As has been noted by many scholars, now is not the point in my life with lots of available time for, say, cooking and blogging. And I persist! But I started this recipe without realizing what a time-commitment it was, and only by sheer chance did things work out for me to do all the steps. Make a sponge, which you let rise over a night or two, and then make a dough which gets not one, not two, but THREE rises! For heaven's sake, Beard, what kinds of free-time loafers (pun intended) do you think we are! He also exhorts us to line the oven with heavy tiles, which I didn't do, and a pan of water, which I did. And to line a baking sheet with cornmeal, but last time the cornmeal burnt and smelled bad, so I used parchment instead. Furthermore, this is the first recipe that has required "hard wheat" flour. Laurel assures me that he means essentially high-protein flour, and that I can use bread flour with impunity. So I did.
Verdicts on all these things:
Heavy tiles—jury's still out
Pan of water—can't tell if it helped at all
Parchment vs Cornmeal—parchment seemed fine, if less rustic
Bread Flour—didn't seem to make much difference
Three rises—honestly, I thought that (plus the very moist dough) would give the bread some nice rustic big bubbles inside, but it didn't. Lovely, dense crumb, but no big bubbles.
Overall: Again, a fine tasting, beautiful white bread. He says to bake "until the bread is a delicious-looking dark color," and I was a little gun-shy so the bread was a bit underdone on the bottom. The dough was nice to work with and all, but took forevah. It's a nice bread, but again, not particularly better than the Basic White Bread, and way more work. Or at least, way more time. Amelia thinks there won't be a really exciting recipe until we get out of white-bread territory, so perhaps we'll do something more adventurous next time.
hey you two, in case you're wondering who Torque Story is, this is your "Aunt" Geneva, and I can definitely confirm for you that "hard weight flour" is regular ole bread flour. (You know I was a food writer in my other life, don't you?)
ReplyDeleteEven all-purpose flour probably has enough protein for your purposes. It's only in the South, where the local flour might be soft-wheat for tender biscuit making, is it an issue.
(And yeah, in case you visited my blog and wondered about that jewelry making, it's a hobby I've taken up in the past couple of years.)
Three rises does the opposite of rustic big bubbles. Every time you punch and/or knead, you break the big bubbles up into more little bubbles, making a finer crumb. Also, you further develop the gluten. Together I think this usually makes for more rising overall, in smaller, stronger, more uniform bubbles.
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