Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

Deadly. That's my opinion of this book. Well, if you love bread like I do, anyway. I bet I've eaten more bread in the last week than in the last month since I read this book. Do I recommend this book? Absolutely. If you want to make tasty, homemade, easy, daily bread, this is the book for you. If you want to stay slim and healthy, than I'd recommend you stay away from this book! When it comes to bread, I can't moderate. Thus, I'm taking it back to the library this week.

I did want to show you how it works. So here's Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day in pictures:

Here's the last of the mix. I mixed up the batter on Friday night. It rose on the counter for 2 hours then was transferred to the refrigerator. I made bread Friday, Saturday and today from this one mixing.

You do really need to have a few pieces of equipment. Those pieces being a pizza peel (shown with flour on top) and a bread stone in the oven.

Here's the bread sitting for 40 minutes out of the fridge on the pizza peel.

The bread goes into the oven (450 degrees) onto the stone with a pan of water above. About 10 minutes prior to being finished, I move the bread from the pizza stone to the rack above. Otherwise it isn't brown all over.

After 30 minutes, here's the finished product. I highly recommend farm fresh butter to complete the meal.

Putting Up....again

My mother froze corn every year of my life. In fact, she is still doing it. She makes the BEST chicken corn soup EVER with the frozen corn. To be honest, I refuse to eat corn that comes from the grocery store. It has to be fresh or frozen fresh or I'm leavin' it behind. That being said, I love a warm cup of soup for lunch during the winter and decided to get my corn on the cob this morning. 

Here's Mike helping me husk. We probably should have done this outside but it didn't make too much of a mess in the sunroom. The husks went right into the compost.

Yummy close up. I bought 4 dozen ears.

 I realized that my kitchen is perfectly set up for blanching the corn. Above you can see the pots that are not quite boiling and the corn ready to be added.

 Turn to the middle and we have two sinks full of ice water (Mike was on the ice run when I took the photo).

 Finally, the draining section to the right.

 We set up the card table just outside to cut the corn off the cob. I wanted to get a photo of Nathan and I cutting and Nolan and Mike blanching but my fingers were too messy.

Here's the bounty for the freezer. Just over 8 quarts. That'll be enough for 4 pots of chicken corn soup this winter. I wonder if that's enough?

Putting Up

What a strange phrase that is. It is, however, one used to describe preparing your food for winter when there isn't any fresh garden from which to pick.

Above you can see what we've been doing today. Nolan and Mike went to the Tomato Barn (isn't that the best thing you ever heard of? A Tomato BARN?). They used all of our homegrown large tomatoes, the tomatoes from our CSA (3 pounds) and a large box of 'maters from the Tomato Barn to make a double batch of sauce. Yum! After dinner (which was cooked on our new charcoal grill) I threw on the mass of bell peppers from the CSA. They are lovely and roasted to perfection. My good friend Connie recommended grilling them whole and throwing them in a freezer bag as is. After defrosting, peel and seed before using. What a GREAT idea! Thanks, Connie! This was the easiest ever. Since we already had the grill going, it was a cinch to add the peppers when the food was finished. 


Finally, I mixed up a batch of bread dough from the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Of course, this is a library book. According to this book, you can mix up a pot of bread dough in minutes, let it sit on the counter for 2 hours, put it in the fridge and cut a loaf's  worth everyday for fresh bread. Each day the bit you cut off needs to sit on the counter for 20 minutes and then bake for another 20. Wow. I'll keep you posted on how it turns out. It is sitting on my counter at the moment.


Just when I think I can't be a stay at home mom and work full time I have days that so many things get accomplished. Did I mention I cut both my boys hair tonight, too? That's at least a $40 savings. I'm glad we brought those boys up right. They sure do make life easy now that they are teens. 


I'm off for an ice cream run. We're eating healthy but it is summer.....gotta have some 'cream. Have a wonderful weekend. I may hit the sewing room when I get back from the store.

Weekend

We loved this little hen that welcomed us to the farm with some gentle clucking.

It's so nice of the weekend to show up every five days. It's only Saturday afternoon and I've already had a fantastic weekend. Last night Mike and I went to First Friday where we tasted delicious gourmet flat bread pizzas, met up with friends and shopped at Creative Reuse, met up with another friend and her daughter who have taken the plunge and rented space at Building Character (go Amy and Annie!) and sat down with yet another friend for a glass of wine while listening to my very talented husband play some groovy jazz. I didn't get home until almost midnight. 

One of my fabulous purchases from Creative Re-use. Silver spoons. We constantly lose spoons so to get beautiful ones like this for $1 was a bargain!

This morning I awoke with the sun (because I have no choice, my body doesn't know you can sleep if the sun is up). It being several hours prior to any other being (ok, the cats were up) in my homestead lifting their heavy eye lids, I spent a few hours sewing. The quilt blocks are arriving on the design board slowly but surely. Once a decent hour arrived, I woke the men and we traversed to the first CSA pick up of the summer: strawberry picking. Since we only paid for a 1/2 share, we could only pick one box. It was a great introduction to the farm. We walked up and down the fields after picking our berries to see if we could recognize what else was growing. I think I could identify almost everything. Our official pickup starts on Thursday. I hope to share our bounty here if I can find the time. It was a lovely morning to be out picking. The berries are small but have a powerful flavor! I haven't tasted berries this good in so long. It is truly a wonderful thing to taste something that only arrives one month out of the year. It's worth the wait.

The best strawberries ever. The photo (taken from my iPod touch) doesn't do them justice.

Tonight the boys and I will head to a ballgame and tomorrow is our Parish picnic which is always a great time. Then I have to wait five more days until the weekend comes again!