Posts Tagged → loaf
Ashley: San Francisco-Style Sourdough Bread
Well somebody is being an extreme slow poke when it comes to baking breads! I baked this bread awhile ago but Adam has yet to make his. And he’s the sourdough lover! We are however having a family burger and bun competition tonight where we’ve both prepared hamburger buns (and other people did the burgers), so we’ll see if his rusty bread making skills can beat my well practiced ones. 
While I really love bread, I’ve never liked (in fact I’ve strongly disliked) sourdough bread. So for many years I’ve avoided it. But I was both happy and wary to give it another chance. And as it turns out, I actually really liked this bread. But it doesn’t have a very strong sour taste as I remember sourdough having, so maybe that’s why. And I’m assuming that’s because my sourdough starter was only left for 24 hours (as instructed in the book) – whereas other sourdough starters are probably much older when they’re used, so they’ve had more time to develop flavour. When it first came out of the oven, the crust was wonderfully crisp (my favourite part) but overnight it’s softened. The inside is soft, light and airy – which is what I expected from the French bread/baguette but didn’t get. Overall a really great bread for sandwiches, french toast, snacking, anything.
Ashley: Cheese Bread
Unfortunately my cheese bread story is not nearly as exciting as my brother’s, but I guess that’s okay because I’d rather not have a fire in my kitchen! I made it a while ago and should’ve (is should’ve not a word?) written the post up back then but I didn’t. So I will keep this brief.
I decided to do a cheese swirl loaf, because swirls make life and bread more exciting. I also kneaded some cheese into the dough, though I’m not sure what difference it made because I didn’t add that much. I used aged white cheddar, which is one of my favourite cheeses, but I think an old regular cheddar would’ve been better (in both looks and taste).
The dough itself was really soft and easy to work with (and I am completely smitten with how bread dough looks prior to baking). And I would definitely make this cheese bread again, and have already thought of all the different things I can do with it. Like making savoury rolls (cinnamon roll style) and baking them in muffin tins. I’d fill them with cheese (smoked gouda?) and pesto instead of sugar and cinnamon mmm.
As you can see I’m an amateur swirler. I hate how there’s a giant hole between the top 2 layers! Hopefully it turns out better next time when I try rolling it tighter.
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: 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.
Ashley: Carrot Bread
This is our first bread out of the book!! Most exciting. I wish I’d taken photos with a real camera instead of just my iPhone…
Even though I messed up some stuff when making this bread (didn’t dissolve the yeast in the milk, forgot to add the sugar) and I accidentally added more whole wheat flour than I meant to, this bread still turned out really well. A lot of the recipes in this book use skim milk powder and I’m not sure how I feel about that. I opted not to use it in this recipe. The bread wasn’t anything special but it was something a bit different with the carrot, though I couldn’t taste carrot at all.
One thing though is that I’m really starting to love hand kneading bread. I’ve made bread before but rarely hand kneaded because of this one traumatic experience where I kneaded some potato bread dough for about 20 minutes and had sore forearms the next day. But I now realize that obviously I was doing something wrong. Anyway the way I knead bread usually is with the dough hook of my Kitchenaid. The problem with this method is that you have no idea if your dough needs more flour because you (well this is how I do it) just turn on the mixer for x minutes and then stop it and it’s done. I often ended up with dough that I thought was too sticky but at that point there isn’t a ton I could (or maybe wanted to?) do about it. Of course this problem doesn’t exist (or maybe that’s a naive statement a bread newbie like myself would make) when you hand knead because you know when to add more flour. Plus it just feels better knowing that you kneaded the dough yourself. So I’m really looking forward to hand kneading all of the breads we make from this book.
