Like a lot of food-lovers, I harbor many kitchen fantasies about fresh-baked bread. Fresh bread is pretty much the ultimate definition of home and hearth, and the person who bakes her own bread is also the person whose house is the go-to place for neighborhood kids, who makes the stranger feel welcome, who has exactly the right advice for every friend with a problem, who has long glossy hair she usually wears in a bun, who composts, hangs laundry to dry in the sun, and never has a cranky day.  

Or maybe she just has a copy of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Zoë Francois and Jeff Hertzberg. I acquired this book after a taste of the bread from their master recipe at my friend Ann Dee’s house about a month ago, and since then have baked six tasty loaves my very own self. It really is an amazingly fast and easy technique, and now I want to evangelize to everyone I know who cooks.  

While reading the acknowledgments for the book I discovered that Jeff and Zoë and I are all represented by the same literary agency, so of course I immediately exploited the connection to get them over here for a Q&A as part of my Shop Local Holiday Gift-Guying Guide. It makes a terrific gift for the cooks in your life, and you may as well get a copy for yourself while you’re at it. The basic ingredients for homemade bread are so cheap, this really pays for itself after the first four-loaf batch of dough. If you don’t see it on the shelf at your local indie store, ask! They can order it for you and have it in quickly. 

And now, let’s hear what the authors have to say… 

SZ: Congratulations on the success of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I’ve bought a lot of bread books in my time, and this is the first one that actually delivers on its promise of do-ability! What do you think it is about the prospect of bread making that strikes fear in the hearts of the average home cook?

 

Jeff: [It’s] the sense that their yeast bread is going to be time-consuming and disappointing. All that mixing, kneading, proofing, and baking to yield exactly one precious loaf. What if it’s bad? For inexperienced bakers using the traditional method, it often isn’t so great. Why? The instructions always say some version of the same thing: “knead, adding flour as needed so the dough doesn’t stick to everything, until it’s silky and smooth.� Beginners tend to add too much flour, and it ends up dry and tough. But how are they supposed to know how much flour is OK to use? It’s a matter of experience, and it’s a Catch-22—they don’t get the experience because they give up.  With the traditional method, it’s too time-consuming to acquire the experience needed to get a dependably great loaf. Our approach doesn’t take any experience, and people are making great stuff the first week (our batches get better as they mature during their 5 to 14-day storage period).  

Zoë: In all of the classes that I have taught over the years, I’ve heard over and over that people just run screaming the second yeast is introduced. They are intimidated by the “science” behind it and the seemingly laborious process they have to go through to get a loaf of bread. To many it seemed easier to buy a loaf at the store. That is what was so exciting about the method that Jeff introduced me to those many years ago. I knew all of the people that feared yeasted doughs would do this, because it was so easy and didn’t take up an entire day. It seems to be working!  

SZ: Like so many Americans, I’ve gone a few rounds with food and body issues, and have done time as a cog in the machinery of the diet industry. I agree with Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma) that America has a national eating disorder. We are obsessed with food and, at the same time, terribly fearful of it. And at the heart of this fear (in the last couple decades, anyway) is…bread. The bread basket has become both the demon and the siren of mealtime, after centuries (millenia!) of playing the role as the foundation of nutrition all over the world. Making your own bread is at once the ultimate and most basic act of taking back what we’ve let the food and diet industry take away. Can you say a few pro-bread words for those of us who are recovering carb-o-phobics?  

Jeff: Carbo-phobia was briefly widespread, but if you think about it, it didn’t really last very long before this latest fad was debunked—its widespread popularity lasted no more than five years. The Atkins super-low carbohydrate craze is over; from a height of 11% of American adults on the diet, the most recent survey I saw (a couple of years old now) suggests that no more than 4% were still on it, and it was dropping fast. The most recent studies I’ve seen say that any low-calorie diet can help you lose weight, whether it’s low-carb, low-fat, or balanced. … So the question is how to get people on a nutritious diet that won’t feel like a Diet with a capital “D.â€?  And that diet has to be forever, not just when we’re trying to lose weight. It has to be palatable, and that was one of the biggest problems with Atkins; it just isn’t palatable to eat nothing but protein and fat all day. As Pollan’s title suggests, we’re omnivores who evolved to eat everything. So we have to figure out a way to eat a varied and delicious diet without overdoing it. It’s not easy, but obsessively avoiding a single “magicâ€? calorie source does not appear to be the answer.  You can’t find a credible dietician who is currently backing a super-low carb diet.  

Zoë: I’m so pleased that you raise this issue, it is one that is near and dear to me. As someone who had eating disorders as a teenager, I think it is so important to learn to love our bodies and not be afraid of food. The irony of this whole issue around carbs and the Atkins Diet demonizing of bread, is that both Jeff and I have lost weight while writing a book about bread. I bake it and eat it daily, I’ve just learned not to eat an entire loaf at a sitting. The beauty of our method is that you can make any size loaf you want, anything from a single roll to a 4 pound loaf. I make enough for our meal and rarely have left-overs. I can’t imagine a life without bread, it is the soul of the meal.  

SZ: On a related note, I know that you both have kids [separately - Jeff and Zoe are not married], and that Jeff is also an M.D. What kinds of things have you done to raise your children to have a healthy relationship with food?  

Jeff: Yes, it’s true, I’m a doctor, but I have no magic formula to get kids into healthy eating and activity.  They’re surrounded by an all-you-can-eat buffet of junk food. I’m convinced that this stuff isn’t all that satisfying and that’s why people eat so much of it. I have daughters, so I’m hyper-aware of the dual message: “eat all this junk and have fun doing it,â€? but also, “have this perfect yet unattainable body.â€? So having healthy kids, I think, means shielding them when they’re young from the barrage of pop culture messages. Once they get a little older, it gets harder and harder to control that. My wife and I try not to be over-controlling of our girls’ food intake because I’m convinced that this often backfires. We provide great, home-cooked food in reasonable portions, limit dessert, and give kids water or milk as the beverage of choice.  No soda pop! My girls make very odd faces when someone presents them with store-bought bread, so I feel like I’ve done my job!  

Zoe: As a chef it was my greatest fear to have children who were fussy eaters, so I’ve tried very hard to foster an open mind about what they are willing to eat. It really helps that they have an older cousin who grew up partly in France eating mussels and escargot; he made that stuff seem cool. I also think it has a lot to do with the fact that we eat dinner together every night. They eat whatever it is that my husband and I make. Sometimes they love it and sometimes not so much, but the rule is they have to at least try it. It turns into a challenge that luckily they enjoy. I also encourage them to pick restaurants from different parts of the world when we eat out. I learned this from the Mayor of Minneapolis. I heard him talking about how he has a map of the world and he and his family are trying to eat their way around the globe. Every time they go out they choose a new spot in the world and eat that cuisine. I’m not as systematic as that, but it makes it a fun adventure and gives the kids a say in where it will be next. If they choose the restaurant they are way more likely to try the food.  

SZ: A lot of readers of this blog are writers who also happen to love to cook, and I think we’d all love to hear a little bit about the editorial process of a cookbook. I’m assuming your editor doesn’t try a recipe and then say, “I had a little trouble believing the 1/2 cup of honey on page 82″ or “I think you need to add another layer of complexity to the brioche to really make it sing.” What is the editor’s role here, and how did it all work in sync with your collaboration?  

Jeff: Our editor, Ruth Cavin, is a joy. She’s been at this a long time, and has written several cookbooks herself. The give and take with an editor is (surprisingly) still a manual process, with red-lined manuscript copies being FedEx’d all over the country. But it works, and I’m certain that our editors vastly improved our book. I think because Zoë’s a pastry chef and baker, they really trusted us with the details of the recipes. And the fact that so many people have been successful with our book suggests to me that we achieved our goal—the recipes are easy enough for an amateur (me) but delicious enough for a professional (Zoë). There are 75,000 copies in print, which is about 70,000 more than anyone expected.  

Zoë: We had a team of editors at St. Martin’s Press, who were instrumental in making the book as good as it is. Some of them read the book for tone and voice, making sure that it had a consistent flow. Others were there to catch all of my run-on sentences and other grammatical mistakes. The thing none of them touched were the recipes or the method of bread making we introduced.  

SZ: Lastly: If you were stranded on a desert island (a desert island with a refrigerator and oven), what one type of dough from your book would you take with you, and why?  

Jeff: If I were on a desert island, I’d bring the European Peasant Bread on page 46, because it’s the most versatile thing in the book. Even though it’s hearty with the whole grains, it’s basically a light whole wheat and rye dough—so it can pass for lots of things. Once mixed and stored, it can be converted into something like Deli Rye by rolling in caraway seeds; you can make baguettes and boules, and even do a whit(ish) sandwich bread for finicky types if you do it in a loaf pan. In my house, when I’m not testing for a book, European Peasant Dough is what’s in the refrigerator bucket. It’s also a great base for pizza, focaccia, and flatbread. Underneath all of this is the sense that you’re sneaking in at least some whole grain. But my favorite thing to make is the Roasted Red Pepper Fougasse, the stuffed flatbread with festive peppers peeking out through dough windows, on page 154.  Reminds me of a magical trip overseas with my wife, every time I eat it. Do I get to bring pepper seeds and plant a garden?  

Zoë: That is simple for me, it would be the brioche dough. I could make breakfast pastries, onion pletzel for lunch and beignets for dessert, all in one day. It sounds like paradise!!!  

SZ: Yes, it does!

Jeff and Zoe have done a great job of connecting with readers beyond the pages of the book, with a web site where they regularly post, adding value to what you get in the book. (Lesson here for all authors!)You can also follow them on Twitter. Here are all the links: 

The Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day web site

The Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day Twitter stream

Zoë Bakes web site

Zoë’s Twitter stream 

Remember – ask for the book your local independent bookseller!