The Great Bread Experiment
January 6, 2008
I have wanted to attempt making bread for a really long time. At least once a month I say I am going to do it. Well today I finally did.
I used the basic bread recipe from Jamie Oliver's 'Happy Days with the Naked Chef' because seemed the simplest and quickest of the recipes I had researched. None of that proofing for 15 hours crap. That wouldn't work for me, I'm more of an instant gratification type of girl.
Here we go:
Step 1: Put on a sexy apron. This is going to get messy so you may as well look good doing it.
Step 2: Gather your ingredients. Here I have bread flour, whole wheat flour, sea salt, yeast and I should have sugar but it got left out of the picture. You will also need 2 cups of lukewarm water.
Step 3. Read the label of the flour you are using before dumping it out on the counter and realizing it is the wrong one. Measure 6-8 cups of flour. I used 6. It was not enough.
Step 4: Make a well in the centre of your flour.
Step 5: Add 2 level tablespoons of sea salt and 2 level tablespoons of sugar to the centre of the well.
Step 6: Add half the water to the well.
Step 7: Add the yeast. For this recipe you need three 1/4 ounce packages. Also, make sure to use scissors to open the package. Otherwise you will have tiny yeast particles all over your kitchen, as you would see if this picture had been bigger.
Step 8: Stir those babies in. It will start to look like gross porridge.
Step 9. Start adding more flour. At this point my well wall broke and water went everywhere so I just smooshed everything into a pile of sticky goo. It was not pretty at all. It should have looked like this:
Step 10: Finish incorporating the flour. The dough will look lumpy like Britney Spears' thighs, but don't worry, we will fix that later.
Step 11. Knead. Knead until your arms feel like they are going to fall off and you're screaming for sweet death to come. At this point you can cry, wail or curse out your dough. Don't even think about stopping until your dough looks like this:
(Smooth and elastic-like)
At this point you might want to go have a nap or go make yourself a sandwich. You need to leave the dough until it has doubled in size, anywhere from 30 mins to an hour should be good. I found it took the latter.
Step 13: Punch that dough down. Make it pay for all that kneading. A 30 second violent beating should be just about right.
Step 14: Reconstructive surgery. Shape the dough as you wish. I split the white dough into two and shaped one half into a pseudo-focaccia with parmesan and oregano on top and the other half I dumped into a loaf pan. The wheat dough I made while the white dough was rising, I shaped into a boule with some fancy slashes on top. Place them on a floured baking sheet.
Step 15: Let them rise again for about an hour. This will allow the dough to get fluffy and delicious. I started to preheat my oven at this point so they had a nice toasty place to fatten up.
Step 16: Bake. Now because I didn't follow Jamie's exact recipes I kind of had to guesstimate at the baking times for my bread. I was basing mine on the focaccia, the walnut bread and the banana honey bread out of his book, so I used those times to start. I first baked the parmesan-oregano bread at 350F for 25 minutes, but the bottom was still a bit doughy so I put it in for another 10 minutes. Then I baked the wheatie ball at 350F for 30 minutes, it looked like a giant muffin and had cracked around the bottom, but it didn't seem done (as it's supposed to sound hollow when tapped) so I cranked the oven to 375F and threw the loaf bread in with it for another 20 minutes. The loaf bread actually rose for almost 2 hours before I put it in the oven as I baked it last. I'm hoping that made it light and fluffy.
The finished product!
The parmesan-oregano bread is delicious, crisp on the outside and chewy and dense on the inside. We've already eaten half of it. I haven't tried the other two yet as that is a lot of bread to eat, so maybe I will slice them up and freeze them tomorrow. I still can't believe these came from my own two hands. I'm quite impressed with myself and can definitely feel an addiction coming on.
I know what I'll be snacking on when Nigella Express premiers tonight that's for sure!
I used the basic bread recipe from Jamie Oliver's 'Happy Days with the Naked Chef' because seemed the simplest and quickest of the recipes I had researched. None of that proofing for 15 hours crap. That wouldn't work for me, I'm more of an instant gratification type of girl.
Here we go:
Step 1: Put on a sexy apron. This is going to get messy so you may as well look good doing it.
Step 2: Gather your ingredients. Here I have bread flour, whole wheat flour, sea salt, yeast and I should have sugar but it got left out of the picture. You will also need 2 cups of lukewarm water.
Step 3. Read the label of the flour you are using before dumping it out on the counter and realizing it is the wrong one. Measure 6-8 cups of flour. I used 6. It was not enough.
Step 4: Make a well in the centre of your flour.
Step 5: Add 2 level tablespoons of sea salt and 2 level tablespoons of sugar to the centre of the well.
Step 6: Add half the water to the well.
Step 7: Add the yeast. For this recipe you need three 1/4 ounce packages. Also, make sure to use scissors to open the package. Otherwise you will have tiny yeast particles all over your kitchen, as you would see if this picture had been bigger.
Step 8: Stir those babies in. It will start to look like gross porridge.
Step 9. Start adding more flour. At this point my well wall broke and water went everywhere so I just smooshed everything into a pile of sticky goo. It was not pretty at all. It should have looked like this:
Step 10: Finish incorporating the flour. The dough will look lumpy like Britney Spears' thighs, but don't worry, we will fix that later.
Step 11. Knead. Knead until your arms feel like they are going to fall off and you're screaming for sweet death to come. At this point you can cry, wail or curse out your dough. Don't even think about stopping until your dough looks like this:
(Smooth and elastic-like)Step 12: Flour the top of your dough and put in it a bowl. Plastic wrap doesn't stick to plastic bowls so just throw a clean tea towel over it and put it in a warm place.
At this point you might want to go have a nap or go make yourself a sandwich. You need to leave the dough until it has doubled in size, anywhere from 30 mins to an hour should be good. I found it took the latter.
Step 13: Punch that dough down. Make it pay for all that kneading. A 30 second violent beating should be just about right.
Step 14: Reconstructive surgery. Shape the dough as you wish. I split the white dough into two and shaped one half into a pseudo-focaccia with parmesan and oregano on top and the other half I dumped into a loaf pan. The wheat dough I made while the white dough was rising, I shaped into a boule with some fancy slashes on top. Place them on a floured baking sheet.
Step 15: Let them rise again for about an hour. This will allow the dough to get fluffy and delicious. I started to preheat my oven at this point so they had a nice toasty place to fatten up.
Step 16: Bake. Now because I didn't follow Jamie's exact recipes I kind of had to guesstimate at the baking times for my bread. I was basing mine on the focaccia, the walnut bread and the banana honey bread out of his book, so I used those times to start. I first baked the parmesan-oregano bread at 350F for 25 minutes, but the bottom was still a bit doughy so I put it in for another 10 minutes. Then I baked the wheatie ball at 350F for 30 minutes, it looked like a giant muffin and had cracked around the bottom, but it didn't seem done (as it's supposed to sound hollow when tapped) so I cranked the oven to 375F and threw the loaf bread in with it for another 20 minutes. The loaf bread actually rose for almost 2 hours before I put it in the oven as I baked it last. I'm hoping that made it light and fluffy.
The finished product!
The parmesan-oregano bread is delicious, crisp on the outside and chewy and dense on the inside. We've already eaten half of it. I haven't tried the other two yet as that is a lot of bread to eat, so maybe I will slice them up and freeze them tomorrow. I still can't believe these came from my own two hands. I'm quite impressed with myself and can definitely feel an addiction coming on.
I know what I'll be snacking on when Nigella Express premiers tonight that's for sure!
posted by kelly.dee at 12:48 p.m. | Permalink
2 Comments:
At November 4, 2008 at 6:23 p.m.,
Hey, I've just read your 'artisan bread in five minutes' entry and thought I'd pop over and check out your bread experiment... The bread looks fabulous! I bet it was delicious. But I'm with you on being able to get bread done quickly - the speed of it all is quite astonishing. Thanks for your clear instructions here too - it's a simple recipe which produces great bread. Brilliant!
The bread looks great!!