I just made some bread based on the recipe at http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/Artisan-Bread-In-Five-Minutes-A-Day.aspx

Ingredients:

• 2 cups unsifted plain flour
• 1 cup warm water (switch on your hot water tap, when the water starts feeling slightly warmer than your finger, fill the cup)
• 1 satchet of dry yeast
• 1 teaspoon salt

I also added a sprinkle of sage, but that was just a random thing I thought would go well. (it did)

Method:

• Combine water, yeast and salt, give it a bit of a stir. Wait a few minutes (~5 minutes)
• Toss in 2 cups flour and mix with a wooden spoon.  It makes a wet dough (you couldn’t pick it up and roll it, it would just slop everywhere)
• Grease up a bread tin, and pour in the mixture.
• Cover with a towel.  Leave for 2 hours (more doesn’t hurt)  The dough will rise.
• Place a 2nd empty oven dish in your oven.  (This DOES NOT contain your bread dough)
• Preheat your oven to 225C (450F)
• When the oven reaches temperature, put your bread in.
• Put 1 cup of boiling water into the empty oven dish and close oven door quickly to trap the steam that is produced
• Cook for 30 minutes (leave temperature as is)
• Take out of oven and allow to cool (although warm bread is devine, it will squash as you cut it)

My experience:

The bread didn’t fill as much of the tin as I was expecting, so my loaf was very small.  The next time, I’m going to try using another cup of flour, leaving all other ingredients the same, and allow the yeast to work for longer before cooking.

Apparently the dough can be refrigerated and wll keep for about 2 weeks, so you can do your prep work ahead of time, if you want to have fresh bread on a particular day, but won’t have the time to make the dough.

If you’ve made bread, I’d be keen to hear how it went, and if there are any lessons I can learn!