I'll have to try Quick Bread another day.

With a narrow window with which to bake something yesterday, I turned to a Quick Bread to avoid the rising time needed for a yeast dough. With not a lot of ingredients on hand, I took a chance on an experiment with a whole wheat quick bread.

Dutch Oven Bread

I am very excited about a lot of the things I cook. But I'll say it: I was the MOST excited about this loaf!

Hybrid Bagel Dogs

The other day I really wanted to make some bread. I hadn't enough flour for a loaf so I got creative. The end result was a half bread, half bagel, hot dog sandwich! Not too bad.

Metal or Glass?

 I have made my last two loaves of bread in a metal pan and I wanted to see if I can see a difference in how the bread turns out when cooking in glass. Here is the run-down: Glass absorbs heat and retains it more than metal (cooking your dish quicker, browning more), so the oven should be set for 25 degrees F lower than with a metal pan. Also, baked items tend to stick more to glass bakeware...

Pickles, part 2

Some photos surfaced of the original pickling process as well as the finished product. Without the cucumbers in them, them mason jars looks like terrariums!

Whole Wheat Flax loaf

 It's been a while since I baked a plain old loaf of bread. Today I had some extra time on my hands (and a loaf of Dave's Killer Bread that is about to be finished), in fact, enough time to make a loaf of sliceable bread for my coming work week.

Chapati

 My brother taught me how to make chapati when he visited Portland a couple years ago. He was visiting from Kenya and he taught me how to make chapati the way the Kenyans do. I'm not sure if I still do it the way Alan taught me, I make it every now and again and I always think of him way off in Nairobi where you can get fresh chapo on the street corners in the mornings.

Bread Pudding featuring: chocolate! berries!

I had some of a french baguette leftover from a couple days ago. While stuffing has been the main contender for dry or stale bread, today I decided to make bread pudding for three reasons: it has less ingredients, less prep time and more sugar! I've only had bread pudding once in my life, many years ago. If I'm not trying to be fancy there are definitely some simple and fast recipes floating around the internet.

Sage Rosemary Focaccia

 I have tried my hand at making many breads. Over the course of my year making various breads I have learned that I prefer to make free form loaves as opposed to bread pan, sandwich-sized loaves. I like the variation in the final product.

I also love breads to dip in sauces, oils and herbs. It was just yesterday when I realized that Focaccia might be perfect for this. A quick internet search revealed that toppings for Focaccia are only limited by imagination. I like this a lot! But I will start simple with two herbs: sage and rosemary.

Sweet Potato Bread

My friend Casey made some homemade ice cream. Even more exciting than the fresh ice cream is its main ingredient: sweet potatoes! After a visit with her this morning, I am the lucky recipient of all of her leftover pureed sweet potato. The internet has shown me that there are many websites dedicated to recipes for leftovers. I think a lot of this is directed towards holiday cooking when we might use things like pumpkin pie filling, cranberries, and in my case sweet potatoes, and then have the remnants that no one wants to eat a couple days later.

And so here I am making bread again. After my modestly successful Honey Oat Bread I guess I am feeling pretty awesome. Awesome enough to attempt a braided bread recipe. How fancy.

The initial mixing was beautiful:
In the bowl is soy milk, honey, pureed sweet potato (with a little yam for coloring), dried thyme, yeast, water and oil.


The next step was adding the liquids to the dry stuff: flours, salt, and some corn meal.

I kneaded the dough to the desirable soft-but-not-sticky consistency and let it rise for 1.5 hours next to my radiator. After doubling, I separated the dough into 6, foot long "ropes" and braided two loaves. They rose for another hour until they were very plump.

In the end they only needed to cook for 35 minutes in the oven until they were golden brown and had that hollow sound when tapped on the bottom. The hollow sound is still something of a mystery to me. I can probably convince myself that any sound coming from the bottom of my loaf sounds "empty". The sweet potato is hardly noticeable in the final product; I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but the bread turned out wonderful and even better, beautiful. Braided loafs are great because I get to play with the dough more than I normally would. Imagine the fun shapes my imagination can create! Circles, spiral buns, tricolors!

Warmed and slathered with Earth Balance this bread is a great morning treat.

Bread is Hard.

Bread is something that is so commonplace and simple. Water, yeast, flour, salt. What can go wrong?

I made a loaf of bread yesterday. While I've attempted several loaves before, something is always different: the aesthetics of the final product, the taste, the feel, and I really have no idea why. Okay, part of the reason is that I can't stick to the same recipe (and really, having a science background I should know better than to have more than one variable in my experiment). Months ago I think it was my misunderstanding of the order of operations with ingredients. And then I think it was my kneading. And then the rising... But sometimes I truly don't know. Now I see why people buy Bread Machines. Perfect every time!

I suppose, though, I don't only make the bread to eat the bread. I like the challenge and I like the process. I am learning that you can't rush bread. It will always rise in time, sometimes faster and sometimes slower, and I can just wait for it and listen to a podcast, read my book or go for a walk around my neighborhood.