I did it! BBA #43: Roasted onion and asiago miche

What an appropriate time of year to announce: I did it! I'm graduating! I finished the BBA Challenge!

It's incredible to think that only a year ago, my bread baking experience consisted of two sandwich loaves, neither of which turned out that well, and other than that, I only baked quickbreads and cookies. And now, in 40 weeks, I've made all 43 breads from The Bread Baker's Apprentice! I can't believe how much I've learned: I can now whip up bread while making dinner and routinely make more than one loaf in a weekend. I've learned about autolyse, wild yeast, stretching-and-folding, hearth baking, the importance of temperature and timing . . . and many other things.

I meant to bake the final bread in Peter Reinhart's BBA last weekend, but life does not always go as planned, and instead we spent 30-some hours in the car, driving across country, to celebrate hubby's grandpa's life. We spent the week with hubby's aunt and uncle . . . Does anyone else find it odd to spend several days without baking or cooking? As soon as I walk in the door of our house after being away, my fingers positively itch to bake!

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So here we are with another bread from Bennett Valley Bread and Pastry, the same artisan bakery that brought us the amazing potato, cheddar, and chive torpedoes: Roasted Onion and Asiago Miche.


This is a three-day bread. On the first day, I made a quick sponge: Austin (my starter), water, and bread flour. Unfortunately I got distracted when measuring the water and ended up with a starter that definitely was not sponge-like. It was a dry, dry dough. So relying on all that I've learned about bread dough (wink, wink), I added a bit more water until it looked more sponge-like. I left it on the counter to bubble and then threw it in the fridge overnight.


The next evening, I pulled the sponge out of the fridge and then had one of those moments where I realized how completely obsessed I've become with bread baking. I'd spent the day on an end-of-the-year fieldtrip to a local amusement park. I came home completely exhausted and changed immediately into sweats. And then realized that I really wanted to bake my bread and didn't have chives and scallions. Too exhausted to change out of my sweats, I nevertheless ran out to my dad's to cut chives and to the grocery store to pick up the green onions.

I'd promised myself that just once, I wanted to do things the right way: make a bread with a full mise-en-place and mix everything completely by hand. Here's my mise:


and here's hubby finishing my miche by grating a pound of cheese:


And as for mixing by hand, this dough demands it as it is so incredibly massive, it barely fit into my biggest mixing bowl. (Next time I would definitely do a half-recipe, just so that I could manage the ingredients!)

So I stirred together the bread flour and the yeast. Then added the sponge and water, mixed it all together, and gave it a five minute autolyse (=rest). Then I added the salt, olive oil, chives, scallions, and half of the cheese. We only had a little bit of asiago left, so I used some parmesan and romano as well.

I used my hands to knead/mix it a bit in the mixing bowl. Then I dumped it out onto the counter where I attempted to knead and tried to get all of the cheese and onions to stay in the bread. I just couldn't handle all of that dough! So I used a stretch-and-fold, three or four times over two hours.



Then I divided the dough into two boules, covered them with plastic wrap, and put them in the fridge to rest overnight.

This morning, I pulled out one of the loaves and let it rest on the counter for a couple of hours. Then I got the oven ready, brushed the top of the loaf with olive oil, dimpled it with my fingers, sprinkled on cheese and onions, and then let it rest for a half hour.


I decided to use the real hearth baking method, instead of the improvised roasting pan steaming technique that I've been using a lot lately, so I put the bread in the oven, poured a cup of boiling water into the steam pan, and spritzed the oven walls at 30-second intervals.

And apparently I haven't learned all that much from all of this bread baking, as once again, I forgot to lower the temperature of the oven after spritzing the sides. So 20 minutes at 500F (when I finally remembered to lower the oven temperature) and another 14 minutes at 450F, and the bread registered 208F, so out it came.


We had difficulty waiting for the full hour to cut it because the smell was absolutely divine; I think we waited about 50 minutes. This is a very cheesy bread with lovely sweet onion flavors in every bite. It's very moist with a light, fluffy texture. Hubby likes it almost as much as the potato, cheddar, chive bread, and declares that I must make it again. (I will sooner than he thinks; there's another loaf waiting in the fridge to be baked on Monday morning.) I wasn't addicted to this the way I was with the potato, cheddar, chive bread, but it was still quite tasty!


And Phyl, over at Of Cabbages & King Cakes, requested pictures of everyone's books after the Challenge, so here's mine:


A million thanks to Nicole over at Pinch My Salt for coming up with the BBA Challenge. I can't believe how it has changed my life, introducing me to what I believe will be a life-time obsession, uh, I mean hobby.

And now . . . on we go with the Mellow Bakers and the Modern Baker Challenge!

BBA #42: Potato, Cheddar, and Chive Torpedoes

Here we are at bread #42 of the BBA Challenge!!! I can't believe it. I've actually finished the whole alphabetical list of breads, from Anadama through Whole wheat, and am now in "The Final Grace Note: Wood-Fired Baking in Bennett Valley" of The Bread Baker's Apprentice, wherein Peter Reinhart profiles a new artisan bakery in California. The last two breads in the book are favorites from this bakery, and they have both received high marks from the BBA Challenge bakers who have finished before me.

Phyl at Of Cabbages & King Cakes

Andrea at Family & Food

Sally at Bewitching Kitchen

Paul at Yumarama

So, potato, cheddar, and chive bread: what could be bad?!

This is a one day bread (always exciting for me), assuming you have your starter ready to go . . . which I did. However, I hadn't looked at just how much starter I was going to need (10 1/2 ounces!), so I had to improvise a bit. I used five ounces of my regular ol' Austin, who I had just refreshed the previous day, but I needed to be sure to save enough of him to return to the fridge. What to do?! I looked around my kitchen, and noticed the stiff starter that I'd prepared for my next Mellow Bakers' bread. Ah ha! Exactly five more ounces, which brought me to ten, and which I decided was close enough. Re-refreshed Austin to make enough for both Mellow Bakers and the fridge, and I was on my way!

I boiled a few yukon gold potatoes for about twenty minutes until they were soft. While the potatoes and the potato water were cooling, the baby and I quickly drove over to my dad's house, where we cut a large handful of strong-smelling chives. When I called home and had hubby check the temperature of the potato water, it was already down to 87 F, so we jumped in the car and raced back home.

I used my trusty dough whisk to stir together the barm, potatoes, some bread flour, some potato water, and some instant yeast. (Yep, this is another mixed leavened bread.) Then I let it sit for a bit while I cut up my chives and caught up on the dishes. Then I added the rest of the flour, the salt, and a couple more ounces of potato water. I thought I'd need a little extra water to make up for using a stiff starter, but I ended up having to add a bit more flour during kneading, so I guess I probably could've made it without adding any additional water.

Anyway, my stand mixer kneaded the dough for me (with the addition of about 1/3 c more flour), and then I added in the chives (a bit more than an ounce, including some of the purple flowers, because really, they were fresh and free, and how could it be bad to have more?!), and then put it into an oiled bowl. The dough doubled in about an hour, which was great because I was in a bit of a rush to finish the bread before I had to leave for a meeting.

I cut the dough into two pieces, pressed each into a rectangle, and placed three thin slices of sharp cheddar cheese on top. I rolled these into batards, and they rose for another hour while I preheated the oven and my baking stone. It took me a few tries to get my slashes down to the cheese layer, but slashing has never been my strong suit, so that wasn't a huge surprise.

I used my aluminum pan fake-steaming method and couldn't believe the incredible oven spring after 15 minutes. P.R. says to bake them for 35-45 minutes, but mine registered just a tad over 200 F after 30 minutes, so I pulled them out. I waited exactly 45 minutes, then lopped off a chunk to take to my meeting, and bolted out of the door.

The result? We absolutely loved this bread! Definitely in the top ten. The flavor combination of melty cheese with oniony chives combined with a slighty chewy, melt-in-your-mouth texture . . . yum! Everyone at my meeting loved it and hubby ate most of what remained of the first loaf during the evening at home. Today, we sliced the second and used it for sandwiches at lunch. The baby ate hers with butter (her favorite way to eat bread). I put sliced chicken on mine; it didn't need anything else. Hubby sliced open the center a bit more - you're supposed to roll the batards really tightly to avoid air pockets, but I guess I didn't do this very well, which hubby took full advantage of! - and put in ham and salami. Then he dipped it into salsa. He said it made a fabulous sandwich. This definitely goes into the make-again pile!

Stay tuned for the last bread of the Challenge, which I will likely make later this week. What a ride!

BBA #41: Whole Wheat Bread

I was so excited when I saw that there was a whole wheat bread at the end of The Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge. 100% whole wheat is our sandwich bread of choice around here, and although the light wheat bread and the multi-grain extraordinaire were both good sandwich breads, I was hoping to find one that was more similar to what we usually eat . . . especially for the little guy, who will not eat any bread that I bake. He will only eat one specific brand's 100% whole wheat bread. That's it. Try to sneak in another kind, even one that looks the same, and he will take one bite and then say, "This isn't my favorite bread! I don't like this bread!"

But as people started completing the Challenge, I read nothing but horror stories about this bread. Sally from Bewitching Kitchen said that it competed with 100% sourdough rye for last place in the Challenge. Oggi from I Can Do That called it a "total fail." Phyl at Of Cabbages & King Cakes called it "meh" and didn't even bother to take a picture of the final loaf. Sadness.

Because of the consistent bad reviews, I took a few more liberties with this recipe than I normally do. The first change I made was to make half a recipe, not wanting to have two loaves of bread that were only good enough for ducks.

Last night, I made a soaker; Peter Reinhart calls for coarse whole-wheat flour or other coarsely ground whole grains. I decided to use a 5-grain cereal I had in the cupboard, which has wheat, rye, oats, barley, and flax. I soaked the cereal in water and left it overnight.

At the same time, I prepared a whole-wheat poolish, using some high-protein whole wheat flour, instant yeast, water, and a little kick of vital wheat gluten. Instead of refrigerating it overnight, I simply left it on the counter.

This morning, I mixed the soaker, the poolish, more whole wheat flour, a bit more vital wheat gluten, salt, instant yeast, honey, and the optional egg and vegetable oil. The dough came together easily. After about five minutes of kneading in my stand mixer, it was a little tacky and felt perfect.

It doubled in about an hour and a half, so I formed it into a sandwich loaf and stuck it in my 8x4 loaf pan. It again rose faster than expected (about an hour), and I put it into the oven.

Hubby pulled it out of the oven at exactly 45 minutes, and the internal temperature was already above 200 F, so it probably could've come out five minutes earlier. Then he brushed it with butter.

The verdict? Not outstanding, for sure, and not even close to one of the best breads I've made so far . . . but it's not even close to the worst either. It's definitely comparable to the store-bought stuff and pretty tasty with a smear of butter. We'll see if the little guy will eat it! If so, I can see making it again. If not, I'll put it in the maybe column and stick to Mags' oatmeal bread for the hubby and me.

UPDATE: Well, the little guy happily ate half of his sandwich. Did he not eat the other half because he wasn't hungry anymore or because he figured out that this wasn't truly his bagged stuff from the grocery store? I guess I'll have to make it again to find out because the rest of the loaf disappeared at dinner last night.

BBA #40: White bread

I can't believe that I've finished bread #40 already! Only three more to go . . . Thank goodness for the Mellow Bakers and the Modern Baker Challenge or I would be feeling much sadder about nearing the end of the BBA Challenge!

It feels a little anticlimactic to be baking plain ol' white bread this close to the end of the Challenge, but I guess that's what happens when you go in alphabetical order!

Peter Reinhart gives three variations for his white bread: one with powdered milk, one with buttermilk, and one with a sponge that includes whole milk. We actually keep all three of these in the house, so knowing we were grilling burgers and brats tonight, I simply went by Peter Reinhart's recommendation: "Variation 1 makes particularly good soft hot dog or hamburger buns."

This is a quicker bread - only one day, only five hours start to finish. However, when you work all day and come home only a couple of hours before dinner needs to be on the table, five hours isn't really feasible. So this morning, I woke up early and mixed up the dough: bread flour, yeast, salt, sugar, powdered milk, an egg, some unsalted butter, and some water. My dough was pretty wet, and I ended up adding quite a bit of extra flour.

The dough doubled while I got the kiddos ready for the day. Once doubled, I quickly shaped it: I ended up with seven three-ounce hot dog buns and seven three-ounce hamburger buns (decided to make knotted rolls to make it interesting). The kids each played with an ounce of leftover dough. Then we threw the two trays of rolls into the fridge and headed out for our day.

When I got home, I let the rolls sit out for about an hour. I brushed them with an egg wash and sprinkled some sesame and poppy seeds on the burger buns. I baked them in a 400 F oven for fifteen minutes; I should have checked them a few minutes earlier as they were already well over 200 F in their centers.

I actually don't use buns for my burgers or brats, but these were pretty popular with everyone else at dinner tonight. This recipe made a very soft, slightly buttery bun with a much better flavor than the store-bought buns we usually have on hand. I'd still prefer that the hubby and kids ate whole wheat breads, but if we need white bread for anything, this easy, tasty recipe will definitely fit the bill!

Vienna Bread (BBA #39)

I can't believe I'm on the 39th bread in the Bread Baker's Challenge! Only four left: two sandwich breads and two specialty breads that have both gotten rave reviews.

Number 39 brings us to Vienna bread; Peter Reinhart explains that "most of the great French breads tht we love today . . . came to France a couple hundred years ago via the Austro-Hungarian empire." The difference between this Vienna bread and French and Italian is that Vienna bread includes some enrichments.

It starts with a pâte fermentée, which is supposed to rest in the fridge overnight. Instead, I started it early in the morning, put it in the fridge once it doubled, and took it out seven hours later. I figured seven hours could be overnight, right?

A big highlight for me is that I used baker's math for the first time! This recipe calls for 13 ounces of pâte fermentée, while the recipe makes 16 to 17 ounces. Instead of throwing some away, I just adjusted the recipe, calculating that I needed 7.75 oz of flour rather than the 10 called for in the original recipe. Then I adjusted everything else accordingly using the percentages in the book. Success!

I mixed bread flour with salt, sugar, yeast, barley malt syrup, butter, egg, water, and the pâte fermentée. I kneaded the dough in my stand mixer for six minutes. The dough seemed buttery, like brioche dough, even though there was only a tablespoon of butter. It just didn't seem to have the right gluten development and it seemed almost sticky, but it was time to sit down for dinner. I scraped/poured the dough into my prepared measuring cup, and then gave it a stretch-and-fold after a while and another one ten minutes after that. What the stretch-and-fold can accomplish just amazes me!

After two hours, the dough had doubled and felt much more like dough. I divided it into two, shaped it into boules, let it rest, and then shaped it into batards.

Meanwhile, I made the Dutch crunch topping. Peter Reinhart explains that rice flour or cream of rice cereal are the perfect base for this topping, but I didn't have either, so I used semolina. Based on advice of those who have gone before me, I cut the recipe by thirds. I mixed semolina, bread flour, yeast, sugar, salt, vegetable oil, and water, and made a paste.

After the loaves had risen again and the oven was preheated, I had two more items of business before baking: scoring the loaves and painting on the Dutch crunch. I just didn't know which one to do first. I went back and forth and finally re-read the instructions that "the paste is brushed on the dough . . . just before the bread goes into the oven," so I decided to score them first.

Big mistake. As I'm sure more experienced bread bakers will predict, while I was painting on the topping, the loaves started to collapse and spread outward. By the time I took my fake-steam-oven aluminum pan off of the loaves after the first ten minutes of baking, the loaves were low and squat with zero evidence of scoring. I was so bummed.

But while the look of the bread was disappointing, the bread itself was not. We could definitely tell that this bread is related to French and Italian breads, but the presence of the enrichments was clear as well. It has a very similar flavor to baguette, but with a texture that makes it well-suited to making a sandwich.

And that's exactly what we're using it for: Picnic sandwiches for our Mothers' Day trip to the zoo . . . Happy Mothers' Day, everyone!

No salt added?! Tuscan bread (BBA #38)

Hubby says that we've all given Tuscan bread a bum rap because, unlike the rest of the breads in the Bread Baker's Apprentice, this bread is not meant to stand out on its own, but is just a vehicle for other flavors.

Nonetheless, I still was so startled by the flavor of this bread that I spit out my first bite. (Then I ate it, of course.) But the bland, slightly sweet, almost non-flavor really caught me off-guard.

This recipe started out strangely by pouring boiling water over flour, stirring it into a paste, and leaving it to sit on my counter for a day.

The rest of the process was pretty standard, except that my dough kept the paste-like consistency for quite a long time. Well, and when you add more flour, yeast, olive oil, and water, you don't add salt; that was weird. And (maybe because I wasn't excited about this one based on the reviews its gotten?) I didn't seem to have enough patience to let the dough do what it needed to do; instead, I added too much water, then had to add more flour, then more, then more. Finally it achieved a normal, non-play-doh-like texture and I was able to proceed with the recipe.

The dough doubled in exactly two hours. I shaped it into a boule and let it rise for another hour. Sprinkled it with flour and slashed it. Baked it with a steam pan filled with water and a few water spritzes. After twenty minutes, it was exactly 200F internally.

Hubby and I tried this one by itself ~ very plain, although it had a really soft, almost Wonderbread-like texture. We tried it with salted butter ~ I couldn't believe how clearly I could taste the salt in the butter. We tried it with honey and butter ~ the honey really dominated. Hubby tried it sprinkled with salt.

Today, I've got an artichoke dip on the menu; maybe Tuscan bread will be a good vehicle for that.

UPDATE: Didn't end up making the dip. We needed bread for sandwiches, so we used up most of the Tuscan for PB&J and PB&B. Seemed to resemble good ol' PB&J on Wonderbread . . . however, I have never been a white bread fan and I really didn't enjoy it. Still, hubby and the kids seemed to enjoy their sandwiches, the loaf is almost gone, and we will not be making it again. On to bigger and better loaves!

BBA #37: Swedish Rye (Limpa)

This bread was surprising. It's the second to the last of the BBA Challenge breads that I have . . . not been dreading, but not looking forward to either. (Last is Tuscan: a bread made without salt.)

It started in a very unusual way: with molasses mixed with spices. I don't love the flavor of molasses, and recently discovered that there are both full-flavor and mild varieties; I finally found a bottle of mild-flavored and have been much happier with it. I also needed dried orange peel, ground aniseeds, ground fennel seeds, and ground cardamom. I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a bunch of spices I'd probably not use again, so I borrowed my dad's fennel seeds and cardamom . . . I'm pretty sure that both bottles were from about 1972, although they still smelled strongly, so I figured they were okay.

I ground up the seeds (used hubby's coffee grinder . . . shhhh! don't tell!), mixed them and the orange peel with the molasses and brought the whole mixture to a boil. Once it had cooled, I added in some double-sifted rye flour and a bunch of my starter. It had a very strange smell for a bread sponge, that's for sure!

It foamed up over night, and this morning, I added in bread flour, a little vital wheat gluten, instant yeast, salt, light brown sugar, and some melted unsalted butter. I kneaded it for about three minutes and then let it rise for a couple of hours.

I decided to make a large two-pound loaf, so I didn't split it, and just formed the whole thing into a batard. And then another unusual step: with this bread, you slash it prior to the second rise instead of just before baking. This allows the slashes to really open up.

After its second rise, I brushed the loaf with an egg wash and baked it for about forty-five minutes.

When it was just slightly warm, we cut into it, still not expecting much. And . . . we loved it! The crust is just a little crunchy and slightly sweet. The texture is light and chewy. And the flavor is quite unique: the anise is really dominant, and while normally not a favorite flavor of mine, it just works for me in this bread. (I'm wondering if its so dominant because the other spices were so old??) Hubby, the baby, and I have already eaten several slices each, warm with a spread of butter. I can't believe how much I like this bread!

UPDATE: Here's what we did with the leftovers (courtesy of Janice): http://roundthetable.net/2010/04/21/swedish-rye-bread-pudding/ and it was AWESOME!

BBA #36: Stollen

I had mixed feelings about baking stollen, the next bread in the BBA Challenge. First of all, it is exciting to bake a quick-ish bread (PR claims it takes four hours from start to finish) after all of the multiple-day sourdoughs. On the other hand, hubby and I are not big fans of fruit in our bread (with the exception of the mightily yummy hot cross buns), so I didn't have high hopes.

A few days ago, I soaked golden raisins, dried cranberries, dried cherries, and dried apricots in some rum and orange extract. I've been shaking the mixture daily, and by yesterday, most of the liquid was gone.

Yesterday evening, I mixed a bit of warm milk with flour and an insane amount of yeast. It was supposed to get "very foamy and ready to collapse" after an hour . . . mine easily filled the bowl it was in after only thirty minutes. I still waited for the full hour, and then mixed together AP flour, sugar, salt, orange zest, lemon zest, cinnamon, egg, unsalted butter, the sponge, and a bit of water. Then I mixed in the fruit.

My dough was extremely wet and sticky; PR says it should be tacky, but not sticky. I had to add a bit more flour to get it to the right consistency, and with all of the fruit and butter and such, it definitely had more of a brioche consistency than a normal bread consistency.

I let it ferment for forty-five minutes; PR says it will rise somewhat but not double. Mine didn't look like it had moved at all. Still, I plowed on and rolled the dough into a rectangle, sprinkled some almonds on it, formed it into a batard, and set it, curved, onto a cookie sheet.

After an hour proofing, it again didn't look like it had risen much, if at all. Hubby and I had a brief discussion about it . . . it was getting close to bed time. We decided to give it a few more minutes and then throw it in the oven and see what happened. After all, it's not really our kind of bread anyway.

It smelled delicious as it was baking, and it did spring up in the oven, so that was good. It took a little over an hour to reach an internal temperature of 195, and then I took it out, brushed it with melted butter, dusted it twice with powdered sugar, and went to bed.

The verdict this morning? Hubby said that it was great for breakfast with coffee. And then he emailed me, "It's the best of the weird fruity breads." It's pretty good, and hubby and I will both bring it in to work to share . . . but I don't think we'll be making this one again.

BBA #35: Sunflower seed rye

I wasn't all that excited about making this bread. I'm not a big rye person (as I've discussed) and after baking all of the sourdough breads in this section, I'm kind of feeling ready to move on to something different. Nevertheless, on we go!

I refreshed Austin yesterday and then made a firm starter and the soaker (pumpernickel flour mixed with water) last night. After doing both of those steps, I realized that part of the reason that I've been feeling challenged to keep up with all of these baking challenges is because we have so much bread hanging around; it's hard to eat it all! So I decided to cut the recipe in half. Wanting to avoid previous disasters of forgetting to halve certain ingredients, I wrote all of the halved measurements in my book; no mistakes this time!

This afternoon, I combined the firm starter (only half of it!), the soaker, bread flour, salt, instant yeast, and water, and mixed them all in my stand mixer. Well, I tried; it was such a little batch that I ended up switching to hand-kneading to incorporate the sunflower seeds.

I had recently read a fellow BBACer's blog post about this bread (Salt and Serenity) and she talked about using honey roasted sunflower seeds. Having a huge sweet tooth, I was intrigued. Alas, I couldn't find them anywhere. I purchased regular sunflower seeds and tried making them myself: I mixed 2 tsp butter with 1 tbsp honey and 1/4 tsp salt and then mixed in the seeds. I spread them on a baking sheet and baked them for ten minutes at 325 degrees, stirring them every few minutes. They turned out okay, not great, and sadly, I couldn't detect the honey roasted flavor in the final bread.

I let the dough ferment for ninety minutes and then shaped it. Another rise; this time, it rose more quickly than I expected. Maybe because I had the oven preheating? I put it into the oven and used my roasting pan as steamer technique. For the first time, it didn't work. I had ZERO oven spring. None. I'm wondering if it's because the dough overproofed while I was waiting for the oven to preheat. So . . . it looked kind of funny and flat. The taste was good; we liked the flavor from the sunflower seeds and it was delicious with butter. Still, I don't forsee making this one again.

It's been too long! BBA #34: Pumpernickel

We're back from a week of spring break, and I thoroughly enjoyed being cooked for and cleaned up after and generally spoiled at my in-laws' . . . but I was also so excited to get back to baking in my kitchen today! The only problem? I still have ten breads left in the BBA Challenge, three new breads for Mellow Bakers, and a bunch of quick breads (however many I can get to; I'm determined not to obsess over baking every single one in this gigantic book!) for the Modern Baker challenge. What to do first?!

I've not been excited about the next few breads in the BBA Challenge (pumpernickel, sunflower seed rye, stollen, and Swedish rye); I'm not a big fan of rye or breads with fruit in them. But once I'm finished with those, the rest of the breads look pretty good to me, so I decided to push on.

Pumpernickel was pretty straight-forward. We'd been away for a little over a week, so I gave Austin (my starter) a couple of refreshments. After the second, he doubled in under two hours: woo-hoo, a new record! So I combined him with pumpernickel flour (which I was happy to find at our local co-op) and water, and left it to get foamy and bubbly. Then into the fridge overnight. This afternoon, I mixed the starter with bread flour, salt, instant yeast, brown sugar, cocoa powder, some oil, a tiny bit of water, and some bread crumbs made from the end of my miche. Being careful not to overknead, I alternated between my stand mixer and kneading by hand until the bread came together. It smelled really strongly of the cocoa, which was unexpected; I was curious to see if it did anything to the taste. I think I should've processed my bread crumbs to a finer consistency, and I think I should've sifted my cocoa, because the dough had a lot more texture than I've noticed in other BBACers' pictures. Oh well!

I proofed the dough in a bowl for two hours until it doubled and then formed it. I really wanted to do free-standing loaves so I could practice my slashing, but we also thought it made sense to use loaf pans because we usually use our bread for sandwiches. So since the free-standing loaves bake at a different temperature from the loaf pans, and I did not feel like baking twice, I compromised and made one boule and one batard (figuring the batard could be used for sandwiches). Then I left the loaves to rise for another ninety minutes. Meanwhile, I preheated my oven and my baking stone to 450 df.

I slashed the loaves, which went pretty well with my new lame, although I think I could've slashed more deeply. Then I put them into the oven, covered for the first 12 minutes with a roasting pan. One day I'd like to do a side-by-side comparison of the roasting pan method versus the hearth steaming Reinhart describes in his book, but the roasting pan is so much easier, who knows if I ever will!

After the twelve minutes, I realized that I'd forgotten to lower the oven temperature to 400, but the bread still needed the full thirty minutes to reach the desired internal temperature of 200 df. I let the loaves cool and then sliced into them. SHOCKING NEWS! I actually really liked this bread. I totally wasn't expecting to, but I thought it had a nice subtle rye flavor with just a hint of something extra from the cocoa. I think it will make for some great sandwiches for this week's lunches!

Oh my, miche! (BBA #33)

I thought my very first loaf of sourdough would be my greatest bread baking accomplishment in the BBA Challenge. I was so proud to create a loaf of bread from my very own starter and my very own yeast.

I was wrong. Nothing could beat this one, a Poilâne-style miche, despite a couple of ingredient issues:

1. I absolutely could not find medium grind whole wheat flour anywhere. I checked at every store I could think of, but no go. So rather than trying to find it and order it on-line, I decided to proceed with P.R.'s suggested substitution: half bread flour and half finely ground whole wheat flour.

2. I purchased sea salt a while ago specifically for this recipe . . . and then totally forgot about it until the dough was proofing. So this one uses table salt.

According to P.R., Lionel Poilâne is probably the most famous bread baker in the world, and his most famous bread is a "round, two-kilo, naturally fermented (wild-yeast) country bread that he calls a miche but that everyone else calls pain Poilâne" (p.242).

This was definitely my greatest bread-baking accomplishment (so far). Some highlights:

1. I fed Austin (my starter) twice before using him to make my firm starter. I set the firm starter aside, preparing myself for the double to triple rising times I've been experiencing since starting on the sourdough journey. And three hours and forty five minutes after setting it aside (it was supposed to take four hours to double), I looked on the top of the fridge to see . . . it had more than doubled already!


2. This morning, I mixed my firm starter, bread flour, whole wheat flour, salt, and warm water. P.R. warns that this bread dough cannot be mixed in a normal stand mixer; there is just too much. So for the first time in ages, I kneaded completely by hand. It took me twenty-five minutes to achieve a good-feeling dough. And it still wasn't quite windowpaning. (I don't know why I didn't think of this ten minutes earlier, but . . .) I finally decided to let the dough rest for five minutes. When I came back, the gluten had developed and the dough was smooth and ready to be proofed after only another minute of kneading.


3. Again I put it in the proofing bowl, preparing myself for the dough to take longer than suggested (another four hours). When we got home from the zoo after three and a half hours, again it had more than doubled! Wahoo!


4. I formed it into a boule, put it in an improvised proofing bowl (a glass bowl with kitchen towel) and let it rise for another two hours. This was an enormous beautiful loaf!

5. Slashing has been going terribly for me. I've tried razor blades, knives, and scissors, all to no avail. Yesterday morning, I was having breakfast with a friend at a restaurant across from my favorite kitchen store. On the way out, I stopped in the store to browse the bread section and saw a lame, which I've been contemplating buying for quite some time. I went for it. Oh my goodness, I cannot believe the difference that having the right tool makes! A simple flick of the wrist and my loaf had the best slashes I've ever done.


6. Into a 500 df oven, two cups of boiling water into the steam pan, and a couple of spritzes on the sides to help create a little more steam . . . I can't believe this loaf! The picture on the cover of the book shows a really wide loaf; mine rose up more than out. Still, a four-pound (and three-quarters of an ounce) glorious loaf of bread.


The crumb was dense and chewy. The taste was nutty, with a slight hint of sourdough. It was not what I was expecting at all, but we enjoyed it buttered with our soup for dinner.


Hubby insisted I share this picture of one of his trolls (don't ask) next to the loaf so you'd get an idea of its size:


My spring break begins on Friday, so I will not be baking any BBA Challenge breads for a couple of weeks. I am still hoping to get my Mellow Bakers bread (hot cross buns) baked before break starts, though!

BBA #32: 100% sourdough rye

While making this bread, I was very glad to be behind other bakers on the BBA Challenge. I was well-prepared for a dough that didn't behave like any other: dough with the consistency of play-doh and next-to-no rise.

I wasn't really prepared for just how weird it would be, though.

Two nights ago, I mixed my starter Austin with twice-sifted rye flour (I couldn't find white rye) and enough water for it to come together into a firm ball. I set it out to rise . . . which it didn't. Not after four hours, not after eight hours, not after an entire day. I was thinking about giving up and just trying this one again next weekend, when I read on a fellow BBACer's blog, Family & Food, about how her firm starter never rose, but she went ahead with the recipe and just loved this bread.

So I tried it. This morning, I mixed the firm starter with my soaker (also from last night: pumpernickel flour soaked in water), added more twice-sifted rye, some salt, caraway seeds, and a bit of water. Knowing that rye is finicky and you don't want to overwork it, I just mixed it by hand in my big mixing bowl, let it rest for several minutes, folded it over a few times, and called it done.

I did not have any hopes of it rising, but when we returned home from our morning out, I thought I detected some lift!

I formed it into two batards, started to let it rise for the final time, and then changed my mind. The loaves were really tiny and we were hoping for sandwiches tonight, so I pulled them off the baking sheet, kneaded them together, formed them into a loaf, and stuck them into my 9x5 loaf pan.

Not a lot of rise, but again, after two hours I detected a slight change. Same thing while it was baking, not a lot of rise, but a slight change. I pulled it out of the oven when it hit 200 degrees after about fifty minutes, the first twenty covered with a roasting pan. It was a heavy brick. Still, I knew rye bread was supposed to be dense, so I wasn't discouraged, just curious.


After it cooled slightly, I tried to slice it for our sandwiches. Apparently I hadn't kneaded the two batards together well enough because every slice split right down the middle where the two batards had joined. Not to be defeated, I made mini-sandwiches!

Homemade corned beef, homemade thousand island dressing (both ATK recipes), swiss cheese, and sauerkraut on rye, brushed with butter and cooked for five minutes in my two-years-old-but-never-used grill pan with panini press (I won it at a charity auction). It worked beautifully! The corned beef was awesome, as was the dressing. The rye bread tasted like rye bread. Next time, I would definitely play with the proportions: thinner slices of bread and more corned beef. And I don't think I'll make this recipe again; the dough was just too weird. But I'm guessing the sandwiches would be fantastic made on last week's New York deli rye.

Overall this was a good experience . . . I learned a lot and got a great dinner . . . what more could I ask for?!

BBA #31: New York Deli Rye

I felt somewhat of an obligation to do this one well, since my entire family hails from New York. My dad insisted that he be there for the slicing and tasting since he was the (self-proclaimed) authenticity expert.

I pulled my starter Austin out of the fridge on Thursday to refresh him and see if he'd be up for baking this weekend. Our house is cold, but he doubled in four hours after being fed. And then I realized that this recipe calls for seven ounces of starter; I'd only made five, so I only had four to use. I added more flour and water to double him, and went to bed. In less than eight hours, he almost tripled! I was so excited! It's the best he's ever looked. My normal pint mason jars were too small for him, so I put him in one of my husband's quart glass round lunch containers. I liked it so much better; I could really see all of the bubbles and activity. I'll be looking for a new container to keep Austin in that's a lot wider.

On Friday night, I lightly sauteed some onions (two, to be exact, eleven ounces worth). It was a lot of onions. I mixed seven ounces of Austin with rye flour and water. I couldn't find white rye anywhere, so I double sifted my normal rye. I then mixed in the onions, waited until the (very odd) starter was foamy and rising, and stuck it in the fridge.

This morning, I double-sifted some more rye, mixed it with bread flour, brown sugar, salt, instant yeast, some powdered buttermilk, the starter, and some water. I think I oopsed with the water. The dry buttermilk calls for eight ounces of water, and Peter Reinhart calls for an additional two to four, as needed, to make a soft, not sticky dough. I used the eight ounces from the buttermilk, but it seemed like there was still a lot of dry flour, so I added two ounces of additional water. Well, I created the stickiest dough ever. Peter Reinhart warns to be careful with rye bread . . . don't knead it longer than four minutes by machine or six minutes by hand or it will get gummy. But after a couple minutes by hand, several minutes in the mixer, and a couple more minutes of gentle kneading by hand, the dough was still so sticky. It wasn't going anywhere.

After adding a little bit of flour a few times, giving it a few more sessions of autolyse, and some "illicit kneading" (as Janice at Round the Table humorously called the extra kneading that her dough needed), it finally resembled dough. Breathing a sigh of relief, I stuck it into my biggest mixing bowl and headed to the zoo with the fam. Two hours later, I walked in to this:


This dough was a monster! I divided it into two, made one into a batard, and one into a sandwich loaf for my new giant loaf pan (ten inch). Seriously, I could not believe the rise; in less than an hour (it was supposed to take ninety minutes) the dough was well over one and a half times its original size.

A quick wash with egg white, a few slashes for the free-standing loaf (my best yet, I think!), and into the oven. I wasn't sure what to do because the loaf pan is supposed to bake at 350 and the free-standing loaf at 400, and I wasn't intending to bake twice, so I threw them both on a sheet pan and into the oven at 350. After twenty minutes, I rotated the pan and upped the temp to 375. After another nineteen minutes, I checked, and both loaves were done; in fact, I think they could've come out a couple of minutes sooner.


They didn't seem to grow much more in the oven, but these are still monster loaves! The smell is fascinating . . . you can really detect the onions and the rye. Same with the taste: some bites are filled with onion, some with rye, some with caraway. It was good plain, even better with a little butter, and delicious as grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner tonight!


Oh, and the authenticity expert? He said that this was not New York Deli Rye! When he explained what he was expecting (very rye-y, dense, less like a sandwich loaf), it seemed to me that he was expecting the 100% rye which is on tap for next week (I have a beef roast brining in the fridge as we speak . . . corned beef sandwiches next week!). But he also asked me to bring him our leftover loaf, so I guess it wasn't too bad! ;-)

My first sourdough . . . at last! (BBA #30)

I have been dwelling on this bread for months. I'd never heard of wild yeast before reading The Bread Baker's Apprentice, and when I learned that I would have to create my own (?!?) I wasn' t sure what to expect. But I knew to be nervous.

My little guy turned three on Friday. We planned a family party for Sunday. I like to keep things easy for these kinds of parties, so I just serve make-your-own sandwiches, fruits, veggies. That way I can put all of my energy into making an awesome cake, visiting with our family, and enjoying the day.

I found an awesome train cake mold on clearance a couple of years ago. The little guy is a big fan of trains and baseball, and our ballpark (minor league . . . my dad has season tickets) sits right against railroad tracks so we watch the trains go by during all of the games. Thus the train with the baseball players in the center.

So this year, to keep the stress-level low, I decided that instead of purchasing rolls, I should combine the birthday party with BBA Challenge #30 and make my first ever sourdough bread. You know, the one that's been making me nervous for the past several months. I also decided to make a double batch so that I could see which of my starters was a keeper and use up or discard the other one. Hm . . . I guess I need to work on stress-reducing choices.

I already wrote about my starter adventures. I've been feeding both starters about once a week and they've been rising, although still taking a really long time to do it. But it's also really cold here, so . . . I've blamed it on the weather. Paul from Yumarama helped me again when I was trying to figure out the relationship between my mason jar full of starter and the barm that Peter Reinhart says I need to make my firm starter:

"Glad to hear your new pet is doing well!

You don’t need to turn it into anything, your starter already is “barm”. Barm is simply Reinhart’s (incorrect) name for starter. So when you see the word “barm” just think “starter” instead.

Now what you need to do is get yourself 4 oz. of starter for the Basic Sourdough recipe. If you’re keeping 3 oz but cutting back to 1 oz of old starter at each feed, then you’re removing 2 oz of excess. So take out that 2 oz of excess starter, put it in another jar and add 1 oz of water plus 1 oz of flour and let it expand out on the counter for a couple of hours until it’s just about peaking. You now have your 4 oz of starter for the recipe.

With that other 1 oz, feed as usual, let it rise for a couple of hours on the counter until it’s increased to almost double then get Mom back into the fridge, safe and away from the baking stuff. I might also recommend you do 1 oz of old starter and 2 oz of water + 2 oz of flour which gives you a feed ratio of 1:2:2, this gives your starter more food. This will then give you a 5 oz Mother Starter and 4 oz of excess to make bread with at each feed. And if it happens that you aren’t baking that week, you’ll be discarding just 2 oz of flour, not a big deal."

Extremely helpful information. And I'm so glad I didn't try to figure out what to do on my own; I assumed I had to make a new barm, so I would've made myself go through several extra (and totally unnecessary) steps.

I divided each starter into two on Friday evening: a batch to remain a mother starter in my fridge and a batch to become my Peter Reinhart-termed barm for my bread. They took all night to double. But once our thermostat kicked into "awake" mode this morning, they both rose right up.

before

after

I stuck the mother starters back into the fridge and turned the others into firm starters by adding more bread flour and just a little water. Peter Reinhart says they should double in four hours and to keep checking every hour if they haven't. Mine had barely started to rise at four hours. It's cold and our house is drafty, so I brought them into the kitchen and let them sit nearby while I baked a loaf of oatmeal bread from Mags, to have another option for sandwiches at the birthday party. (It smelled heavenly! I've been eyeing this bread for weeks!)

It worked; after another few hours, they doubled.


Instead of retarding them overnight (I just didn't have time, given how unreliably they were rising; or rather, reliably sloooooooooowly), I went right into mixing the dough, using eighteen ounces of bread flour and two of whole wheat flour. (Three reasons: one, I'm getting low on bread flour and was worried I wouldn't have enough to make my double batch; two, I was hoping the wheat might give the yeasties a little push and make them rise a little faster; three, it makes me feel better to feed my family some whole wheat in their bread.)

I mixed for four minutes in the stand mixer, let the dough autolyse for fifteen minutes, and then kneaded by hand. The dough was really supple and smooth, just a little tacky, and very nice to work with! After a few minutes kneading by hand, I had a perfect temperature and a perfect windowpane.


And then the wait . . . again, it took way longer than the suggested three to four hours to double.

This post on The Fresh Loaf made me feel a lot better, assuring me that colder temperatures in the winter lead to seemingly-stalled starters and extremely long rise times. He also states that white flours rise more slowly, as do firmer doughs. So it seems I've hit just about every indication of really really slooooooow sourdough rises.

At 1:00 in the morning, I woke up and sure enough, one of the containers of dough had almost doubled and was ready to be shaped. So I went downstairs and formed it into one twenty ounce boule and seven almost-four ounce rolls. They sat out for the rest of the night and were ready to bake this morning.

This morning, I also realized that the other dough wouldn't be ready on time for my second batch of sourdough, so I quickly (love how quick this recipe is!) whipped up another batch of Mags' oatmeal bread and made it into rolls. While it was rising, I baked the sourdough.

I baked the rolls first. I put them into a 500 df oven, turned it down to 450, covered them with a roasting pan for ten minutes (I love this new easy steaming technique!), and then baked them for about another ten minutes. They had incredible oven spring after that first ten minutes! While the oven was going back up to 500, I slashed the boule; still not great, but way better than my slashes have looked the last few times. I slid it onto the baking stone, cooked it (with the lid on) for about ten minutes, and then uncovered it for the last 20 minutes of baking. I probably could have used the lid for a little longer; the boule didn't spring up as much. Still, they smelled and looked like sourdough!

At the party, I quickly welcomed all of the guests and then got down to the important matters: slicing open the loaves, taking pictures, and taking a taste!


The oatmeal bread (on the right) was fantastic. This is definitely the quick, easy, delicious multigrain bread that I have been searching for. I will make it for our weekly sandwich bread now, and I'd love to experiment with adding a few other grains.

I'm not a huge sourdough fan, but the bread on the left is my pride and joy. I tried to explain to the hubby what it feels like . . . to make bread using yeast that I made is just the coolest thing ever. A fellow BBA Challenger over at Salt and Serenity called baking her first sourdough her bread bat mitzvah. I love the comparison! After you produce your first successful sourdough, you can finally proclaim, "Today, I am a bread baker!"

Several guests at the party who are big sourdough fans said that this sourdough was great. I am excited to see the flavor develop as I continue to nurture my starter. And I am excited to bake the second batch and compare it with the first to decide which will be the keeper!

Woo hoo, I did it!

Pugliese (BBA #29) and the Best Idea Ever

On Wednesday, December 16, my life was forever changed. Well, not really, but on that day, I read fellow BBA Challenger Mags' post about making pizza buns and I knew they were in my family's future. I shared the post with the hubby, who started salivating on the spot. And then I got caught up in the rest of the Challenge and promptly forgot about them . . . until yesterday.

Did Peter Reinhart foresee Nicole's Challenge? I couldn't believe it when I read ahead from the potato rosemary (and garlic!) bread and realized that the next bread used exactly the amount of biga left over (11 ounces) and 2 ounces of my leftover mashed potatoes! It was like fate! We were meant to bake these two breads within days of each other.

But I still had a bunch of potato rosemary bread that we were working our way through, and we didn't really need two more loaves. Oh, I know I could've given them away, but then I suddenly remembered Mags' post!

So yesterday afternoon, I took my biga out of the fridge to let it warm up to room temperature (and then took a nap, but I guess that's not really pertinent). I couldn't find the fancy durum flour that's traditional for this bread, so I used some semolina (about 2 1/2 ounces) and then bread flour for the rest. I mixed the flours with the biga, salt, yeast, leftover potatoes, and the minimum amount of water. Peter Reinhart warns that it's a sticky dough, so I used my stand mixer. I had to add some more water to get the dough more sticky, and I'm guessing I still could've used more. I found that the dough picked up a lot of flour from the stretch-and-fold and wasn't nearly as sticky by the end; probably why my finished product didn't have any big holes.

Right as I finished mixing and was about to start the stretch and fold process, I discovered that we were going to take an unexpected fieldtrip to my dad's house. So I got a baking sheet, put the cutting board with my dough on it (covered with plastic wrap), grabbed my flour, oil spritzer, and timer, and headed out the door.

wet dough just after being dumped out of the mixer

I finished the stretch-and-folds at my dad's and had to borrow a bowl. You can see how the dough really firmed up (although I hadn't thought to bring my camera, so I had to use the hubby's cell phone).

into the bowl after three stretch-and-folds

after two hours of undisturbed rest

Mags' recipe (which she adapted from this recipe from the King Arthur Flour's web blog) only called for 1 1/2 pounds of dough and Peter Reinhart's recipe made 2 pounds of dough, so I decided to make a mini (1/2 pound) loaf with the rest of the dough.

I formed this one into a boule, put it in an improvised banneton (a mixing bowl with a cloth in it), and let it rise for almost two hours (it was only supposed to rise for 60 - 90 minutes, but we had a lengthy bedtime last night). I then baked it with my adapted-hearth baking method (covered with a roasting pan for the first 10 minutes) and then for an additional 5 minutes, until it was at a perfect 205 df in the center.


As I said earlier, no big holes at all, but the taste was fantastic. The loaf was gone within 30 minutes of first slicing it. I will definitely be baking this bread (as a bread) again.

I flipped out the rest of the dough onto an oiled counter and rolled it into a 12 x 18 rectangle with an oiled rolling pin. It was a little sad to hear and see all of the bubbles popping as I rolled it out. I then pressed 1 cup of mozzarella and a meat mixture I had made earlier (1 oz pancetta, 3 oz pepperoni, 1 finely chopped onion, 1 tsp minced garlic, and some chopped green olives for the hubby's half) onto the dough. I rolled it up into a log (starting with the shorter side).


and then used my trusty dental floss trick to divide it into twelve rolls.


Hubby used his ingenious system (the kids' building blocks) to stack the two trays into the fridge


and we let them rest overnight.

This afternoon, we took them out of the fridge, let them rest for 90 minutes (they probably could've used a little more time to rise, but we were hungry!), and then baked them at 325 df for 15 minutes. I spread a spoonful of pizza sauce (same sauce recipe I used for the pizza napoletana) and topped them with shredded cheese (5 oz mozzerela mixed with 3/4 oz parmesan and 1/2 oz asiago).


Crumb shot from the pizza buns:


Best comments from dinner tonight
Hubby: "Ouch! Hot! But can't stop! So good!"
Little guy (who will be 3 years old on Friday!!): "Oooohhh, delicious. Pizza buns, I love you sooooooo much!"