Whole Wheat French Bread

I definitely got off to a late start last night. I'm going to need to be more efficient by baking more on the weekends and spreading out the posts. Baking every day is a herculean effort.

The results of last night's efforts was a whole wheat French bread. I'm finally happy with the crumb inside of the bread. I'm still working on the crust. This time the dough was hand kneaded and I gave it a much longer proof. Unfortunately, during the proof both loaves expanded to the point that they were touching and I fear that in the process of separating them and shoveling them into the oven, the crust lost some of its surface tension. Aside from that, I included a pan of water on the lowest level of the oven to provide steam for the first 10 minutes. However, in the rush of things and in a desperate desire to get some sleep, I don't believe that I let the oven preheat long enough. It may have been 425 degrees but the stone should have been heated longer and the water should have been steamier before I added the dough.

Tonight is my last bread attempt for a while, as it is time to move on to other things. There is so much to cover! I'll be doing another french bread but will use the sponge method this time. More on that later.

French Bread

Bread is tricky. I've baked a lot of cakes and pies and cookies and never spent much time on bread until now. Baking decent bread isn't too difficult, but I can see that making great bread involves a lot of trial and error. Humid conditions and an old oven are probably not helping much but I'm going with the theory that anything is possible with enough effort. How very German of me... I know.

So far, my French bread attempt has been my favorite. That's not to say it's a perfect loaf of bread. Far from it. But... this has been the first loaf of bread that really had that lovely aroma of freshly baked, home made bread. There was nothing that was going to stop me from tearing off an end of the loaf as soon as it came out of the oven so that I could have a taste. It tastes as good as it smells.

On to the challenges:

• Crust:  The crust was crusty last night when it was baked. This morning... not so much. Too much humidity? Not sure. Proper french bread should get crustier, stale even, after sitting around for a while. I tried a different method for steaming. I sprayed the bread a few times in the first 10 minutes of baking. This turned out to be a bad idea. The loaf closest to the spray ended up bursting on the side with the most moisture. Will need to try another technique next time.
• Center: It's delicious and there are bubbles, but I suspect some of the dough is still too dense. The culprit is likely that I'm underproofing.

More proofing time and different steaming technique will be tried out later when I try a whole wheat french bread. Wish me luck!

Pizza Night!

I thought it might be a good idea to put all of these dough supplies to good use and make some pizza. Quite frankly, as much as I've been enjoying the bread, I was pretty excited about eating something other than sandwiches this week. Basically this pizza dough was the same as the Italian bread, but with the addition of some oil and sugar.

After mixing the dough and setting it aside to ferment I ran out to the grocery store to pick up toppings (a lot of cheese, ham, tomatoes and basil). Once it was time to roll the dough, it was already pretty late and perhaps I wasn't as lucid as I had hoped. I seem to have made a slight misjudgement. I've made pizzas in the past using various different doughs, but none of them were a "proper" or "traditional" Italian bread pizza dough. In other words, none of them rose quite like this one did. I could easily have made four large personal pizzas with the quantity of dough I had but instead I made two.

The result.

Well, the downside is that I ended up with a pretty thick crust. The upside is that the crust was delicious. They weren't the prettiest pizzas ever but needless to say, they took "midnight snack" to a whole new level.

Coming up next, French baguettes!

Whole Wheat Italian Bread

Had my first official baking session on a week night. In a way, this wasn't too bad. Bread isn't as labor intensive as some other baking ventures, but waiting for it to ferment requires patience and inevitably, a late bed time.

This Whole Wheat Italian Bread has all of the comfort of a traditional Italian bread, but has the healthy feel of a whole wheat. It isn't made entirely of whole wheat. If it was, it would lose the lightness in flavor and texture of an Italian bread.

Tonight will be the last of this round of Italian breads. I'm going to put all of these bread supplies to good use and make some pizza!

Happy Bread Week!

It looks like we’re going to be eating a lot of sandwiches around here this week. Out of the oven today were hard rolls, Vienna bread and Italian bread.  All of these breads are known for their crisp, thin crusts. They have little to no sugar or fat (although that can be remedied depending on what you plan to have with the bread!)

Tricks and tips I picked up today. If you can’t steam bread in your home oven, just take an aluminum roasting pan and invert it over your bread for the first 10 minutes of baking. This can be problematic when the bread is bigger than the roasting pan, but I may just start baking smaller portions at a time. Also, if you can’t find malt syrup, maple syrup will suffice in a pinch. Malt syrup can be ordered online with advance planning, something that I need to get on the ball with.

First up were the hard rolls.  Not too bad.  Definitely lovely right out of the oven. The crust is somewhere between crispy and flaky. I think I’ll leave them in a bit longer next time just to let them get a bit crustier.

I did a better job with that in the following Vienna bread. This will make great sandwich bread and would be great with a French onion soup.  The Viennese developed the steam method to create the crust. It is often prepared as a long loaf and is a precursor to the better known French baguette.

Before I get to the baguette, I took a detour to Italy. It is softer than French bread, due in part to the addition of oil. This one came out with a better split down the middle of the top of the loaf. It makes me want to have something saucy or soupy to mop up. 

I’m afraid that my mother won’t revert back to grocery store bread after this was delivered to her house.

Coming up next will be a whole wheat version of the same Italian bread. Anybody want some?

 

Introductions

Let me introduce myself. I’m Helga. Pause. No, I don’t look like a Viking, nor do I look like a Nordic supermodel. I do live in South Florida (where there aren’t many people that share my name).  I’m an engineer by day. I tend to keep myself pretty busy at work and outside of it, which is why you may find it strange that I would embark on this adventure. For those that know me, this should come as no surprise.  I tend to keep myself…. busy.

I’ve been baking for a few years, entirely for friends and family.  It turns out that I’m getting pretty good at it and even better…I really enjoy it.  I want to bake more. A lot more.

The plan (because every engineer likes a plan):

Bake as much as possible, considering time and funding constraints.  There is a lot that I want to learn and recipes I’d like to perfect. I can’t possibly eat everything I bake, so I’m hoping that my friends and family can help in that area. In the interest of maintaining waistlines, I suspect they will start donating these baked goods to their friends, families and coworkers. Should someone like to purchase one of these creations, I’d be happy to oblige…and so… a bakery can be born. A Busy Bee Bakery that is.