Bread Adventures (Batch 3 Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day)

For any new readers. I am attempting to bake my way through Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day by Jeff Herzog and Zoe Francois,   It's a GREAT book for anyone who would like to try baking bread - especially for those a little bit intimidated in the kitchen!

I ran into a snag with Chapter 2.  The breads in this chapter call for Rye flour and I am having a little difficulty locating it.  I went to 3 stores the other day and had no luck.  I did have corn meal, however so I skipped around and found a corn bread recipe.

Broa - Portuguese Corn Bread - had to make 2 loaves because the first one disappeared before I got a photo :-)   The recipe is mostly regular flour with a cup of corn meal so there is  just a hint of corn bread flavor.  The added flavor is really good and it was a great side to add to our Chicken Barley Vegetable Soup.

Spicy Pork Buns - I had some leftover pork loin roast so this recipe came right on time!  Unfortunately I am remedial about recipes... so the night I decided to put it together, I went into the kitchen in time to bake the bread... but had misread the meat sauce instructions!  It was supposed to simmer for THREE HOURS!  Okay, well that wasn't going to happen!

Quick recovery though!  I had some regular dough in the fridge too - skimmed the chapters ahead and found a stromboli.  This was a great looking recipe with some ingredients I didn't have... but I figured that I could use basic marinara, the pepperoni in the fridge and some shredded cheese and create something that would feed the men in my life!

I will make another one when I reach that chapter and use the ingredients in the book and use what I learned this time around!

And while I was working on that, I put the pork ingredients in my crockpot.  The cooking can happen tonight and I will make the Spicy Pork Buns tomorrow night :-)

Spicy pork buns saga continues :-)  Again ME with the assumptions and not reading the directions!  Spicy pork buns.... I am thinking.... hamburger buns with a spicy pork meat filling.... kind of like a sloppy joe or a barbeque...  Not so much!  If they had named it EMPANADA, I would have had a better idea if what I was going to do... or maybe a picture would have been a good idea :-)

At any rate, once again, I set up to put them together and discovered that the meat & sauce were supposed to be refrigerated separately and the process was not what I had envisioned.  Okay - whatever -)  I used what I had.... and made them.....

Messy, I know... I was making BUNS in my head... it was hard to regroup :-)  And that one with the holes... I followed instructions on the amount of filling... and it was too much.. but I learned and the others look better :-)

But no worries, they tasted fine :-)    I do want to do them again... only this time I will probably make them half the size.

I am beginning to think that this book is not exactly idiot-proof.... but all is still pretty tasty and I am having fun learning.  Certainly I am not intimidated by it any more :-)  I just don't have good kitchen sense...