So... my only loaf on Wednesday was a half wheat half white bread that just refused to rise. I need the Vital Wheat gluten. Commercial AP flour doesn't cut it, and whole wheat flour has completely different properties all together. The bread did rise, just not as much as I wanted it to. It looked great, just short. Not very happy with it overall.
Thursday, I decided to make a nice, light, fluffy bread. Everything was going as expected. The second rise either didn't poof like it was supposed to, or I was too scared it would deflate for some reason. I know I proofed the yeast correctly- I know how to work with yeast. I believe it was the problem with the proteins again. Regardless the end product turned out pretty good, in the form of a nice dinner bread to pull apart and use in olive oil and vinegar, or to sop up your dinner slop. The aesthetics are impressive, and I felt I had control over the amount of browning. So my original plan failed, but an alternative use prevailed.
Last, I completely redeemed myself. Although a quickbread, it still takes some effort to make one correctly. I used flour, salt, baking soda, water, oil, sugar, an egg, butter, and the rest of the grub. My very own recipe I just made up on the fly. Of course, there are similar recipes, but they are all similar in the core ingredients. I actually wrote this one down, so I could reproduce it. I give you the Jalapeno Cheddar Beer and Bacon Bread. It is surprisingly sweet, with a tease of heat, but no delivery. It is freaking yummy. It made one large 9x5 pan and a small 8x3 pan. Would make three 8x3 pans if you were so inclined. As you can see in the picture, I devoured over half of the small loaf in about 60 seconds. I couldn't even wait for it to cool! It is the absolute, end-all-life-as-we-know-it-in-your-face-omnomnom-BOMB.
Going to get some proper ingredients and tools this weekend, and make some lovely loaves. My sourdough starter is thriving, and I am excited to get into that next week.
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