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!