Bread and Lemon Zest

What about bread and lemon zest?  Well, I've been baking bread lately from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.  And the zest is a little tip I got from Bon Appetit magazine.

[caption id="attachment_1438" align="alignright" width="189" caption="Look! It's pretty!"][/caption]

First of all, I got Artisan Bread from the library to test it out.  I was very impressed, so I bought it. I found that it really is just a few minutes that you spend before putting a loaf of fresh bread on the table.  You don't have to make bread every day.  Rather, you mix up a very easy dough and keep it in the fridge until you are ready to use it.  Then you tear off a hunk of dough, smooth it out, pop it in the oven and voila! Fresh bread with dinner tonight!  The dough will keep in the fridge for weeks, so if you only feel like doing this on the weekend you can. This is a photo of my third loaf (and only my first boule--the others were baguettes), so I know my technique will improve.  I'm not a fan of gimmicks, such as, just say, claiming to make bread in five minutes, but this isn't a gimmick!  It really works. This bread cookbook is well worth the money.

Now on to the zest:  I have sooo many lemons right now, and my second little tip is one I found in Bon Appetit magazine at some point, but I'd never tried it out.  Here's what Dana Sturgis, test kitchen director, says in the magazine: "When a recipe calls for lemon juice, don't waste all that great zest!  Before I squeeze a lemon, I use a sharp vegetable peeler to remove thin strips of zest.  I let the strips air-dry for a day or two, then store them in a jar at room temp until I want to crumble them into rices, stews, or cooked fruit.

[caption id="attachment_1447" align="alignleft" width="112" caption="Denuded lemons and their zest"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1448" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Zest after aging"][/caption]

When I need 'fresh' zest, I just soak the strips in cold water for an hour, and they're as perky as the day I peeled them off."  Due to the plethora of lemons and the plethora of guilt I feel for not using every last one, I was thrilled to find this little tip.

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And I have to say, it works well!  I used a sharp chef's knife to very finely mince the shards of peel, and it was easy, quick, and guilt free!

Homemade bread and preserved lemon zest...we're just so thrifty!