Sometimes Less is More

on Saturday, April 10, 2010

I've tried to love it.


I worked, I slaved, I spent days preparing sponges/poolish, dousing my sourdough starter with pineapple juice, taking dough temperatures, checking my gluten to see if it made a windowpane; I rested dough on couches of dusted kitchen towels, I weighed ingredients precisely by grams and ounces, and after a few exercises in painful precision, I have come to a sad conclusion:

Peter Reinhart's "Bread Baker's Apprentice" may be beautiful bread porn, and may be worth the effort for others, but it is not for me.

I've gone back to an old standby... "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day", and the results are good enough that I don't feel the need to do three plus stage doughs, or mess about with sourdough starters from scratch.

I talked to friend with two kids, who said that while he loved the idea of getting complicated, he was too busy to find it worth doing more than the five minute method of mixing dough, and then just taking it ready to rock from the fridge to a peel and into the oven.

You can just have anything you want anytime you want it, with little to no effort.

The results are great. You can buy it here. You won't be sorry.