Unfortunately this didn't turn out very well either.
I followed the recipe exactly, except I had to half it because my mixer won't handle the full thing. That led to needing to measure a quarter of a tablespoon. Does anyone have a 1/4 Tablespoon??? I don't. Unfortunately I didn't work out that 1/4 tablespoon is 3/4 of a teaspoon until just now (and I call myself an engineer...sad). So I just put in 1 T and a scant teaspoon (of yeast and lemon juice).
My scant teaspoon of lemon juice.
Those were two mistakes. I think my other mistake was being too anal about the times they listed in the recipe. When it said to "add the water all at once and mix for one minute" I only mixed for one minute even though there was still dry ingredients that weren't incorporated. I was worried about over mixing the dough.
The picture above is after letting it sit for 10 minutes (the sponging process).
The dough worked out okay, maybe a bit dry. I don't know... Plus I could use some lessons on how to shape my loaves. The first loaf I just sort of squished into the pan. The second one I tried to roll a bit and then "squish into the corners" like the recipe suggests.
The last mistake is the mistake I continually make over and over again...not being patient enough when the bread is rising. This recipe had some kind of quick rise approach. You let it raise in the oven after heating the oven to lukewarm for 1 minute. My understanding of lukewarm is body temperature - 98/99 degrees. Well, the lowest my oven will go is 170. So I set it for that. But in retrospect I think most ovens low temperature is 200, so I probably should have pre-heated the oven at 200 for one minute.
The recipe says that it should only take 10 - 15 minutes for the dough to rise to the top of the pans. I let my bread sit for thirty minutes and it seemed to be at the top of the pans, see below.
Of course, it's only to the top of the pan if you squat down and look at the pans straight one. Looking down, like in the picture, the dough isn't quite to the top. It wasn't as risen as much as I wanted but again being very literal (and impatient) to the recipe I went ahead and baked it.
The recipe said it should take 30 minutes to bake but for this part I wasn't trusting the recipe. I knew that if I checked the temperature of the bread I could be sure it was cooked. It wasn't. I gave it 15 more minutes and got to 190. I love having a surefire way of knowing something is right! I need something like that for every step.
They aren't as beautiful and brown as the picture on the website, so maybe I should have gone longer? The bread came right out of the pans, which was good, since I didn't have the Baker's Secret loaf pans.
Anyway, I ended up with two pretty dense but not bad flavored bread...
Well, I'm going to have to try this recipe again. Next time I'm going to just use the traditional (let the dough sit in a warm space until double in size) raising method. I'm determined to get this right!!
The biggest problem I have with baking - especially yeast breads - is that you can't just follow the recipe. There is always some kind of "until it looks right" or "until it feels right" step. Is a lukewarm oven a different temperature than lukewarm water? Lukewarm seems like a pretty useless term.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip. Next time I try it I'll depend more on my insticts than on the recipe. Thinking about it I'm pretty sure I had too much flour too. It's really, really dry down here (around 14% humidity) so I need to add it slowly and make sure I don't have too much. Maybe if I try this enough times I'll get the right feel for it and be able to turn out yummy perfect bread!
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