Honey I Blew Up the Kitchen

Since the hubby and kids were otherwise occupied, I decided it would be a good opportunity to complete the baking challenge and try my hand at Anadama Bread. It took the better part of the day and my kitchen is a wreck, but it did turn out beautifully.

Let me start by sharing, I am not an accomplished baker. I've made bread in the bread maker, but mostly stuck with recipes that involved tossing a couple of ingredients in, pushing the button and walking away. This was going to take considerably more effort.

The book we are working out of is called The Bread Baker's Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart. I suppose I should have been diligently reading to understand the concepts, formulas and art of bread-making. In my own true fashion, I hastily bought the book on Amazon when Buffy announced our first challenge, and then promptly turned to p.108 to dive in.

From Bread

Let's begin with my cast of characters.

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When I am working with a new recipe and not sure of my abilities, I tend to over compensate with my ingredients. I went to four different stores in search of the perfect cornmeal and molasses, because, according to the recipe, the cornmeal must be coarse grain, and the lighter the molasses the better the flavor. By-the-way, I got that ginormous package of yeast for less than $4 at Costco. I keep it in my freezer and it will last forever.

Anywho... the first step was to start the night before and make a soaker. That part was easy enough. Here's my soaker after a night of soaking:

From Bread

The next morning, my first step was to combine some of the flour with other ingredients, cover and let it ferment for an hour until the "sponge begins to bubble." I don't know what a sponge is (guess I should have read more), but I followed along as best I could. After an hour and a half, my "sponge" looked like this:

From Bread

I deemed it "bubbly". Then the recipe called for adding the rest of the flour and remaining ingredients and mix until they form a "soft, slightly sticky" ball. So I dumped the ingredients in my trusty Kitchen Aid and started mixing. After watching an incalculable amount of my flour go flying up in the air, out of my mixer, and all over my counter top, I concluded I should have taken a little more precaution in adding the dry ingredients.

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I took some more flour and tossed it in, hoping to make up for what I lost. The next step was to knead the dough and since my countertop was suddenly pre-floured, I decided to go it by hand. After 10 minutes, my dough had not yet passed the "Window Pane test", so I threw it in the mixer with the hook and let is knead for 2 more minutes. We were still failing the test but I decided to move on.

Next up was to lightly oil a bowl, add the dough and cover until it doubles in size, ~90 minutes. It started out like this: (I used too much oil, I think)

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And after a few errands and 2.5 hours later, it looked like this:

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From here, the next job was to divide in the dough into three loafs, shaping them as shown on page 81.

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I had a hard time with this. I didn't understand the "working from the short side" business and wasn't sure I rolled my dough properly.

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Nonetheless, I got the job done and put the loaves in the bread pans where they need to "proof" again. It's not obvious in the pic, but I didn't divide equally very well. The loaf in the stoneware pan is much bigger.

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I threw cheesecloth over my loaves and ran out to knock out some more errands. When I returned two and half hours later, I saw my loaves had poufed up nicely and were ready for baking.

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After baking for ~45 minutes (turning once, half way through), the timer went off and the bread was done. I worried that my bigger loaf would need longer, but all of it cooked fine and was well above the suggested temp of 180. I popped them out of the pans and left them on the rack to cool for another hour(!).

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When I finally got to sample the fruit of my labor, I was very pleased. The flavor was delicious - moist and slightly crunchy, thanks to my coarse corn meal. Now that I've made it, I'm sure regular corn meal would be fine.

I'm glad it made three loaves. That means I've got one to enjoy, one to save, and one to share with a friend who just had a baby! Despite some hiccups along the way, it turned out beautifully. Now if only there was a kitchen fairy who could come along and restore my countertops to their former glory...

From Bread

Til next time...

Kendra
aka The Meanest Momma