no kneed crusty artisan bread {learn from my mistakes}

I’ve made a lot of bread in my life, but nothing remotely fancy.

Not crusty.

Not artisan.

Not really bread my husband likes, so I end up eating all of it.

I tend to get stuck on the whole wheat bread thing.  If I’m going to make it whole wheat, it needs to be 100%.  Zero white flour.  Because it’s better for you.  BUT…. I eat white bread at restaurants, I eat it at other people’s houses, and I even eat it when I buy it to go with our cheese and wine.  I’m not going to lie, it tastes good!

Then on Monday it hit me… if I’ll buy some fancy crusty white bread, why not just make it?  Just because I’m making bread doesn’t mean it can’t be white!  And so the attempt began…

Have you ever heard of the book artisan bread in 5 minutes a day or healthy bread in 5 minutes a day?  I have the latter one (because I like to be healthy).  Well, the concept is to create a no kneed wet dough that can be refrigerated for up to 14 days.  You make a big batch of dough, so that when you want to make bread, you just cut off a piece, let it sit and then bake.  I wanted to make their master recipe to just start with the basics (and because my friend Alissa made it once when we were at their place – it rocked!).

The internet is a wonderful thing.  On the author’s website I found how to make it: master recipe for artisan bread in 5 minutes a day. I’m not going to share the recipe on here, mainly because it’s in depth and the link above is wonderful.  I am however going to show you how it turned out and tell you some mistakes of mine.

Do as it says, not as I do…

• I ran of out of white flour so I used 4.5 cups white, 1.75 whole wheat and 2 tbsp vital wheat gluten.
• Half of my yeast was expired… but it still rose a ton so that must have not mattered!
• I do not have a pizza stone like they suggest baking it on, so I just baked it on the sheet pan on parchment.  The sheet pan was not preheated in the oven.
• I also don’t have an oven thermometer like they say to use…
• Salt – use as much as they say.  I’m not sure why, but I only put like half the recommended amount of salt in.  I also used sea salt since that’s what I had on hand.
• I couldn’t find my food scale so I just guessed at how much a pound of dough was.

So after all that… how did it turn out?

Still a success!  It LOOKS crusty, although it is not.  The crust was soft.

The inside texture – perfect and soft.

The flavor?  Bland.  Again, go for the recommended amount of salt.

The husband – he ate it!  Although, he said it was bland too.

The pride –> YUP.  🙂

I still have enough dough in the fridge for 3 more loaves, so to make it taste better, I’ll add salt on top of it before it bakes, since I can’t really add it into the dough now.  Maybe some olive oil and rosemary too for a little more flavor.

While this isn’t going to become an every day bread (I need my whole grains!), it will be nice to have with salads throughout the summer months.  We ate it with salmon caesar salad.  And THAT was delicious.

Have you ever made crusty bread?  How did it turn out?  Do you follow directions better than I do?

I have always wanted to make a baguette.  I think once I master the crusty loaf, that’s my next challenge!

Happy hump day all.

Heather