Sometimes Cooking Local Means Baking at Home

Sometimes, you need (or want) a food that just isn't local. A few times a year, I get a hankering for guacamole. Every few months I'll buy orange juice, or a mango, or spicy marinated olives. There's nothing wrong with that (at least in my mind). I figure, as long as the majority of my food comes from Washington farms, I'm doing pretty well.

One of those foods that is nearly impossible to get 100% local is fresh baked bread. Sure, you can get locally baked bread. Tall Grass and Essential are two of my favorite bakeries. But there are very few breads around that are made from 100% local ingredients. In fact, I've yet to find one. There are a few sources of local flour (including Bluebird Grain Farms, which has Emmer flour and white flour), but I haven't found a local source for yeast yet (though I know they exist so stay tuned). So when I want bread, I try to make my own as much as I can.

But do you know the problem with freshly baked bread? It takes a very long time. I get home from work around 7pm. If I want bread for dinner, I have to spend twenty minutes mixing it up, an hour letting it rise, a few minutes punching it down, and then another half hour letting it rise. Not to mention the 40 minutes I'll spend baking it. Adding that all up, it's between 2.5 and 3 hours from lukewarm water and yeast to bread.

So when I saw a new cookbook, Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, I was intrigued. 5 minutes? Can I really spend 5 minutes a day and get freshly baked bread?

Well, as it turns out, you can't. It takes a little more than 5 minutes. However, this book does help you have freshly baked bread at a reasonable hour on a weeknight, even if you do get home at 7pm.

I was fortunate enough to not only get a copy of this cookbook, but to be able to interview the cookbook authors just the other day. Over the next three weeks, I'll introduce you to some of their recipes so that you can have freshly baked bread at home too - whenever you want.

Soon, I hope to even be able to find local sources for many of their recommended ingredients, so you can have truly local bread any night you want.

Basic Bread

Makes 4 loaves

• 3 cups lukewarm water
• 1.5 Tbsp yeast
• 1.5 Tbsp kosher salt
• 6.5 cups all purpose flour
• Cornmeal

1. Make sure the water is right around 100 degrees.
2. Mix the water, yeast, and salt in a large bowl. No need to proof the yeast, just mix it up.
3. Add the flour and mix until the mixture looks uniform.
4. Cover (not airtight).
5. Let the mixture stand on the counter for anywhere from 2-5 hours if you can, or slide it directly into the fridge.
6. You can store the mix (in the bowl in the fridge) for up to 2 weeks.
7. When you want to bake bread, take the bowl out and with a serrated knife, cut off about a quarter of the dough.
8. Cloak the dough by folding it over onto itself. Basically you're going to take the sides of the dough and fold them under the dough ball.
9. Place the dough ball on a pizza peel that has been sprinkled with a good handful of cornmeal.
10. After it has risen for 20 minutes, place your pizza stone in the oven and preheat the oven to 450.
11. Place the bottom half of your broiler pan in the oven as well, on a shelf under the pizza stone.
12. After 20 more minutes, slide the risen dough onto the pizza stone.
13. Take a cup of hot water and pour into the broiler pan.
14. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the dough is nice and golden brown.
15. Serve and enjoy.

Patricia's Notes: Freshly baked bread is one of my weaknesses. I love it slathered with butter. This bread did not disappoint. While it didn't appear to rise much on the counter, it did rise nicely in the oven. The dough can be a little hard to work with when you first take the bowl out of the fridge, so spread some extra flour on your hands first. So while it's not really 5 minute bread, you can have fresh bread from fridge to mouth in 70 minutes. Not bad for a weeknight.

Stay tuned for another bonus bread recipe next week, as well as some more information about this interesting technique. Come back in two weeks for a great interview with the cookbook authors!

 

Topics: Bread