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...)