200 Fast and Easy Artisan Breads: No-Knead, One Bowl [Paperback]

This 317-page book ... shows the baker how he or she can achieve incredible results in just minutes. (Debra A. Aleksinas Waterbury Republic-American )

With...Judith Fertig's clear, detailed instructions, even a kitchen novice should be able to craft beautiful, bakery-style, premium-priced breads. (Sue Story-Truax Omaha World-Herald )

Incredibly simple and easy recipes for delicious artisan breads.

Baking fresh bread at home brings fragrant aromas and fresh tastes, but it also delivers a quintessential home-baking experience. Judith Fertig's recipes provide shortcuts for all the mixing, kneading and baking that takes too much time for busy home cooks. The secrets she reveals guide the home cook in preparing artisan bread in only five minutes.

The recipes are organized by difficulty to guide a baker in progressive steps. From baking a simple French loaf to pretzels, clear instructions with step-by-step illustrations assure success.

Here are some of her easy-to-make and great-tasting breads:

• Easy artisan foccaccia with rosemary
• Greek-style pizza
• Whole wheat pita bread
• Braided challah
• Butternut brioche
• Minnesota wild rice sticks
• Marbled bagels
• Apple custard kuchen.

A special chapter is devoted to toppings and fillings, such as artisan butter, honeyed applesauce, and roasted garlic and onion jam.

With just one bowl and very little time, 200 Fast & Easy Artisan Breads guides any home baker to glorious fresh breads.

(20091111)

Judith Fertig is a recipe developer and the author of 300 Big & Bold Barbecue & Grilling Recipes. Her recipes are featured regularly on the Food Network and in USA Today. She lives in Kansas City, Missouri.

Introduction

ALTHOUGH ARTISAN BREAD baking is a time-honored tradition, with classic forms and methods, there has been a recent surge of revision. Baking experts such as Jim Lahey, Peter Reinhart, Jeff Hertzberg, Zoë François, Dorie Greenspan, Nancy Silverton, Maggie Glezer, Nancy Baggett and the late Julia Child; food scientists such as Shirley Corriher; and innovative bread bloggers have taken a fresh look at old recipes and come up with new, easier ways to achieve the same or similar results.

As a cookbook author, culinary instructor and avocational baker, I've built on their combined expertise and gone a step further in streamlining artisan bread baking into an achievable -- and rewarding -- activity for busy people. I've questioned, challenged and tested my way to the best methods for baking artisan-quality breads in an easier, faster manner.

I've also used a sequential, step-by-step approach known as "benchmarking." With each dough, with each recipe, you learn and master new techniques.

The result is 200 Fast & Easy Artisan Breads, which shows how you can achieve incredible results in just minutes a day.

What's so easy about easy artisan breads?

• You use basic equipment: a large mixing bowl, a Danish dough whisk or wooden spoon, measuring cups, a cutting board or cookie sheet, an instant-read thermometer, a serrated knife, a rolling pin, a broiler pan and a baking stone.
• You make enough dough for several loaves, store the dough in the refrigerator, then bake when you're ready. Many of the doughs keep in the refrigerator for over a week.
• You skip traditional bread-making steps. No need to proof (active dry) yeast over water to make sure it works; you use instant or bread machine yeast and simply stir it into the flour. No need to knead, as you use a moist dough that does the work of activating the gluten for you. No need to bake the bread the same day -- you can if you want to, but you can also wait several days, up to a week or more.
• You master easy methods for shaping the dough into round loaves (boules), baguettes, batards, rolls, filled rolls, flatbreads, pizzas, bagels, pastries and more.
• You know when your bread is done in one easy step -- by using an instant-read thermometer. No tapping, thumping, guessing, hoping.
• You learn similarly easy, streamlined ways to make complements to bread, such as artisan butter (in the food processor in 5 minutes) and caramelized onions (in the slow cooker).

The "fast" part of the 200 Fast & Easy Artisan Breads title means that your hands-on activity (not including rising, resting or baking time) with these breads is only minutes a day. You can make the dough one day, form and bake in the days afterwards.

If you can bake a batch of brownies from a box mix, you are ready to start 200 Fast & Easy Artisan Breads. So let's get started!