Baking!

Yesterday was baking day, and I tried a new recipe and a new technique, which I got from This Book.  The recipe is for "artisan" bread, and I have no idea what that means, but it was darn good.  It was better than good, actually.  It was heavenly.  The bread came out chewy with a delicious chewy/crunchy crust that was divine.  Swoon.  I used the basic whole grain dough recipe from the book, and I made a few mistakes that will endeavor to correct next time, but overall it was very easy.

 

Essentially, it takes 4 1/2 cups of all purpose flour, two cups of whole wheat flour, 1 tablespoon of salt, 2 tablespoons rapidrise yeast, and three cups of lukewarm water.  I subbed in a gluten flour for my mixture at about 1 tbsp per cup of regular flour. 

 

I made the dough in my mixer, and let it rise in my mixer bowl after I took the hook attachment out.  I don't think I let it rise quite long enough, or maybe I let it rise too long.  The recipe called for 2 hours of rising, but it doubled in size and took on a spongy appearance after only 45 minutes or so, so I waited another 20 minutes and then started shaping it.  Shaping was very difficult because this dough was quite wet and sticky.  (Another thing to think about for next time... a little less water?)  But, I got half the dough shaped into a sort of boule, admittedly a flattish one, and let it rise for another 40 minutes while the oven was heating up.  I think I didn't have enough rise because I couldn't get the dough to shape right. Here is where I made one of my mistakes.  I kept fiddling with the boule to try to get it more round, which involved tucking ends under to try to tighten it into a half dome shape.  But, since I had set the boule on sprinkled cornmeal to rise, every time I fiddled with it, I created pockets of cornmeal on the bottom of the loaf.  Whooops!

 

The key thing with this bread, though, seems to be the cooking method.  I don't have a baking stone, so I used my cast iron griddle.  I put it in the oven 40 minutes before baking while the oven was preheating, so it was hot when the shaped bread was ready to go in.  I also didn't have a "broiler pan" as described in the book, so a casserole dish full of water went on the bottom rack of the oven to create the steam effect.  Then, I had to slide the boule from the cornmeal-covered cookie sheet it was rising on onto the hot griddle without mishap, which was hard, but I managed.  It baked for about 30 minutes and came out... delicious!  Sooo good!

 

I highly recommend this. 

 

Next time, I will fiddle with the liquid proportions, the rising time, and the shaping to see if I can't make it even better.