-Free Naan:

8-ounce piece of gluten-free crusty boule dough

1 tablespoon Ghee, clarified butter or European style butter (You can use regular butter, but you have to be careful of the butter burning. The ghee and clarified butter have a higher burning point and allow you to cook without worry of it burning.)

Brown Rice Flour for dusting the surface of the silpat and pizza peel

For the g-f dough you will need to roll the naan out on a Silicone Baking Mat that is sprinkled with brown rice flour. This method is also used for rolling out the pizza in the book.

I used a piece of dough that was about the size of my fist. This turned out to be the perfect size when fried in my 10 1/2 inch Skillet.

sprinkle the dough with a bit more rice flour and cover with a sheet of plastic wrap.

Gently pat the dough into a disk…

you may have to pat the sides to round them off.

Peel back the plastic and sprinkle with a bit more flour so that the plastic won’t stick as your roll it thinner.

Replace the plastic and roll the disk to scant 1/8-inch thick.

peel off the plastic.

Carefully transfer the dough to a Pizza Peel that is lightly coated with rice flour.

You may need to use a Dough Scraper to ease it off the silpat.

Preheat a cast iron skillet to medium heat. Melt 1 tablespoon butter and swirl it around.

Slide the dough into the hot pan.

Cover with a tightly fitting lid to trap the heat.

After about 2-3 minutes the side of the dough will be golden and the top with be bubbly, flip it over with a spatula. Cook for another 2 minutes on the other side.

I served the naan with dips I made from Suvir Saran’s Indian Home Cooking; eggplant dip with tamarind and mango chutney.

It was pure comfort food and no one knew that the naan was g-f but me.

The following is a 1-pound piece of gluten-free crustly boule dough that I froze for one week, defrosted overnight in the refrigerator and then set off to bake.

I unwrapped the defrosted dough and set it on a piece of parchment. Because it was wrapped and frozen in the right shape, I didn’t fuss with it at all before I loosely draped it with plastic and allowed it to rest on the counter for 90 minutes.

I slashed it with a serrated knife and baked it exactly how I had the original loaf.

The bread was fantastic. Great crust and amazing flavor.

The crumb was a tiny bit denser than the original loaf, but I was the only one in my family to notice this at all. I’m thrilled to report that the g-f dough freezes wonderfully.

In our method, proportionally more of the rise comes from “oven spring,” rather than “proofing.”  Traditional bread methods get more proofing rise than we do.  Proofing is the time that the shaped loaf spends just sitting and waiting for the oven.  Oven spring is the sudden expansion of gasses within the pores of the loaf that occurs upon contact with the hot oven air and the stone or other hot surface that you might be using.

Don’t be surprised if you don’t see a whole lot of rise during proofing with our method. You’ll still get a nice rise during the oven spring, so long as you didn’t over-work the dough while shaping.

If you’re still not happy with the final result– if it seems to dense and under-risen, check our our “Dense Crumb” FAQ.

Return to FAQ page

Our new book has a terrific braided challah with whole wheat and wheat germ, and I’ve been playing with a variation that includes cranberries and orange zest.  This same challah recipe lends itself to many other holiday traditions as well, forming the basis in our book for Scandinavian Christmas breads like Pulla and Julekage.  It’s really just a lightly enriched yeast dough that is very, very versatile.  The recipe……is quite easy, like everything in our book.  The main difference between this challah and the white challah from our first book is the ingredients list (lots of whole grains), plus the fact that you need to mix in vital wheat gluten with the dry ingredients first, in order to prevent clumping.  Vital wheat gluten is a crucial ingredient for our stored whole grain doughs– we found that unlike white doughs from the first book, they just didn’t store well without it.  So here goes:

5 cups whole wheat flour

3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1/4 cup wheat germ

1 1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast (2 packets)

1 tablespoon kosher salt

1/4 cup vital wheat gluten

3/4 cup dried sweetened cranberries (”craisins”)

Zest from 1 orange, scraped off with a microzester)

3 cups lukewarm water

1/4 cup neutral-flavored oil, melted butter, or melted zero trans fat, zero hydrogenated oil margarine

1/2 cup honey

3 large eggs

Egg wash (1 egg lightly blended with 1 tablespoon water)

Whisk together the flours, wheat germ, yeast, salt, vital wheat gluten in a 5-quart bowl, or a lidded (not airtight food container.  Drop in the cranberries and orange zest.  Add the liquid ingredients and stir them together with a spoon, or use a 14-cup food processor or heavy-duty stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.  Allow the dough to rest and rise at room temperature for about 2 hours, until it slows down its rising or begins to collapse. 

Now follow the directions for challah at http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/?p=360, but probably skip the seeds– I don’t think they go with cranberries and orange.  You can use some additional orange zest instead; just sprinkle it on after brushing with egg wash.   Baking time is 30 to 35 minutes at 350 degrees F (use an oven thermometer).  This recipe makes five pounds of dough; make tonight’s loaf a one-pounder and store the rest for up to five days in the fridge, using pieces of dough as needed.  Or, store up to 2 weeks in the freezer— freeze in one-pound portions.

Enjoy!  …and follow us on Twitter for updates and recipe alerts.

When Jeff and I set off to write HBin5 we knew it would include gluten-free recipes. It was the #2 request from our readers of ABin5, more of a plea than a request. The options for buying gluten-free bread are both unsatisfying and expensive, two qualities we try to avoid. We wanted to create wonderful bread that anyone, celiac or not, would want to eat. Along the way we learned a lot about baking with flours that don’t have gluten, which is what gives wheat breads their desired texture and ability to rise. It took several failed attempts, some sleepless nights and ultimately the advice of experienced gluten-free chef Shauna from Gluten Free Girl before we landed what we think is a dynamite crusty loaf, that just happens to be gluten-free.

Several readers have asked about our olive oil dough on page 238. While the Crusty Boule has a chewy and toothsome texture, the bread made with the olive oil dough has a much lighter, almost fluffy interior. Replace the neutral flavored oil in the Crusty Boule recipe with olive oil if you prefer the texture of that loaf. They are both wonderful and give you fantastic options for free form loaves, sandwich breads, pizzas and even crackers. You will find all of these, plus many other gluten-free breads and awesome sticky buns in Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

For those of you who are celiac or just baking for someone who is you will find all of the directions and tips for handling gluten-free dough below. It is just as easy as our other recipes, but requires slightly different techniques and a new list of ingredients.

Gluten-Free Crusty Boule

Makes enough dough for at least four 1-pound loaves

2 cups Brown Rice Flour

1 1/2 cups Sorghum Flour

3 cups Tapioca Flour (also called tapioca starch)

2 tablespoons yeast (can be reduced but you will have to increase the rise time)

1 tablespoon kosher salt (increase or decrease to taste)

2 tablespoons Xanthan Gum

2 2/3 cups lukewarm water

4 large eggs, whisked together

1/3 cup neutral-flavored oil or olive oil

2 tablespoons honey or sugar

Mixing and storing the dough: Whisk together the flours, yeast, salt and xanthan gum in a 5-quart lidded Round Food Storage Container. Combine the oil, honey and water, set aside.

Dump the eggs into the dry ingredients and then stir while you pour in about 1/3 of the oil and water. Unlike our wheat doughs we do not add all of the liquid at once and stir. If you do that it will result in a lumpy dough.

continue to stir while you pour in another 1/3 of the liquid.

The dough will start to come together in a thick dough. Add the final 1/3 of liquid and

stir until the dough is nice and smooth. Cover with the lid, but do not snap it shut. Allow it to rest on the counter for about 2 hours. Place the dough in the refrigerator and store for up to 7 days. (I have a piece in the freezer and I will report back about how that turns out once I defrost it and bake it up. Stay tuned.)

On baking day take the bucket from the refrigerator. The dough will be quite fluffy still and you want to try not to handle the dough too much. Just like our other doughs the trick is to keep as much of the air bubbles in tact as possible.

Use wet hands to remove 1-pound (grapefruit-size) piece of dough from the bucket.

The dough will be quite scraggly when you take it out, just place it on a piece of parchment paper.

Use wet hands to smooth out the surface of the dough.

This may take dipping your hands in the water a few times…

to get a nice shape.

Cover loosely with plastic wrap and allow to rest on the counter for about 90 minutes. If your kitchen is very warm you may only need about 75 minutes.

30 minutes before baking time preheat the oven with a 5 1/2 quart Dutch Oven in it to 500 degrees. Be sure it is fitted with a metal Replacement Knob, the original plastic knobs can only be heated to about 400 degrees. To find directions for baking on a stone see page 237 of HBin5.

The dough will not have grown much while resting, but it will seem a little bit puffier. Use a serrated knife to cut slashes in the dough.

Remove the pot from the oven and take off the lid.

Lift the bread on the parchment and VERY CAREFULLY lower the parchment and bread into the pot, replace the lid onto the pot. Return to the oven and bake for 20 minutes. After the 20 minutes remove the lid, turn the heat down to 450 and bake for an additional 15 minutes.

Once the bread is done baking remove it from the pot using a spatula.

Allow the bread to cool completely before eating or the center may seem gummy.

The loaf is also wonderful toasted and served with butter and marmalade. Enjoy!

To read an interview Jeff and I did about the gluten-free chapter of HBin5 visit Wasabimon.

We try to make only enough bread to eat on the same day, but if you have leftovers, the best way to store homemade bread is unwrapped and cut-side down on a non-porous surface like a plate.  This preserves the crust a little more than if you put it into a plastic bag, which softens the crust very quickly.  The exception is pita bread, which is soft-crusted in the first place and is great in a plastic bag–but wait till it cools before bagging.

Return to FAQs page

(… and a recipe for pitas from so-called “Cornell” dough).  Don’t quote me on the title, because that will probably change five times before our third book is released in late 2011.  But we know for sure that it will have pizza and flatbreads from all over the world—plus, the recipes will be complemented with soup, salad, and dip recipes so that these pizzas and flatbreads become the basis of an entire five-minute meal.  As in all our books, the idea is to do all the mixing once, but serve many times from a big batch.  That’s a perfect fit for soups and dips (and you can get a salad ready while your bread’s in the oven).

Turns out that you can make great flatbreads (like the pitas above) using a modification of our Whole Grain Master Recipe (that original appears in Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day).  The modification was inspired by ”Cornell Bread,” a bread baked from soy-enriched dough originally developed as a vegetarian protein source during World War II.  Many of you have asked us about whether our recipes work with some soy flour— they do..

In the 1940’s, war rationing took hold, and panicky parents began to wonder whether their families were going to be able to meet nutritional needs, especially those with growing children. Back then, most Americans believed that you couldn’t be healthy without eating meat, which was one of the most strictly rationed goods.

Money was also tight; between the ration stamps and dwindling income, Cornell University nutrition professor Clive McKay was motivated to develop a high-protein dough that baked into what became known as “Cornell Bread.” To replace the protein and nutrition people were missing from meat, McKay added non-fat dry milk, wheat germ, and soy flour.  Along with Victory Gardens, “Cornell Bread” was promoted to dutiful families as a way to stretch budgets at a time of national emergency.

Here’s what blows my mind about Cornell Bread: the original is made almost entirely from white flour! McKay understood that Americans still hadn’t embraced the nutritional value (and good taste) of whole grains. White bread was still viewed as the pinnacle of developed bread-cuisine, and he needed something that would be embraced by everyone.

When I saw the original recipe for Cornell Bread, I was struck by how much skim milk powder, wheat germ, and soy flour was needed to make white bread more nutritious. I decided to use McKay’s ideas to create a super-fast, nutritious pita bread, but start with more whole grains so I wouldn’t need as much soy and milk powder.

The Master Recipe in our second book is based mostly on whole wheat flour and other inexpensive ingredients, so I used that as a nutritious and economical basis for Cornell pitas. Because whole wheat is so much more nutritious in the first place, I felt comfortable decreasing the wheat germ, soy flour, and skim milk, letting the grain flavors shine through.

And like all our recipes, stored dough is the key for busy families: if you have the dough mixed and ready to go every day, whenever you need it, you’ll make your own bread as often as you like.

Best news of all: all the ingredients for a four quarter-pound pitas cost less than 70 cents!  When you do the math, you’ll see what I mean. Remember that the full batch makes enough dough for over sixteen pita breads. Buy your yeast in bulk or in 3-pound packages to realize the most savings. When you’re done with this quick and inexpensive recipe, you’ll have 4⅓ pounds of dough that will develop lovely sourdough flavors over its 5 days of storage. With our method, you just pull dough out of the storage container as you need it. Because that recipe has no milk, it can be stored for 14 days in the refrigerator. In addition, we go through the steps for forming loaf-shaped breads (Cornell dough can be used similarly).  As you look over this recipe, you’ll also find pictures and instructions from our other pita bread postings (click here).  Or, here, for Turkish-style pita.  And here’s a version done over a hot grill (click here). 

2.  Add the water and mix with a spoon to form a wet dough.　 Cover loosely (leave lid open a crack) and allow to rise for two hours at room temperature.　 NEVER PUNCH DOWN　or intentionally deflate.　 The dough will rise and then begin to collapse.　 Refrigerate and use over the next 5 days, tearing off quarter-pound lumps for pitas as you need them, or grapefruit-sized balls if you want to make a loaf bread (see end of recipe for instructions on loaf breads). The dough can be used immediately after the two-hour rise but is easier to handle when cold.

3.  On baking day, pre-heat the oven to 500 degrees for 30 minutes, with a baking or pizza stone on any shelf in the oven. If you don’t have a stone, a cast-iron pan works well.

4.  Cut off a peach-sized piece of dough (about a quarter-pound), using a serrated knife or kitchen shears. Quickly shape into a ball by pulling the top around to the bottom while rotating quarter-turns as you go.　 DON’T KNEAD or otherwise overhandle—you don’t want to knock gas out of the dough. Place the dough on a pizza peel or wood cutting board (preferably with a handle). Using a rolling pin and dusting with flour, roll out in a circle-shape to a thickness of 1/8-inch. Use enough flour so the dough doesn’t stick to the board.

5.  Just before baking, use a pastry brush to paint the top with water and sprinkle with seed mixture.　 Slide the bread onto the pre-heated stone or cookie sheet and bake for about 5 to 7 minutes and bread is just beginning to brown. Whole grain pitas don’t puff quite as much as white pitas.

6.  Wrap with a clean cotton towel for the softest, most authentic result.  Allow to cool inside the towel.

7.  Split open with a fork and enjoy as a sandwich bread or with dips.

Thank you Jennifer for the use of your wonderful video!

Click here for the recipe.