Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day~Whole Grain Master Recipe

March 9, 2010

One of the things I really missed when eating gluten-free for 3 weeks was freshly baked bread. I’m used to baking my own bread a few times a week using the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (ABin5) method so of course one of the first things I did when done with the cleanse diet was make a batch of dough. For those of you unfamiliar with the ABin5 method, it is a “no-knead” bread dough, made in a batch large enough for 4 loaves, and stored in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. Since discovering this method last year, I have not bought one loaf of french bread because I always have dough ready to go in my refrigerator. Now, I’m starting to make my own wheat sandwich bread too.

I was fortunate to receive a review copy of Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day (HBin5) a day but unfortunate in that it arrived on the first day of my diet. I looked through it longingly and was thrilled when I got the chapter on Gluten-Free Bread. However, those recipes contained eggs and sugar, two things that I could not have. I did try to make them with egg-replacer and a bit of agave syrup, and while they were the best of the GF bread I tried, they just weren’t as good as they would be using the right ingredients. I do intend to try some of the gluten-free recipes (now that I have all the special flours) as they were written, especially when I have family who are gluten-free visiting.

I thought it fitting that the first bread I baked once I was eating gluten again would be a healthy bread. So of course I turned to HBin5 and started with recipe #1. If you are familiar with the Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day method, this one will be no surprise. There are some distinct differences, however. The first is the use of Vital Wheat Gluten as an ingredient. The Vital Wheat Gluten allows the whole grain dough to rise after being stored in the refrigerator. Whole grain flour has less gluten than white flour. The second is the use of whole wheat flour and the proportions in this recipe are different from the ones in the Whole Wheat recipe in ABin5. The also book offers weight measurements instead of just cups which is a much more exact way to measure when it comes to baking. I love my kitchen scale for this.

The method takes a bit longer too, 90 minutes from refrigerator to oven instead of 45. This means you really need to plan it a bit more in advance when you want to have freshly baked bread for dinner, at least 2.5 hours in advance which means it’s not really feasible (for me) to come home from work and throw a loaf in the oven in time for dinner. Fortunately, there is a recommendation for forming the dough in the morning, letting it rest in the refrigerator throughout the day, and then baking it after only being out of the refrigerator for the time it takes to preheat the oven.

I baked the loaf in these photos in a 8.5″ loaf pan because I wanted to use it for sandwich bread, but the dough works well as a free form oval loaf or round boule. It’s heavier and denser than the white ABin5, but it just feels so healthy when I eat it. As a big bonus, the bread seems to stay fresher longer and is still nice and soft inside, even after a few days.