These days Henry and I are enjoying freshly baked homemade bread right from the oven several times a week.
Unbelievable, you say? Has Melissa traded in her knitting obsession for a baking one, spending hours mixing, kneading, raising, punching, raising again, baking? Why, no! I have found a book that promises and delivers "the discovery that revolutionizes home baking."
The book is Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. (Her name has both an umlaut and cedilla neither of which I care to figure out how to type here.) As described by the New York Times, "Soon the bread will be making itself...The crusty, full-flavored loaf that results may be the world's easiest yeast bread."
The idea is that you mix a fairly wet dough and 
store it in the fridge without kneading for up to 10 days. Every time you want bread, you pull off a hunk, form it and let it rise (takes about 40 minutes) and bake it. Done. Craziness!
The book takes a one page explanation and recipe and spins it into 242 pages which is a publishing miracle in itself. (They've also built a robust website as well - I sense a marketing mind behind this.) All variations of the same recipe, plus adding eggs, honey and butter to make brioche dough for pastries as well, which I haven't tried yet. I really don't need brioche dough around the house.
All the purists may scoff (because what else do purists do?) but it really works. I may never knead again!
Okay, I'm not a food photographer. But doesn't it look a little like the book cover?
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