As Thanksgiving rolls around the big bird and the plethora of sides and desserts we assemble to accompany it get all of the love, leaving little room for the lowly appetizer. This is truly a shame because heaven knows there’s always more time between when guests arrive and when we sit down to the Thanksgiving table than any of our stomachs would truly like. We load up our plates with grumbly bellies and low blood sugar which can lead not only to excessive overindulgence but crankiness with our fellow diners (which may happen even with full bellies and robust blood sugar so it doesn’t need any further assistance).

I submit that a properly sized and timed pre-dinner nibble bursting with fall flavors is just the primer your guests’ palates need to prepare them properly for the dinner you’ve so lovingly created.

Wow – someone pushed my alliteration button tonight.

I also submit that the Butternut Squash, Ricotta, and Sage Crostini from the October Bon Appetite is that properly sized palate primer. It is substantial enough that one or two will quell any niggling appetites and each creamy yet crunchy bite looks and tastes like fall. I initially worried that the creamy ricotta and the soft roasted squash wouldn’t have enough texture difference and the dish would be mostly mushy, but their textures are just different enough that they worked well together, particularly when combined with the crunchy crostini. Lemon zest in the ricotta brings just enough brightness to each bite that it doesn’t feel heavy.

And, as icing on the cake (or sage on the crostini), all of the elements of this nibble can be made the day before so you don’t have to add one more thing to an already busy day. It takes about 15 minutes total to assemble the finished crostini and plate them, which you can do while you enjoy a relaxing glass of bubbly (or possibly a shot if that’s more your style) in the last quiet minutes before your guests arrive.

So go ahead, buck tradition and make an appetizer for your next big Thanksgiving dinner. But not just any appetizer, this appetizer.

Queso flameado (or flaming cheese) is one of my favorite indulgent dishes. It’s nothing more than melted cheese in a cast-iron skillet with some sausage and an occasional green chile thrown in for good measure. It’s served fresh and bubbling hot to be spooned into warm tortillas. The Homesick Texan has an awesome recipe for this dish of cheese and chorizo awesomeness. Yes, I used the word awesome, or some derivation thereof, twice in that last sentence because it’s a totally appropriate usage.

The down side to queso flameado – besides the fact that you might as well just wipe it on your thighs – is that it has to be piping hot to stay ooey and gooey and melty. When it’s fresh out of the oven or off of the grill, that’s just fine. In fact, I’ve been known to serve it from a pan on the grill during an outdoor party. But, when it sits around, it starts to get stiff and not so melty, making it not the best option to sit on a table of party fare for an extended period of time.

When I was trying to come up with a way to serve queso flameado at a party without having to involve a heating element, it occurred to me that it would be great stuffed in bread, with the bread also providing the perfect vessel for transferring the cheese from plate to mouth without the need for a utensil. I put this theory to the test and voila, I offer you bread stuffed with chorizo and cheese.

Bread, cheese, and sausage. What could be better?

Recipe: Chorizo and Cheese Stuffed Bread

Details

• Difficulty: Easy
  
• Makes: 16 slices
  
• Prep Time: 20 minutes
  
• Cook Time: 25 minutes
  

Ingredients

• 1 14-16 oz. ciabatta, rustic Italian, or other rectangular loaf of bread
• 1 lb. fresh chorizo (aka Mexican chorizo)
• 5 oz. mozzarella cheese, shredded (about 1.5 c.)
• 5 oz. Monterey Jack cheese, shredded (about 1.5 c.)
• 1 Tbsp. snipped chives for garnish

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cook the chorizo in a medium skillet over medium-high heat until cooked through. Drain well on paper towels and let cool slightly.
3. While the chorizo drains and cools, hollow out the bread to create a 1 inch thick bread shell with a wide opening at the top (sort of like a brad bowl, or I suppose a bread tray). Save the bread you remove for fresh breadcrumbs.
   
4. In a medium bowl toss the mozzarella and jack cheeses with the cooked chorizo until well combined.
5. Fill the bread shell with the cheese and chorizo mixture, mounding it in the center until almost overflowing.
   
6. Place the filled bread on a rimmed baking sheet sprayed with cooking spray.
7. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the cheese is melted and the top of the bread nicely browned.
8. Remove from the oven and cut into slices.
9. Garnish with chives.

Recipe for Success

• Be sure to use fresh pork chorizo in this recipe and not cured Spanish chorizo.
• You can substitute Italian sausage in this recipe, or really any other bulk sausage you’d like. For an Italian take on this dish, use hot Italian sausage, a combination of mozzarella and provolone cheese with a bit of parmesan cheese grated on top for good measure. Garnish with chopped Italian parsley or fresh oregano.
• You could easily toss a can of drained4 oz of chopped Hatch Green Chiles (or roasted Anaheim peppers) into this dish for a little more of a kick and depth of flavor.

Weekend mornings are a bit of a conundrum for me. I enjoy making a slightly more involved breakfast that takes more than the five minutes I have in the kitchen on week days and that my family can linger over at the table. It gives us another meal together to reconnect when we’re fresh and well rested. I also like to sleep in at least one day on Sunday and can be a little slow getting out of bed, so breakfast can become brunch or even lunch if I’m not careful. In my quest to have it all, I’ve been collecting make-ahead recipes for weekend breakfasts that have the “I spent the morning in the kitchen” feel and the “I slept in” reality.

French toast is a family favorite dish and it’s a great way to use up leftover bread from earlier in the week or from my freezer stash. When I griddle up individual pieces I’m in the kitchen for a while and I’m looking at a 30-45 minute process. French toast casserole however, is mostly hands-off once it’s in the oven. I can sit on the couch and get caught up on news or blog posts while it cooks, giving me the lounging feeling I’m looking for on the weekend.

I’ve tried a variety of French toast casserole recipes, but many of them were overly sweet and had more calories than I’m interested in consuming at any sitting because of the rich egg custards. After much searching and testing, I found Ellie Krieger’s Blueberry Almond French Toast recipe and it’s become a family favorite. It uses a combination of eggs and egg whites to reduce the calorie load, along with healthy dose of fruit and nuts to improve the overall nutritional value of the dish.

• Cooking Time
  • Stated in the Recipe — 50 minutes cooking time (no prep time listed)
  • My experience – 30 minutes to prep and 45-50 minutes to cook
• My Modifications
  • I usually make the recipe with skim milk to reduce the calories even further and it’s because I have it on hand.
  • My favorite griddled French toast recipe is Ina Garten’s Challa French Toast and inspired by that I add 1 Tbsp. orange zest to Ellie’s custard recipe along with some freshly-grated nutmeg.
  • The recipe halves beautifully. I weigh the bread cubes so I don’t end up with more bread than I want or need.
  • I often change up the fruit and nuts in the dish with whatever I have on hand or what’s in season. In my favorite version, I use slivered, blanched almonds with blackberries.
• Tips and Tricks
  • This dish isn’t particularly sweet, with only a couple of teaspoons of maple syrup and a dash of brown sugar per serving, but I can live with that. A quick sprinkle of powdered sugar or some extra maple syrup on individual servings lets each person at the table make it a sweet (or not) as they would like.
  • To be sure the bread is evenly soaked I mix the custard in a large mixing bowl, dump the bread into it, and mix it with the custard thoroughly before I pour it into the baking dish and top it.
  • Leftovers reheat well. Just pop them in the microwave for 30 seconds or so and you’ll have a warm serving of French toast in no time flast.

This recipe is perfect for holiday entertaining when you have a crowd in the house to feed for breakfast or brunch. It always makes at least one appearance on my holiday menus during the fall and winter holidays. Try it for Christmas morning so you can concentrate on opening gifts while the casserole bakes. It goes particularly well with blood orange mimosas.

Blue Dahlia Bistro, one of my favorite restaurants in Austin, makes amazing open-faced sandwiches that are just the perfect lunch when I’m in the mood for something more than a typical sub. A couple of weeks ago I took my lunch break at Blue Dahlia to contemplate the recipes for my 12 Days of Easy Appetizers. While I had a chicken salad tartine, I noticed fig and ricotta sandwich on the menu and decided right then and there that I’d find a way to put that flavor combination in one of my appetizers. Then, serendipitously, my friend Stephanie, the local preserves artisan behind Confituras, added fig walnut conserves to her list of available goodies. It was as if the universe was telling me to create this dish. I decided that for a party appetizer a crostini would be a good expression of the Blue Dahlia tartine. I added a bit of prosciutto to the mix for a bit of meat and saltiness, but some fresh arugula would work as well to make this a vegetarian twist.

Recipe: Fig, Ricotta, and Prosciutto Crostini

Details

• Difficulty: Easy
  
• Makes: 24 crostini
  
• Prep Time: 15 min
  
• Cook Time: 10 min
  

Ingredients

• 1 baguette
• 3 Tbsp. Olive oil for drizzling
• 1 c. fig compote or jam
• 24 oz. whole milk ricotta
• 8 thin slices prosciutto, down the longest side into thirds for a total of 24 pieces.

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Slice the baguette into 24 ½ in. slices. Place the slices on a baking sheet and drizzle evenly with the olive oil.
3. Bake for 10 minutes or until crispy and light golden brown. Remove from the oven and let cool completely.
4. Spread each crostini with 2 tsp. of the jam then top with a Tbsp. of the ricotta cheese. Roll each piece of prosciutto into a small cylinder and place it on top of the ricotta. Serve immediately.

Recipe for Success

• Ingredient quality makes all the difference in this dish, so choose wisely. It’s also a great opportunity to showcase goodies from local artisans or even friends who gifted you a particularly tasty jam.
• You can substitute other jams for the fig compote in this recipe. Try for something on the sweeter side like a cherry preserve that can stand up to the ricotta and the prosciutto.
• You can make the toasted bread up to a day in advance but wait to assemble the crostini until 5-10 minutes before you plan to serve them so they won’t get soggy.

I love quick breads. They come together, well, quickly, and they can be a vehicle for so many different flavors. From sweet breakfast breads to savory dinner loaves, the options are almost endless. A couple of years ago I came across a recipe in Cooking Light for a basic beer cheese bread and I thought at the time that it would be a great base for a green chile cheese bread. It turns out I was right. The green chile’s trusted companions, gooey cheese and earthy cumin, come along for the ride. The beer lends a slightly bitter edge to the bread to cut through the creaminess of the cheese and the soft dough. Serve this bread with a hearty soup or on its own with a bit of honey butter. It travels well too, so it’s perfect for a potluck or a holiday party. Or, make a loaf and eat the whole thing yourself. I won’t tell anyone.

Recipe: Green Chile Cheese Beer Bread

Adapted from Basic Beer-Cheese Bread

Details

• Difficulty: Easy
• Makes: 16 slices
• Prep Time: 20 minutes
• Cook Time: 1 hour

Ingredients

• Cooking spray
• 4 oz. hot green chilies, chopped (about ½ c.)
• 1 Tbsp. olive oil
• ¼ c. diced shallot
• ½ tsp. black pepper
• ¾ tsp. ground cumin
• 2 Tbsp. honey
• 13.5 oz. all purpose flour (about 3 c.)
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 oz. Monterey Jack cheese, shredded (about ½ c.)
• 2 oz. manchego cheese, shredded (about ½ c.)
• 12 oz. lager-style Mexican beer such as Dos Equis

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Spray a 9 x 13 loaf pan with cooking spray.
2. Place the green chilies in a double layer of paper towels and squeeze to remove as much moister as possible.
3. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the shallot and cook for five minutes or until tender but not brown.
4. Add the black pepper, cumin, honey, and chilies to the pan and stir to combine. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside.
5. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl and whisk to combine.
6. Add the onion and chile mixture, cheeses, and beer to the flour mixture and stir just until the ingredients are combined, careful not to over-mix.
7. Spoon the mixture into the prepared loaf pan. Bake for an hour or until a tester inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.
8. Cool the loaf in the pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes then remove it from the pan and cool completely on the rack.

Recipe for Success

• You can use mild chilies in this recipe if you’d like, but there’s enough going on with the bread and the cheese to help balance out the heat of warmer chilies.
• The final batter is very thick; resist the urge to over-mix it or the final bread will be tough.
• The recipe doubles beautifully and is great for gifting. Take a loaf to a potluck or to the office to make your co-workers happy.

Slow Cooker Herbed Pork Sandwiches

[Jump right to the recipes: Cinnamon Toast & Slow Cooker Herbed Pork Sandwiches]

I’m happy to report that in January I stuck with my 2010 culinary resolution to learn how to bake bread. A couple of weeks ago I shared with you my first foray into this adventure: making the master recipe from Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois book Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. My experiences (experiments?) proved that indeed homemade bread is possible with just a few minutes active effort at any given time. I was generally happy with my results and with the encouragement of my family I’ve persevered. I continue to be well-supported by the baking group so wonderfully organized by Michelle from Big Black Dogs. In short – I’m hooked!

Soft Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread*

The baking group’s second assignment was to make the Soft Whole What Sandwich Bread recipe and turn out three different creations:

• A loaf of bread baked in a traditional loaf pan
• Hot dog or hamburger buns
• Apple strudel bread

I’m happy to report that I made all three different applications of the dough and had a thoroughly fun time with each. Thus far this dough is my favorite to make, work with, and eat.

*As a reminder, all of the bread recipes the baking group is following can be found in Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. We’ve agreed not to republish them online but you can pick up a copy of the book for less than $20. Also, I’ll be giving a copy of the book away later this month, so you can try to win a copy then. Following Michelle’s great example I’m sharing a recipe that goes well with our bread as part of this post, so you won’t feel recipe deprived.

Making the Dough

The sandwich bread dough recipe has nine ingredients instead of the 6 in the master loaf, so it took just a little bit longer to make: 13 minutes instead of 11. Because these branded ingredients worked so well for me for the master recipe I stuck with them for this recipe as well:

• King Arthur Whole Wheat and unbleached AP Flour
• Hodgeson Mill vital wheat gluten

I did double the salt in this recipe based on my experience with my first batch of dough and the little extra helped enhance the flavor of all of the breads I made. I once again measured the ingredients by volume using my kitchen scale, which probably adds a couple of minutes to the process but it’s worth it. I mixed the dough by hand again because it was so easy last time, and once again with just a little elbow grease the mixture came together quickly.

Soft Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread dough - just mixed

The dough rose beautifully as well, as you’ll see below.

Soft Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread dough - after initial rise

Bread #1: Sandwich Loaf

Because this loaf gets most of its shape from a loaf pan, it’s very easy to put together. A quick shaping of the dough into a ball and then a stretch to lengthen it was all it took. I had it in the pan in less than 3 minutes.

Whole wheat loaf - after shaping

I wasn’t sure how much rise to expect while the loaf rested because the master loaf didn’t rise much at all, but I was excited to see the dough fill the pan before I even put it into the oven.

Whole wheat sandwich loaf - after resting

I was very happy with the final loaf. It has an even and open crumb and a deep wheat flavor. My family does like wheat bread, so they were fine with the richer flavor. Even so, I think I’ll make the dough again with light wheat flour to see how that changes the flavor profile.

Whole wheat sandwich loaf - baked and sliced

As I was trying to think of a recipe to go with this bread, I saw that Elise from Simply Recipes recently offered up her take on cinnamon toast, a recipe that’s so simple yet has so many different possible preparations. It turns out my mother’s cinnamon toast that I grew up eating and still make for my family is indeed different from the method Elise outlines. I thought for fun I would share my mom’s “recipe” for making cinnamon toast as it was a perfect match for this hearty wheat bread.

Bread #2: Hamburger Buns

I will admit that I had my trepidations about making hamburger buns. Now that I’ve made them, I’m not sure where they came from, but indeed they were there. Making hamburger buns is as easy as making small balls of dough and flattening them a bit with your hand to form a burger-sized round. Yep – that’s all there is too it. It took me maybe 5 minutes total to prep the pan with my slipat and shape the buns. My fourth bun was a little more evenly shaped than my first, which shows that a bit of practice is all it takes to form professional-looking hamburger buns.

Whole wheat hamburger buns - after shaping

Interestingly, the buns didn’t rise as much as the loaf of the same dough did, although they only rested for half of the time which might explain it.

Whole wheat hamburger buns - after resting

I chose to brush the buns with melted butter and skipped the sesame seeds. The resulting buns were fantastic. Like the loaf of bread they had a nice open crumb and the melted butter created a crisp crust on the top. They weren’t as light as store-bought buns, but I didn’t really expect them to be given the robustness of the loaf of bread I’d made earlier in the week. At some point I’ll confer with the group to get their thoughts on how to make a lighter bun, but for now, I’m excited to be able to make my own, particularly for those nights when we only need 3 buns instead of the 6 or 8 we usually get at the store.

I knew that rich buns like these would need a substantial filling – both in weight and flavor. After some hunting I found a recipe for slow roasted pork on Epicurious.com. I liked the flavor profile of the pork but wanted something more low-maintenance, so I converted it into slow cooker recipe that the whole family really enjoyed. I secured a pork shoulder from a local purveyor and topped the sandwiches with locally grown micro greens and locally produced cheese. When I served the sandwiches to my family I felt I really knew the source of every single ingredient, starting and ending with the bread.

Slow cooked pork on freshly baked buns

Brad #3: Apple Strudel Bread

The last application of our dough was a stuffed and rolled loaf of bread mean to be reminiscent of apple strudel. The recipe calls for a filling of apples, raisins, and walnuts mixed with sugar and cinnamon. I modified the recipe to use dried cherries and sliced almonds because we prefer those flavors. It took me almost 30 minutes to prepare this loaf but that was largely due to the time it took to prep the filling. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got ready to roll out the dough, but it rolled out very easily.

Whole wheat dough rolled thin

The bread is like a giant cinnamon roll with filling spread over the dough and rolled inside. The recipe makes quite a lot of filling, particularly if the apples are big.

Whole wheat dough with apple filling

The one mistake I made was not to be sure I had enough flour under the dough as I rolled so it stuck to the counter as I tried to roll it up. The result was some torn dough a slightly mangled outside exterior. I patched the holes with a bit of left over dough and I’m confident that next time I make this bread I’ll be able to get it into the pan in slightly better shape.

Slighly mangled filled dough in a loaf pan

Even with my patch job, the final bread was just beautiful, particularly when sliced. It was also very tasty – not too sweet and substantial enough to be breakfast on its own along with a glass of milk and maybe a slice or two of bacon. This bread is a perfect candidate for preparing the night before and resting in the refrigerator overnight before baking the next morning. Nothing says “I love you” on a weekend morning like freshly baked bread!

Apple strudle bread - pretty after baking

What’s Next

Our next assignment is inspired by Valentine’s Day. We’ll be making red beet buns and chocolate espresso bread. My calendar is a little full right now with a couple of Mardi Gras parties, so I’m only planning to make the espresso bread but will squeeze in the beet buns if time allows. Until then, enjoy the recipes that my family has enjoyed with our homemade bread.

Recipe: Cinnamon Toast

Details

• Difficulty: Easy
• Serves: 4
• Prep Time: 5 minutes
• Cook Time: 7 minutes

Ingredients

• 8 slices whole wheat sandwich bread
• 4 Tbsp. softened butter (light butter works well too)
• 4 Tbsp. raw sugar (white sugar works here as well)
• 4 tsp. cinnamon (recommend Saigon or Vietnamese)

Instructions

1. Turn your oven broiler to high. If the broiler is at the top of the oven, position a rack in the position closest to the broiler.
2. Spread butter evenly over each slice of bread.
3. Sprinkle each slice of bread first with sugar and then with cinnamon.
4. Place the bread slices on a baking sheet and cook under the broiler until the sugar begins to bubble and the edges of the bread are brown.

Recipe for Success

• You could mix the sugar and cinnamon together before you sprinkle them on the bread, but my mother always made cinnamon toast this way so I can’t imagine having it any other way.
• I used the bread I made for this recipe but you can use any bread you like. Lighter breads may not hold up as well to the weight of the butter, sugar, and cinnamon so choose a slightly heavier bread if you can.
• Keep an eye on the bread while it’s under the broiler. It will go from not done to done in the blink of an eye.

Recipe: Slow Cooker Herbed Pork Sandwiches

Adapted from Hot Slow-Roasted Pork, Onion, and Mozzarella Sandwiches

Details

• Difficulty: Medium
• Serves: 8
• Active Prep Time: 60 minutes
• Inactive Prep Time: 1 hour – 24 hours
• Cook Time: 6 hours

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp. olive oil
• 2 medium shallots, minced
• 2 tsp. dried basil
• 2 tsp. dried oregano
• 1 Tbsp. fresh rosemary
• 1 tsp. dried sage
• 2 tsp. fennel seeds, toasted and then ground in a spice grinder
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
• 1 3 lb. pork shoulder or butt
• 1 medium onion, roughly chopped
• 1 c. white wine
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 c. chicken broth
• 1 Tbsp. corn starch
• 2 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
• 1 Tbsp. honey
• Fresh mozzarella, sliced (optional)
• Roasted red peppers, sliced (optional)
• Micro greens (optional)

Instructions

1. Combine the olive oil, shallots, basil, oregano, rosemary, sage, fennel, salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Stir to create a thick paste.
2. With a sharp knife, make slits 1 inch long and 2 inches deep all around the pork shoulder. Rub the herb paste over all sides of the shoulder, pressing the paste down into the slits.
3. Wrap the pork in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to 24 hours.
4. Add the chopped onion, white wine, and bay leaf the bottom of a slow cooker. Place the pork shoulder on top of the onion and cover with the lid.
5. Cook on high for 6 hours or until the pork begins to fall apart.
6. Remove the pork from the slow cooker and place in a shallow bowl or dish. Shred evenly with two forks.
7. Drain the juices from the slow cooker into a fat separator. Pour the juices without the fat into a 2 cup measuring cup. You may only have a quarter cup or so of defatted juices.
8. Add enough chicken broth to the measuring cup to equal 2 cups of liquid.
9. Combine 2 Tbsp. of the liquid with the cornstarch in a small bowl and stir to combine.
10. Pour the remaining liquid into a medium sauce pan. Add the cider vinegar and honey. Bring to a boil
11. Whisk in the cornstarch mixture and stir over medium heat until the mixture thickens.
12. Taste for flavor and add salt and pepper as needed.
13. Pour the sauce over the shredded pork and toss to combine.
14. Serve on whole wheat buns with slices of mozzarella, roasted red peppers, and micro greens.

Recipe for Success

• You can also make the pork in an oven instead of a slow cooker. Bake in a tightly-covered pot at 325 degrees for 4-5 hours.
• Make the pork up to a day ahead and warm before serving.
• To hold warm, return the sauced pork to the slow cooker and turn it to the warm setting.
• This recipe will easy double or triple. You’re really only limited by the size of your pot.
• The pork will freeze beautifully for up to 3 months in a zip-top bag.

Enter the five minutes a day method developed by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. They first shared this approach in their book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day which was well received by the cooking and blogging community. Because my family has been very focused on transitioning to whole grains, I was very excited to hear that Jeff and Zoe were following their first book with a second, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Then, when Michelle from the Big Black Dogs blog started a baking group for the new book, I knew this was the year I would learn to make my own bread. For the next year or so, I’ll be posting a couple of times a month about my baking adventures and linking back to the posts of my fellow bakers. My hope is I’ll have some fun insight to share, and if you’re thinking about learning to bake your own bread too, you’ll find some tidbits in my posts to help you on your own journey.

The Master Recipe*

At the heart of the five minutes a day method of making bread is a quick mix of dough that hangs out in your fridge for a week or two. You pull of pieces of the dough to shape, rise, and bake when you’re ready for some fresh bread. And indeed, it really is that easy. The initial dough recipe in the book and the one our baking group started with is the Master Recipe, which combines whole wheat and unbleached all purpose flour for an easy foray into whole grain bread. The assignment was to then turn this dough into three different baked goodies:

• A free-form loaf
• An epi (baguette that looks like a stalk of wheat) or a bread wreath
• Crackers

I didn’t quite get to the crackers but I did get the loaf and epi done. I learned so much along the way – including how much more I have to learn about shaping and working with dough. And while no one would confuse my initial loaves with anything from a professional bake shop, they tasted good and were fun to make, which is all that really matters.

*All of the recipes our baking group follows can be found in the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day book. Because I want Jeff and Zoe to keep writing, and because it’s the right thing to do, I won’t be republishing them in my posts. If you’re intrigued by this method and don’t have the book yet, I’d consider getting a copy. It’s less than $20 on Amazon.com, which you’ll make back after your first few loaves of bread.

Making the Dough

In my initial forays into bread baking, I’ve discovered that the brand of ingredients is very important, particularly when it comes to the flours. To avoid any unexpected variables, I made my bread with ingredients from two trusted brands:

• King Arthur Whole Wheat and unbleached AP Flour
• Hodgeson Mill vital wheat gluten

Learn more about whole wheat flour

Another thing I’ve discovered is that there’s more than one way to mix up a batch of dough even by the five minute method. I chose to:

• Measure the ingredients by weight according to the chart on page 54. I’ve become a big devote of the Ratio approach to cooking, particularly with baking, and I prefer to weigh ingredients when it’s practical.
• Mix the dough by hand, largely because I didn’t feel like washing my Kitchen Aid bowl and paddle in addition to my bread dough container. Yup – this is laziness at its best.

During the dough process I learned the following:

• Initially I was concerned there wasn’t enough water in the dough when it became difficult to mix, but with a little perseverance the water was evenly distributed and dough was manageable. It’s important to be patient.
• My extra-large metal mixing bowl worked just fine for mixing and storing. Thanks to a typo on my grocery list I had a 5 gallon bucket instead of a 5 quart, so until I get a new 5 qt. bucket I used the bowl. I think I round containers make the dough easier to mix, particularly in the middle stages when water isn’t evenly distributed.

Jeff and Zoe promise that this process is easy and that making the dough is the most time-consuming part of the process. For fun, I’ve been timing how long different steps are taking. The time to mix the dough, including retrieving ingredients from pantry was 10 minutes and 51 seconds. I bet once I’ve done it a couple of times it will go even faster.

Bread #1: Free-Form Loaf

Once I had my batch of dough made and it rested over night, I made my first loaf of bread. I baked my loaf on a silpat to make it easy to move into the hot oven. I don’t really have storage space for a baker’s paddle but the silpat worked just fine. I did buy a pizza stone for my oven as the book recommends, but I didn’t invest a ton into it (yet). Once I’ve baked more bread and can find a good deal on a bigger, thicker stone, I’ll upgrade.

The total time to shape my first loaf and set it to rest was 3 minutes and 51 seconds. Yup – you read that right. I put together my first loaf in less than 5 minutes. It did have to sit for 90 minutes and cook for another 30, but that was all inactive time on my part. Thus far the method was living up to its name. Along the way, I learned the following about shaping a free-form loaf:

• Shaping was easy – dough was easy to handle with a minimal amount of flour.
• As mentioned in the book, the dough doesn’t rise while it’s resting but spreads instead. My final bread was a little flatter than I would have liked. Next time I will be sure to create a thicker loaf when I shape the bread.
• I wasn’t as aggressive with my slashing as I should have been so the final bread wasn’t as pretty as it should have been. This may have contributed to the flatter bread as well.
• I was very happy with the texture and crumb. While the crumb wasn’t totally uniform, it was fairly open and the bread was not dense at all (as whole wheat bread goes).
• Next time I will increase the salt a bit. The flavor was just a little bit flat and I think a bit more salt will help.

Bread #2: Epi

The next bread to tackle was another free-form loaf, a shaped baguette cut to look like a stalk of wheat, or an epi. As a disclaimer, I didn’t know about this wonderful step-by-step photo guide that Zoe put together, and this was my first pass at forming and cutting the bread into this shape. Shaping the baguette was fairly easy, although I’m still working on creating a smooth loaf without compressing the air out of the loaf. Once I started to cut the loaf I realized I wasn’t cutting quiet deep enough and I was spacing my cuts to far apart. Happily, I’m all about making lemonade out of lemons, so I just started cutting away and created more of a root loaf than a sheaf of wheat. It was fun, and tasted great, which is all that matters.

I do have some dough left and I will most likely try the epi again to put what I’ve learned to good use. Beyond the many little details I learned about in my first work with the bread dough, my biggest realization is that it’s important to practice and practice some more. Given how easy it is to whip up batches of bread, I don’t think practicing will be difficult; it’s the not eating all of the practice loaves that will be the real challenge.

What’s Next

Our next assignment is to make dough for soft whole wheat bread that will become a sandwich bread loaf, hamburger or hotdog buns, and an apple bread. I’m looking forward to working with this new dough, and am particularly excited about being able to make my own bread for daily uses like PB&Js and burger night. More to come at the end of the month.