Bread Makes The Meal

I haven't made bread for quite a while. Largely because Nancie's food has been so good, and so plentiful, that we've been eating mostly leftovers for lunch, not sandwiches. (We have a lot of stew in the freezer; I should see how dinner rolls will go over.) So Sunday I went back and made the basic Amish White bread. I don't know what happened, but Everything Went Wrong . The bread didn't rise adequately, it started drying out, and when I tried to roll it out and roll it up into a loaf, it wouldn't stay together. Baked, it started falling apart. I don't think I've "lost my touch", but it was a very disappointing experience. The bread has a good taste, but it's very dense. I don't even have pictures; it's too annoying. Actually, dinner rolls sounds like a great idea; I can use some of the rye flour for them. Do you think I need to make the whole sourdough starter, or can I just mix the bread flour and the rye flour? God spe...

It's been a long time (almost a week!), and I was going to be showing you my newly revised recipe for Tuscan White Hearth Bread (made with water instead of milk, since we were out of milk, and with my buckwheat honey). But I think I seriously didn't bake it long enough. It was quite not done in the middle, and I think that's what made me sick for the first couple of days of this week. The last couple are a different story; but I think most of my "feeling ill" yesterday and today is mostly a second- or third-order consequence of not getting quite enough sleep—and trying to make up for that with several cups of tea. Let's just keep in mind for the future, shall we, that if a recipe calls for a pan of water to provide steam, I'll automatically bake it an extra ten minutes or so. This weekend, I plan on (a) making some kind of well-baked bread, and (b) finally finishing up the garden for the season. Oh, and celebrating our anniversary. Looking forward t...

The Tuscan White Hearth Bread looked good (apart from being odd-shaped) and when I first cut it open (my pictures of the crumb all turned out blurry) it looked good, smelled good, tasted good. But on the inside It Was Uncooked Again ! Argh! What am I doing wrong? The oven doesn't seem to be unusually cool—we baked homemade macaroni and cheese a couple of days ago and I was concerned the oven was running a little high, if anything. Am I not leaving the loaf in long enough? It was starting to get beyond golden brown; I didn't want it to burn. I'm not sure what's going on, and I'm really frustrated . Nancie doesn't like the bread because it seemed almost raw in the middle. Should I just toss it and chalk it up to "experience"? Deep breath. Must take a deep breath :-) God speed, and remember: All sorrows are less with bread (properly baked, of course).

I did in fact finish the Tuscan White Hearth Bread last night. I let it rise for two hours before dinner then put it in the fridge over dinner. So it rose for another hour in there. I punched it down, and tried shaping it into a boule. Didn't work very well. Apparently I didn't follow my instructions, kind of folded the dough up, and when I tried to roll it, it tore. But okay, whatever, I thought; I went ahead and crosshatched it per the recipe. Then when I baked it ...! I thought I had a picture to insert here, but I must have missed it. Let's just say that although it did come out golden brown, it looks like it's one loaf sort of "budding off" a smaller loaf (perhaps it's reproducing, like yeast?). Next time I'll carefully attend to the instructions that I actually gave people :-/ I still have to see how it tastes; I'll do that this afternoon when I come home. But it smells delicious, and I'll call it a success.

So Wednesday I was so pleased with the bread and the sandwich that I didn't feel like griping about my lack of cupboard space. Well, today is different. But I'll keep it brief :-) Our kitchen in general needs re-working, but that would take several thousand dollars that we don't have at the moment. We do need a pantry of some sort, though. Right now, my baking materials (flour, sugar, baking powder and soda, cocoa, and the rest) are all crammed into half of one of our cabinets over the stove: It's not very usable. And the flour has fallen out on, or nearly on, my head once or twice. Suggestions on what to get/how to arrange things to be a bit more friendly? God speed, and remember, All sorrows are less with bread .

I've been too busy over the last day or so to get to a computer. But I haven't forgotten my bread. Night before last, I tried (a variety of) Peasant Bread from Everything Bread . It called for ¼ cup each of rye and whole wheat flour as well as the bread flour. I unfortunately only had the bread flour, so I just went ahead and made it straight. I liked the bread; Herself didn't—I don't think I gave it enough time to rise. It was done, or nearly so, but the crumb was very dense. Here's the recipe: Peasant Bread 1½ cups warm water 1 tablespoon honey (I used buckwheat honey—I love the taste) 1¾ teaspoons active dry yeast (1 package) ¼ cup rye flour ¼ cup whole wheat flour (I didn't have either, so I substituted ½ cup of bread flour) ¾ teaspoon salt (we don't have kosher, so I used plain iodized) 3 – 4 cups bread flour ¼ cup cornmeal In a large bowl, combine water, honey, and yeast. Stir to dissolve and let sta...

"Go" as in "post", that is. We had a great weekend with Herself's family and I'm ready to go. Of course, this means I didn't get to make bread over the weekend. But I thought I'd share with you the Sally Lunn recipe that I will make tonight or tomorrow. But I Can't Find It . I know I left it somewhere here on the desk. Unfortunately the desk is a total mess: As you might guess, it's a bit difficult to find anything, especially with a cat wandering. I'll look for it more tonight and post the recipe as soon as I find it. God speed, and remember, All sorrows are less with bread .

It (that is, the Sourdough Boule recipe from Everything Bread ) started off so well. Well, almost "so well". I didn't watch my timing as well as I wanted. Leslie in Everything Bread suggested to let the bread rise for an hour and a half at room temperature "or until the bread doubled in size". So I went off to the community garden for an hour and a half. By the time I got back, the bread had nearly tripled in size, I think! So I punched it down, divided it in two, and rolled it into boules. By that time, we had to go shopping. So I put the two boules on a big plate and put them in the fridge, figuring that would slow things down enough that they'd be about the same size when we got back. No such luck. When we got back about three hours later, the two loaves had grown together and I had quite a time trying to separate them. By the time they were on the baking sheet, one was much bigger than the other, and they were both flat on one side: You might n...

So I noticed something strange when I came by the blog this evening. The search bar, picture, and other "gadgets" (so called) are supposed to be floating off to the right of the blog entry. And in fact, that's what they're doing on the "About Me" page. But on the home page, and each of the individual blog entries, they're stuck at the bottom. This is most impolite, and I will have to correct this. So apologies if the formatting of the site occasionally looks strange or different over the next short while - I'm experimenting with ways to force the side bar back to the side where it belongs. We'll hopefully have things back to normal quickly. Edit to previous night's post: So I looked at the individual posts and eventually figured out the problem. The picture of "clumpy spot bread" was apparently wide enough that it was trying to push the sidebar off the page. I narrowed the picture, and there you go—back in business. Excelle...

So I started using Sunday's buttermilk bread this morning making PBJ for my wife - only to discover it's got clumpy spots (see one up toward the top left?). I must say, this is the first time this has ever happened to me - though I know exactly what's going on. It seems the dough didn't get mixed well enough and the yeast didn't distribute evenly. So now I have to think what I could have done. Maybe pour in the buttermilk more slowly? There was a lot of it, after all. On another note, I got a hankering for scones yesterday and put out a call for a quick recipe - and got one from my youngest sister this morning! So now I might be making some after I get home tonight. Yum! My sister says the trick is to cut in the butter with a stand mixer. The problem is, we don't have a stand mixer at home. Will a regular beater work as well? What do you think? And do you have a recipe for scones, or biscuits, to share? I found another great bread quote from Miguel Ce...