5-Minute Artisan Bread Recipe

This bread is amazing! I've only heard good things from people and OVER and OVER! They rant and rave and tell their friends and family. It takes just a couple minutes to mix up, about 2 hours to rise and 30 minutes to bake! You can't get much better than that for homemade bread.

This is NOT my recipe. I found it online and it comes from this book: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (found here).

It is also found on Food.com but the instructions are VERY complicated and I'm here to simplify it.




5-Minute Artisan Bread Recipe (Yield 4 small loaves)

3 cups lukewarm water (just a little warmer than body temperature)
1 1/2 T granulated yeast
1 1/2 T kosher salt (cannot substitute table salt)
Sprinkle/pinch of sugar
6 1/2 cups all-purpose flour


1. Add water, yeast, salt and a pinch of sugar to a mixing bowl. Let stand 10 minutes or until frothy.

2. Add in half of the flour and mix. Once the flour is incorporated, add in the rest. You're finished when everything is uniformly moist, without dry patches.

3. Cover with plastic wrap with the underside sprayed down with non-stick spray. Place in a warm area of the home until it's doubled in size or flattened on top. This usually takes 2 hours, but longer rising time up to 5 hours is fine. You can use any portion of the dough from this point forward.

4. Take 1/2 or 1/4 of the dough and form it into a ball.

5. Place it onto any type of pan, round cake pan, pie pan, cookie sheet, casserole dish, whatever you have. Spray it with non-stick spray or throw down some cornmeal.

6. Preheat the oven to 450 once the bread is formed in a pan and let the dough rise while the oven preheats. Sprinkle flour on top and slice the top a couple times. This will make the bread look authentic.

7. Place a oven safe dish on the lower rack of the oven, in with the bread, with about 2 cups of water. This increases the humidity inside the oven and helps make the crust...crusty. :)

8. Bake for 25-30 minutes. The bread should be golden brown. Slice and enjoy.

9. Refrigerate and cover any leftover dough for up to 14 days. The longer it's in the fridge, the more sourdough-like it will taste. This can be baked at any time.

Mom's Fried Chicken

I wanted to share my mom's recipe for fried chicken. This meal was definitely a staple at our home growing up and once you try it, you'll see why! 

 

 

Defrost chicken.

Mix together flour and then any seasonings you like.

She used seasoning salt, Mrs. Dash, Cajun, red pepper flakes, paprika, pepper, garlic salt, steak seasoning or any combination of those. The key is to make sure the flour is no longer white. It should have flecks of dark and have a red/cream tinge to it. Then you know you have enough seasoning.

You don't need to dip the chicken into egg or any other mixture. They should be moist from defrosting and that juice should be enough to grab the seasoning.

Make sure your pan is hot and has some veggie oil in it.

Fry on both sides making sure the middle is cooked through.

 

We had chicken flavor Rice A Roni.

 

And green beans.

 

It was a delicious, healthy and quick meal for our family.

Try it out!

 

Love you mom!

Befores and Afters

We've been working really hard since Feb 12th when we closed on the house. It's been a long month and a half of work and a lot of help from friends watching TJ while I worked on the house alone. We've cleaned and caulked and painted (walls, trim, ceiling, doors) and constructed and textured and filled and repaired and cleaned and painted some more. We've purchased carpet, appliances, a sofa and rug. We'll continue to improve and design the home.

It's been a lot of blood, sweat and tears but we did it! It was crazy looking back at the before pictures. I'd forgotten what it used to look like just a short month ago...

Here is the long awaited befores when we first bought the house and the afters of how the house looks as of today with new paint and new carpet and all our little and big changes.

These are just extra pictures to showcase our home.

NEW CARPET and other items!!!!!

I didn't take a picture of how horrible the carpet was but it was pretty much like this:

 

 

But dirtier...

 

And stained...

 

And nasty...

 

 

So here's the before...

 

There it goes!!!!!!!!

TJ admiring the new pad

 



 

Here's a close up of our new carpet.

After...mmmm....

TJ LOOOVES the new carpet. Says it's "nice and cozy and soft"

2nd load to the house

 

Enjoying the new carpet

 

We went to Rug Land on the 635 to find a rug for our family room. TJ LOVED that place. He jumped from rug pile to rug pile. We may call them to see what their party packages are like for TJ's 4th bday party. He'd love to have it there. :)

3rd load

 

We also bought a fridge!!!

Before a fridge

 

After with our FRIDGE!!!! Maytag baby.



A few updates

Before:

 

 

After (opposite side):

 

How badly all the trim and anything white needed to be painted with TRUE white....

My pants have gotten pretty painted

 

 

Laundry room when I started one day

After doing all but the trim work that same day

After the trim work was complete. I couldn't believe I did all that painting in one day. Pretty proud of myself.

 

TJ used his imagination and imagined this small piece of molding to be a race car! Can you see it?



Todd covered in paint while using the paint sprayer we borrowed. We thought we may have to shave Todd's head and arm after he was done. It came off pretty easily though.

We painted all the interior doors and the vents. The paint we got for the doors isn't as white as the trim :( Dang...we may just replace them eventually with paneled doors and pretty knobs.