Country-Style White Bread

Today was an epic day of baking. In preparation for multi-genre reveal tomorrow, I have baked: two loaves of country-style white bread; a HUGE vanilla, sour cream coffee cake; two enormous Challah braids; and 16 whole wheat pitas. Whew!

While baking, I documented the baking of the country-style white loaves. When I first started baking bread, I would obsess over whether or not things were looking the way they should. Cookbooks without thorough descriptions or pictures would irk me to no end! Thus, I give you a "from goop to glory" pictorial walk-through of the making of two loaves of white bread:

This, as you might have guessed, is the goop. Prior to this stage, all the elements of the dough are combined in the order specified by the recipe. This particular recipe called for a total of 5-5 1/2 cups of unbleached, all-purpose flour. Since no wooden spoon or arm in the world is capable of thoroughly mixing in that much flour, you have to turn the dough out of the bowl onto a floured surface after about 3 1/2-4 cups of flour. What resembled dough in the bowl will look like a lump of underdone oatmeal on the counter. Remove any rings and get ready to become Swamp Thing! You need to add the remaining 2 or so cups of flour by tablespoon; though tedious, this ensures that you maintain full control over the dough and can monitor how well it's mixed as well as how dry it becomes. Sounds pretty good in theory until you dive your hands in and realize that you no longer have individual fingers to pick up the tablespoon measure with. This is where a helper comes in handy. Keep at the kneading and mashing until you end up with a smooth, elastic-y ball that looks like this:

Next, grease a large, deep mixing bowl thoroughly and plop your kneaded dough into the bowl. Turn it over once so that the dough gets a full coating of the grease. This will keep the surface pliable as the dough expands. Cover the dough with a clean dish cloth and allow it rise for 1-1/2 hours, until it's doubled in size, like so:

Once the dough has puffed, you get to punch it! As stress-relieving at this sounds, you have to actually be gentle. Tearing the dough at this stage can affect the way that the loaf will bake, so rather than slamming a fist into the bowl you have to press gently, allowing the dough to deflate. This particular recipe yields two loaves of bread, so once the dough has been deflated it is cut into two equal portions. At this point you can either transfer the dough to a loaf pan or you can shape the dough and allow it to bake free-form. This time I chose free-form. I shaped the two dough halves into log shapes, covered them with plastic-wrap to avoid the formation of a tough skin on the air-exposed side of the loaf, and allowed them to sit for about 40 minutes to an hour, until about double in size:

Once the second rise is complete, the loaves are brushed with an egg glaze. This gives them a nice crispy crust and a beautiful golden brown color. You don't want to let the glaze puddle around the base of the loaves, though, as it will cause the loaves to stick and pull away from their bottoms as they bake. (You can see in the picture below where I failed at this step while glazing the loaf on the left. Whoops!) Once the glaze has been brushed on, you have the option of sprinkling the loaves with poppy seeds, which I think looks delightful. Then, pop 'em in the oven:

Let the loaves sit undisturbed in the oven for about 40-45 minutes. Since I have a small oven, my loaves only took about 35 minutes. Bread is possibly the easiest food to check for doneness. All you have to do is tap on the crust with the tips of your fingers. If the crust does not give and the tap results in a hollow sound, the bread is done! Remove the loaves from the oven and immediately transfer to a cooling rack. Ideally, your end result will look something like this:

Tah-Dah! Enjoy :)

A Word to the Wise

I haven't been baking bread for very long, but I have at the game long enough to begin learning from my mistakes. I now know approximately how much grease a metal pan will require as opposed to a glass or silicone pan. I've gotten fairly good at judging how much batter or dough needs to be poured into what size pan for optimal results. What I have not mastered completely is trusting cookbooks. I've been disaster-free for just long enough to convince myself that I know better than the published, award-winning authors of such cookbooks as "The Bread Bible."

You'd think I'd pay attention to someone with enough experience to pen the Bible of bread, right? Wrong. While preparing to bake the samples I intended to bring to class, I looked over the recipe for "Vanilla Sour Cream Coffee Cake." Yum, right?! Luckily, I have everything I need... except the right sized pan. The recipe makes one 10 inch round cake, or two 9x5 in. loaves. I have no round cake pans, and only two 9.25x5.5 in. silicone loaf pans. So I go with the silicone. I grease 'em both up and begin layering the first loaf; batter, crumb filling, batter crumb filling. I realize that I can easily fit all of the batter into one silicone pan. Why on earth would they call for two? So I throw the recipe's advice to the wind and layer away until all the batter and filling are nestled into one pan. Then I pop it in the oven and await the delicious cinnamon-y results.

45 minutes later, the timer goes off. I throw open the oven door expecting to find a perfectly browned, beautiful coffee cake. Instead, I am confronted with a bloated mass standing at least a four good inches above the edge of the pan and pushing the sides of the flexible silicone into a rather round shape. Turns out I did have a 10 in. cake pan after all...

Luckily, the cake came out alright. It required an additional half hour of baking time, but it did bake nonetheless. While I don't consider this a "disaster," after all the results are edible, it did teach me a valuable lesson: until I understand perfectly how specific breads will react while in the oven, listen to the nice lady who wrote the recipe. :)

Challah Comparison

As I've mentioned before, I really enjoy making Challah. Luckily, my husband really enjoys eating Challah, so I've got plenty of opportunities for baking it. It's such a "hands on" dough that, as a baker, you really feel involved in the outcome. Every time I've made Challah, I've braided the dough; though you can put the dough into loaf pans, or twist it into a "turban" style loaf, I just love how beautiful the braid is once it's baked to a rich, golden brown. Working the three portions of the dough, seeing your hard-won braid awaiting baking, and finally taking the flaky finished product out of the oven, all just gives you such a sense of accomplishment. The first time I made a loaf, I did a dance when I took it out of the oven and saw how perfect it looked. I even sent pictures to all of my family and friends to show off my hard work!

Until recently, I've always worked from the same basic recipe from the always-popular Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook. You know, that red plaid cookbook that your mom has had forever? It's been a steady go-to on my shelf of cookbooks, often overshadowing the others. I love this cookbook because of it's classic recipes. It seems like everything that this book turns out, ends up just like Mom used to make it. Maybe because the book's been around so long! Either way, this is where I got my first Challah recipe.

My second Challah recipe came from a newly acquired cookbook, The Bread Bible. Upon deciding to start a blog, I felt the need to step up my repertoire a bit; so, I consulted Beth Hensperger and her award-winning recipes. When I saw that she, too, had a Challah recipe, I decided to do a comparison bake.

Starting with the basic ingredients of the recipes, the differences are noticeable, but not drastic:

Better Homes & Gardens

• 4 3/4 - 5 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 package active dry yeast
• 1 1/4 cups water
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 3 tbsp non-dairy margarine
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 eggs
• Egg Glaze (water, yolk)
• poppy seeds

The Bread Bible

• 7 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 1/2 cups warm water
• 2 tbsp active dry yeast
• 1/3 cup plus 1 tbsp sugar
• 3 large eggs, at room temp.
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 tsp salt
• Egg Glaze (milk, yolk)
• poppy seeds

What struck me as interesting about The Bread Bible's Challah recipe, was that it called for proofing of the yeast with warm water. This activates the yeast and allows the resulting bread to rise higher. Better Homes & Gardens only required the yeast to be added to th

e dry ingredients. As a result, the dough produced by The Bread Bible's recipe rose considerably higher than BH&G's.

Following the instructions exactly, I found The Bread Bible's description of how to braid the Challah slightly lacking. Hensperger suggests working the braid from the middle out to the ends. It was too late to save the loaf by the time I realized how awfully I'd messed up the braid. The bread came out beautifully (and tastes great!) but it's not much to look at. Thus, I vastly prefer the instructions included in the BH&G book. Every time I've made Challah following their lead, the braid has come out wonderfully. Here are pictures of each, see if you can figure out which braid came from which book ;)

I ended up making this recipe again and this time used the ingredients from The Bread Bible and the braiding technique from BH&G. Here is the result:

It's a thing of beauty, eh? :)

Sources:

Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook. 14th ed. Vol. 1. Des Moines, Iowa: Meredith Books, 2006. Print.

Hensperger, Beth. The Bread Bible: 300 Favorite Recipes. San Fransisco: Chronicle Books, 1999.

Best Ways to Store Homemade Bread

Bread is best when used up quickly; however, this isn't always possible or plausible. I always thought that the refrigerator was the ideal place to keep bread. Turns out, I was wrong! Refrigerators produce a lot of moisture, thus speeding the spoiling process. In the refrigerator, the bread is also susceptible to absorbing odors and tastes from surrounding foods. So, here are some tips for storing your homemade bread:

- If you need to keep your bread fresh for up to a week, store the loaf either in a bread box, or Ziplock container at room temperature. Room temperature has proved to be ideal for the New England climate, this may not be so in more humid regions.

- Bread boxes seem like such an antiquated item, but in fact are optimal for storing homemade bread. Go figure, right? The idea behind the bread box is that the tightly shut door helps keep moisture in, thus preventing the loaf from drying out, but also allows for slight air flow so the loaf doesn't get stale or moldy. Tucked inside the bread box, the loaf is also safe from little critters and bugs. Today, many bread boxes are made of plastic or metal, but basically serve the same purpose.

- Should you need to keep your bread fresh for longer than a week, or your household uses bread slowly, there is a better option than the bread box. The freezer! If I've gone on a bread-baking spree and am left with several loaves of bread as a result, I will often cut a loaf in half and pop each half into a Ziplock freezer bag and then into the freezer. Bread takes no time at all to defrost, so minutes before you need some fresh bread for sandwiches or dinner, just take out a bag! Oftentimes I will also pre-slice my loaves into sandwich slices and freeze the slices in packs of two or four to take out when I need to make lunch for myself and my husband.

What About Wheat?

What About Wheat?

Though white bread is popular and delicious, it isn't exactly the most nutritious option; generally, whole grains are the way to go. Whole grains provide our bodies with important vitamins and antioxidants as well as more fiber and protein than white breads, which helps to fill you up faster and keep you satiated longer. For those who enjoy baking at home and want to incorporate more whole grains into their diets, substituting whole wheat flour for all-purpose is a great option! However, baking with whole wheat flour presents a unique set of hurdles to overcome. Due to the dense nature of whole grains, if you substitute wheat flour 1-for-1 with all-purpose flour, you run the risk of ending up with a heavy, dry loaf of rather untasty bread. If you knead the dough too much you'll end up with a tough, chewy, gluten-string-ridden loaf. So, how do you substitute whole wheat flour for all-purpose without ruining the outcome? Here are a few tips that will hopefully clear the fog and get you on your way:

-Unfortunately, it may take some trial and error before you get the outcome you're looking for. Thus, the first time you try substituting whole wheat flour for all-purpose in a recipe, start slow. Try exchanging only 1/4 of the total flour and see what happens. If the result comes out too dry, you'll know to increase the liquid ingredients slightly. If the change in taste isn't noticeable enough, try exchanging half of the total flour.

-In recipes that were designed for white flour, you need to be careful about how much whole wheat flour you use. Recipes not built around whole wheat flour will be weighed down by the denser grains, and you'll end up with an unsavory mess. Generally, you don't want to exchange more than half of the all-purpose flour for wheat flour. Exchanging up to half of the flour total should be enough to give your favorite recipes a healthful boost without making the confection unrecognizable.

-DO NOT sift whole wheat flour. Most flours these days come presifted (Ahhh, modern technology!). However, some recipes or websites will tell you that sifting whole wheat flour helps lighten the result. Yes, this may be true, but, you're sifting out all of the good stuff that's in the whole wheat flour! Not to mention clogging the dickens out of your sifter!

-Don't try and knead breads that have had whole wheat flour incorporated until they're smooth. Bread recipes that are made with all-purpose flour or pastry flour result in a ball of smooth, matte, elastic-y dough. Recipes that have had whole wheat flour substituted in will have colored flecks throughout and be very bumpy or even rough. This is because whole wheat flour is not ground as finely as all-purpose, leaving more fiber and whole grains in the flour; thus, your dough will not be completely smooth. Attempting to knead the dough until it IS smooth will over-work the dough and create gluten strings. Since whole wheat flour is already more glutenous than white flour to begin with, allowing an excess of gluten to form will make your bread tough and unenjoyably chewy.

*Image from images.faithclipart.com

Baking Terms: Defined!

For the beginning bread baker, the hardest part of tackling a recipe is often trying to overcome the language. If you aren't familiar with the terms included in the recipe, and the book or website isn't kind enough to include a glossary of terms, you can easily find yourself scouring the internet, or another cookbook, for a reliable definition. Here I have defined some of the more commonly seen terms that can be a bit confusing:

Yeast: a type of microorganism that feeds on the sugars and proteins in bread thus expelling carbon-dioxide and allowing the bread to rise. Active Dry Yeast (found in small strips of vacuum-sealed packages or a baby-food sized jar) has larger granules of yeast than Instant Yeast and needs to be "proofed" in warm water to make sure it's still alive. Instant Yeast has smaller granules and does not need to be proofed before being added to a recipes dry ingredients.

Brioche: a French egg bread that is made using butter, giving the bread a moist and tender crumb. The crust of a brioche is a dark golden brown, and is flaky as opposed to the shell-like crust of a regular French bread. Brioche is often circular in shape.

Babka: a type of Eastern European or Jewish dessert bread. Babka is often found in a circular shape or baked into a high loaf and usually has chocolate or cinnamon in it. Eastern European versions often include fruit glazes or raisins, while the Jewish versions utilize a crumb topping.

Bread Flour: is a type of flour made specifically for bread baking. It contains more proteins and vitamins that allow the yeast to create a higher carbon dioxide yield, resulting in a higher rise of the bread.

Bleached/Unbleached Flour: while bleached or unbleached all-purpose flours can often be used interchangeably, they do both have their strong suits. Bleached flour has been chemically treated and as a result contains less protein. This type of flour is best used in breads that don't rely on yeast for rising. Unbleached flour, on the other hand, contains more protein than bleached, and is thus best used for yeast breads.

Crumb: refers to the texture of the inside of a loaf of bread. For instance, an egg bread would have a rich, tender, cake-like crumb whereas a whole wheat bread would have a course, dense crumb.

Doubled in size: this is the point where a bread is done rising, at least for the first time. When a bread has doubled its size, it will be airy and elastic to the touch.

Finger-tip test: a way to determine whether a bread has doubled in size yet. Quickly and lightly, poke two fingers about half an inch into the surface of the risen dough. If dents remain visible after your fingers are removed, the dough has sufficiently risen.

Knead: a series of movements that works the dough to form a smooth, elastic ball. Kneading is useful for working in the remainder of flour that could not be stirred in. The typical kneading method follows a "fold, push, turn" rhythm: fold the dough in half towards you, then push it away with the heels of your hands, then turn the dough a quarter turn and repeat.

Pullman Pan: a type of six-sided pan that encloses a baking loaf of bread from all sides with a sliding lid. This type of pan is useful for creating dense, sandwich sized loaves that are easy to slice.

Quick Bread: a kind of bread that utilizes baking soda, baking powder, or another type of chemical leavener instead of yeast.

Rise: what a bread does either prior to baking or while baking as a result of either yeast or a chemical leavener.

Second Rise: some breads require a second period of rising. Once the kneaded dough has risen to double its size, many recipes require a bread to be shaped. After shaping, it helps to allow the bread to re-rise and relax some of its glutens that may have been stiffened during shaping.

Hubby's Shopping List

I am infinitely fortunate in the fact that I have a husband who supports my bread-baking hobby with all his heart and soul. Though his support often comes in the form of enjoying the outcomes, I can sometimes coerce him into going grocery shopping for me. Below is a typical, pre-bread-baking-spree shopping list, but annotated for my hubby:

Shopping List:

v King Arthur’s Bread Flour (the one with the baby blue bands around the bag)

v Eggs (one dozen, brown)

v Cane Sugar (either the Domino one in the baking aisle or the kind in the bins that you scoop out yourself, whatever’s cheapest)

v Butter Flavored Non-stick Spray (cheapest)

v Strip of Active Dry Yeast Packages (the ones in the natural food section, make sure you get Active Dry and not Highly Active!)

v Wheat Germ (I have no idea where this will be or what it is. Sorry, you're on your own)

v Honey (get the good kind, ours tastes like old tea)

v Poppy Seeds (these may be expensive, so brace yourself)

v Baking Soda (Hannaford brand is fine)

v Cornmeal (Hannaford, again, is fine)

*Image from thedailygreen.com