I started baking bread about 10 years ago using Carol Field’s The Italian Baker as my reference. That is where I learned about using a starter or biga to improve the flavor of my bread. The next important book in my bread baking education was The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. An essential volume for anybody serious about baking bread, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, taught me much more about the science of bread baking and introduced me to different types of starters and other pre-fermenting methods that help extract maximum flavor from the combination of flour, water and yeast.

Bread baking can be a time consuming task. Mixing, rising, shaping, and baking bread can take hours depending on the type of bread. In recent years an answer to this problem for home bakers has appeared in the person of no-knead bread recipes, like the techniques in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. These recipes cut down on the active time required to bake bread, the principle being that you make a large batch of very wet dough with minimal kneading, place it in the refrigerator to ferment, take the dough out the day you want to bake, shape, proof for forty minutes or so and bake. While the results can be very good, especially considering the amount of time and effort put in, I find the breads are not quite as good as the ones I make when I use Reinhart and Field’s formulas.

In his latest book, Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day, America’s bread guru comes through with a solution. In this book Reinhart takes the basic principles behind no-knead bread and applies them to his own formulas and techniques. The result is a sort of hybrid that, while a bit more involved than other no-knead recipes, still cuts down on active time, and results in some of the best breads you will ever make.

The book starts off with some science, talking about streamlining the baking process by replacing pre-ferments with overnight fermentation. After that the author talks about tools and ingredients then goes into some of the basic techniques that are used throughout the book such as the stretch and fold technique.

The recipes follow, starting with classic French bread, then moving to a Pain a l’Ancienne Rustic dough than can be used to make ciabatta and focaccia. I have tried many ciabatta recipes at home with varying levels of success and this is definitely my new go to recipe, my results have been consistently awesome every time. A nice open crumb, slightly sour flavor and crisp crust. There are also several pizza dough recipes, including a great Neo-Neopolitan Pizza dough that is so easy to make, you will never need to buy pre-made dough again.

The recipes I have mentioned just scratch the surface. Formulas for everything from bagels to whole wheat sourdough to chocolate croissants should be able to satisfy just about every baker’s tastes. Peter Reinhart has done it again giving us yet another indispensible resource for making excellent breads at home.

Recipe:
Neo-Neopolitan Pizza Dough

A few years back I was doing a lot of bread baking. I worked my way through a good portion of The Italian Baker by Carol Field and the Italian bread recipes from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. I made a mean Pane Pugliese. As much as I enjoyed the process and especially the results, baking bread at home is something you have to make time for and 2 children later that time is harder to find.

 

When I saw Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois in the bookstore I was intrigued but skeptical. The thought of being able to make good bread without setting aside an entire morning was pretty exciting so I decide to pick the book up. I had it sitting on my shelf for a couple of months before trying the master recipe, but I am really impressed by the results of my first attempt. 

 

The concept behind the book is making a large batch of high moisture dough (enough to make four 1-pound loaves), mixing it just enough to form the dough, no kneading.  The dough is then covered and left to rise for two hours before being stored in the refrigerator for up to 14 days. When you want to bake a loaf you cut off a piece of dough, shaping it quickly, again no kneading, and let it rest for 40 minutes. Then you pop it into the oven and bake for 30 minutes and you have hot fresh-baked bread.

 

While five minutes a day is a Barnum-esque claim (it actually refers to active time spent shaping the bread), the technique is still quite a time saver. Being able to have really good Artisan bread made in less than two hours of deciding to make it is pretty amazing. Many of the concepts used in the book are techniques that I have used before, the high moisture dough is necessary for getting that airy open crumb that is prized in breads like ciabatta. I have also retarded loaves in the refrigerator overnight before.