Chocolate Bobka

Some time ago I worked my way through the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking book and mostly enjoyed it.  The thing that was nice about it was that they tried to take much of the pressure off of the process of making bread.  They were good salesmen on the topic.  Then with the second book Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients I thought it would be even better, but then I realized that even though they were saying how simple things could be, they were still suggesting that you buy a specialized food container for the bread, specialized ingredients (wheat gluten, wheat germ, etc) and I thought, forget that.

So now, I make the bread for our family every week with a much simpler method.

--In a large mixing bowl add--

4 c. wheat flour

3 c. white flour

2 t. salt

1 palm full of sugar (so anywhere from 1/4 c to 3/4c depending on your mood, or skip it, whatevs.)

2 T. yeast (or two packets)

[optional] Add 1/4 wheat germ

**mix dry ingredients**

--add to dry--

3 1/3 C tap water. 

a couple glugs of oil.  Olive oil is nice, canola is good, caster is not.  (couple glugs would be anywhere from 1/4-1/2 C depending on your mood)

-Mix with a wooden spoon, or the fork you used to mix the dry until all the flour is decently well moistened.  

-Place mixing bowl in the fridge overnight.  (you could do this on the counter and wait an hour and a half but since we are skipping the kneading step, if you let it sit for a long time that gives the mixture time to self saturate with the liquids.)

-In the morning (or whenever you feel like it) turn the oven to 375, place a baking sheet on the bottom rack and put some (4-8C) boiling water in it. (this will keep the oven moist)

- break the dough into two pieces, place in greased loaf pans, or on a cookie sheet if making a boule.

-let rise about 20 minutes and place in the oven for 45 minutes give or take.  Loaf should be evenly brown when turned out of the pan. 

This makes two loaves which is just a bit more than our family of 4 needs for a week.  

We sometimes make one loaf and save the other half for pizza crust.

 

The picture above has the two loaves, then I also made a half recipie and upped the sugar (a heaping handful) and added some chocolate to the dough.  then in the morning I  smushed [techincal bread term] the dough out, sprinkled a healthy coating of brown sugar, some cinamon, and more chocolate powder on it and rolled it up. Baked it with the other loaves and it was great.  I don't have a picture of the finished product because there is such a short window of time before the loaf is mostly gone.  As you see above.  :)