A Surprise **Also: READ THIS BOOK

I was at work last night when I recieved a text from Dave.

"I have a surprise for you!"

My first suspicion was that it had something to do with my cat. Maybe he got him a new collar? Just a couple of weeks ago we were at Target and I had raved on and on about how cute this little bow-tie collar was. Maybe he picked it up?

I spent the evening pondering, but didn’t ask for any hints.

I had to close last night so I didn’t get out of work until sometime after 1am. I sent Dave a message that I was on my way home (he was out with Clint and more of our friends).

"You’re going to beat me home! Whatever you do… don’t go into the bedroom. Wait until I get home. I’ll be right behind you!"

…Okay, so if it had to do with our bedroom then it certainly couldn’t be a new collar for the cat. He’d have put the collar on the cat, and the cat isn’t even allowed in our bedroom (because I have allergies). Maybe he did my laundry? I have a lot of laundry on the floor right now… I really need to do laundry. That’s it! I’ll bet he did my laundry. What a nice boyfriend I have… 

So, when I got home I tossed my bag on the kitchen table. I sliced myself a couple of pieces of bread (more on that later**) to make some toast. Just as I turned on the toaster Dave came peeling into the apartment.

"Did you figure it out, yet?"
"I might have an idea. When you said ‘bedroom’ my wheels started turning."
"What do you think it is?"
"You did my laundry!"
"Nope, follow me."

He grabbed my hand, "I had to do some re-arranging in there to make it work…"

He flipped on the light. Our bedroom furniture had been shifted. On top of Dave’s dresser, across from the bed, sat a brand new 32" LG LCD TV Just like the one that he has in his office.

"A housewarming gift! You always fall asleep watching TV on the couch in the living room, so I thought I’d open it up and put it in here for now. It’s yours, though! I knew that you didn’t have one and thought that you’d want one for your room in your new place- just in case you don’t want to sit in the family room with your new roommate all the time. I hope that you like it!"

See? He’s so thoughtful. And I love surprises.

** Okay, this is entirely off topic but I MUST talk about it. First, a picture:

I am not lying, exaggerating, or messing around when I say that this book has changed my damn life. And I’ve only owned it for a week! 

I love freshly-baked bread. I love baking. However, baking fresh bread can be a massive pain-in-the-ass. It takes hours. DAYS sometimes. You mix and knead and allow to rise and punch down and rise again and form the loaf and rise again and then finally bake. If you want fresh bread for dinner then you have to plan far in advance. Then, assuming that you don’t eat the entire loaf at dinner time, the bread stales on your counter top. A couple of days from then you may want a sandwich, but by then it’s too late. You turn your leftover bread into breadcrumbs for later cooking endeavors or into french toast for breakfast. You feel slightly defeated. You retreat to the store to buy a loaf of pre-sliced sandwich bread because you want the convenience- when you want a sandwich you want a sandwich. You don’t want to wait twelve hours for one, or suffer through eating one on stale bread.

This book changes EVERYTHING. And the results are PHENOMENAL. It requires NO TALENT. I cannot emphasize enough how amazing this book is and the techniques that it teaches. Seriously.

Mix enough all-purpose flour, yeast, salt, water for 2-4 loaves of bread in a large container that has a lid (an ice cream bucket will do- I just used a large tupperware). Let sit on the counter top for 2-5 hours in the same container that you’ve mixed it in. Throw into the fridge and use any time within the next fourteen days. The dough is now ready to use any number of ways any time that you want it. You can cut some of it off to make from-scratch cinnamon rolls with the dough. You can use the rest to make french baguettes. You can make garlic breadsticks for pasta or a boule for sandwiches. If you wait to use it until further in the week, the dough begins to take on flavor characteristics of sourdough. Say you baked off a boule a couple of days ago and it’s stale? Who cares! With this technique you’ll have more dough in the fridge to bake RIGHT NOW for sandwiches if you want to! The bread will be baked and ready to eat in less than an hour!

And there are other recipes! Four days ago before going out to the bar with my friends I threw together the recipe for 100% whole wheat bread and left it on the counter in the same container that I mixed it in (with the lid on). When I got home I threw the whole thing in the fridge. Two days ago, when I finally had time to do something with it, I removed some of the dough from the fridge and baked it in a loaf pan. Yesterday I sliced some of it up and made myself turkey and tomato sandwiches for lunch. The bread was a rich brown color… dense yet soft, bitter and nutty from the whole wheat flour, and slightly sweet from the honey that the recipe called for. It was divine- nothing like the whole wheat bread that I’d attempted to make by hand or with the bread machine that I owned years ago (and have since thrown away because the results were always so disappointing).

The trick here is not only in the technique, but also in the ratio of ingredients. This isn’t your typical bread dough. It’s much more slack and wet then what you’d be used to seeing if you’ve made from-scratch dough in the past. The slack dough allows for reduced rise time and the wetness keeps it extra moist.

I was skeptical. It went against everything that I knew about bread and bread making. One of the co-authors is a local James Beard Award-winning chef here in the Minneapolis/St Paul area- in the book she admits that the technique goes against everything that she learned in cooking school. But the fact of the matter is this: IT WORKS. You really can have fresh baked bread every single day if you want to with almost no effort. No kneading. None of the bullshit. And it tastes great! The texture is excellent! 

You MUST buy this book.  Or check it out from the library. Do what you have to. You MUST read it.