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Saturday, April 3, 2010

Bread Bake-Off

By the title of this blog post it probably sounds like I took part in some sort of bread making competition. Not so. Recently I tried my hand at bread making and although I haven't yet made a loaf that wasn't edible I could certainly benefit from a lesson in bread making. When my friend Matt, a professional baker and author of Flour Powered, suggested a Bread Bake-Off I jumped at the chance!

We spent most of yesterday making 3 different types of bread. Two braided loaves of Challa for Easter, one loaf of Ciabatta to serve as Matt's bread for the week, and my request, a whole wheat sandwich loaf with a simple recipe.


The Challah won the beauty contest...

{Ready to Kneed}

{The First Rise}

{The Second Rise}

{Whole Wheat Loaf}

Unfortunately the whole wheat sandwich loaf didn't rise, our hunch, stale whole wheat flour, but who knows! We were pretty mad at that dough for not performing since it was the only loaf that was part of the lesson plan. I am determined to finagle one more lesson out of Matt and one more crack at the perfect, family friendly, simple loaf of sandwich bread.

...I did get to take home a loaf of the Challah and it's as delicious as it is beautiful!



5 comments:

  1. My sister just purchased a bread machine, its sort of cheating, but it still makes delicious bread :)

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  2. Gorgeous looking bread! I bet it tasted delicious. I recently got into a big bread making kick, and I now love homemade bread so much, I'm never going back to store bought, pre-sliced again. It just tastes SO good!

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  3. Oh my.. that Challah looks delectable!!

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  4. I haven't tried this yet, but check out this tip for whole wheat bread:

    http://southernfood.about.com/cs/breadmachine/a/breadmachine_2.htm
    "Whole grain breads will not rise as high as white breads. Add vital wheat gluten (found in the flour section of most grocery stores) to give whole grain flour a boost. "

    I made a bread with whole wheat pastry flour and unbleached white flour, and it rose very well!

    The first loaf is so pretty :)

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  5. Thought maybe you would like this:
    http://lusarytole.blogspot.com/
    Your bread looks yummy and this is an easy one...

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