A friend recently told me about a new book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. The idea behind the book is to use some new techniques to make great bread at home that has some of the flavor depths of traditional aged, fermented dough. Bread made by just mixing ingredients and baking really doesn’t have the complex flavors of flavor made of either aged starter (like sourdoughs) or at least fermented dough (letting the dough sit for a while to evolve and brew its own flavors).

My friend was making bread in the mornings for her kids to take to school, and easily popping out fresh loaves. I thought I should give it a try. So I bought the book, and mixed up a batch of dough.

Mixing the dough was easy. I just put the ingredients in the KitchenAid and mixed. Then I put the dough in a plastic tub, let it sit for a few hours, and put it in the fridge, as instructed.

I made my first bread the next day.

I’ve got to say, it looked great. Nice smells, good looking crust. Very artisanal. But it really had no flavor. Not to say we didn’t gobble it down before it had a chance to cool – nothing is better than warm bread from the oven, and we had some President butter on hand. But there was really nothing special about the bread beyond it being homemade and hot.

So I let the dough sit. The authors tell you that the dough gets better with age, up to two weeks. And that stands to reason. So on day four, I pulled out another batch of dough, made my “gluten cloak” (you have to read the book to get that). And I baked. But this time I didn’t get enough rise at all – despite letting it rise for the prescribed 40 minutes.

Better flavor this time, but with very little rise, it was pretty dense. This wasn’t really working for slicing for sandwiches, which was the dinner plan, but doughy slices spread with pesto worked out pretty well.

Given the lack of rise but the good crust of the last version, on day 6 I made smaller, flat loaves. We had eaten at a restaurant in Paris last year called Cosi that made flat loaves for sandwiches. Great concept: less bread, but good fresh bread, with more filling. And since the bread was largely crust, it really held the sandwiches together. The bread was close in shape and form to a pita, but with a great flavor, and a bit tougher and having more bite than pita.

So I aimed for that, and I got pretty close:

I basically sliced these around the edges for three-quarters of the circumference, and stuffed them with the favorite fillings for each family member.

Now, tonight, two weeks after I first mixed up the dough, I wanted some flatbreads with toppings. I made four. I added a cup of whole wheat flour to what was left of the dough, and some more water. I kneaded a bit, and let the dough rise for about an hour in four parts. Then I rolled each out flat.

The kids basically turned into pretty traditional pizzas. The adults got bacon, gruyere, frisee, and eggs. After they came out of the oven, they needed some serious salt, but this was definitely the best meal from the dough.

More?

Yes, I’m definitely going to go for another round. I’ll use most or all whole wheat dough next time. and I won’t even try a bread on the second day – not enough flavor. I need to figure out if maybe my yeast was bad; something was wrong with the rising of the dough on days after the first. So I’ll probably get a new jar.

But this method definitely has potential. If I can get this to work, it’ll be much less work than a sourdough starter (which has always intimidated me).

The authors have more information on their website.