If you follow my tweetstream (or FB status) then you know I made some bread dough. I was going to make cinnamon rolls, but then decided I didn’t have the stuff for icing. I changed my mind and thought I’d make pretzels. Ooops, I made the wrong dough. Insert big *SIGH* here.

Now I’m sure the pretzels would turn out great with this dough. I may even try it tomorrow. Let’s just say I really liked the sound of the other dough and figured I hated icing on cinnarolls anyway.

So what did I do? Let’s start with the bread dough. A friend taught me about this awesome stuff in December. I promise you, I love this woman forever because of it. It is hands down the easiest way to make bread ever. Even easier then the bread machine on my counter that no longer beats my ingredients. (Grrr, we are still trying to fix said machine. I’m so not happy.)

Easy? Bread? But no way, Ozzie. This time, I just KNOW you have lost it!

Never fear, your trusty Lady Ozma has NOT completely lost her mind. There is this fantastic book and it tells you all the secrets to making artisan bread in only five minutes. Seriously! Five minutes! Real artisan bread. The fancy stuff from the special bakery!

First I gathered all my stuff together. I needed a food safe bucket and we happen to have about a gazillion ice cream buckets . I think if it had ice cream in it, that counts, right? We’ll see!

Here are my ingredients!

1 Ice Cream bucket – 1 gallon size
3 cups of lukewarm water
2 packets of yeast
1 tbs of salt
6.5 cups of flour

That’s it. Here’s the super hard part. You dump all of that into your bucket. I know, hard. You use a giant spoon (or your hands) and mix this stuff up. Now you have a lump of rather moist dough in your bucket like so:

It probably took me longer to get all this stuff together then to actually mix it. I mean we’re talking real serious effort here. Cute kids as photo backgrounds were just a bonus for me!

I gently laid the lid of the bucket on top and walked away. After a mere two hours I glanced at my bucket of dough and saw this:

HOLY SMOKES! IT IS ALIVE!

Yeah, that’s like the bread dough that ate Oz. Did it grow? OH YES IT DID!

Wow. At this point I actually put the lid on properly and then opened just a little bit of it and stuck this bucket on a shelf in my fridge. And debated. Bread? Pretzels? Rolls? Oh the full bucket in my fridge promised so many wonderful treats!

This afternoon I, the ever so cruel and mean parent that I am, forced my kids out of the house to run around outside. I know. Torture. I tidied up the kitchen and set to work!

I tore off a hunk of the dough and returned the bucket to the fridge. I shaped it quickly into a lump.

Lots of flour to resist the stickiness of dough and I was ready to roll. Literally. Rolling pin came out and I attempted to make a nice big square out of the dough.

Next up was the brown sugar and cinnamon mixture. I could probably have measured this out and stressed, but eh… why bother?

Yup… I went the lazy way and just dumped a ton of brown sugar onto my dough and sprinkled with cinnamon. This is the way Grandma baked and I was in the groove! Rocking out while the kids beat on the door and demanded to come inside. In the music world, I think that’s called percussion. Right?

My pampered chef bread knife cut through the dough just as easy as could be and I placed my rolls on my pampered chef baking stone. Yes. I like my pampered chef stuff! It makes me happy!

Baking time! In went the stone and I baked away. I baked a few minutes too long, expecting them to brown up, but that’s OK. At this point the kids managed to pick the lock and descended upon the kitchen and began what we call The Hoover Effect. If you have kids, especially boys, you know what I mean. They managed to suck up food like they were a Hoover vacuum. Really, it’s a bit frightening to witness!

Here’s what was left… one lone roll for my husband when he arrives home from work.

Yum.

I still have a ton of dough left over. I’m not sure what I’ll make tomorrow. Guess we’ll see! Did I mention this dough is good in the fridge up to two weeks? Oh baby, that’s what I’m talking about.

–Lady O