BBA Challenge: No bagels for you!

This week's challenge is bagels! But I'm not going to be able to bake them. I'm writing this from the Indianapolis airport, which is remarkably comfortable and has wireless, but I can't bake here.

I've been in Bloomington for the past few days, and I'm off to Boulder until next Saturday. Hopefully I'll be able to bake next week's challenge---brioche---when I get home.

Sourdough attempt number 1

I decided I wanted to get serious about artisan bread baking, and that means growing my own sourdough starter!

I followed the instructions for growing a seed culture and mother starter in Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads using the pineapple juice solution. Everything seemed to go pretty much how the book said it would.

For my first sourdough I used the Basic Sourdough Bread from the Bread Baker's Apprentice. The formula notes that you can skip the firm starter and build the final dough straight from the mohter starter, which I did because I was a bit pressed for time. I was also using a whole wheat starter instead of a white flour starter. That can't possibly make much of a difference, right? Umm...

The primary fermentation probably lasted about 5 hours, which was almost certainly too long, but also understandable because I was at the Crooked Star. When I pulled the dough out of the bowl, it totally de-gassed! But I hardly touched it! This has happened to me a couple of times before, particularly trying to bake PR's whole wheat hearth bread. I'm not sure why it happens, but I need to figure it out...

Anyways, I didn't proof it for very long because I wanted to go to bed at a reasonable hour. I didn't have much hope when I put it in the oven; the loaf looked pretty flat and deflated. Surprisingly it went spring in the oven and here's what I got:



I really need to work on my scoring. I think I need to cut deeper.

Well see how it tastes tomorrow morning!

Update: Delicious! It's a bit dense, probably due to the crazy degassing that happened after fermentation, but way less dense than I thought it would be. It's got a nice, mild, sourdough flavour. I'm pretty happy with this for a first sourdough loaf, especially with all the shortcuts I took.

BBA Challenge: Artos Greek Celebration Bread

Oh man...

I made my *first* one of these this afternoon. Unfortunately, I tossed it in the oven with the plastic wrap from the proofing stage still on it. Oops. I wasn't so upset because I'd also forgotten to put the almond extract in...

Round two!

I remade the poolish, but didn't let it sit overnight, I just used it after letting it do its thing for about 4 hours. I made the dough with *all* the ingredients including the lemon extract, removed the plastic wrap before baking, tossed on some glaze after it came out of the oven, and ended up with this:



You can see my "collection" in the background...

I don't know how it tastes yet, it's still cooling. I'll let you know.

In other news: My starter grew! I now have a whole wheat mother starter (made using the pineapple juice solution from PR's Whole Grain Breads). I might try and make something with it tomorrow.

Update:

It tastes pretty good! As Hannah pointed out, it kind of tastes like a hot cross bun. I don't think I'll be in a rush to make this bread again though. I'm just not that into enriched white flour breads. I don't like making them because they have so many freaking ingredients that I feel like I'm baking a cake. And they do taste great! But it's just not my favourite type of bread to eat. But that's the point of this challenge, right? Try it and see if it's awesome.

The magic of the Internet

Ever wanted to half a recipe and convert all the measurements from, say, ounces to grams? So many fractions, so much division...

Just type something like this into Google: 3.5/2 ounces in grams

The search result?

(3.5/2) ounce = 49.6116655 grams

Super rad.

Google: This makes up for not wanting to hire me, so we're cool again.

Bread baking vocabulary

Johnson's Dictionary has an interesting entry today.

KI’SSINGCRUST. n.s. [kissing and crust.] Crust formed where one loaf in the oven touches another.
These bak’d him kissingcrusts, and those brought him small beer. King’s Cookery.

No bread because I ran out of flour. I've started growing a sourdough starter; so far it smells funny but hasn't done much...

Kaiser Rolls

I've been thinking about making these for a while. I'm not really sure why. I have some sort of fantasy about eating a really good sandwich?

Anyways, yeah, I made these tonight. The formula is from the Bread Baker's Apprentice. The dough made six buns, but by the time I got around to photographing them there were ONLY FIVE LEFT. They are even more delicious than they look. I just ate another one.

Comments about actually making this bread... It's fairly straight-forward. The dough is just an enriched white bread that you cut up into bits and shape like buns. And the shaping is super easy: roll about 4 ounces of dough into a long strip (I had to roll it out a bit, let it relax for a few minutes, and then roll again, but that's not a big deal.), then tie the strip into a knot and poke the ends in towards the middle so it kind of looks like a bun. The only problem I ran into is that my baking sheet wasn't big enough for all six. So I baked four and tossed the other two in the fridge to avoid over proofing them. Then after the first batch was done, I let the second batch warm up at room temperature for about ten minutes before baking them. I have no idea if this was actually a good idea or not, but the results are delicious, so, whatever.

Can you spot the other deliciousness...?



Done!

Molasses fail

So I think I might have figured out what went wrong with my Anadama bread. I bought black strap molasses, which I thought was a brand, but apparently that's not the case. It turns out there are three grades of molasses, light (first), dark (second), and black strap. Oops...

BBA Challenge: Anadama

So the folks over at pinchmysalt are organizing a little challenge to bake all the breads in Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice. Sounds easy enough, so I signed up (but I haven't heard anything else about it yet... Oh well.) Assuming that we're rocking this alphabetical styles, I baked Anadama bread last night.

This was some efficient bread baking. After kneading the dough, I went longboarding. I rode some mellowish hills and worked on toe side stand ups and early grabs. I knew I'd be out for longer than the expected rise time, so I opened the window and left it on the window sill; it was a cool night. When I got home it had risen about the right amount. Then during proofing I went out for a pint of Mill Street Cobblestone Stout at the Communist's Daughter. As usual, the hipsters were out in full force. I came home, baked it, and pulled this out of the oven a while later.







I have no idea what Anadama bread is supposed to taste like, so I don't really know how this bread turned out... I don't really like it though. The flavour of the molasses is kind of over-powering. Peter does mention in the recipe that you want to go for a lighter-flavoured molasses for this bread, so maybe that's why it doesn't taste super fantastic? (This was the first time I had ever bought molasses, so I may or may not have purchased one with a lighter flavour...) Also, I halved the recipe, so maybe that screwed things up?

Next!

Whole wheat sandwich bread

This is my second attempt at Peter Reinhart's whole wheat sandwich bread. I'm pretty pleased with it, but I think it was a bit under baked. (I baked it for 40 minutes at 350F and it registered 197F at the middle of the middle when I pulled it out.)

First post

Now let's go bake some bread!