Reflections on Seven Months of Bread Baking

First, I'm amazed that I finished baking all the breads in Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice in seven months. And I wasn't rushing. I took a week off more than once, and even took a three-week vacation at the end. I had expected this project to take a year, but I underestimated how much bread we can eat, if it is really good bread. Looking back, I can tell you that we ate a lot of bread. I have gotten in the habit of planning the week's meals around what bread I will be baking. Now that I've baked them all once (and many of them multiple times), I'm looking forward to planning my bread baking around the meal plan.

As a baker, I have definitely grown. Before BBA, I had a repertoire of maybe four different breads. None of them were rustic doughs or hearth breads, and all of them were enriched doughs. I was intimidated by any bread with the word "artisan" attached to it, and sourdough was terrifying. Now, I can say with all honesty that I haven't found a bread formula intimidating in months. Yeah, I've definitely flubbed a few, but it's been a long time since I've scanned a formula and then shelved the cook book because it looked too time consuming or too hard. Not allowing myself the option to skip any has made me feel much more competent as a baker, even with my failures (sourdough, anyone?). 

I've baked a few breads since July that I can say with confidence I will never bake again. I've baked many that I would like to revisit in the future, and a fair few that have already become regulars at our house. Current favorites are the pain a l'ancienne, ciabatta, and multigrain bread extraordinaire. Less regular but unlikely to disappear from circulation are bagels, cinnamon raisin walnut bread, English muffins, and kaiser rolls. And even as I write this post, I am remembering breads that were favorites along the way that I haven't made in awhile but should make again soon: potato rosemary bread and pugliese, Vienna bread with dutch crunch topping.

And someday, someday, I will revisit sourdough. I have a good friend who is a sourdough master, and she has a theory that my mistake was using pineapple juice. I grew a colony of yeast that preferred the pineapple juice environment; then as I refreshed my barm with water I gradually altered the environment to be less and less favorable for my colony of yeast, until after several refreshments it weakened and finally died. Makes sense to me. But I think I need some time of just baking for pleasure before I try my hand at sourdough again.    

Thank you for reading and sharing my journey!

1/31/2011 - Swedish Rye (Limpa)

Definitely one of the more unique breads in BBA, Swedish rye features licorice-flavored spices on a sourdough background. In preparing to make this bread, I was unsure both of whether I would like it and of what I was going to do with it if I did.

Back when I had a thriving sourdough barm, I had the forethought to freeze a portion of it. I thawed it in the fridge and refreshed it as instructed in BBA. In spite of my best efforts, it never showed any activity. As I have pretty much zero interest in throwing myself back into sourdough right now, and in the interest of finishing this project, I decided to go ahead and use what I had rather than starting over and spending a week trying to rebuild a new barm. This bread is spiked with commercial yeast anyway, so all I really needed from the sourdough barm was the flavor.

The evening before baking the bread, I prepared the sponge. I combined water, molasses, zested orange peel, ground anise seeds, ground fennel seeds, and ground cardamom in a saucepan, brought it to a boil, and removed it from the heat. (The formula actually calls for dried orange peel, but a fresh orange is what I had, and the fresh zest sounded more appetizing to me anyway.) The mixture was extremely aromatic; it wasn't pleasing to me, personally, but I have a hard time with the smell of molasses. Once the mixture had cooled to lukewarm, I mixed in some sourdough barm and rye flour. I left the sponge to ferment at room temperature for four hours before putting it in the fridge overnight. I use the term "ferment" loosely, because it didn't appear to really do anything.

The following day, I let the sponge warm to room temperature. I combined bread flour, yeast, salt, brown sugar, and then mixed in the sponge and some melted shortening. I added probably 1/4 cup of water to my dough to get it to come together. I briefly kneaded the dough, since rye flour becomes gummy if it is over-kneaded. I left the bread to rise for two hours, shaped and panned my loaf, scored it, and let it proof for 90 minutes before baking. This bread made my whole house smell like black licorice.

I hate to end on a downer, but this is one of my least favorite breads I've ever baked. The problem isn't with the bread itself, the problem is that I don't like the flavor of licorice. This is a very flavorful bread, and I think the balance of flavors is very good, if you like all the flavors. I enjoyed the citrus and cardamom notes, and I think the sourdough flavor is a nice contribution as well. But I just don't enjoy the flavor of anise and fennel. I had never scored bread prior to the proofing stage before, and I really like the look of the cuts when they are made earlier and given time to spread and heal.

1/26/2011 - Focaccia

I'm finally getting myself in gear to finish up this project. Before I could attempt the formula for focaccia found in BBA, I had to prepare a batch of herb oil. PR suggests steeping one cup of fresh herbs in two cups of warmed olive oil. I used about 3/4 cup fresh basil and added some dried oregano and rosemary. I also added some salt, pepper, and minced garlic per PR's suggestion. I left my jar of herb oil on the counter for a few hours, swirling it a few times, and then stored it in the refrigerator until I needed it.

Focaccia is a two-day formula. On the first day, I mixed the flour, salt, yeast, olive oil, and water to make a smooth, sticky dough. As with other rustic doughs like ciabatta or pugliese, focaccia is not kneaded. Instead, it is allowed to rest for a few minutes on a bed of flour on the countertop, and then stretched and folded in thirds. The stretching and folding are repeated a half hour later, and then the dough is left to rise for an hour or so. I've really learned to enjoy this style of bread making. Once my dough had risen, I lined a sheet pan with parchment paper and spread olive oil all over it. I carefully transferred the dough to the pan and spooned about 1/4 cup of herb oil over it. Then, using my fingertips, I dimpled the dough, spreading it toward the edges of the pan. It was pretty fun and also quite fragrant. I then covered the bread and left it in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, I spooned another 1/4 cup of herb oil over the bread and dimpled and spread it some more until it filled the pan. Then I covered it and let it proof at room temperature for three hours. I preheated the oven to 500, put in the bread, and then dropped the temperature to 450. The importance of that first burst of heat is something I have learned in my undertaking of this project. This bread baked for forty minutes and made my entire house smell fabulous.

This focaccia turned out pretty greasy, but oh, so good. J4 said it reminded him of deep dish pizza crust, which is completely appropriate since focaccia dough can be used to make pizza. The crust of this bread is flaky and the crumb is soft and pillowy. My focaccia turned out much thicker than PR says he prefers in his note, but I quite enjoyed the texture and I don't think it would have been that soft if it had been thinner. The herbs on top were a nice addition as well. Yum!

1/17/2011 - Challah, Take 2

Going on vacation for a few weeks can really derail special projects. I'm home now, and have been baking, but I need to pick up a couple of ingredients and wake up some saved sourdough barm from the freezer before I can finish those final two formulas. In the meantime, I finally made that round braided challah loaf. Isn't it pretty? I had some milk in my fridge that needed to be used up, so I substituted it for the water in the formula. If anything, the crumb of the bread was softer and a little less flaky, but not bad at all.