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Artisan Bread in 5 minutes – make it at home!

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This week, by reader request, I added a Recipes section to the Forum here on the blog. And, reading the recipes readers have been posting inspired me to share this one with you all.

Around fall of last year, I came across this Instructable online for “Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.” It seemed too good to be true – a no-knead bread dough that you mix, store in the refrigerator, and break a chunk off of whenever you want to bake bread?

Well, it is that easy. I won’t repost the entire recipe here, as the Instructables site does a great job (with photos and video) of explaining exactly how to do it. I halve the recipe and keep it in a plastic “shoe box” type container in the fridge. You knead nothing. You mix your dry and wet ingredients in the container, and it doesn’t even look “right” when you’re done. It looks kind of like a sticky mess. Throw it in the fridge and leave it there for a few days or weeks.

The receipe bakes a fantastic, artisan-style bread with a thick, delicious crust. Part of the secret to the great crust is cooking the bread on a pizza stone or terra-cotta tile, and pouring water into the oven broiler pan right before you close the door. The combo of the stone and steam bake this bread into perfection.

The dough gets better the longer you leave it in the fridge too. I’ve left it up to three weeks at a time, and the yeast develops more complex flavors the longer it sits. You can break smaller chunks of dough off to make rolls with too.

With the price of artisan breads these days… this is an amazing, cheap alternative. The comments under the Instructables recipe will attest to how easy & good it is too. The recipe comes from a book by the same name, and I really need to pick it up and check out more of the recipes. If they’re half as good as this one, I’d guess it would be a worthy addition to my cookbook shelf.

Now, for more photos of my bread… can you believe I made this? Mmm!

Comments

  2. I must say you and I are very similar! I found that last fall too (I mean 2011, to me it’s still 2012 :)), and bought the book for Christmas.I usually make 1 to 1.5 amount of the recipe to keep in the fridge.It is awesome!

  4. I use this too. The book was a great Christmas gift for many of my relatives in 2011. The dog would rather have this bread than steak. No kidding it’s that good. He comes running when he hears the bread knife slicing. We did an experiment. My husband went one direction with some steak and I went the opposite with a slice of the bread. The dog followed me!

  5. Maybe its time to put my pizza stone to use! For the past couple of weeks i had the artisian french bread on my Dominick’s JFU personalized pricing of $.99 for the 16 oz, but its not there anymore.
    Also, nothing beats the smell and taste of fresh bread out of the oven, this will go well with tomorrows dinner of Chicken Parmesan and spaghetti, ymmm :)

  6. But I will have to run out and buy a new ‘box’ to keep it in. Will any large Tupperware type box do? Thanks.

  7. Could one of these be used as a bread bowl for soup? My first batch is in the fridge … can’t wait to make a loaf!

  8. Hubby has been looking for a good but simple bread recipe and I can’t wait until he makes this one for me :-) it looks delicious
    Thanks for sharing

  9. and it really is that simple & delish!! Just a note-we happen to have a pizza peel and it really is handy for the ‘hand-off’ into the oven, as it has a handle and is thin, not like a cutting board that is a little bulky. If you read the instructions, you’ll know what I mean cuz you put the dough into the oven, onto a ‘hot’ stone, with a ‘shuffle’ the dough moves from the peel onto the stone (as long as it’s prepped with cornmeal as suggested). HTH! :)

  10. Has anyone used this recipe to make a pizza crust? My family loves to make homemade pizza and I’m hoping this recipe would be good for that.

  11. I have a Pampered Chef cookie pan, that we use to make homemade pizza, can this be used as the pizza stone?

  12. I just found that yes I can use my pampered chef pan – yeah looks like I have all I need to try this bread.

  15. We made the bread but ran into a few bumps. We followed the directions and recipe exactly as shown, except we cut it in half. I rarely bake so I don’t know how to tweak the recipe. Our dough was not as pliable as shown, when folding the dough under to make the ball the dough kept cracking and was not as smooth on top. We let it sit for an hour as suggested. I think the slits were cut too deep in the dough before baking because the finished product had little burnt peaks on top. No, it was not pretty but flavor and rest of the crust were terrific. The bread was heavy and pretty dense (not doughy) in texture – I think it could have been a little more light and airy. Any comments or suggestions. Thanks to all

  18. I made the dough a week ago (Super Bowl Sunday), and baked the first loaf today. It was delicious, and the easiest bread I’ve ever baked! I can already tell that the grapefruit sized loaf isn’t going to be large enough for us. Those of you who’ve made larger loaves — is 35 minutes long enough to bake a larger loaf? If not, how long do you bake it?

  19. if so how long did you bake it? I plan on making 2, but baking on a flat cookie sheet. any help is appreciated. thanks in advance.

jillcataldoheadshotI'm Jill Cataldo, founder of Super-Couponing® workshops and author of the nationally-syndicated newspaper column and video series "Super-Couponing Tips" enjoyed by over 20 million people each week.

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