Goth Panda

As sometimes happens round about these parts, I finished these breads a while ago but am only now getting around to posting about them. I was hoping to finish the BBA Challenge during my three-week Christmas break, and I got very, very close to doing so. I got through the Potato, Cheddar, and Chive Torpedoes, but I still have the Roasted Onion and Asiago Miche to conquer. I am planning to pull that one off before the week is through, and then celebrate!

Bu first — Whole-Wheat Bread. Another bread I was looking forward to. I didn’t know what to do about the soaker, because I wasn’t sure if my King Arthur Flour Whole Wheat Flour was considered “coarse” enough. I thought probably not, so instead I ground up oats in my Cuisinart to use as the whole grain. I didn’t get a photo of this, so just picture a very unattractive bowl of oatmeal.

I was worried about my poolish, because while it definitely got to the “thick paste” phase, it never really got to the “bubble” phase. I think I let it sit in the refrigerator for two nights, hoping to get more bubbles, but it never really happened.

I mixed everything up:

I was worried about the rising, and I think it took a little longer than two hours, but eventually it got to this point:

I shaped it:

And gave it a little more time for the second rise, too.

The one on the left is a little flat on top. You can also see it in the photo below. It almost looks like pain de mie.

This bread is a simple and great recipe, just like the white bread. Between these two, sandwich breads are covered, in my opinion. It may have taken a while to get to them, but I am glad I did.

The Whole-Wheat Bread gets 4 stars.

I am also happy I made the Potato, Cheddar, and Chive Torpedoes, although they are far from an everyday bread.

First, somehow I managed to completely boil away the water while boiling the potatoes, which is a mistake on so many levels, not least of which is that you need the potato water later in the recipe. Fortunately I managed to catch it before I scorched my pan. Although the potatoes were done, I added more water and let them boil for a few minutes more, just so I could get the necessary potato water.

PR doesn’t specify the type of potato to use. I used Yukon Gold.

I even managed to remember to feed my “barm.”

Here is the potato water, which doesn’t look very appetizing:

I also chopped up a whole bunch of chives, not just the recommended quarter cup. I usually complain that PR’s recipes have too many add-ins, but I am pretty sure that there is no such thing as too many chives.

Here is the bread all kneaded and ready to rise…

…and risen. You may not be able to see it, but the dome in the middle is touching the plastic lid.

This dough smelled delicious, like Sour Cream and Chive potato chips, my favorite flavor.

Time to add the cheddar. First pat the dough into a rectangle.

Next, add the cheese slices.

Then roll it all up. This was easier than I thought it would be. I thought there would be unraveling, but it didn’t happen.

Let the dough rise again.

And then slash. I think the point of the slashing was to get down to the cheese layer, so the cheese would ooze out. I was somewhat successful, but some of my slashes just weren’t deep enough.

Some of them were deep enough to cause the cheese explosion.

This bread is seriously delicious.

We ate it all by itself. I’m not sure what else you could use it for, but it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t need any accompaniments. It gets 4.5 stars.

So one more bread to go. The Roasted Onion and Asiago Miche takes three days to make, not counting the extra day to feed the “barm,” but there is not a lot of active time each day. I am hoping to get started on it this weekend and finish it up during the week. I can’t believe I am this close to the end of the Challenge!

White bread! Although it is not considered cool, perhaps, in the home bread baking community, I will admit that I like white sandwich bread quite a bit. I was interested to see what PR would bring to the table with this recipe.

I chose to make Variation 1, but I am not sure why. PR says that the different variations affect the final outcome in both texture and taste, but neglects to say exactly how each of the variations differ. So I chose to make the first one because I would rather use a whole egg than just a yolk (eliminating Variation 3) and I have King Arthur Flour’s Baker’s Special Dry Milk on hand, instead of the buttermilk or whole milk required for Variation 2.

This recipe can be done all in one day, and it is super easy. You mix all the ingredients together and then knead them. I haven’t bothered to check for windowpanes or check the dough temperature in what seems like forever. This is my dirty little BBA baking secret.

I put my dough on my stove to rise, which is the only place in the kitchen that seems to work. Still, I waited the full two hours before checking on it, and that seems to have been a mistake.

Look at that! I think that is the worst my bucket has ever seen. It looked like the dough might pop the lid off at any second.

Then you divide the dough into two pieces. I do usually weigh out my dough when dividing it because I am pretty bad at guessing by sight. So here is how I go about it.

First I put one of my flat bowls on the scale and zero it out. I usually measure in grams, just to make it easier to half the number in my head.

Then I overturn the bucket directly into the bowl, as seen here.

Then I move the dough to my counter and divide it with my bench knife. I put one half back on the scale.

I usually don’t bother too much to get it exact, as you can tell from the photo. Exactly half of the dough would have been 614.5, but 10 grams difference is not a big deal for loaves. I decided to leave it that way. For rolls, since they are so much smaller and the dough needs more divisions, I would try and get closer to the exact number.

I shaped them into boules, and there was some crazy gluten action.

Then I shaped them into loaves and put them in pans for the second rise.

Halfway through the rise, I had to go out, so I put the loaves in the refrigerator. When I took them out later on, the loaves had definitely kept rising in the refrigerator. I let them come back to room temperature, and after 45 minutes, I noticed they were rising even more. So I started preheating the oven, and put them in about 1 hour and fifteen minutes after removing them from the refrigerator. I don’t think the bread was affected at all.

This is when I started to preheat the oven:

I had to bake them the full 45 minutes to reach the right internal temperature.

I waited until this morning before slicing into them. One of the things I liked about this bread is that I found it very easy to slice. I have been baking pain de mie recently in an attempt to completely stop buying bread from the store. You might think that I would have been able to stop buying bread before that, but you would be wrong for one simple reason: I was not able to slice my bread evenly and thinly enough. I didn’t have any problems with hearth breads, but with soft sandwich breads — exactly the kind of bread where you want to be able to make even, thin slices — I would always mangle the bread. I bought some things that helped when slicing the pain de mie: a better bread knife, a bread and bagel slicer, and even an electric knife, which was the absolute best for the softest breads. But I decided to take a knife to the BBA White Bread, and although the crust and crumb are soft, I was able to slice it very nicely.

This bread tastes great and is easy to make. My only problem is one I have mentioned before: I wish the loaves were a little bigger. Has anyone tried to make this as one two-pound loaf (in a 9 x 5 pan) instead of as two one-pound loaves? The smaller loaves didn’t bother me much this time, but I would prefer larger loaves in the future. As white breads go, this recipe didn’t distinguish itself much from other white bread recipes I have made, but it is perfectly serviceable. Maybe there is just not all that much distinguishing about white bread. But I give it four stars.

I don’t think I have ever had Vienna Bread before, but I was excited about making it. It looked like it would be similar to French and Italian breads, and it did not disappoint.

I made a pâte fermentée two days before I mixed up the actual bread dough. The dough was very soft.

It took slightly longer than two hours to double, but I realize I forgot to get a shot of the doubled dough. I baked this bread yesterday on New Year’s Eve, and it seems like my picture-taking was sparse.

I decided to make loaves instead of pistolets, so I divided my dough into two pieces and shaped them into boules. This was near the end of the twenty minute resting period, and you can see how the soft dough spreads. Very different from the Tuscan bread.

Then I formed them into bâtards and put them aside to rise again. You can see air bubbles in the dough below. Usually when PR instructs to shape carefully so as not to deflate the dough, I laugh internally, because I don’t think I am ever able to shape the dough gently enough to not deflate the dough. It might have worked this time, though.

I let them sit for longer than specified again, because I have been having trouble getting my dough to rise. But I might have let them sit too long, because they started to bump into each other. I slashed them, badly. The dough was so soft that it caught on my lame and made unsightly rips in the dough. And after I was so proud of my slashes on the last two breads.

I did all of the hearth baking techniques, and waited for my bread to be done. It took the full thirty minutes.

The bread rose noticeably in the oven, and also spread out to bake my two loaves together. Nevertheless, they turned out very pretty.

I had this bread this morning for breakfast, and I enjoyed it a lot. It is like a hearth bread, but the small amount of shortening and egg added make the crust and the crumb both slightly softer than French or Italian breads. It had a really nice flavor. I opted not to do the Dutch Crunch topping, which I had never heard of before, but I think I might like to go back and try that, too.

I wonder if the bread could be baked as one two-pound loaf, instead of two one-pound loaves. The one-pound loaves turn out so small that they don’t make decent-sized sandwiches, in my opinion. I think this would be a good bread for sandwiches if it could be baked into larger loaves. Vienna bread gets a solid four stars.