Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients

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Acknowledgments

The Secret

1 Introduction: Healthy Breads Can Be Made in Five Minutes a Day, Too!

2 Ingredients

3 Equipment

4 Tips and Techniques

5 The Master Recipe

6 Whole Grain Breads

7 Breads with Hidden Fruits and Vegetables

8 Flatbreads and Pizza

9 Gluten-Free Breads and Pastries

10 Enriched Breads and Pastries from Healthy Ingredients

Appendix

Sources for Bread-Baking Products

Sources Consulted

Index

Sometimes, it’s the second time that’s a charm. So many things went more smoothly for us in our second book, and we’re grateful to the friends and colleagues who have kept us on track and were so willing to help us. Our spouses, Laura Silver and Graham François, continued to put up with the crazy hours, interrupted dinners, houses coated with flour dust, and carbohydrates at every meal. We’re not trained as writers, but Laura is, and she made sure our editors got manuscript versions that had already been vetted. And Graham created our incredible Web site, where we spend most of our time these days.

Friends once again generously agreed to test our recipes and provide all kinds of help when we needed it. Thanks to Christa Anders and Tom McLeod (who also lent us their gorgeous kitchen for a photo shoot), Betsy Carey, Marion and John Callahan, Allison Campbell, Alex Cohn, Barbara Fenzl (who invited us to teach our method at Les Gourmettes Cooking School), Shelly Fling, Leslie Held, Theresa and Jim Murray, Lorraine Neal (Zoë’s mom), John Rosengren, Danny Sager and Brian McCarthy, Jen Sommerness and Debora Villa and Ralph Gualtieri. Neither of us are celiacs nor eat a gluten-free diet, so we are particularly grateful to Danny and Shauna James Ahern of the Gluten-Free Girl Web site, who advised us on the gluten-free chapter.

Rebekah Denn connected us with great new sources for artisan flours. Writers Beth Fouhy and Peggy Orenstein helped us navigate the murky waters of book publicity, and as always, we relied on the wisdom of our literary agent, Jane Dystel. At St. Martin’s Press, thanks to Peter Wolverton for helping us with the process of creating a second book; thanks to our editor, Ruth Cavin, and of course to our managing editor, Amelie Littell. Amelie’s dedication and thoroughness got us through the nitty-gritty of actually finishing. And of course, we wouldn’t be writing any books if not for Ruth Cavin, who took a chance on us in the first place and let us tell our story. Judy Hunt helped us create a great index, perhaps the most important pages of the book. Lynne Rossetto Kasper, Sally Swift, and Jennifer Russel of
The Splendid Table
radio program gave us our first national exposure.

Many more people gave of their time, their knowledge and their support to this book: Mike Anderson (for Web support), Brett Bannon and Jon Templeton at Bret’s Table, Leslie Bazzett, Karl Benson and all of the wonderful folks at Cooks of Crocus Hill, Jay, Tracey, Gavin, and Megan Berkowitz, Sarah Berkowitz, Barb Davis, Fran Davis, Nan Fletcher (whose talents as a makeup artist made us feel like movie stars, if only for a moment), Anna and Ewart François, Jaden Hair, Judy and Larry Hicks, Raghavan Iyer, the staff at the Joie de Vivre Hotel Group in San Francisco, Mary Jo Katz and the kitchen staff from the Intercontinental Hotel in Buckhead, Klecko, Kathy Kosnoff and Lyonel Norris, Dusti Kugler, Kelly Lainsbury, Emily Luchetti and her pastry staff for lending their kitchen at Farallon, Alec Neal and Katherine Ball, Barbara and Kristin Neal, Carey Neal and Heather Pamula, Craig and Patricia Neal, Don Newcomb and Jim Price from ChicagoGourmets, Jimmy Alexander, John Peters and Mitchell Schmieding from Powerhouse restaurant, Ray from Mohawk Valley Trading Company, Cy Rohan, the staff at Quang, Suvir Saran and Charlie Burd, the Schmitt family, Sally Simmons and David Van De Sande, Jen Sommerness (for providing a second home to Zoë’s boys in all the crunch times), and a special thanks to all the lovely people we met on our Web site (
healthybreadinfive.com
), who taught us so much, made our first book a success, and then paid us the compliment of asking for a second one. And the community on Twitter who inspire us daily.

Gratitude to Zoë’s mentors and colleagues in the baking and culinary world from the past and present: Robin Asbell, Steven Brown, Jennifer Burkholder, Stephen Durfee, Michelle Gayer, Thomas Gumpel, Jacqueline Hopkins, Riad Nasr, Suvir Saran, and Andrew Zimmern.

Once again, some of the most fun and creative times were spent with our friend, photographer, and visual mentor Mark Luinenburg, who not only advised us about our own pictures for the Web site, but also produced the stylish and delicious photographs that appear in both of our books. Food and recipes are more than just a collection of information. Thanks to Mark for pictures that convey beauty, texture, and taste—a sensual feast.

Most of all we are thankful for the love and support of our families: Zoë’s husband, Graham, and her two boys, Henri and Charlie, and Jeff’s wife, Laura, and his girls, Rachel and Julia. They’re our best taste testers and most honest critics.

It does not cost much…. It leaves you filled with peace, and the house filled with one of the world’s sweetest smells…probably there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation…that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.

—M. F. K. F
ISHER IN
H
OW TO
C
OOK A
W
OLF
,
1942

The “Secret” works with super-healthy ingredients, too: Mix enough dough for many loaves and store it in the refrigerator.

It’s easy to have freshly baked whole grain and other healthy breads whenever you want them, with only five minutes a day of active effort. First, mix the ingredients into a container all at once, and let them sit for two hours. Now you are ready to shape and bake the bread, or you can refrigerate the dough and use it over the next five to fourteen days (depending on the recipe). You’ve prepared enough dough for many loaves. When you want fresh-baked, crusty whole grain or gluten-free bread, take a piece of the dough from the container and shape it into a loaf. Let it rise and then bake. Your house will smell like a bakery and your family and friends will love you for it.

Boule, Master Recipe

We love food,
and we love bread best of all. It was our bread obsession that brought us together for a cookbook in the first place. Our first book (
Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking)
created an unlikely team: a doctor and a pastry chef. But it turned out to be a great combination. One review of our book called us “the Chemist and the Alchemist,” though on any given day we reverse roles at will. Our partnership worked because amateurs found the result extraordinarily easy, yet aficionados found it utterly delicious. In writing that book, we wanted to discard everything that was intimidating and make the process fast enough to fit into people’s busy lives.
Artisan Bread
replaced the time-consuming traditional yeast bread method with something quicker, without compromising quality. This technique calls for mixing large batches of dough in advance, storing them in the refrigerator, and then tearing off dough for loaves as needed over two weeks. Quite a lot of people tried it, and our book became part of a home-baked bread revolution.

Along the way, we started our blog at
www.artisanbreadinfive.com
, so that we could be in touch with readers who had questions or comments. It became a place to share new information that we’d learned. It’s been great fun—people have even written poems to us about their bread. We’ve heard emotional stories about entire families making bread together: grandmas making pizza with their grandkids, and siblings baking long-distance (some even across oceans). Our blog space is a forum for feedback and requests, and the most common ones have been for breads with more whole grains, seeds, nuts, and even for gluten-free breads. The requests came from as far away as Europe, Asia, and Australia. It seems that the world is becoming a healthier place. People were asking for whole grain breads that they could bake themselves, but they still wanted the same five-minute method. So the idea for our second book came from our readers.
Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day
became our next logical step for making breads and even desserts part of a healthy diet.

We both eat
some
sugar, white flour, and butter. In other words, we’re not health-food fanatics. But that’s not to say we aren’t health-conscious. We both exercise, and ultimately we watch what we eat. We wrote our first book with the goal of getting people back into their kitchens to bake really great bread, with recipes mostly inspired by the European tradition. That meant lots of white flour. We ate it in moderation while we tested the book, and believe it or not, despite the much-maligned reputation of carbohydrates, we didn’t gain weight. We were both pleasantly surprised. Bread and desserts can be part of a healthy lifestyle, so long as you eat them in moderation.

Whether you are looking for more whole grains, whether you’re vegan, gluten-free, watching your weight, trying to reduce your cholesterol, or just care about what goes into your body,
Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day
has recipes for you. We all want to be healthy, and now we can do it without sacrificing flavor or precious time. It’s obvious why this would make sense for Jeff (the doctor). His background in health care and preventive medicine leads him to alternatives that are lower in calories, with healthier fats and higher fiber. Then, there’s his passion for bread baking, which led to the discovery we wrote about in our first book, making artisan breads quickly and easily. Not everyone needs to make their brioche without butter, but if doing so means that someone who can’t eat butter can enjoy fabulous brioche, then by all means let’s do it, and do it right.

That’s where Zoë (the pastry chef), comes into the picture. She grew up the daughter of hippies and cut her teeth on the ultra-healthy bread served at the Vermont commune where she was raised. In her twenties Zoë was a vegetarian; she didn’t eat refined sugar and headed off to the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) to follow her passion, pastry. Her goal: bake without refined sugar, but create ethereal pastries that didn’t weigh a ton and taste like sweetened tree bark. But while studying at the CIA, Zoë was tempted by the miracles of sugar, bleached flour, heavenly butter, and all of the other ingredients she had once shunned. She was being seduced away from the whole grains, fruit sweeteners, and carob that had been the staples of her counterculture childhood. Years later, Zoë would figure out a way to have it all: great-tasting but healthy pastries, desserts, and of course, breads.

So we both were drawn to write a new book that combines superfast bread with healthy ingredients.
Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day
is about taking the speedy methods of
Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day
and adapting them for breads made with less white flour (sometimes none), lower refined sugars, and healthier ingredients. We’re not going to claim that eating these breads is the key to a longer life. But we can show bread eaters who want to use more nutritious ingredients how to get results as delicious and fast as those they achieved with our first book. So
Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day
will
not
be 250 pages of preaching and scolding about health and diet; neither of us has the patience for that.

We’ll use the same wet, stored-dough method and we won’t make anyone knead. But as you’ll see, we’re switching to healthier alternatives: whole grains, canola and olive oils, nuts, seeds, natural sweeteners, and in some cases, gluten-free ingredients. Where white flour (or butter) is required, we’ve tried to decrease the total amount that goes into the recipe. And we kept active daily preparation time to five minutes for the basic recipes. We assume that this newfound interest in health hasn’t been accompanied by a newfound wealth of free time! A doctor and a pastry chef turn out to be a great match to create recipes that are not only good for you but that also taste fantastic. So now healthy eaters can have their bread (or pastry) and eat it, too!

As you read through the book, please visit our Web site (
www.healthybreadinfive.com
), where you’ll find instructional text, photographs, videos, and a community of other five-minute-a-day bakers. Another easy way to keep in touch is to follow us on the social networking site “Twitter,” at
http://twitter.com/ArtisanBreadIn5
.

Happy baking, and enjoy all the bread!

Why Eat Healthy Bread: A Wee Bit of Science

Being alive takes energy, and that energy comes from burning carbohydrate fuels with oxygen in our bodies (that’s called
oxidation
). Even though oxidation is perfectly natural and healthy, it releases some nasty chemicals. So does exposure to sunlight, chemicals, pollutants, and radiation. All that oxidation and energy can create what biochemists call “superoxide radicals,” which we’ve heard of as “free radicals,” high-energy chemicals that can do damage to our cells. Free-radical damage has a role in a host of chronic diseases, including cancer, hardening of the arteries, heart disease, stroke, and arthritis.
The good news:
Our bodies get help in getting rid of free radicals from phytochemicals (beneficial plant chemicals) and vitamins in our food, both natural substances with powerful health benefits. They act as potent antioxidants, chemicals that absorb damaging energy from free radicals. Phytochemicals with antioxidant activity tend to be richly colored: green, yellow, blue, and red. Some of the most colorful fruits and vegetables have the largest stores of phytochemicals. As you work through
chapter 7
, Breads with Hidden Fruits and Vegetables, you’ll feast your eyes on a stunning and colorful palette of breads. Substances like phytochemicals are the reason that the U.S. government recommends that you eat nine or more servings of fruits and vegetables per day. These breads will help you do it.

Vitamins are essential helpers for the body’s normal chemical functions (metabolism), allowing the chemical reactions we depend upon to take place. Lack of vitamins cause some of the world’s most devastating but curable deficiency diseases, which have pretty much disappeared in the industrialized world. But deficiency diseases are the tip of the iceberg—many vitamins don’t just act as metabolic catalysts, they’re also antioxidants. This is especially clear for vitamin E. There is strong evidence that normal levels of vitamin E prevent heart, blood, muscle, and eye problems. Vitamin E is found in wheat germ (from whole grain wheat), vegetable oils, seeds, and nuts. Vitamin C, another powerful antioxidant, works in concert with vitamin E. Throughout the book, we’ll jump in with sidebars about the vitamins—vitamin A, the eight B vitamins (see
Appendix
), plus vitamins C, D, E, and K (please do not ask us why there is no vitamin F, G, H, or I!). Most nutritionists agree that vitamin requirements are best met through a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, rather than by taking vitamin supplements. That’s not to say supplements aren’t ever helpful; they certainly can be when daily requirements aren’t being met through food intake. But the vitamins that occur naturally in food are better because they’re more easily absorbed through digestion than supplements are, probably resulting in higher levels of vitamins and antioxidants in our bloodstream and tissues. This book will help you put more of those natural vitamins and antioxidants into your family’s diet.

There are a lot of wild nutrition claims out there, and we’ve steered clear of them in this book—we do not believe that there is a magic bullet to promote health or cure disease with particular food sources or supplements. But there are some scientifically based statements that will probably stand the test of time:

1. Whole grain flour is better for you than white flour.
Because whole grains include the germ and the bran, in addition to the starch-rich but fiber- and vitamin-poor endosperm (see
chapter 2, Ingredients
), whole grain flours bring a boatload of healthy substances into your diet, including phytochemicals (beneficial plant chemicals), vitamins, and fiber. Those are pretty much absent from white flour. Iron, niacin, folic acid, riboflavin, and thiamine are added back in enriched commercial white flour, but no other nutrients—so whole wheat delivers more complete nutrition than white flour even when it’s been enriched. But there’s more—because bran and germ in whole grains dilute the effect of pure starch in the endosperm, the absorption and conversion of starches into simple sugars is slowed, so blood glucose (the simplest sugar) rises more slowly after consumption of whole grains than it does after eating refined white flour products. Complex, high-bran carbohydrates are said to have a lower “glycemic index,” a measure of how fast your blood sugar rises after eating a particular food. The evidence for better handling of blood sugar convinced the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to make two recommendations in their current guidelines:

• Consume a high-fiber diet,
  with at least 14 grams of dietary fiber per 1,000 calories consumed. For most people, that’s going to mean 28 to 40 grams a day (depending on body size at normal weight).
  
• Make sure that at least half of your grain intake is
  whole
  grain.
  The recipes in this book will help you meet that goal.
  

2. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated oils are better for you than saturated fats (like butter and hydrogenated oil).
See our
ingredients list
for a more complete discussion. Switching to these oils or other heart-healthy fat sources can benefit those with high blood cholesterol.

3. Low-salt breads will benefit people with hypertension, heart failure, and kidney failure.
This applies to all our breads—they all can be made salt-free, though the flavor will of course be different.

4. Nuts and seeds contain heart-healthy oils.
Though they’re concentrated calorie sources, nuts and seeds are rich in vitamins, minerals, and heart-healthy fats (monounsaturated and omega-3 polyunsaturated fats).

5. Fruits and vegetables are the best sources for phytochemicals and vitamins.
We have a whole chapter of breads enriched by fruits or vegetables, which are fiber-rich and loaded with vitamins and antioxidants. We’ll discuss the unique benefits of the particular fruit or vegetable in sidebars next to the recipes.

And finally, a word of advice: Please don’t obsess about food. This is supposed to be fun. If you can put some healthy ingredients into your bread and you like the flavor, do it. Otherwise, eat something else.
^*

Making Your Own Great Bread Saves You Money

When the economy goes into a tizzy (and even when it doesn’t) you have to wonder why anyone is willing to pay $6.00 for a loaf of bread in specialty bakeries. If you buy your bread in a supermarket, you’ll still pay $3.00 a loaf. Making your own bread, on the other hand, is very, very economical. Even when whole wheat flour is 70 cents a pound (right at this moment in some of the stores near us), an entire batch of whole wheat bread uses a little more than two pounds of flour, costing about $1.40. It’s a few pennies more for yeast and salt, and you get four 1-pound loaves that cost about 40 cents each.

An added benefit: The world’s most heavenly source of home heating this winter will be your oven, cranking out the aroma of freshly baked bread.