jeff, Author at Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

Jeff’s doing a benefit class for Minneapolis’s Legal Rights Center on November 30

November 16, 2017April 1, 2021 jeff Leave a comment

Jeff will join forces with New York Times food writer Martha Rose Shulman to create perfect pizza crust and imaginative toppings (guess who’s doing which), in a benefit for Minneapolis’s Legal Rights Center, a non-profit legal organization dedicated to diverting kids from the criminal justice system and into restorative justice programs. The baking demo will be from 4:00pm to 5:30pm on November 30, 2017 ($150 donation to LRC). After the demo with Jeff and Martha, starting at 5:30pm, it’ll be an evening of great conversation with great Twin Cities cooks and foodies who’ll be in attendance, including Lucia Watson (founder of Lucia’s restaurant and cookbook author), Beth Dooley (Twin Cities food writer and cook book author, and Matt Morgan (chef from The Bachelor Farmer, Heartland, Aquavit, and Chef’s Taverna). There’s an additional $100 donation if you choose to stay after the demo.

Click for more information and to register…

Corrections to Holiday and Celebration Bread (2018)

November 12, 2017December 12, 2025 jeff 25 Comments

In some of the Kindle versions, the Stollen recipe omitted items from the Ingredients list:

Ground cardamom: 1/2 teaspoon
Mixed dried and/or candied fruit*: 1.5 cups/9 ounces/255 grams
Almond paste: 1/2 cup per loaf (4 ounces/115 grams)
Egg wash: 1 egg beaten with 1T water, for brushing

* Golden raisins, dried pineapple, dried apricots, dried cherries, and candied citrus peel are a few few of the many possibilities

In the print version, see…

Page 35, Volumes conversion chart: 1 teaspoon is equal to 1/6 ounce, not 1/3. Metric volume is correct.

Page 85, Ingredient chart, all-purpose flour should read 6 cups | 1 pound 14 ounces | 850 grams

Page 115, Conchas, yield: Should read “Makes 8 buns”

Page 153, Whole-Grain Challah Dough, Step 2 should read “Combine the water, honey, oil, vanilla, and eggs.”

Page 173, Chocolate-Raisin Babka Bundt, Step 1: says to add milk, but the ingredient lists says water. The recipe was developed with water, but the truth is, you can use either.

Page 189, Truck Stop Cinnamon Rolls makes 4 rolls, not 8.

Page 225, Panettone, Step 5 should read “On baking day, grease a 6-inch panettone or brioche pan with butter.”

Page 247, Finnish Pulla’s Ingredients list: the entry for unsalted butter should read “Unsalted butter, melted.”

Page 248, Finnish Pulla, Step 1 omits using the eggs, vanilla, cardamom. Add those in step 1.

Page 249, Finnish Pulla, Step 9 omits using the walnuts called for in the ingredients list on page 247. Step 9 should have ended with “Sprinkle with raw sugar (or regular granulated white sugar) and walnuts.”

Page 262, Saint Lucia Saffron Buns, Step 2 should read “… whisk together the bread flour with the potato flour.”

Page 275, Hot Cross Buns should include a yield statement at the top of the ingredients table: “Makes about 25 buns”

Page 286, Easter Raisin Bread (Mazanec), Step 2, in keeping with the ingredients list, should call for milk, not water, and read “Mix the yeast, salt, sugar, eggs, melted butter, extracts, and lemon zest with the milk in a…”

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Chocolate Chip Cookies from The Vanilla Bean Baking Book

September 28, 2017October 21, 2017 jeff 181 Comments

These cookies were just featured in the New York Times! We’re so thrilled for Sarah and it just confirms what we already know about them, they are AWESOME!

You are on the right site, we are just taking a short break from baking bread to bring you one of our absolute favorite recipes from Sarah’s new book, The Vanilla Bean Baking Book. You all know Sarah’s gorgeous work here on Breadin5, but you may not be as familiar with her baking website. Sarah has been working with us on the Breadin5 website and has been instrumental in our cookbook photoshoots as a food stylist. During our last marathon photo session she brought us cakes, cookies, scones and even pie she was testing for her own cookbook. When she brought in these chocolate chip cookies we took a moment out of the shoot to declare them the best cookies any of us had ever had. I do not say that lightly, considering I had a cookie company in college, have baked no fewer than 500 chocolate chip cookie recipes and have consumed even more. These are the best and now you have the recipe.

We are thrilled for Sarah and are so proud of her and this brilliant book! She and her publisher have graciously offered a copy of her book to a lucky winner of our GIVEAWAY. ~~Just leave a note in our comments and we will select someone at random. It will make a great addition to your cookbooks or a lovely gift for someone on your list. All our normal contest rules apply.~~ This contest is over.

How & When to Swap Bread Flour for All-Purpose in Mini-Wreath Pain d’Epis

September 18, 2017December 14, 2025 jeff 61 Comments

People often ask us why we only used all-purpose flour (where we called for white flour) in The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Why not “bread” flour, which is higher in protein and is often considered traditional in bread? Well, not in all traditions. French baguettes, for example, are typically made with lower-protein flour for a more tender, and less chewy crumb. And we knew most of our potential book users already had all-purpose flour in the house. But sometimes, a stiffer dough is desirable, like when something really needs to hold its shape, like these wreath-shaped, well… bagels. You can always swap bread flour into our recipes that call for all-purpose, just by adding a little extra water (details below). Read More

Upside Down Plum Brioche Cake

August 18, 2017April 29, 2019 jeff 5 Comments

August is slowly slipping away from us, and here in Minnesota it’s brought endless days of cool weather and rain. Baking has been an essential part of my day, as I process changes: new routines about to begin, weather moving from hot to cold, and daily current events that fill my computer screen.

Stone fruits are still front and center at my grocery store; they’ve replaced the piles of berries that filled my fridge all through July. While we’ve mostly been eating them perfectly ripe and sliced, I did sneak in an up-side down brioche this week that was incredibly delicious. Made with plums, some butter and sugar, and a splash of vanilla, this brioche cake is a perfect way to celebrate the end of summer.

Grilled Breakfast Pizza Two Ways

July 19, 2017April 29, 2019 jeff 1 Comment

We’ve had some incredibly warm days here in Minneapolis (scorchers, as we like to call them, as in ‘what a scorcher!’) so our grill has been in constant use. Grilling during extremely hot weather isn’t always the best idea, because, well, that grill is hot, but it does keep the house much cooler. I decided on one of these raging hot mornings that I would start grilling early – friends were coming over for a late breakfast, and maybe we could just do pizzas? With breakfast toppings? Everyone was amused by the idea of breakfast pizza, and now my kids request it daily. We made two different kinds: eggs, bacon, and Swiss chard with a roasted garlic sauce, and peach-sausage-basil with mozzarella. Both were considered hits by all.

Chicken and Donuts

May 25, 2017April 29, 2019 jeff Leave a comment

I’ve recently become obsessed with Gary Cooper – not the Gary Cooper, but a decadent donut breakfast that a local Minneapolis diner serves, named after Mr. G.C. The diner is the Hi-Lo Diner, a new establishment that serves a fancy item called a Hi-Top, which is essentially a donut piled high with either sweet or savory ingredients. The Gary Cooper is my favorite hi-top on the menu, it’s covered with buttermilk fried chicken, maple-bourbon syrup, country gravy, and micro arugula. I decided to try and recreate this number in my own kitchen, using our no-knead brioche dough for the donut base, and then building the rest with maple syrup, mashed potatoes, gravy, and crispy chicken. It was incredibly delicious, and although this dinner will be a special occasion treat in at my house, it was worth all the effort.

How to shape wet dough

April 16, 2017January 16, 2024 jeff 107 Comments

The secret to this method is having a nice wet dough. This allows you to store the dough and make a beautiful loaf. One of the most often questions is how to successfully shape the wet dough into a nice neat ball. If your loaf is not shaped well, it may spread out and be too flat or it will bake in a shape you just didn’t intend. Even if your dough is super wet, even wetter than we intended, within reason, it can still be successfully shaped and bake into a gorgeous loaf. We’ll show you how in this video. The trick is using more flour than you may think is okay, but as you’ll see you don’t work the flour into the dough; just use it to keep the dough from sticking to your hands. As we gently handle the dough we add more flour. This allows you to shape, without overworking the dough. Didn’t use a Bench Scraper in this video, but it is a great tool for keeping the dough from sticking to your hands.

The dough in this video is the Master recipe from The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, but this method can be used for any of our doughs.

Tsoureki: Easter Bread from Greece

April 10, 2017April 10, 2017 jeff 6 Comments

Easter is right around the corner, and while it is celebrated in different ways by many, one common thread is to involve colorful eggs, either in hunts or baskets or bread.

Tsoureki is the traditional bread of Easter in Greece and many other Christian countries. The dough is enriched and then twisted around brightly dyed eggs. The bread is often braided with three strands to represent the holy trinity, formed into a circle as a reference to life and the eggs are dyed red as a symbol of Christ’s blood. The bread is sweet, flavored with orange zest and a traditional Middle Eastern spice called Mahlepi, which is made from ground cherry pits (the spice can be found in Middle Eastern or Greek markets). If you don’t have Mahlepi, you can make the dough with ground Anise seed or even Cardamom. We’ve made them individual-sized here, with light pink eggs, but you could make them any color you would like (for a large loaf, we have a recipe here).

Cinnamon Twists

February 27, 2017April 28, 2019 jeff 17 Comments

We’ve been on a breadstick kick. My children are obsessed with them, and love them even more than pizza. They’ve started begging for breadsticks at every meal, and while I don’t always heed their cries, I do find I am making them more than usual. Why? Well, they are so easy to put together, and work with almost any kind of meal. Pizza and breadsticks. Spaghetti and breadsticks. Chicken and breadsticks. Lasagna and breadsticks. (Don’t worry, there are plenty of vegetables served alongside, too). One weekend morning, when breadsticks were brought up for breakfast, I decided to surprise them with cinnamon twists instead. They were an instant hit, and while these are not a weekly affair, they are a fun, simple way to sweeten up a breakfast, brunch, or even dinner table.