Tuscan Peasant Bread

I have not made this bread in a while, at least a year. The texture of the bread is quite excellent: quite airy with some larger air pockets, but so large as to make it look like I tried to "inflate" the bread . The flavor of the bread was a little bland as the recipe doesn't require much salt - just a pinch. I got the recipe from The Bread Maker's Bible by Beth Hensperger. However, it is an awesome bread for soaking up sauce, say from chicken parmesan or some olive oil - preferably infused with some oregano. According to my mom, it is also great as toast with jam.

The one big mistake I made is below:

The bread rose very well and the slashes worked fine - maybe I will do a tic-tac-toe game on it next time. However, I placed the dough on cookie sheet with some olive oil on the bottom, expecting to slide the dough off the sheet and onto the baking stone. Big mistake. I should have put the dough on parchment paper and then on the cookie tin. If I did that, I could have slid the dough and the parchment paper directly onto the baking stone.

This is a great bread for a dinner party of more six people with tomato sauce type dish. You definitely want to eat it by breakfast the next morning as it goes stale quickly. It probably would also make good croutons.

Vermont Maple Honey Oatmeal Bread

     One of my favorite breads to make and one I haven't made in a while. It is from the King Arthur's Baking Companion. I generally follow the recipe except I add probably three times the amount of cinnamon in the recipe - my wife and I love cinnamon - and I also add maple syrup instead of maple flavoring.
     The bread is fairly dense as the two cups of whole wheat flour and the oatmeal make the bread denser. It also makes a fair amount of bread as well. I made one long loaf and 4 shorter loaves for gifts. I prefer to give bread to fellow my grade eight teachers and paraprofessionals that I work with. I figure who needs more cookies or sweets around Christmas time but almost everyone appreciates home made bread. The only problem is one of my teammates has Celiac Disease and gluten literally makes her sick. I would bake her some gluten free peanut butter brownies but there is no way I guarantee that there would not be any flour as both my wife and I like to bake and cook so flour is everywhere. My fellow teacher is very sensitive to cross contamination.
    Anyway, so pictures are below. I didn't do anything different than I usually do. Just had a snow day so I figured I would bake some bread.

 
   One more thing, everybody always loves the bread and appreciates having it.

Peace and Love

Buttermilk Honey Bread

This is one of my favorite breads to bake. It is from the Bread Bible and is simply delicious. No one I have ever given this to has said they did not like it. The secret is the buttermilk which adds a tangy flavor to the bread.
The only change I make to the recipe is I start with two cups of whole wheat flour rather than simple white, unbleached flour. I usually use King Arthur's 100% whole wheat flour combined with King Arthur's white, unbleached flour (which makes sense since my daughters just finished watching Avalon High which is about the reincarnation of King Arthur and knights of the Round Table).
As you can see from the picture, the bread is also popular around my house as the girls ate about half of it while I was building the frame for a set of cornholes in the basement.

White Mountain Bread

In my quest to bake most of the recipes from the book The Bread Bible, I started with the first recipe, White Mountain Bread. I used all white flour from King Arthur. The bread was ok. The dough was fine to work with:

Smooth and absorbed the flour well. I actually used a cup of water rather than 3/4ths of a cup. I also use about a 1/4th a cup of buttermilk since I ran out of whole milk. I made my usual two loaves:

Which resulted in these, which my wife and daughter started eating:

while my other daughter and I were out sailing on the sunfish.

(Actually my daughter and her cousin, but my very few, if any readers, will get the idea)

The texture of the bread was fine. It made great toast with some jam and was good with sandwiches, but I wouldn't make it again. The buttermilk honey from the same book is much better and takes the the same amount of time and materials.

Baguettes - Another try

I tried some baguettes again. This time I used a recipe from The Bread Bible , given to me by my brother-in-law and his wife. An excellent book and I plan to bake as many recipes as I can from it over the summer. This recipe did not call for a Poolish or starter like the King Arthur recipe did that I used last time. So it was quicker to make. It also called for more yeast - 1 and 1/2 tablespoons - than the other recipe. So it rose extremely well.
The other change I made was that I used 6 cups of King Arthur unbleached four rather than 3 cups of cake flour and three cups of regular flour. The weather was extremely hot and muggy. The weather report said the humidity had dropped, but I didn't feel it. But when the temp is 85 and the humidity is say 80% rather than 95%, what really is the difference? I certainly can't feel as I sit, sweat dripping down my back and chest.
The bread tasted fine, it didn't have the tang that the King Arthur recipe did or the air pockets, so I prefer the taste of the King Arthur recipe better.

My biggest problem baking this getting the dough rising in a baguette pan:

onto the extremely hot stone (450 degrees) in the oven without destroying the logs or my hands. The King Arthur blog suggests letting the baguettes rise in cotton cloth dusted with flour, a couche, like they do in France. But I am still not sure how to get them from the cloth to the extremely hot stone without creating a fire. I tried using the dull side of a cleaver and my hands, which worked okay, definitely not ideal.

Finally, I put ice cubes and then water on a paella pan to get the steam. Next time I will mist the dough.

Making Challah Bread

After no power for four days, I decided to celebrate the return of electricity by baking a celebration bread - Challah from the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion. I have tried it before and it is always tasty. I followed the recipe except it rose for about an hour and 30 minutes for second rising rather than 45 minutes as the book recommended. I also used sesame seeds rather than poppy seeds since we had them laying around.
For the ingredients, I used King Arthur's unbleached all purpose flour, regular table salt and white sugar as well as canola oil.
The first rising was slow and didn't seem to double in size, but as one can see from the picture, the bread did rise enough to make a good sized loaf. I used four braids of dough to make the loaf. My daughter did the first few weaves and then I finished the loaf.

Taste - the crust is dark and crispy and the loaf is moist. My daughter claims she needs a bigger piece to get the full effect of the bread. She said it is cake like but not too heavy. It is moist and fluffy. I recommend it. Especially after losing power for a few days.

Baguettes Attempt 1

First attempt to bake baguettes since last year. I used King Arthur recipe, used warm water instead of cool water and also use mixer with dough hook to knead - about 4 minutes total. I needed to add about 3/4 cup of flour since dough was very wet. The weather was hot and humid and my house does not have AC.
Bread rose fine and was still very wet the whole time it was rising and I was working on it. I used a baking stone as well as a cast iron pot and 3/4 cup of water to create steam effect. I could have possibly made 4 loaves or divided dough more equitably. One loaf is much thicker than the rest. The other two also taper a bit two much as the end. Poolish was fine. No problems with the bread rising.

Next time - use cool water instead of warm water. Also might try a bit more flour on humid days.

Texture - Hard, crunchy crust and the interior has small, fairly uniform air pockets
Taste - slight sour taste, definitely different than the standard bread made with either 100% "regular" flour or 1/3 whole wheat flour and 2/3 "regular" flour.