Make Artisan Bread In Under 10 Minutes

You, your partner, your six-year-old kid: anyone can make sensational artisan bread with under 10 minutes of labour.

EASY BAKE | I’m not an accomplished cook. I can produce a nice meal and make complicated dishes when I need to, though I prefer to leave the culinary wizardry to my friends born with chef’s knifes in their mouths. Quick and easy are my things (along with tasty and attractive), so I was shocked when a good friend suggested I make my own bread. I’d been going on about how my family was plowing through Terra Breads’ pain de campagne to the tune of $10 to $15 dollars a week when she popped the suggestion.

“You’ve got to be joking,” I said. “Making bread is an art that takes years to perfect. I thought you knew me.”

“Believe me, this bread has your name on it,” she retorted, whipping out her iPhone to show me a YouTube video from The New York Times archives.

The 2006 video, considered a cult classic among foodies and with 1,344,831 views and counting, demonstrates how to make a “no-work, no-knead bread” that doesn’t rely on a bread-making machine. The finished product, which is an irregular, rustic Italian loaf (much tastier than Terra’s French country bread in my estimation), is supercrusty on the outside with a chewy, airy crumb  (baker-speak for the part inside the crust).

This video launched Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery in Manhattan to superstardom in the food world. “Rustic. Simple. Italian. Divine,” is how Mario Batali describes Lahey’s bread. “This loaf is incredible, a fine-bakery quality, European boule that is produced more easily than any other technique I’ve used, and it will blow your mind,” enthused Mark Bittman in The New York Times.

It blew my mind the first time I made it. First of all I was shocked that I could make something so beautifully rustic and tasty. Then I was surprised by the actual amount of labour involved, maybe 10 minutes tops, and by the fact that this recipe is almost impossible to screw up providing you use bread flour (which has the requisite amount of protein—I use 365 brand baking flour from Whole Foods) and follow Lahey’s slow-rise timetable.

If you do everything the way Lahey explains it in the YouTube videos and in his book, My Bread (which is absolutely worth purchasing), you will look like a bread-baking pro. Oh, and I’m guessing that all of this rustic, Italian goodness costs me around 50 cents a loaf.—C. Rule

To see the now legendary New York Times video, visit www.nytimes.com.  You can purchase My Bread locally and online at Indigo, www.chapters.indigo.ca

Photos: Sari Goodfriend for Sullivan Street Bakery