Goth Panda

I made these baguettes over the weekend. Since I am closing on the house on Thursday and officially moving on Friday, this is the last BBA recipe I make in this apartment. I wonder how the move will affect my bread baking. For one thing, at the new house I will have a full-size oven. I will also have central air, which will provide more climate control. However, the more you bake bread, the more hospitable your kitchen is supposed to become to the bread-baking process, because you are encouraging friendly yeast in the air and environment. Will I have to start all over to nurture some more friendly yeast?

I was a little nervous about making these baguettes, but mostly about shaping them. I have never tried to make baguettes before. Also, this is also only our second foray into Reinhart’s hearth baking method, with the steam and the spray bottle. I think the only time we did this before was with ciabatta. The method seems to work well, but I still get a little freaked out, because there is so much to do all at once. Put bread in the oven, pour water, shut the door, hope your heat doesn’t escape, spray oven walls at 30 second intervals…. In comparison, the non-hearth breads we have made are much less stressful.

So. I fermenteéd some pâte. Meaning I made some dough ahead of time. Then I refrigerated the dough, pulled it out the next day, and cut it into pieces.

Then I mixed my pieces with some more flour, salt, and yeast. I used the blend of all-purpose and bread flour that Reinhart suggests. I added the full amount of water, since he says it is better to err on the sticky side. But after I had kneaded it in my stand mixer for 6 minutes, I could tell that it was too sticky. So I hand-kneaded it for a few minutes longer, and added in some extra flour to get the right consistency.

I don’t think I have been patient enough about kneading until I get a windowpane. I got a very small one here, but I went ahead with rising. The dough’s temperature did measure above the suggested range, but that could easily have been because it was warm that day. So in the future, I vow to do better.

My dough totally doubled before the two hour mark, so I degassed it a little in the bucket. Then I waited until the two hours were up, and the dough had doubled again.

Now for the part I was dreading: the shaping. First I cut the dough into three pieces, and I roughly weighed them out with the scale. Then I shaped all three pieces into batards:

And from there, on to baguettes:

I decided I was going to bake these on the sheet pan, because although I have a pizza stone in my oven, it is not very big and I thought if I tried to bake all three, some part of them would be hanging off the stone. Besides, then this way I didn’t have to move them after the second rise.

I almost forgot to slash them. This was the first time I was using my new lame, and it was kind of hit or miss. Some of the slashes were very good and neat, some I more teared than slashed.

I baked these for ten minutes, then turned them and baked for another ten. I took their internal temperature, and all were above 205, even though the loaves themselves were very light. Only the top one has any significant browning. They did crackle satisfactorily when I took them out of the oven, though. I am always happy to hear that noise; it seems to me a sign that I have done something right.

These were very tasty. They were small and rather thin, but they seem to be the perfect size for sandwiches.

They weren’t very difficult to make. Hopefully the baguette shaping and slashing will become easier with more practice. Although I am having a great time baking through these recipes, one thing I am regretting is that I don’t have enough time to go back and make recipes I particularly liked again. Even if I had enough time, I doubt I have enough freezer space. I still have leftovers from four different BBA recipes in my freezer right now. I wonder if the freezer in the new house is bigger than this one….

I give this recipe 4.5 stars.

There is a new love in my life. And it’s name is Sundried Tomato Focaccia.

I was looking forward to this week’s challenge. I love focaccia and I have never made it before. So I started yesterday with the dough. I mixed KAF bread flour, salt, yeast, olive oil, and water:

I decided to knead in the KitchenAid, to try and keep from adding too much flour. The book says the dough is supposed to clear the sides of the bowl but stick to the bottom, but I saw this:

I added more flour at this point, and kept kneading. I don’t think my dough ever really “cleared the sides of the bowl,” but I was also afraid of adding too much water and not getting nice open holes.

I plopped it out of the bowl after seven minutes was up, and put it onto a little bed of flour.

I patted it into a rectangle, as instructed:

And proceeded with the stretching and folding maneuvers previously made famous by the Ciabatta recipe.

I also started packing yesterday to move, and so I went and packed in between stretching and folding. You are supposed to stretch and fold three times, a half an hour apart, and then let the dough rise for an hour. By the end, I was losing track of how many times I had stretched and folded, and where exactly I was in the recipe. I may have stretched and folded an extra time in there.

I also noticed that the dough got progressively less stretchy. The first time it was easy to pull it out, but by the last time, it didn’t want to go very far. It did rise a lot, though.

Also while it was rising, I made the herb oil. The herb oil recipe given makes two cups, but I only wanted to make enough for the recipe, so I only made a half a cup. This was a good idea not just because I didn’t want extra herb oil, but also because by the time I poured out the quarter cup of olive oil on the sheet pan, I think I only had a few drops of olive oil remaining.

The herb oil was very easy to make. I put my half cup of olive oil in a pan over low heat, and it quickly got up to 100 degrees. Then I took it off the heat and added the seasonings. I didn’t have any fresh herbs, so I just used a teaspoon of italian herb blend, a teaspoon each of minced garlic and onion (left over from topping the bagels a few weeks ago), a teaspoon of kosher salt, and few twists of black pepper. I let it steep for about an hour, until the dough was ready.

I managed to transfer the dough to my parchment- and oil-covered sheet pan, although I think it deflated a little in the move.

I added half of my herb oil and dimpled the dough.

Then I covered the dough in plastic and put it in the refrigerator. Remember when I had such a hard time finding space in the refrigerator for the bagel tray? Yup, it wasn’t any easier this time.

This morning, I pulled out the tray.

The dough and the herb oil were very cold, so I let them warm up for about a half hour before adding more oil and dimpling again. I also had a pre-proof topping I wanted to use: a small jar of sundried tomatoes. Since this recipe seemed to be all about adding as much oil as possible, I just threw the sundried tomato oil on top the focaccia as well.

It took my dough much less than three hours to rise enough. After two, I started preheating the oven, and I think I might have waited too long.

I put the pan in the oven for ten minutes, and then went to turn the pan. While I was turning it, some of the oil in the pan must have spilled out, because suddenly my kitchen was filled with black smoke, and my smoke detector was going off. I ran to take out the batteries and open the windows.

I took the pan out after another five minutes. I think it could have baked even longer, but I was having a hard time staying in the kitchen with the smoky air. I managed to pull the focaccia onto a rack to cool, and retreated.

By the time the smoke had cleared, my focaccia was cool and ready to slice into.

This bread is seriously delicious. You can see from the photos how the top edge and the bottom edge are soaked in olive oil. I didn’t need to add anything extra to the bread. The bottom was crispy and the interior was soft and light. I didn’t get very large holes, so I wonder if I added too much flour in the kneading stage. The herb oil gave a delicious flavor to the bread, and the sundried tomatoes gave nice little bursts of sweetness.

I cut mine into fairly large pieces, making 16 slices, and I could imagine eating it by itself as a meal. In fact, I’m not sure I want to eat anything else in the near future. I usually freeze at least half of these recipes, but I haven’t frozen these yet. I think we might actually eat them all. I did put them on paper towels, to try and soak up some of the extra olive oil, though. I really don’t want to know how much is in each slice.

These get 5 stars; up with the bagels as one of my favorite recipes so far.

I was looking forward to this week’s challenge. I love English muffins and I had never made them before. I liked the look of this recipe because it was comparatively quick to make, it involved the special stovetop/oven English muffin method that I wasn’t sure I could get to work, and it only makes six English muffins, so I probably wouldn’t need to freeze them. My freezer is jam-packed full of frozen bread at the moment. I kind of looked at it as more of an experiment than our usual BBA recipes.

For some reason, I couldn’t go back to sleep early this morning, so I got up and started these around 6:30 a.m. On a Saturday. Thank goodness this is not a usual occurrence.

The first important thing to note is that, due to no fault of my own, I don’t have photos of the first half of the process. Okay, maybe there was some fault of my own. I had a cast photo shoot for my friend’s negative-budget independent movie last weekend — I am the free photographer, very important when your budget is nil — and I forgot to recharge my flash. I usually use my flash with a diffuser since my kitchen doesn’t get a whole lot of natural light. So no flash, no diffuser, no decent photos until there was enough natural light is my kitchen a few hours later.

But you have seen these same kinds of photos before, and you can probably go on any of the other BBA websites and see them again. I mixed flour, sugar, salt, and yeast. I added shortening. I have gone into how I’m not a big fan of shortening before, but now I have a whole container in my pantry from the Cinnamon Raisin bread, so I decided to use it since it was already at room temperature, unlike my butter. I also added 3/4 cup of milk. I started mixing in my KitchenAid, and found I had to add just a touch more milk to bring it together. I then kneaded it with my dough hook. I actually feel proud that I didn’t take it out and knead it by hand. I almost got a little nervous watching it and thinking that I should do it by hand to make sure. Again I realize how far I have come since the beginning of this little challenge, in the hand-kneading department, anyway. But I let the dough hook do its job, and found that I didn’t have to add any more flour. I got a good temperature and a little bit of a windowpane, so I set it aside to rise for somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half. Then I came back to shape.

I did use my scale to divide the dough into the specified 3 oz. rolls, but I found that I ran out of dough by the end. So two of the muffins were only 2.7 oz.

And lo! There were photos:

I let them get puffy for almost an hour and a half, and meanwhile preheated my griddle and my oven. I have a two-burner griddle pan, but I find it’s hard to keep the temperature consistent across the pan, so I decided to cook and bake them in two batches with my smaller griddle pan.

I did have a hard time getting them from the sheet pan to the griddle. Maybe I didn’t use enough cornmeal, because they were sticking.

I kept them on both sides for eight minutes, and baked them for eight minutes and they didn’t burn. I think the biggest surprise was that they didn’t really flatten. They were much puffier than I expected.

While the first batch cooled, I flipped and baked the second batch.

I did manage to let them cool for half an hour. Then I poked a fork around them to split them open.

I was a little disappointed to not have the dramatic “nooks and crannies” of the Thomases’ variety. But these tasted really good.

I give these 4.5 stars.

I was not very enthusiastic about baking this week’s bread. I am not big on fruit and nut breads to begin with, and it seems like not that long ago that we made Cinnamon Raisin. This bread is a Thanksgiving-themed bread, and it has been in the 90s here since I came home from vacation. And not only are breads with add-ins not my cup of tea to eat, they also happen to be a pain in the neck to knead. So. Not enthusiastic.

I started by putting together the usual dough ingredients. I mixed with my dough whisk.

Then there came a point where we were supposed to add between 2 and 4 ounces of water. I was going to mix and knead this in my KitchenAid, but then I think I added too much water. I realized the only way I would know for sure was to take it out and knead by hand. Eleven weeks ago, this would have scared me a bit, but it’s starting to seem like old hat, now.

So I set my trusty timer and kneaded away. I had to add flour while kneading, probably because I added too much water, and also because that seems to be the way of the recipes.

Although Reinhart said that almost any fruit/nut combination would work, I stuck with the original cranberry walnut, because, eh. Not enthusiastic. Also, I happen to like cranberries and walnuts, although I prefer them both in a nice green salad than in my bread.

I used Craisins, which come in 8 oz. packages. You need 6 ounces for the recipe, and I went ahead and bought two packs and used the full amount.

The walnuts were not so fortunate. They came in small bags of 2.25 oz. and even though 3 oz. was given in the recipe, I just bought one small bag and figured that would be enough.

And guess what? It totally was. Too many add-ins! First cranberries:

Then walnuts:

I don’t think any more could have been squeezed in.

I put the dough aside to rise:

It rose quickly because of the heat, and by the time I came back to check on it — well before it should have been ready — it was almost bursting out of the rising container.

I hurriedly divided the dough into two loaves and shaped them for loaf pans. I had already decided I didn’t want to do a complicated double-braid, because, eh. Not enthusiastic.

I let them rise and again, sooner than expected, they were ready.

I didn’t bother with an egg wash. I baked and turned and baked some more. I think I maybe baked a little too long. Maybe the loaf pans require less time.

The smaller loaf was kind of deformed on the side due to my negligent shaping.

I let them cool, sliced open, and ate a slice. It wasn’t bad. The bread itself isn’t very sweet, but the sweetened cranberries added to the flavor. I didn’t mind the walnuts much either. But I have a hard time imagining what I would do with this bread. I guess meat-eaters could use it for turkey sandwiches.

Although I wasn’t really into baking it, this recipe worked well and delivered what it promised. I wonder if maybe adding some cinnamon or nutmeg to the bread would have made it a little more interesting, but I guess that would push it more into “dessert” bread territory. I’m going to give it 3.5 stars.