It's 2009!

Oh, Lovely, lovely loaf! How tasty you are with butter!

A short break from my time travels today.

A few days ago I read an article about a book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I love making bread, but yeah, it takes a long time and I'm not too crazy about that part. The article, in Mother Earth News, stated that all you have to do is make dough, keep it in the fridge, and then whenever you want bread you just break off a chunk, shape it, let it rise once and bake for 30 minutes. In this way you can have hot, fresh bread in less about two hours, you never have to knead, and the cost is amazingly low. This appealed to my Rationing mindset, so even thought the technique was not in use during wartime, it SHOULD have been. I had to give it a try.

My first experinemt was the basic bread: Flour, yeast, water, salt. That's it. No sugar, no kneading. I baked up a batch and put the rest of the dough in the fridge for later. My first loaf was so golden and beautiful that my husband and I ate it al at once that same night. Luckily, I could shape another loaf and have a second helping within two hours of the first. And there is still abunch left in my fridge for later! For an investment of six cups of flour, I'll be getting at least 5 loaves of bread. And THAT is GREAT!


Mother Earth News is an invaluable magazine for those brave people who want to go to the next level of retro and actually try their hand at living the lifestyle that gramma (or great-gramma) lived. It's also handy for people who are tring to become more self-sufficient, or those who are becoming disillusioned with modern life. There are always articles on organic gardening, raising various kinds of livestock, cooking, and making things like barns or rainbarrels. For the moderns, there are articles on how to put up solar panels and windmills so you can finally tell the power company to shove it. Give it a peek, I think you'll like it.

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and its new sibling, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, can be purchased at Amazon.com , and you can also visit their website and see what they're experimenting with today.