the bread project
Dec. 9th, 2007 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
topazSummary: I want to learn to make a better bread. My mother, like her father before her, is fantastic at bread. I don't seem to have inherited the knack. My boys have grown up believing that bread is something you buy in a store, and it's depressing and discouraging.
So I am attempting to teach myself to bake an irresistable loaf of bread. The kind of chewy, crusty bread that takes you by the throat and begs to be eaten. The kind that must be baked in at least two loaves at a time because the first one disappears within minutes of coming out of the oven.
I tried several iterations of an oatmeal molasses bread I found in one of our old Sunset cookbooks, figuring that if I want a chewy, sweet loaf, oatmeal bread is the way to go, but it kept coming out dry and crumbly. (See what I mean? I must be cursed if I have figured out how to make oatmeal bread dry and coarse.)
Tonight I decided to go back to first principles and made the white sandwich loaf in The New Best Recipe. The comments in the book were very interesting -- that most of the loaves they tried need very little kneading after all, and they found that they generally came out better when kneaded by machine than by hand. My first effort is currently cooling on the rack, and while I fear that I overbaked it again, it seems to have come out a perfect size and shape. Here's hoping.
So I am attempting to teach myself to bake an irresistable loaf of bread. The kind of chewy, crusty bread that takes you by the throat and begs to be eaten. The kind that must be baked in at least two loaves at a time because the first one disappears within minutes of coming out of the oven.
I tried several iterations of an oatmeal molasses bread I found in one of our old Sunset cookbooks, figuring that if I want a chewy, sweet loaf, oatmeal bread is the way to go, but it kept coming out dry and crumbly. (See what I mean? I must be cursed if I have figured out how to make oatmeal bread dry and coarse.)
Tonight I decided to go back to first principles and made the white sandwich loaf in The New Best Recipe. The comments in the book were very interesting -- that most of the loaves they tried need very little kneading after all, and they found that they generally came out better when kneaded by machine than by hand. My first effort is currently cooling on the rack, and while I fear that I overbaked it again, it seems to have come out a perfect size and shape. Here's hoping.
