Casatiello: Tuppence a bag.

Alrighty, then. I suppose it's time to get back into the saddle and take the reins. I honestly can't even remember when I made this bread, it was so long ago. Oops. Anyway, we were at Bill's parents' house for the weekend. One of his childhood friends, one Miss Elizabeth Lacher, was moving that weekend, and we decided to make her a loaf of bread as a housewarming present. I chose this based on her previous love for a loaf of focaccia we gave her and her enjoyment of a bread she can just keep by her bed and eat a pinch whenever she likes. That's my kinda girl.

Seeing this bread in the book, it seemed perfect. It was loaded with extra ingredients that made it more than just "a piece of bread." The meat and cheese made it seem more like a meal in itself. It turns out that the bread has quite a history to it as well. Explained in the book as the Italian version of brioche, this bread is actually an important Easter bread in Italy. The bits of meat, traditionally salami, represent an ancient pagan ritual involving the sacrifice of pigs to ensure increased fertility in both women and the land. The cheese, traditionally pecorino, represents the innocence of Christ. The butter doesn't necessarily represent anything, but I like it. A lot.

Step one: a one hour sponge. Bread flour, water and buttermilk go into the bowl. One hour later, a bubbly mess. Meanwhile, dice and fry the salami.

Step two: Flour, salt, sugar, eggs and the sponge come together to make a dry, crumbly, unappealing dough. A stick and a half of butter go in, making something much nicer.

In goes the meat and some diced up cheese, followed by an hour and a half of rising.

One of the suggested ways to bake these was in paper bags, a traditional form of baking. We were about to relent and bake them in the loaf pans but found some paper bags in the bottom of a drawer at the last moment. Again, another rise.

And, voila! Two beautiful loaves cresting over the tops of the bags. The bag was removed from one of these about ten seconds after the picture was taken so we could take very cautious bites from the steaming hot bread. The taste was unbelievable. Between the butter and the cheese, the crumb was incredibly smooth and creamy. The salami gave it both a flavor kick and a nice salty twang.

The next day, the housewarming gift was well-received, and we had devoured most of our loaf. This bread is great when you want something to snack on, as it really hits all the taste sensations I like. Two big thumbs up on this one!

Casatiello? Check.

Next? Portuguese Sweet Bread.

Light Wheat Bread: No Buns About It

Alright, this was the last of my wild weekend that began with panettone and also included the white bread. I've made this again since then, and received some pretty amazing reactions from people at work. I didn't think this was anything particularly special, but my coworkers were raving about it.

The bread isn't hard or tough like a whole wheat bread, but it still has the same great flavor. It's incredibly light and airy like any other typical sandwich bread. I suppose I'll get on with this post, then! There's not too much to this bread, so it'll be another pretty quick post.

The dry ingredients were a mix of whole wheat and bread flour, about one-third whole wheat flour, salt, powdered milk and yeast. The wet ingredients were honey, shortening and water. Mix 'em up, knead it well and let it rise.

After the first rise, shape it into a loaf shape and let it rise again in the loaf pan.

Bake for somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour, and voila! This was one of my most perfectly shaped loaves in some time.

I have an upcoming food day at work where we'll be grilling burgers and hot dogs, so I've decided to make the buns. These were just a bit small, but still just long enough for a hot dog. Good show!

I also attempted to make kaiser rolls the second time, but they looked more like blooming flowers than kaiser rolls, so no pictures of those. Bleh!

Light Wheat Bread? Check.

Next? Casatiello.

White Bread: My introduction to powdered milk.

Alrighty. I decided to make what I had decided was one of the filler recipes in my crazy weekend of reclaiming my ego. Seriously. White bread had to be both easy and plain, leading me to not screw up another bread and feel better about my baking skills. Right?

I now scoff at my former assumption and sneer at my presumed snobbery. I really don't know what it is about this bread, but I absolutely devoured it practically the moment it was cool enough to eat. It was so amazingly light, fluffy and delicious that I couldn't believe it had such a misnomer as "White Bread." Clearly, this is the manna from the heavens that was sent to the Israelites during their journey through the desert.

Since this was from a crazy weekend of three different baking projects, I apparently forgot to actually use my camera. As a result, there are a grand total of two pictures. Oops...

As always, it's a pretty standard list of ingredients. Bread flour, salt, sugar, instant yeast and powdered milk for the dry ingredients. (Okay, the powdered milk isn't so standard, but I've used it again since then, and it's some pretty neat stuff, actually.) Egg, water and butter for the wet ingredients. Mix it all together, knead it up, and leave the lovely, soft dough to rise.

Since I had wheat bread turning out at the exact same time and only two loaf pans, I decided to use half the dough for a loaf and the other half for dinner rolls. I've gotten pretty good at guesstimating equal portions of dough out, so it was a nice exercise for me.

So I baked the rolls in a cake pan, and Bill and I managed to put off devouring them for long enough to take this picture. I kinda forgot to use the egg wash on them, so they're not shiny, but they were fine without. I don't know how to put it any other way, but this bread was just amazing. It was so milky and fluffy, and... YUM!

This recipe is a definite A+. Reinhart offers three different white bread recipes, so I'll probably try the other two at some point, following the joy I've received from this one.

White bread? Check.

Next? Light wheat bread.

Panettone: Have a boozy, floozy Christmas.

Today's important lesson is that no matter where we're from, we have more in common than different. Take today's bread, for example. Panettone is a Christmas bread originating in Milan. As legend has it, a humble baker named Tony wanted to create a bread that would completely dazzle his sweetheart, the daughter of a rich merchant. To impress the man, Tony added every trick up his sleeve to the bread--butter, brandied fruits, nuts and sugar. The merchant was so impressed that he got not only the girl, but his very own bakery, where he could continue making "pane Tony" to the end of his days.

The secret about this bread is that it is virtually identical to the Christmas breads steeped in tradition from every country. In Germany, it's stollen, in Greece, christopsomo. and so on. These breads all contain similar ingredients, such as fruits and nuts, each symbolizing pretty much the same thing--the gifts of the magi. However, each country lays claim to these recipes, refusing to acknowledge the overwhelming similarities.

Step one: Soak the fruit in booze. I used a mix of golden raisins, cranberries and pomegranate seeds. I soaked these overnight in a mix of Triple Sec, Evan Williams, vanilla and lemon extract.

Also the night before, I made a sponge with the sourdough barm, milk and flour. I let this get bubbly, then refrigerated it overnight.

The next day, I mixed up some more flour, sugar, salt and yeast. To that, I added the sponge, an egg and an additional yolk. I mixed these all together with enough water to make it into a nice smooth ball. I let this rest for a bit to develop the gluten, then added butter and the fruit, slowly working it through the dough. After kneading, it was time for the bulk fermentation period.

A few hours later, it was risen and ready to be divided, shaped and placed in their final resting places. I felt pretty fancy with these panettone molds, and was glad they were only seventy-five cents each, so I can keep getting them again and again. Now, it was time for another rise, until the dough reached the top of the molds.

The dough baked for roughly forever. Ok, just ninety minutes or so. Probably the hardest part of this whole process was letting the bread cool before I ate it. This stuff was seriously awesome. The fruit had a really nice bite from its bath water, and the bread itself was like a very thick cake. I'm looking forward to making stollen, so I can compare the tastes of the two. In another of his books, Reinhart has every holiday-related bread as a derivation of the panettone formula, but in this book, the recipes do differ from one another.

After such a string of mishaps and abject failures, it was really nice to have such an overwhelming success. The best part is that everything from then until now has been wonderful, so here's to many more!

Panettone? Check.

Coming up next? White bread.

Pumpernickel: With a name like "devil's fart," who needs to make jokes?

So the etymology of the word "pumpernickel" isn't exactly as cut and dry as all that. The OED doesn't attribute any specific origin to this word, but it has several interesting stories about it. One origin of the word claims that as Napoleon was invading Germany, he was served dark rye bread. Disgusted with the thought of eating it, he exclaimed, "C'est pain pour Nicole!" (It's bread for Nicole!) Nicole, of course, being his horse.

In Germany, pumpernickel gets its color from a chemical reaction between amino acids and sugars, in the same way as sausages brown when they are heated. These breads bake for up to 24 hours in an oven at a very low temperature. In America, pumpernickel is baked for a much shorter period of time, instead getting its color from various coloring agents, either caramel coloring, cocoa, molasses or coffee.

The bread began with a starter of barm, pumpernickel flour and water. That sat out until it began to bubble, then took a nap in the fridge overnight. The next day, the starter was mixed with flour, sugar, cocoa, salt and yeast, as well as some bread crumbs from the rye bread I had made. This is a holdover from how the bread is made in villages in eastern Europe. At this point, a small amount of vegetable oil and water were added to finish off the dough.

Kneading this dough was exciting, because it smelled and looked just like chocolate ice cream. Unfortunately, I had a mishap with the amount of salt added, so it really didn't taste much like chocolate anymore... At this point, it was a pretty standard affair of allowing the bread to rest and double in size.

After the first rise, I made the dough into loaves and set them into loaf pans to rise again. At this point, another side effect of the excess salt manifested itself. You see, due to some sort of chemical reaction that I don't pretend to understand, salt kills yeast when they come into direct, concentrated contact with one another. So, at this point, the excess salt had pretty much taken all the oomph out of my yeast. As a result, my loaves ended up looking like...

Short, stumpy loaves. They looked like pumpkin rolls, actually, as you could still see how I had folded them up. The bumps across the surface are larger bits of the rye crumbs that didn't get chopped up quite as fine. As far as the look of the bread itself, it was really nice. It was the same color as the cocoa that I put in it, and managed to still smell like the cocoa as well.

I really hesitate to comment on the flavor of the bread, as it was most certainly not the way it was supposed to taste. I could definitely catch a number of different flavors, including a bit of the rye crumbs, the sourdough from the starter and a bit of something from the cocoa. This was all incredibly overpowered, however, by the salt. That being said, I'll have to just wait to form my opinion on how this bread tastes.

Until next time...

Pumpernickel? Eh... check?

Next up? Panettone.

Enough of my rye humor.

Well, I totally meant to catch up on this bloggage. Apparently, I've lied to not only you, but myself as well. With that said, I will write this post, and I will write it now! I guess I keep putting it off, since it's always harder to write about the breads that don't work out quite how I want them to.

This bread was a totally different experience than all the previous breads. I know that's something I keep saying, but this was seriously different. The rye flour is a very roughly milled flour, so there is no way to make it achieve a fine texture. The best it really gets is what is basically a wet ball of sand. The best part was that there wasn't really a chance for it to be sticky like the previous doughs, which kept the entire process very clean.

The process began with two different starters. The chunks are a starter made from the sourdough starter, water and rye flour. The bowl that looks like vomit is a soaker of pumpernickel-grind flour (even more coarse than the rye flour) soaked in water. These starter rises then chills in the fridge overnight, while the soaker sits out. On baking day, out comes the starter to warm up before making the dough.

The dough is then made from more rye flour, salt, caraway seeds, the starter pieces and the soaker with just enough water to bring it together. This wasn't really kneadable, but I managed well enough. The dough was then left to rise. If you look at the picture, you can see how rough the dough is. I think I did something a little wrong, as the dough seemed insanely dense and didn't really rise like it was supposed to.

At this point, I shaped it into two batards and let them rise again. Again, there wasn't that much rise. I scored them down the middle and did the steam-based baking method again, which really isn't that bad now that I'm used to it. Just throwing the oven door open and shut for a few minutes, and then it's baking as usual.

The rye came out alright. The crust was insanely tough. Reinhart claimed that it would soften, but you can't read everything you read, apparently. The flavor was good, though, and the crumb was relatively soft in comparison. I'll probably cut the caraway down a little next time, as it was incredibly powerful.

I'm kind of interesting in holding onto the rye I still have left and see how long it stays good. I'm not sure why exactly, but the shelf life of rye is supposed to be measurable in months versus the week or two that white or wheat bread will stay good. This could be an exciting experiment. I suppose the contest will be to see if I get the next blog entry typed up before the rye goes bad.

Rye? Check.

Next up? Pumpernickel. (Another bread I kinda screwed up. Blah...)

Sourdough: Or, according to Lora, boobs.

Alright, so I'm six posts behind on this thing, so these posts will be short while I catch up. This is partially because I have too short of an attention span to write too much and partially because these breads were much more involved, so I didn't have a chance to take many pictures with which to fill these posts out.

This sourdough was quite a labor of love. I began by making my own sourdough starter. The first try never took off, as the wild yeast apparently wasn't appreciating the lovely home I was providing for it. The second try worked, however, and a week or so later, I had a barm ready to scoop up and start my first sourdough. I started out with some barm, flour and just enough water to for it to form up into a ball, then let it ferment for a while until it doubled in size. I then let it relax in the fridge overnight.

The next day, I took the starter out of the fridge and cut it into smaller pieces. I happen to believe they looked like pizza rolls. I added these starter pieces to some flour and salt with enough water to make a nice smooth dough, then did the whole kneading and fermenting thing.

At this point, I split the dough into two pieces and made boules, the word snobby people people use for the round dome of bread ("balls"). These rose again, and I used the same baking technique as I did for the ciabatta. It wasn't quite so scary this time, as I knew I wouldn't immediately destroy the bread if I did something wrong.

So they were a little lumpy and not exactly round, but not bad for a first time effort! The bottoms are another story altogether, as it was very apparent how I tried to pull the dough around to make the balls, but I suppose that's something I'll learn with practice.

The bread itself was excellent. It had a great tang to it, so I know my wild yeast friends were doing their job. I really don't have any distinct memories of eating sourdough bread before, so I don't have anything to compare it to. The original startup for this bread was quite an investment, but I now have barm that I have been using for various recipes for two weeks now, and I'm glad I have it at my disposal, as I can make something relatively impressive like this with very little effort on my part.

Sourdough? Check.

Next up? Rye.