My New Passion: Baking Bread in 5 Minutes

I've always wanted to bake bread, but...I'm a bit of a lazy cook. I know that kneading bread is supposed to be therapeutic, but I'm not on a search for therapy. I want bread. Still, when I bought Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg, M.D. and Zoë François I was skeptical. Very skeptical, despite the many positive reviews on Amazon.

Well, no more skepticism here. I've only just started, but my first two loaves of bread came out perfect (and fast). There's no kneading involved, and while the 5 minutes doesn't include resting time and baking time, it's pretty much the actual time spent working with the dough (quickly stirring together water, yeast, salt and flour and then later shaping it into a loaf). Also, since this dough makes enough for 4 1-pound loaves and is refrigerated for up to 2 weeks, loaves 2, 3 and 4 are even faster since the mixing has already been done.

Meet a World Builder

This video is a bit longer than the ones I usually post. I started watching it not expecting much (the title, Jerry's Map, didn't totally grab me), but the process by which this man works and his discussion of his childhood sucked me in. Novelists are, essentially, world builders. We create worlds that don't exist and try to make them believable (or we become so involved in--temporarily--living within a created world that it almost becomes real, which carries over to the reader. Hopefully). This artist (I think that's an appropriate term), Jerry Gretzinger, is creating a world as he goes. Very interesting. His discussion of his childhood was also enlightening.

Jerry's Map from Jerry Gretzinger on Vimeo.

He also has a blog here.