HollyKing's Journal

Last night I attended the Rustic Breadbaking class at Cook's World. The class was taught by George de Pasquale one of the founders of The Essential Baking Company. It was an excellent class with a lot, and I mean a lot, of good information. I came home with dough covered hands and many pages of notes.

I recommend the class if you want to learn more about baking rustic and artesian style bread. Though I wouldn't recommend it for someone who doesn't bake bread now. For those people I would recommend the Baking 101 class first.

Not having any plans I decided that today was a day of baking and cooking. So I made some applesauce and baked a loaf of white bread. Today the bread really rose and I looked forward to a great loaf when it I put it in the oven. Fifteen minutes into baking things were looking good as I put some foil on the top. However, during the last few minutes of baking the top fell and instead of a nice rounded loaf I ended up with a valley in the middle. jerichobrown, cheesentoast and hollyqueen all said the bread was wonderful, and I agree that it tasted great but I still wish the loaf looked better.

I now have several baking books. (Thanks ragnorokt for my lastest, Baking with Julia.) I still would like to find a baking class as I learn best using hands-on methods and if I can get the feel of how to make a basic loaf of bread the rest will fall into place.

The bad thing today was I watched an episode of Food Network Challenge where they made haunted gingerbread houses. I do not need another hobby... No, no, no... Does making gingerbread houses fall under baking? That's not a new hobby then is it?

Here are my notes from the bread I made last weekend. It had been a long time since I’ve baked bread so I wanted to start with something simple and small. Why not King Arthur Flour’s White Sandwich Bread? The recipe looked simple and it only makes one loaf so there would be less waste if it didn’t turn out.

As I don’t have a stand mixer or food processor I did a bit of research on manual ways of mixing and kneading bread. some_other_word pointed me to the Fountain Method and it sounds very promising. I didn’t use it this time as the quantity of dough fit nicely in my work bowl with plenty of room to mix things around. When I make more than one loaf I’ll use the Fountain Method because I will have a very full work bowl.

I have, and highly recommend, Alton Brown’s book “I’m Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking”. One of the things I love about Alton is he explains the reason behind his directions. Knowing why I’m stirring the dough only 10 times and then walking away was a big help when I made muffins. So I read his chapter on bread the night before which gave tips like using filtered or bottled water to keep chlorine out of the dough. Alton also recommends letting the dough rest for 30 minutes between mixing and kneading. This phase, known as autolyse, allows the flour to absorb the liquid and the gluten time to develop. I used to think I would have problem with the dough rising because of the cooler temperatures. I read in Alton’s book, and other places, about a slow cool rise giving the dough more chances to develop flavor.

After reading my books and some baking websites it was off to buy the ingredients. I didn’t know it at the time but that was when I made my major “mistake” for this whole adventure. I was supposed to buy Unbleached All Purpose Flour and instead I picked up White Whole Wheat Flour. Also, the store didn’t have the instant yeast I wanted but “active dry” yeast just needs a bit of blooming before use so it wasn’t a problem.

To start I weighed out the flour and measured the other dry ingredients into my work bowl. Yes, I weighed the flour. Alton Brown has convinced me that flour should always be weighed. Depending on how packed it is the quantity of flour in one cup can vary greatly. Weighing is the only way to be accurate. Next I bloomed the yeast and when it was ready mixed it all together. Covering the bowl with a towel I let it sit for 30 minutes.

The next step was the kneading and the one I had the least confidence about. Using the guidelines in AB’s book I kneaded until the dough was smooth and sprang back from a light poke. I’d still like to take a bread baking class to get some more experience and skill with knowing how much kneading is needed. I kneaded it enough based on the end result.

The first rise was supposed to take one to two hours. Although both AB and the King Arthur recipe say the important thing is to wait until the dough doubles in size. So I actually gave the dough three hours and it was nice and puffy. Instead of “punching” the dough I followed Alton’s directions and gently flattened it and folded it on itself three times. Then I molded the dough into a loaf shape and placed it in the pan.

Time to wait again. This rise was supposed to take an hour but after two the bread was cresting the top of the pan. I just couldn’t wait any longer and so sent it off to the oven to bake. It was supposed to bake for 35 minutes and that was my second mistake of the night. You see when I placed the pan in the oven I burned my hand on the side of it. (Note to self, move the racks in the oven.) In the hopping around and looking for something cool to put on my hand I forgot to start the timer. So the bread probably baked longer than it needed too.

After the bread cooled on the rack I sliced a few pieces for hollyqueen and I to try. At this point I discovered my first mistake. The bread was darker than I expected. Half-way between white and whole wheat. Very tasty though. Oh very tasty. In the pictures the loaf looks heavy and dense, but it really isn’t. It has more body than white but it’s light and tasty. Takes butter with ease and has been a good bit of my breakfast the past few days.

Next time I’ll keep these things in mind. First, start earlier in the day. “Room temperature” here is cooler than most places so it will take longer for the dough to rise. Buy the right kind of flour for your recipe. This is a happy accident I’ll make again, but this isn’t white bread. Use a timer and watch the sides of the oven so I don’t burn the bread or my hand. Bribe someone with fresh bread to take pictures and document the process. I took a few pictures with my mobile phone, but I wish I had more pictures with better quality.

I consider this baking adventure a great success. As I was once told “Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing,” I think that any baking that results in a fresh loaf of tasty bread is a good baking.

All of my reading paid off. Today I made a loaf of bread for the first time in a very long time and it was great success. Just as much fun as I remembered and the end result is tasty fresh bread. No mixers were harmed in the making of this loaf. ;)