Goth Panda

OK, so I have not abandoned my bread baking project. I have just not been keeping up with posting about it. I have been Unplugged for the past few weeks, working on revising my dissertation’s literature review for a December deadline, and also playing way too much Settlers of Catan. I blame Steve P., whose Halloween party was where I was first introduced to the board game, and Mike, who found the online version and downloaded it for us. We have been fiendishly collecting wood, bricks, wool, grain, and ore ever since.

But I have still been baking! Here are the fruits of my labors:

Pain à l’Ancienne

This bread is the one that Peter Reinhart seems most excited about. It uses cold fermentation and rising to retard the bread and intensify the flavor. It has only four ingredients: flour, salt, yeast, and water.

You mix the dough with ice water, and you do it by machine to avoid adding any heat. I think I had to add more flour to get the dough to release. Then it just stuck to my paddle.

It was strange and almost creepy to touch this dough. I am so used to touching warm dough that feels alive, and this dough felt cold and dead, somehow. But nothing could have been easier to make. Once it was kneaded for a very short time, it goes into the bucket and then into the refrigerator.

When I took it out of the refrigerator the next day, it hadn’t risen at all. In fact, it looks lower than when I put it in.

I left it out to double, but I think I ended up shaping it before it had really risen enough:

The shaping was easy, too. You are just supposed to flatten the dough out and cut it into strips for the baguettes.

My baguettes ended up looking pretty funny:

I was disappointed that they didn’t get bigger, although they don’t look too much flatter than the ones in the book.

These did actually taste phenomenal. The flavor had real depth that made it hard to believe there were only four ingredients. It was a flavor that I associate with umami – almost as if it were a cheese bread. But I didn’t really like the way they were flat as baguettes. I think I would have enjoyed this more shaped differently, as maybe a foccaccia or pizza dough, both of which are offered as variations. Or maybe I should have let it rise longer. I just wanted a little more lift for a baguette. I guess these get 4.5 stars.

Pain de Campagne

I didn’t take any photos of making my pâte fermentée, because let’s face it. When you’ve seen one pâte fermentée, you’ve seen them all.

Here it is coming out of the refrigerator. Notice the half-moon marks from my too-long nails dimpling it down. I bet Peter Reinhart doesn’t have that problem.

I used rye dough instead of whole wheat, and I am glad I did. It gave it more rye flavor than the marbled rye breads had! Yes, I am still bitter about the marbled rye.

Here it is ready to rise:

And nice and risen:

I used my couche for the second rise. They looked so cute shaped and the light was so good that I took about a million photos of them.

And here they are, finished.

The one on the left got stuck to one of its neighbors during the baking process and ended up somewhat deformed. We love him anyway.

This bread was a joy from start to finish. It was one of my favorite tasting breads so far. My only complaint was that I wish I hadn’t split the dough into thirds, because the resulting loaves were a bit small for sandwiches. Next time, I would just divide the dough in half. And there will so be a next time. This one gets 5 stars.

Pane Siciliano

I baked the pane siciliano this past week, and the sad part is that I couldn’t find my good camera while I was baking. We painted our kitchen last weekend, and I moved my camera while we were painting, and then I couldn’t find it again. Except for I really had found it, only I thought it was Mike’s and not mine. By the time my confusion was sorted out, it was too late for the pane siciliano. I just have this photo I took with my point-and-shoot:

As you can tell from the photos, I didn’t really get the shaping quite right. These rose a lot in the oven. They taste pretty good, too. If I make these again, I might do the same thing as with the pain de campagne and just divide the dough in half so it is more sandwich-worthy.

Here is a crumb shot, after I found my camera again.

I liked this bread, but I think it suffered coming after the Pain de Campagne, which I liked a lot better. So I will be giving it just 4 stars.

Now, next up in the book is Panettone, but here is what I am going to do. First of all, I am not going to bake this week, because I am baking bread and rolls for Thanksgiving, since I am hosting it here at my house. But I think next week, I am going to skip the Panettone and move on to the Pizza Napoletana. There are three reasons: (1) I want to push back the Panettone to Christmas-time, (2) the Panettone needs sourdough starter and mine is currently dormant, so I am hoping to push it back to group it with the other sourdough breads. Then I will convert my stiff starter to a liquid starter since I will be using it every week. And (3) because I want pizza. I think those are convincing arguments.

Have I really baked twenty breads already for the BBA Challenge? It doesn’t seem possible.

These past few breads have been sandwich breads. Last week I posted to the BBA Challenge Google Group asking if anyone had any tips for slicing sandwich breads, because I have problems slicing them even and thin enough to make good sandwiches. Most of the advice I got back was about getting a better bread knife. I ordered a new one this week and I’m happy that I got it in time for this bread. I think this bread is the first I managed to slice adequately. We made excellent peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with it tonight.

This bread starts with an overnight soaker of cornmeal, oats, and wheat bran with water. I couldn’t find wheat bran at my local grocery store, but I did find Bob’s Red Mill natural raw wheat germ, which the internet assures me could be substituted for wheat bran.

The next day I added my soaker to the dry ingredients:

I added the rest of the ingredients, including the one ounce of cooked brown rice that I did indeed just cook for the bread. I made leftovers that I plan to use later in the week, though.

I started kneading in the KitchenAid and it quickly became apparent that I would need to add more flour.

I added more flour, alternating with kneading spurts. Then I took the dough out of the KitchenAid and finished kneading it by hand, adding even more flour. I’m not sure how much I ended up having to add, but it seemed like a lot.

I set it aside to rise.

As strange as this may seem, so far in this challenge I had never had to retard the dough in the refrigerator because I needed to go out or do something. I have always been able to work straight through the recipe. But this time, I needed to go out in the middle of the first rise, so I waited until about an hour in and put it in the fridge. It looked like this:

It has been cold here this week, so it was taking a while to rise anyway. When I got back, it was definitely risen enough – almost but not quite overproofed. I should probably have put it in even earlier.

I shaped it while it was still cold, and as a consequence, the second rise took a while.

Usually my second rises for the challenge breads have taken much less than Peter Reinhart says they will (probably since we have been baking throughout the summer). But this one took even longer than the full 90 minutes, and probably could have been proofed a little more.

This bread tastes very good, and since I’ve gotten a little better at my slicing, makes delicious sandwiches. I think next time I make it I would use part white whole wheat flour, since there are lots of extra “multigrains” but the recipe still uses plain bread flour. I’m also happy it uses honey instead of molasses. For some reason this challenge is turning me off of breads with molasses in them. I might be substituting honey for molasses in the upcoming recipes. This bread gets 4.5 stars.

Oh, people. We finally have a BBA Challenge disappointment here at Goth Panda.

The first bit of evidence:

What happened here? I think the pan sizes for these loaves, like last week’s Light Wheat Bread, should be revised from 8.5″ loaf pans to 9″ loaf pans. I weighed each dough before dividing it, and each one weighed almost 32 oz. which would make each loaf almost two pounds. But I didn’t think of this at the time, and so followed the recipe’s directions.

Which is how I ended up with this:

I also had to bake the bread for about ten minutes longer than the recipe stated in order to get the right internal temperature. The interior swirl didn’t turn out too badly:

And the crumb was nice:

But this bread also fails on taste. It doesn’t taste enough like rye bread. And I didn’t like the slight taste of molasses, either. This is the first recipe from the Challenge that I wouldn’t recommend.

This morning wasn’t a complete waste, however. For the first time, I fried dough. I made Apple Cider Doughnuts:

This recipe gave me no end of trouble, since I didn’t add enough flour. I think I made a mistake converting the flour from cups to ounces. When I had mixed all the ingredients, I had more of a “batter” than a “dough.” But since I’d never made doughnuts before, I wasn’t exactly sure what the dough should look like. I considered throwing it all away and starting again. But I ended up adding flour until it looked right and could be cut out with my doughnut cutter. Then I dropped them in hot oil and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.

Then I put them in my cake stand.

Seriously, if you like to bake desserts or muffins or really anything that fits in a cake stand, you should totally get a cake stand. Everything looks so much nicer in a cake stand.

So in conclusion, doughnuts are awesome and BBA Marbled Rye, not so much. I need some more doughnut recipes to try. I am thinking maybe a nice glazed yeasted doughnut, to tide us over until we can get back to the justly famous Britt’s Doughnuts in Wilmington, NC.

Unlike the last time I posted about two breads at once, I did not actually bake both of these in one day. I am just behind in posting. I baked the wheat bread last weekend and the lavash crackers the weekend before that.

I had never made crackers before. Here’s my dough, mixed and kneaded – by hand, since P.R. says this one is no good for the stand mixer. This dough was actually fairly easy to knead, and I enjoyed throwing it around a bit.

There wasn’t a lot of dough, so I put it in one of my measuring cups to rise.

This looks more like it got wider than taller after 90 minutes. I went ahead and used it anyway.

I rolled it out on the counter and then laid it out on the sheet pan with parchment. I had problems rolling it out. Although I could get it very thin, the dough kept catching when I would turn it and fold over itself. You can see the ripples.

I liked the alternating toppings idea, so I used it myself. From left to right, we have kosher salt, smoked paprika, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, and then the same sequence over again. I also cut the crackers with a pizza wheel before baking them.

These were pretty easy, and very good. I served them with hummus the next day to guests. I put them in a plastic bag overnight, but I think that was probably the wrong thing to do. The crackers didn’t remain as crisp as I would have liked. I wonder if keeping them in a paper bag would have helped.

I’m not sure I would make these again, but I might try another kind of cracker. I’ve been looking at cheese cracker recipes that might be in my future. I give these 3.5 stars.

Last weekend, I pressed on with the Light Wheat Bread. Now my light wheat bread was going to be very light, because I used KAF White Whole Wheat flour, which happened to be what I had hanging around my kitchen.

Here are my ingredients, ready to mix. I have been mixing with the dough whisk, and then at the end mixing by hand. Then kneading with the stand mixer for a few minutes, but ending kneading by hand. I don’t know why, but it does make me feel better about the dough to put my hands on it throughout the process.

I checked my dough’s windowpane and took its temperature, and then put it to rise in my dough bucket.

I didn’t do a bad job this time. At least I got to it before the lid was almost blown off.

I shaped it and popped it in a loaf pan for a second rise. I used a 9″ loaf pan. The recipe says the loaf is two pounds, which to me means using a 9″ loaf pan, although the recipe says to use an 8.5″ one. I was wondering about this before I made the recipe, and then I saw several of my fellow bakers had a problem with the pan size. So I decided to go with my gut and use the larger pan.

The bread crested in less than 90 minutes – I think it was even less than an hour.

I baked it for 30 minutes, and then turned the loaf. I checked it after fifteen more minutes, took its temperature again, and it was done.

This bread was very good, and would make an excellent everyday sandwich loaf. With the white wheat flour, I don’t think anyone would even know it wasn’t white bread. I give it 4 stars.

I was thinking about trying to fit both Kaiser Rolls and Lavash Crackers in this past weekend, but as it turned out, I only had time for the Kaiser Rolls. I made the pâte fermentée on Friday, and then baked the rolls on Saturday.

First I mixed the dry ingredients: bread flour, salt, diastatic malt powder, and instant yeast.

Then I added my pâte, egg, oil, and water. Doesn’t this look appetizing? No?

For some reason, not only have I started to knead by hand, but I have also started to mix by hand. I start off with the dough whisk, but after it gets fairly mixed up, I feel the urge to reach in and smush it around until everything is well-mixed.

Then I start kneading with the KitchenAid, but usually take it out and finish it by hand. I don’t know what is wrong with me.

This dough was very sticky and needed more flour to come together.

Incidentally, has anyone been using an autolyse on any of these doughs? I don’t think Reinhart really goes into the autolyse in the BBA book, and none of the recipes direct you to do it. I was thinking of trying to incorporate it in one of the future breads and see if it makes a difference, since I have never done it before. I got the idea because I have been reading other bread books, but I haven’t had the time to bake anything from them, since BBA consumes almost all of my baking time.

I put my dough into the same KAF measuring beaker I used last week:

And yet again, my dough almost overflowed:

This is partially my fault, since I went out and didn’t get back until two hours had passed. However, I am starting to think that the tall shape of the beaker helps the dough rise higher. This may have no basis in fact.

I took out the dough and shaped it into boules. I did have six, although there are only five here for some reason:

I used my scale to get them roughly even, but I think each of them was more than 4 ounces.

Since I didn’t get a kaiser roll cutter, I decided to try the knotting method. I rolled the dough out and double-knotted it according to Reinhart’s directions: first like tying a regular knot, and then pushing the loose ends through the center again, one through the top and one through the bottom. Does that make any sense?

It kind of worked for me, although I had a hard time getting the dough to roll out long enough to make all the required knots.

I also decided to use my KAF roll pan for the rolls. I figured since I have a roll pan, I should use it.

I flipped the rolls over halfway through and then preheated the oven.

I decided to add sesame seeds to the rolls, so I spritzed them with water and sprinkled on the seeds. I almost regret doing this, because for the next few days I found sesame seeds discarded by my rolls everywhere. It’s a miracle even one made it into our mouths.

I baked these for ten minutes and then turned the pan. After fifteen more minutes they were ready. I took their temperature and all were well above 200 degrees F.

These tasted delicious. I am not a huge kaiser roll fan, but if I were, I would make these all the time. They were fairly easy to make and came out just like a kaiser roll should.

I think my roll pan caused them to spread upwards instead of out (like it does for my hamburger buns), so my kaiser rolls were rather taller than wider.

And here’s the crumb shot. We have been using these for sandwiches all week. It is nice to have another “small batch” recipe that isn’t going to take up residence in my freezer. I give these a 4 out of 5.