Posts Tagged → adam
Adam: Cheese bread
So this was an adventure! I’m late posting this due to catastrophe and it goes a little something like this:
Those are scorch marks! I haven’t checked yet, but I do believe this tin is now ruined. How did it get this way you ask? Well let me tell you! I had made my dough mixture, had it rise a couple of times, added everything I needed. My daughter had a friend over for lunch and I made them some fabulous grilled cheese sandwich’s using my new panini press. So the dough was just about done.. and just needed a final rise. The girls wanted to go outside and play so I headed outside with them – but before doing so I threw the final on top of the stove with a floured cloth over it – for the final rise before baking. I must’ve knocked – somehow – the element that was below the tin (it’s a flat top/glass type stove top) – and didn’t notice. So there I go outside.. talking to the other neighbourhood Dad.. and then I hear fire alarms. Man, I wish someone would stop that loud noise.. it’s really loud! Don’t people watch what they are cooking? Sheesh…. oh wait – is that my house? Is that my wife yelling? I run inside and there’s a fireball on top of my stove!!! Quick action took care of it – but not without being banned from the kitchen (I’m still banned so I hope she doesn’t see this ! ) and a very burnt bread tin. I should’ve taken more pictures but alas no.
So round two was this weekend. I was very excited about making this bread as my daughter declares, daily that she LOVES cheese – was pretty sure this would be a hit even if I goofed it a bit. Some notes: I kneeded the dough more this time (not that I would really know the difference as the last dough was all charred and … semi-cooked. Maybe I should’ve tried to save it!) – probably about 10 minutes actually. I love this new Rogers white bread flour – it seems to have a really nice texture once you start really working at it. I also thought I’d try something fancier this time with the way I folded the dough to fit in the pan. Previously I sort of ignored the folding, but this time I watched a video of this dude on youtube and thought I’d try folding it over like him (though his was much more wet than mine). I can’t find it now as I seem to be using different search terms. Rest assured our faithful Jewish Baker’s book has 0 pictures of this activity and the folding terminology gets quite complicated.
The tl;dr; (too long didn’t read) version of the folding is: I basically folded it in 1/3′d inwards.. and then the other 1/3′d inwards .. first making it a rectangle. This made the right shape. But when the bread was baked .. it’s stayed together, but it does separate rather easily where the folds were made.
The bread is DELICIOUS. It’s SO very good. Toasted with a bit of butter it’s even better. ”Adam, this bread is really really great” said the wife last night. Yay!
Adam: Baguette
So first off: I was really nervous about making this bread. I freakin’ LOVE baguettes – and am entirely guilty of sitting with a small dish of butter and an entire baguette and having them both just disappear somehow. I love the crunchy crust and the soft interior – and the smell.. oh the smell. So I really wanted this to turn out right – ESPECIALLY after last weeks debacle; and for a spoiler: It turns out! Sorta.
I ran out and got some proper white bread flour (we have a lot of whole wheat stuff in the house but not much in the way of white bread flour, so .. well, corrected now!) and decided that this was going to the loaf of loaf’s! I spoke with Ashley previously and she mentioned it become quite large and to make two (which the recipe calls for ) would be fairly difficult with a standard sized baking sheet, so I split the recipe. After the sponge was done I took it out and it was the most amazing dough I’ve ever played with.
It just felt … svelt? I’m not even sure if that’s the right word for it but it was an amazing experience. Our beloved bread book, now very specifically says: ”Knead until you feel you are done”. Really? That doesn’t seem like very good instruction to me. EXCEPT THAT IT WAS. This dough was no like no other and I knew it was ready, or did I? It then said: “When you think you are done, knead for another 15-20 minutes and whap it on the table every once in a while”. Most excellent.
Once done it was set to rise, and then rise again. And oh yes, then again.. wait no, I don’t have to split the dough and let it rise again – or do I? How much does this all really matter? Wait what? My dough didn’t rise at all – ok maybe 10-15% but that was it. I couldn’t figure out why dough that was so amazing to knead wasn’t doing everything right to insure it found itself transformed into the most amazing baguette ever. Turns out when I 1/2′d the recipe I failed to 1/2 the salt. Salt eats yeast right? I think this is the problem. But I continued (I clued into this about the time I put it on the baking pan). I rolled it out after a few failed risings and twisted it just slightly while putting it on the sheet. It looked like it was going to be awesome : a few slits down the top for steam and they said if I angled my cuts it’d open flower like, sure did.
Our oldest and most trusted baking sheet is up for the task.
40 minutes later and some magic came out of the oven. I really enjoyed the way it looked. Ashley had actually gone out for the day with my wife and when she returned it had just come out of the oven. I asked if she wanted to see it of course and I felt like I was standing next to my offspring, very proud. Of course, I think that at this point I still forgot that I doubled the salt. Turns out it was sorta salty – but otherwise really nice and soft inside and a wonderful rustic crust on the outside.
I forgot to take bread interior shots. I’ll do that in the future. It was nice and airy – not too dense. It took butter like a champ. If only it didn’t have so much salt!. ARGH. I will remake this and likely update this post. I didn’t do much in the way of storage for it as we didn’t each much of it being salty and all – but I think bread box + brown paper bag is the way to go. And of course, you must consume most of it as quickly as possible!
Also, one of the dog – because I took the bread outside on this cutting board to take some better lit pictures and she patiently waited for me to finish up. She likes short walks, cheese and belly rubs.
Adam: Broa – Portuguese corn bread
I’m reasonably certain I’ve followed all the directions correctly. I even read through the entire recipe prior to anything to be sure I wouldn’t miss a thing.
The bread itself looks really great. The crust is very hard as described in the cookbook. The bread itself is fairly dense and is reasonably soft. The taste… is really not very good at all. I did do a couple of things when making this fairly popularbread: I forgot to put in any salt until the last few minutes of kneading prior to the last step of baking and I also left the sponge out longer than 45 minutes – was more like 2.5-3 hours.
As I did end up rolling in the salt, and the sponge seemed fine anyways I find it hard to believe either of these items was the issue. Whisking up the corn starch was a bit weird as well as the cookbook suggests you let it cool before adding it to your sponge. Well, when you let it cool it turns into a real gelatin type substance as doesn’t transfer well into a sponge? Again – not convinced this was the issue either.
We’ll see where we go next. All in all a disappointment the evening I finished this up as the wife and I were excited to try it with a bit of a butter – especially after I received an email from Ashley saying “MY BREAD IS SOOOOOO GOOOOD” or something to that effect. She was quite the oppositie.
Adam: Carrot Bread
And off we go! Ashley beat me to making this and teased me with photos of raw dough sitting in a bowl. Unfortunately due to weekend business I ended up sampling Ashley’s bread and then baking mine 2 full days later on a nice lazy Easter Monday. I cheated a bit though as I had a professional carrot peeler.
Ashley mentioned she 1/2′d the recipe and I’d thought of doing the same but totally forgot by the time I’d started the sponge. I forged on! I used more yeast than I’d ever used any previous bread making experiences (though not a lot by any means) and I attribute my end result, which ended with a beautifully shaped interior and was not nearly as dense as previous breads directly to it. I just used your typical pre-packaged dry yeast.
So after I left the sponge for an hour or so on the cold easter morning I came back and it had doubled nicely anyways and I continued to follow the directions from our Jewish baking book. The next steps asked for mostly white flower but I substituted whole wheat as I have a lot more of it and generally enjoy whole grain flavoring more. After mixing everything in and doing 8 minutes of kneading or so (including the master-crafted carrot pieces) it was left to sit covered on top of the stove until risen again and aprox. 90 minutes later I cut it in two (2/3’s and 1/3 as I don’t have two identical baking pans just yet) and then after reshaping into a proper folded over loaf I threw them in the two olive oil (lightly) smeared tins and let them rise up again. I hadn’t ever let bread rise up once in the tin and this was interesting. Directions called for it to expand over the tin by an inch (2cm or so). Mine rose at different speeds but once they were nearly there I scored them sorta diagonally 3 times.. probably not quite as deep as I should have but I’ll experiment with this.
Then into the oven and away we go. The book mentions adding a bit of steam to the process and proceed’s to tell you different ways of doing this with one of them being taking a small pan (I used a pie pan) and throwing some ice cubes in it and setting it below your bread. The steam is supposed to improve the crust. So I did this and am not sure of the difference. Too bad I dont’ have two ovens to test the difference! They did also mention knocking them out of the tins at the end and baking them on their own for the last 5 minutes which I should have done in retrospect but didn’t as I quite honestly skimped in pre-reading the recipe’s tail end: assuming wrongly that one would just bake it the whole time in the tin.
In any case, they turned out really lovely. Possibly the best bread to date! ha! The crust was much heartier than any previous breads I’ve made and the overall taste was extremely lovely. I particularly like how the large-ish carrot strips detail the outside crust.
Hello everyone, welcome!
Hi everyone! We’re excited to announce a new project that will hopefully run for some time. It’s one that involves two siblings that want to see more about baking breads (and maybe more!) and have decided to cook their way through some books and blog about it in the process. Ashley, who’s already been blogging for ages and runs eatmedelicious.com and Adam who’s never blogged more than one post in his life and isn’t remotely a baker having to look up every item and detail of how to prepare items.
We’ll start with a few basic breads from Secrets of a Jewish Baker, which is a random book Ashley recommended on a list of books we had to choose from. This book appears to have a large variety and has a lot of interesting tips for the new baker which comforted Adam greatly. It appears to be a bit vague in some places as well but luckily we’ve both baked a few loaves before and are somewhat familiar with the process.