Bread Blogging Loaves 52-66

Alright people, I haven't blogged about bread in months. So here it goes.

This picutre is of my standard hearth bread or artisan bread. There are four in this picture and I have made some variation of this (with rye, oat, etc.) totalling about 12 loaves between then and now. This is pretty "routine" bread in the house now and I still love it. At the risk of sounding like a total moron, my heart skips a beat every time I smell the smell of baking bread.


This is a some more focaccia. I really like this bread because it is so versatile. You can see little rosemary bits in the picture and some salt on top. You can make a sandwhich or panini with it. You can put tomato sauce on top and eat it like a pseudo pizza. It's a very tasty bread all around! I made two of these.

We went to the Iowa City farmer's market the other day and I can't believe what a bread snob I've become. I was looking at all the choices and even sampled a few and I kept thinking, "I could make better than that. Been there, baked that. I can't believe how much salt you put in this?! Why is this so dry?" And so on. I really have to reign it in!

Anyway, go out and bake some bread for yourself!

Bread Blogging: Loaves 43-51!!!

I can't believe I reached 50 loaves of bread already!! I made a goal at the beginning of the year to reach 50 by the end of the year! Good thing we like sharing or we would have gained lots of weight by now.

Before I get to my loaves, let me share one other food related thing with you. This, my friends, is called The Peanut Butter Torte:




Alternate names include: "If this is going to give me a heart attack, at least I will die happy" and "Epi pen not included."

D and I made this jointly the day before mother's day and OH BABY IT IS GOOD!!! So rich, so flavorful, I can't describe it. The crust is oreo, the delicious interior is peanut butter whipped with real whipped cream and the topping is dark chocolate and chopped nuts. It's to die for.

Now on to bread. Here is another standard artisan/hearth loaf made with part oat flour. These have become so routine at our house that I forget that other people usually don't think envision this type of bread when they think of bread. I made three of these loaves.

Here is a Ciabatta loaf. I finally got one right! Well, mostly. I would still like bigger holes in the crumb, but this tasted really good and was the appropriate size and shape. Note the crinkles in the crust. These are really good with havarti cheese. I made two of these.

This is an "cinnamon surprise" loaf. The surprise is the delicious, tart apple in the center to contrast with the relatively sweeter crumb and topping. The nice thing about this loaf that it is not overpoweringly sweet like you would find at a coffee shop. It's a more subtle sweetness, allowing the cinnamon and apple to be the dominant flavors. D really likes this one. I made two of these.

Here are some pictures of my next attempt at a new bread - focaccia! I LOVE this bread. It is a flatter bread because it is so wet it doesn't hold a traditional bread shape (as opposed to a flat bread that doesn't use yeast). I made this first one with fresh rosemary and olive oil roasted garlic. It is really, really tasty and appeals to my garlic loving side. I made a second one of these without the garlic and it was still good. It has a very soft, airy crumb with big holes and a nice crisp, but not overly hard crust. It's also very easy to change this bread and add various herbs, spices, etc. I also think it would taste great with some fresh mozzarella and a slice of tomato.

For anyone who cares (ie. no one) I am going to go back and tag all of my bread posts from the past so you can easily see them all in one place. Off the top of my head, here are some of the breads I made for my first fifty breads: standard hearth bread, wheat hearth bread, Italian hearth bread, oat flour hearth bread, rye flour hearth bread, scones, ciabatta, focaccia, banana bread, cinnamon surprise, golden semolina, pugliese.

Happy bread baking!

Bread blogging: Loaves 38-42

More bread! Here are three of my standard artisan/hearth loaves. Nothing new to add here.



This is a loaf called Pugliese. It is a very wet dough which means it is full of huge air bubbles and very delicate. It turned out fair. The crust was nice and crispy. The inside was very soft, but the holes weren't quite as big as I hoped. Overall good.

This is my horribly failed Ciabatta attept. I acidentally didn't cover the container with the biga so it was hard by the time I came back to mix it. So, I added extra water and I was basically guessing. So, I accidentally made an incredibly slack dough which did not hold a shape very well. I could've put it in a bread loaf pan, but the name Ciabatta means "slipper" so that would defeat about half the purpose of the loaf. So, the shape was flat and horrible, almost an accidental foccacia. The good thing, not incredibly apparent by this picture, is the beautiful crumb that it produced. The holes and the texture are PERFECT for Ciabatta. If only the shape had been right...

Bread blogging: Loaves 31-37

Time for some more bread blogging. Loaves 31-34 were just more of the same artisan type of bread I made for my last post, so no pictures.

The loaf below is my first attempt at Ciabatta. I was pleased with the creases in the loaf, a typical ciabatta feature. The inside didn't have holes quite as big as I wanted, but it's my own fault because I forgot it was rising and made it later than I intended. Deanna really enjoyed the flavor of this one.


Here are some banana bread muffins I made. They used sour cream and lemon peel and were very soft, moist and tasty. The kids ate them up. I also made mini loaves but added a "Todd amount" of chocolate tips to the loaves (as D would say) which is way too much for banana bread. Guess I've made too many batches of cookies.

These are the rolls I made on Easter. They were golden brown, light, buttery and very tasty. I really, really liked them. The one on the left was a cloverleaf pattern which I really loved because it came apart nice and easy. Very good.

Bread blogging: Loaves 25-30

Time for more bread blogging!

The next few loaves I made were primarily unbleached white flour with a small amount of semolina durum flour in there as well. I really liked the flavor and the semolina gives it a nice, pleasing golden crust. And having a smaller amount of semolina in there made it the cornmealy flavor wasn't even noticeable.




So, next I am moving on to more of the "peasant" or rustic breads. These ones below contain part wheat, part rye and mostly white flour. For some reason they have an extremely soft crumb and nice, perfectly crusty crust. The flavor is very hearty and I really like this recipe.

Next up I am going to keep experimenting with different types of flours to see what I like the best. One slow Saturday or Sunday I would also like to try the long versions of ciabatta, focaccia and pugliese. After all of those are done (weeks? months?) then I am going to get fancy and try adding spices, herbs, etc.

Loaves 17-24

Yep, you read that right. Loaves 17-24. Time for some bread blogging! I've been trying some more new breads the past few weeks, so I have lots to blog about.

The loaf below is a semolina loaf. Semolina is a yellow flour that is a little more coarse than wheat flour. It makes a nice golden bread, but you can see below that the slits are really close together because it didn't rise much in the oven. Turns out I was supposed to buy durum semolina and not regular semolina. So we're going to buy some more later and give this loaf another try. It tasted kind of like cornbread.



These next few loaves were using a new method from a different book. They tasted a little yeasty but were otherwise pretty good. The first picture is to show you that I forgot to score this loaf before baking it because Lawson was "helping" me and I was trying to keep him away from the knife. The picture below that is bread with the wonderful Nutella to counteract the yeast flavor. Below that is one I scored like a smiley face for the kids. Then we ate it before they saw it. :)

The loaf on the left here is from the method above and the loaf on the right is called Pugliese. It uses some semolina flour, but again I had the wrong kind. It's a very light, bubbly bread, kind of light ciabatta. I didn't really devote the kind of time to it that I needed to so it didn't turn out that great, but I want to master it so I will try again on a day when I have time and the right flour.

The next three loaves were all from the method I mentioned above. It's from the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I notice small differences in quality between the 5 minute bread and the labor intensive, but overall it produces excellent results and I'm very pleased with it. In fact, the first picture below is one of the best tasting loaves I've made. Certainly for "daily bread" it's fantastic and that much better because takes minimal effort. I won't reveal the method because you should buy the book but you can see below that it involves making huge amounts of dough at a time! We've devoted an entire shelf in our fridge to bread dough!

Loaves 14-16

For those of you just joining the program, I am becoming a bread master by baking 100 loaves of artisan bread (not sandwich bread). I love artisan bread and I have been missing all the great bread I got to eat in Portugal so one day I just snapped. I mean I just decided to become a breadmaster. The number 100 is inspired by Becca who in turn was inspired to make 100 pies by Martha Stewart. Yes, my eventual goal is to have a manly voice like Martha and get thrown in jail for my baking exploits.

Anyway, I got The Bread Bible for Christmas from Brian and these are my first recipes from that book.

I started with the book's basic Hearth Bread recipe. And when I say basic, I mean complex. She is very, very specific about amounts (2.3 grams and so on) and techniques. The result? An amazing bread! This dough was just fantastic to work with, very smooth and elastic and wet enough to rise well but not too wet to work with.

The dough uses a tiny bit of wheat flour and honey to add flavor and then uses a sponge to develop the flavor. The sponge you actually cut up with scissors and if you look closely you can see little yellow sponge flecks in the bread. Not really. A sponge is a very wet dough, almost batter consistency which you let rise prior to adding the rest of the flour, yeast and salt. Once the sponge is mixed into the dough I think I let this thing rise I think a total of four times with envelope folds between each rise. Then I used parchment paper to solve the problem of getting the bread into the oven. I also moved the rack down to the bottom shelf and used the steam method again.

The first loaf was cooking too quickly so I took it out a little early. After cooking this bread and the scones below I realized our oven cooks hot so I cooked the second loaf on a little bit lower temp.

The final result is a crusty but slightly chewy crust with a springy, tasty crumb that takes fantastic warm with some melted butter on top. MMMM, heaven on earth. This is definitely lighter in texture than my previous efforts and I think it will be my basic artisan bread recipe from here on out.



Here is loaf number 2 from that recipe which I let ferment over night. I think it's going to be great but I haven't cracked it open yet.

Even though scones technically aren't bread loaves, I am counting them towards my 100 because they came out of The Bread Bible. These scones are not supposed to make you think of 1000 calories in a bite Starbucks scones, but more like having a leisurely breakfast in London on a rainy morning. They are supposed to be flaky but still substantial. Like a flaky biscuit. I rolled the first half of the dough too thin and the oven is too hot so they were OK but not great. I took the second half (the four remnants pictured below), rerolled them and made two scones instead of four and cooked them at about 25 degrees cooler. They were much, much better and tasted just as I described above. I couldn't shape them properly with only two so the final picture at the bottom is my misshapen but tasty scone. These were lemon poppy seed scones and I think next time I'm going to make either cranberry or raspberry scones.

Loaves 12-13

Well, the last two loaves were an Italian Bread recipe that I didn't read closely enough. It said "makes two loaves" and I somehow missed that, so I made four loaves! These only stuck together a little this time. :)

Again a crust that wasn't quite as hard and a lighter texture. Good for dipping or spreading Nutella, but not great for just eating with some butter on top.

Loaves 8-11

Well, here's some more bread blogging for your holiday pleasure.

Here are loaves 8 and 9. I decided to make these loaves half wheat flour and I learned that whole wheat good, no wheat good, half wheat bad. It kinda, sorta tasted like wheat, but not enough to make it hearty. Not so good.

The other problem I had with these is that I had been trying to increase the hydration of my loaves (ie. adding more water) and I was experimenting with different ways to get the loaves in the oven. Someone suggested trying was paper and lets just say it went very, very poorly. That's why the loaves look so deformed. They lost all of their rise in a very assymetric manner when I was trying to pry them from the wax paper. Probably my worst two loaves so far.


Next I decided to try some Italian Bread which has a little softer crust and little lighter texture to it. Now, I messed up this one as you can see because I was trying to fit two loaves on a pizza stone when I knew they wouldn't really fit. They went all siamese twin on me and rose assymetrically in the over. Overall this was a good bread though. Light, good for mopping up pasta sauces and spreading nutella.

My bro-in-law got me (well, me and D) The Bread Bible for Christmas, so expect a lot more bread in the future!

More Breadmaster, Loaves 3-7

Ah Ha! I am back with some more bread making stories. And yes, I'm really serious about this.

So, I've been working on this artisan bread, basically starting from the beginning and trying different things to get a feel for the basics before I move to crazy types of bread. So, here is loaf three, just a basic flour/salt/yeast/water bread (like loaf 1) but this time with a starter the night before that rose in the fridge over night. I can't say it made much of a difference. I learned from this one not to cut to different depths when you score because they you get an unever oven spring. Moderately dense, solid flavor.


I might be getting these out of order, but Loaf 4 was one I made when we had some friends over for dinner and was a variation on loaf 2. Thick crust, complex flavor, moderately dense. Very tasty.

Loaf 5 was a variation on loaves 2 and 4, but it used an overnight starter and a super hot oven with some steam to make the crust crustier. D and I really enjoyed the thick crust. I also made this one a litter wetter and you can tell by the picture that it has more air in it. So, less dense but still far more dense than garden variety grocery store bread. Very good and one that I think will be a staple. Oh yeah, I also brushed the crust with butter when it came out of the over which made it much softer. Bad idea for this type of bread. Butter is for the inside. :) Also all of these loaves taste absolutely fantastic with D's raspberry peach jam. Very, very good combo. And while I'm at it, they taste very good the next day for breakfast with a slab of Dubliner cheese.



Loaves 6 and 7 I made when my sister and her fam came over for cookies. It was basically the same as 5 but no overnight starter and I had to cut a few steps short in the interest of time. What I learned is that skipping some of the kneading creates big air pockets in the bread that make it a lot lighter but much more uneven. Also I messed up the oven timing and the crust wasn't that crusty. It still tasted good, but wasn't quite the texture or density I was hoping for. Also, these were my wettest loaves yet (and therefore most difficult to handle) and that also made them lighter I think.

Stay tuned for loaves 8 and 9 which are up on our oven right now...

The Breadmaster

Admit it. When you read the title, you thought I was talking about Deanna, didn't you? Well, on our trip we had some really good bread and it made me think, "Why can't I make fresh artisan bread myself?" So, I searched around online, found a few tutorials on how to start out making artisan breads and away I went!!

Here is my first loaf, an incredibly basic bread.

Pre:
Post:

The first loaf had a pale complexion, was moderately dense, not too crusty and had a slightly sour dough like flavor. Here is my second loaf which was only slightly more complex. The crust was a little darker and thicker and the flavor was richer and more complex. It tasted absolutely fantastic with Deanna's homeade peach-raspberry jam. Alia liked it enough that she even drew me a "Thumbs Up" picture, below.


I have to say that my favorite part so far, besides eating it, is kneading the bread. Everyone online complains about that and has gone to "no knead" recipes but it's comforting and almost meditative to gently press the dough into a smooth, tasty loaf of bread. That and it's fun to take out my frustations by beating the snot out of it and shaping it to my will.

Anyhow, my goal is to become a breadmaster and to be able to produce fresh, exotic artisan breads merely with the power of my mind.