Well, okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration. But we have been eating a lot of awfully good bread at home with very little effort.
The "aha" principle is this: Gluten, which gives good bread its lovely chewy texture, develops with either agitation or time. Knead the dough, develop gluten. Alternatively, mix up a thick soup of water, yeast, salt and flour, let it sit in the refrigerator for a few days (or weeks), and what do you get? Gluten. Plus that great sourdough flavor. Oh, and it takes about five minutes to mix up the dough, five minutes to shape a loaf, and a few "Bob's your uncle"s later, you've got bread.
I do depart from their recipe in a few ways. First, I let my loaf rest on the counter after shaping for a good long time - four or five hours, sometimes. And second, when I heat the oven, I stick my cast-iron Dutch oven in there, let it get good and hot, and then bake the loaf right in the iron pot. I bake it covered for half an hour to trap the moisture, then remove the cover for the last 15 minutes to let the loaf brown.
Trust me: Anyone can make this bread. The only part that takes practice is shaping the loaves before baking, and it's just not that hard.
So, in case I wasn't clear enough at the beginning, buy this book. You will not be sorry.