I've been absent for a while. After Thanksgiving, my family and I went to Belize for 10 days. It was glorious except for one tiny horrible thing that happened the first day, the day we arrived, but that's being taken care of soon enough. But now I'm back. And I'm still unemployed. And things don't look too good on the job hunt but there are more important things to talk about.
Part I of this big catch up blog is about BREAD.
While I was in Belize, a crazy part of my brain decided that I should try to make bread there. Why not? Right? The weather is perfect for proofing (89 degrees in the shade). They have yeast there. I have nothing but time to wait for the flour to rise. Somehow, when I was waxing laconic about the beauties of baking fresh bread on a tropical island, I completely forgot about the part where I have to turn on the oven to 450 degrees and then bake it for an hour. That's two hours minimum of 450 degree heat added to the already pretty hot weather.
I went to the local Super Buy and got a bag of flour. It was "bulk" flour weighted out into smaller packets. Imported, pre-packaged stuff is expensive so this was a very affordable option. However, the bag stated the brand and the weight/price. It didn't state whether it was corn flour (??) or regular flour. This is a problem because on the island of Ambergris Caye, corn flour is used a lot. The pupusas are made of flour, tortillas are made of corn flour (as well as wheat), but to my inexperienced, slanty Asian eyes, I could not tell the difference. Oh well. What could go wrong?
I got some packets of yeast. The ingredients are ridiculously simple: flour, salt, yeast, water. The first attempt with the packet of yeast did not go quite as expected. It turned out like it had in the past, where I FORGOT TO ACTIVATE the yeast. There are so many different types of yeast now! Even among the familiar American brands: Active, rapid rise, bread machine, etc. The most simple recipe calls for mixing all the dry ingredients, then adding the warmed water, stirring it, then letting it proof for a while. DO NOT TRY THIS with unfamiliar yeast. Because, this is what I did. And the thing DID NOT RISE. It's ok. The bread turned out to be this kind of nice, dense, flat bread with a crispy crust. It smelled artisan and was much better than the bread on the island. Except creole bread, but that comes later. Creole Bread is so so YUM.
The second attempt at bread went more smoothly. First, I got a measuring cup of warm water. Remember, if you can't stick your hand in it without grimacing from the heat, the yeast won't like it either. If you wouldn't bathe a baby in it, don't activate your yeast in it. (I've got to come up with something more catchy). I sprinkled the yeast over the top to dissolve. Again, I was too lazy to really wait for it to "prove" to me that it was still alive by bubbling. Tropical weather makes anyone lazy. But, one thing to look for when "activating" yeast is the smell. After the yeast is sprinkled on top (sprinkled, dumped, casually tossed, it's all the same!), it should smell like a freshly cracked baguette, steaming hot out of the oven.
The rest of the recipe is the same. Mix. Let it sit. Let it rise. There will be gases that build up. So if your mixing bowl has a lid (like the one I used while on vacation), it may POP towards the end of the 1st hour of proofing and scare your mother who is fiddling around in the kitchen, cutting up pineapples and papaya. In that case, assure her that it was just the bread dough. Keep calm, and carry on vacationing.
The second batch of dough proofed nicely, but there was not as much oven rise. It might have been because the dough was too wet. I didn't have a measuring cup so I did everything by eyeball. It turned out to be a dense, flat bread that spread to all corners of the baking tray. But still tasty.
What I learned from trying to bake bread in Belize: Bread flour is really important. The dough just didn't have the same consistency when I was mixing it. It continued to stay pretty sticky and wet. It never developed the gluten veil that I've learned to look for. The ball of dough also kept spreading out like goo. This could have been because I used too much water. And I didn't end up using the last packet of yeast because the thought of turning on the oven again was too much.
Baking since I've been back from Belize.
Since I've been back, I have made 4 batches of dough (and 1 batch of vanilla cupcakes). I know, I get around when it comes to baking. First batch I made at my parents house with bread flour from Costco that comes in a 50 lbs bag. I don't remember the name but it is not a designer flour. Second batch was made at Rob's house with King Arthur brand bread flour. Third batch was made at Pearl's house with Gold Medal Flour's Better for Bread flour. Fourth batch was made at Rob's house again with King Arthur bread flour.
The first batch is still sitting in the ice box at home. I drizzled a bit of extra virgin olive oil on top for flavor. I also used fresh cake yeast. A lot of fresh cake yeast. I had bought 3 of them before going on vacation. They needed to be used. Thus, I read somewhere that cake flour = 3x granular yeast. Somehow, I translated this into using all 3 cakes in a 6 cup flour batch of bread. In hindsight, this might have been a bit excessive. After all, the "thing" I "read" somewhere was referring to converting the weight of yeast for cake to granular. Not necessarily the amount needed to replace the rising power of yeast. So I have an over-yeasty-excited batch of dough. It's not a big deal. I can split it up in to smaller batches and use it as a starter for about 5x the dough. I'm not concerned. The dough proofed beautifully, nearly busting out of its container.
Second batch was baked the very same day it was make. I used nearly 2 cups of water with much more than 3 cups of bread flour. Unfortunately I don't know the exact measurements because I was looking for a specific texture. This dough turned out beautifully. It was perfect. It was elastic, stretchy, not sticky. The flavor was wonderful. It had large, beautiful holes inside like artisan bread should. I also baked it slightly differently. I didn't use the steam pan. Instead I misted the top of the dough before putting it in the oven. I also put it on the lower rack of the oven rather than the top-middle rack. This change resulted in great oven rise. Some of the best oven rise I've gotten. Rob's oven is not convection. It seems to work better. I don't know why I got caught up in the convection hype but it is not worth it when it comes to baking bread and cupcakes. According to a bread baking book, the ideal situation is to put the dough on the lower rack for the first 15 mins for that oven rise, then to move it to the top rack for a crisp crust. I forgot about that second step so this bread spent its entire life on the bottom rack. This resulted in a slightly, slightly burnt bottom crust. Only slightly. And now I know not to keep it on the bottom rack. We put some sliced onions and ground up dried rosemary on the dough before baking it. It smelled like foccaccia. Yum. And then halfway through baking, when I should have moved the dough to the top half of the oven, I sprinkled some grated emmental and greyeur cheese on top. So delicious. We had it for dinner with some ridiculous Toscano Framani salami ($27.95 per pound! How is that possible?), some more greyuer cheese, late season tomatoes from my garden. I supplemented with some greek yogurt and salsa. I know it's a strange combination. But it's really nutritious, doesn't taste too terrible, and has helped me lose about 35 lbs. Of course, this high protein diet could secretly be growing kidney stones in my body, but so far, so good. I'm happy with losing weight.
Third batch of dough was made at Pearl's house. I made a sort of big fat mess in her kitchen because I accidentally ripped the paper bag of Gold Medal Better for Bread Flour. Not entirely ripped apart, but near the top, there is now an inconvenient hole. Pearl has the most darling measuring spoons. They are black ceramic and shaped like a cat's face. Knowing me, I would break the ceramic immediately by accident. But they were nice to use. I also used her orange colored Kitchenaid Mixer. It was not as big as mine. It has the flip up head and the screw on base. Typically, I'm not really fond of using the mixer for bread. The mixer tends to do things too uniformly and makes recognizing texture difficult. But in this case, we used the really slow "stir" setting and kept stopping it to touch the dough. The "stir" setting is suppose to be used for gentle incorporation, to prevent flour and ingredients from flying out of the bowl. Strangely enough, the "stir" setting kept throwing flour out of the bowl. Violently. And surprisingly. Every few revolutions, it would just toss out some flour. Willy-nilly.
After the dough reached the correct texture (about 4 cups of flour to nearly 2 cups of warm water and 2 tsp of salt), I wrapped it in a plastic bag and put a sweatshirt over it. I set the bowl over their counter top wine chiller where the hum of the electric motor made it a cozy and warm. Unfortunately I had to leave and pick Rob up from work so I was unable to finish this. I left instructions with Pearl on how to bake the bread. Olive oil imparts such a nice flavor. She told me that this nice quality brand of olive oil was on sale at Safeway. I'll have to go take a look soon.
The third batch of dough was just completed about 30 mins ago. Because it's been really cold in San Francisco, I turned on the broiler for a few minutes while mixing the dough. Then, after wrapping the mixing bowl in a plastic bag and towels, I put it into the still warm oven that was now turned off. We will see how this batch comes out. It looks promising because the texture was completely correct. However, I did use a different type of yeast. When will I learn to stay consistent with something that is not broken? Sigh. This is rapid rise yeast and is suppose to work where all the dry ingredients are mixed, then the warm wet ingredients are added. I just couldn't resist fiddling with the yeast! There were these three sad little packets sitting in the fridge, just saying "please don't neglect us!" So I used on. One packet is nearly a tablespoon. And that is close enough for science.
When I want to be really precise, such as baking cakes, I do weigh my ingredients. I will dust off the balance (not just a scale, but a balance!), calculate the conversions of volume to weight, and then weigh it out. This is likely the reason my cakes turn out much more reliable than my bread. Cake failures are much more catastrophic and disgusting than bread failures. Rob will nearly always eat bread. But no one wants to eat bitter cupcakes. That only happened once.
And this concludes Part I of the catchup post that covers my exciting experience with bread. I don't know why I get so excited about baking. It really gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when I see the dough rise, and then the bread baking and rising more. I will post pictures. I just need to get in sync with my camera. My camera and I, we used to be like this (cross fingers). But now, we are more like orbiting planets around the sun.
Happy Sunday Football!
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