BBA #26, 27, 28, 29, 30

It's been a while since I've posted a BBA challenge post.  Partially this is because I've been stalled for about a year on the sourdough starter.  I tried and failed a few times, then just forgot about it in the chaos of moving and all.  However, I recently visited a friend who gave me some of her starter, so I used my baby "Zeke" to get me going on the challenge again.

However, when I started up with the sourdoughs, I realized that somehow I lost my photographs from the last four breads that I didn't remember to post when I made them!  I've switched computers in the meantime, and maybe they're still here, but I haven't been able to find them.  So here's a quick write-up on those four (what I remember), and my first sourdough.

#26, Poolish Baguette

This one was okay, but if I'm going to spend the time to make a poolish, I see no reason to not be making Pain a l'ancienne instead!

#27, Portuguese Sweet Bread

I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but I don't like sweet breads.  However, on a TDY before I made this bread, DH had a sandwich with Kahlua pork and sweet bread, so I made the pork at the same time as I made this loaf.  They went pretty well together.

#28, Potato Rosemary Bread

Without a doubt, this bread is one of the contenders for "Best Recipe in BBA!"  I made two loaves and gave one to my (then pregnant) friend.  It might have been the hormones, but she tore into this like there was no tomorrow!  I don't think her husband got to try any, and I don't blame her, it's that good!  As it happens, I finally have leftover mashed potatoes in the fridge.  I'm going to make this again ASAP.

#29, Pugliese

Honestly, not particularly memorable.  Maybe if I had used the durum flour it would have made a difference.

#30, Sourdough (pictured above)

Yum yum yum yum yum!  Sourdough is a favorite in this house and this recipe did not let us down - apart from being even better the second day than the first!  I did make a few mistakes working with my baby Zeke.  I need to listen to the dough more than the timeframe given in the recipe.  As a result, the bread was a little heavy and dense, but I think I can fix it next time!  I also didn't get the crust and color that I'd want, but since I'm working without my best baking materials (notably, my baking stone), I figure that's not my fault!

BBA #25 - Pizza Napoletana

Pardon the smooshed appearance!

This pizza dough was absolutely fantastic!  The only trouble I had is that I found it very difficult to shape.  It tended to tear, I'm not sure why.

I made two different pizzas.  The first looked a lot better, since I used plenty of cornmeal to slide it onto the baking stone - unfortunately, I used so much cornmeal that I sent black smoke billowing throughout the house.  Between that and how good it tasted, I didn't get any photos of the first pizza.  This second one I tried to avoid the whole burning-thing, and used too little cornmeal instead, resulting in this smooshy look.  I must practice!

BBA #24 - Pannetone

Here's my first complete failure.  After two attempts, I still couldn't get the seed culture going, so this bread will officially wait until I get to the sourdough section.  Then I shall reattack!

BBA #23 - Pane Sicliano

The 23rd bread in the BBA challenge and I still have a while to go!  This bread was a lesson in reading comprehension for me.  I'm going to blame it on The Husband finally being home and messing with my schedule.  I had several reading comprehension issues, but the bread survived it!

The first reading comprehension came Saturday as I mixed up the pate fermente.  As I was mixing, I read the formula again only to find that this is a three day bread, not a two day bread.  Ooops.  Fortunately, I only work afternoons on Monday and the bread could be baked before going into work.  I'm not sure what I did to the pate fermente, but it came out a lot wetter than usual!

Onto day two.  I took the pate out to lose its chill.  It's supposed to sit out for an hour - well, we went to run some errands, and The Husband multiplied "some" into "many," and it was over two hours before I got back to the bread, which had a distinctly yeasty smell.  In a hurry, I mis en placed everything, looked over the formula again....  Ooops.  Seminola flour?  How did I miss that?!  I had no seminola flour.  So I dug through my cupboards and ended up using oat flour instead.  I proceeded to knead the dough.  It rose quite swiftly and was ready for shaping.

The shaping part was totally fun.  This qualifies as one of my favorite shapes, along with the epi and fougasse.  Simply put, the dough was formed into baguettes, then spiraled in from each end simultaneously to create the traditional "S" shape - though my boss asked if it was supposed to be a treble clef, which gives me an idea to try next time I am experimenting!

This morning, I set up the oven for hearth baking, explained to The Husband about the steam pans, and popped the bread in.  Halfway through I rotated the pan 180 degrees as always.  Five minutes away from my timer going off, I said to myself "Self, when doing hearth baking, don't you usually reduce the heat after the first minute or two?"  "Why yes, self, usually I do.  I wonder why this formula didn't?  Let's see."  After rereading the formula:  "Oh.  It did say to.  Ooops."  And I swooped to pull out the bread.

Despite all that this poor bread suffered, it actually came out quite tasty, something both The Husband and the coworkers agree upon!  I shall have to try it again when I actually have seminola flour, though!

BBA #22 - Pain de Campagne

Well, here's a bread that I'm not going to be making again.  The taste was just boring.  Meh!  It was a pretty standard recipe, using pate fermente.  The only change was 1/3 cup of "different" flour.  I went with wheat, though you also could have used rye or something more exotic.

Despite the taste being boring, it was a lot of fun to get to mess around with different shaping techniques.  I made three different shapes today.  The epi is still my favorite, but I think the fougasse has potential as well!

BBA #21 - Pain a l'ancienne

I am in love. Add this one to my favorites list from this challenge! The best part? This bread is easy to make!

On the first day, the ingredients are combined. This is not an enriched dough - all there is is flour, salt, yeast, and ice-cold water. These are stirred for several minutes (not kneaded) and then refrigerated overnight.

The next day, the dough must warm for a bit to finish rising. Once it has doubled, though, you simply flour it and turn it out gently, patting it into a rough rectangle. The rectangle is carefully sliced into six, and the baguettes are baked three at a time on the bread stone.

Even best, this is a forgiving bread. I smooshed and stretched and dropped baguettes all over the place, but it didn't matter! This bread is intended to look rustic.

Inside, the crumb has wonderful holes, but the best part is the cool, creamy texture of it. I've never tasted anything like that before, much less anything that came out of my oven!

This is a hit!

BBA #20 - Multi-grain Bread Extraordinare

Last weekend's bread was this multi-grain bread. This bread incorporated a soaker, which is a technique we've been using from the get-go in this challenge. We were given much more leeway in what grains to use in the soaker, though. I ended up going with a mix of polenta and quinoa.

I've not done much work with grains before, and it was a bit of an effort to get everything incorporated into the dough (the rice was particularly irritating). My hands and arms were definitely sore by the time I gave up on kneading and called it a day.

The bread rose nicely and baked to a nice golden-brown. I didn't get to eat much of it, since I took it all into work, but I did use it for my tuna salad. Quite tasty, and perhaps a little better for me than regular bread. I'm still not a huge fan of sandwich loaves though. Perhaps next time I'll use the dough to make rolls.

BBA #19 - Marbled Rye Bread

Wow! This bread is a winner! I was a little nervous after reading some other people's blogs on this bread, but mine came out fantastic! The dough was very supple and enjoyable to work with and the bread was quick - only five or so hours from mixing to pulling the bread out of the oven.

This rye bread tastes fantastic. It's not dry at all, and the hint of molasses is just the right touch to complement the rye flavor.

The coolest part of this bread is how awesome it looks with the marbling and swirling. This is accomplished by making two separate doughs. To my surprise, there was only one difference between the two, and that was a coloring additive to the dark dough. Caramel coloring was recommended, but since I didn't have any available I used an alternative - two tablespoons of cocoa powder dissolved in two tablespoons of water. Not as dark as I'd imagine it would be with the caramel coloring, but not bad at all.I used two different shaping methods and two different baking methods for these loaves, as you can see from the pictures. I'd intended to use a loaf pan going in, but the formula mentioned that free-form baking was preferred. My free-form loaf got pretty fat in the middle, but still quite nice.

The best part was marbling. For my free-form loaf, I went with the actual marbling technique, which consists of chopping the doughs into small pieces, mixing them together, and smushing them up into one big lump of dough. You can see the marbling results at the top of this post.

The second method I used was the swirl method. For this one, the light and dark doughs are divided in half (after being split in half for the two loaves, of course). Each piece is then rolled into an oblong. These are layered together, then rolled up lengthwise. The picture is a little blurry, but shows the swirl quite nicely.

BBA #18 - Light Wheat Bread

Here's a nice, simple loaf of bread. No pre-ferments, nothing fancy. I doubled this recipe to make two loaves, since I had need of one to give away.

I was surprised at some of the add-ins for this bread. I guess I didn't expect it to be enriched. The honey makes sense, but the really weird one was powdered milk. Go figure. But it tastes good, so I guess it works!

This bread was very relaxing to knead. It was quite smooth - no dealing with sticky-ickyness. Since I'd doubled the recipe, there was a LOT of it, though! Look at that monster!Here are my lovely loaves, cresting the pan just before baking.Nothing better than a slice of warm wheat bread with honey butter!

BBA #17 - Lavash Crackers

Here's a BBA first for me... I liked this recipe so much that I went off and made a whole 'nother batch the very next day! But I'm jumping the gun a bit here.

This formula is very simple. Essentially, it's a pita dough. Flour, honey, oil, yeast, etc. In fact, you can make pitas with this, and I did use half of the dough for that.

After mixing, kneading, and one rise, this dough is rolled out into a paper thin rectangle. And I do mean paper. It's shocking how big such a tiny ball of dough can get! When you're first mixing the flours and other ingredients together, it's definitely the smallest amount of dough we've worked with thus far.

Anyway, the resulting rectangle is carefully transferred onto a pan (not as hard as you would think) and sprinkled with spices. I used a base of maple pepper and cayenne, with some poppy seeds, sesame seeds and sea salt for contrast. The crackers are then baked at a low temperature for 20 minutes or so. Once they cool, they are nice and crackly. You can shatter them after baking or slice them pre-bake into the shapes you want!

I don't really like crackers. But I could eat these all day! They're great with some port salut spread on top, but even better just plain.

BBA #16 - Kaiser Rolls

Yet another dough with preferment. The preferment really is a great idea though, so little work for so much more flavor.

Honestly, this dough was nothing special, so this post will be brief. The best part was shaping it. Traditional kaiser shaping involves complex folding and layering. Modern kaiser shaping involves buying a tool specifically for that purpose. Fortunately, BBA gives us a middle of the road opportunity, which does not require extreme amounts of work or any amount of money, yet still looks pretty darned good.

To shape these rolls, each section of dough was rolled out into a rope. The rope was then knotted, and the free ends tucked around again. I was dubious at first, but they look fantastic!

As far as taste goes, these are alright. Challah rolls are still my favorite for sandwiches, though.

The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread

BBA #15 - Italian Bread

It's been a few weeks, thanks to the annual Anchorage Folk Festival (which is tons of fun, by the way!), but I am back with BBA! The fifteenth bread is Italian bread. This bread is very similar to the previous French bread, but the dough is enhanced with a bit of sugar, a bit of olive oil, and a bit of malt powder.

I started with a biga, which is a preferment very similar to last time's pate fermente. Refrigerated overnight and everything. My biga came out of the fridge with several large bubbles - I don't know if that was supposed to happen!

After letting the biga warm for an hour or so, I chopped it into bits and mixed it with the rest of the ingredients.
I found this dough to be fairly stiff. After 16 minutes and no windowpane test, I gave up and set it to rise. It doubled very quickly, so I split it in half and shaped each half into a batard and left it to proof again on my nifty bread thingy while I got the oven ready. Once the bread was ready, I slashed it - fairly awkwardly, I might add; I need to work on that - and popped it in the oven.

The bread browned nicely and is quite soft. The holes in the crumb are tiny, at least on the loaf I sliced open. I have higher hopes for the other loaf - it looks puffier!

BBA #14 - French Bread

So, I had tons of "prep" pictures for this bread. Until I realized that I didn't have a memory card in my camera. Ooops!

Anyway, I was pretty nervous going into this bread. I was concerned about getting the crispy crust, the moist crumb - in short, getting artisian bread out of my little home-oven. But that's what this challenge is all about, right?

This dough starts with a pre-ferment. I used the pate fermentee, so Friday I mixed up a basic dough - flour, salt, yeast and water. After a rise, I popped it into the refrigerator. After that, you can use it anytime in the next three days. I waited two.

First, you let the pate fermentee warm up a bit. Then it needs to be cut into small pieces so that it can be incorporated into the final dough more easily. To the pate fermentee, I added more flour, salt, water and yeast, mixing it into a ball. Mine was fairly dry so I had to add more water. Then it was time to knead. And knead. And knead. After 20 minutes, my dough was smooth, tacky but not sticky, but still nowhere near passing the windowpane test. Eventually, I gave up and set it to rise.

The dough doubled in an hour. Following instructions, I gently degassed it and let it double again, about another hour. The dough is then cut in three, careful to degass as little as possible, and shaped into batards, which are sort of rough torpedo shapes. Then I let them rest for a few minutes before shaping them into baguettes - long and skinny. I let them proof for another hour in their little couches before popping them onto the very hot cookie sheet that I use since I am still lacking a stone.They came out beautiful, with a lovely crunchy crust. The color could be better, I suppose, but since it's the best I've ever gotten, I'm not complaining!

The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread

BBA #13 - Focaccia

I have to say, I wasn't sure it would be possible to love a bread more than I loved the challah. But, ladies and gentlemen, focaccia has done it! This bread was beyond amazing and was a huge hit at work as well.

Now, this is definitely an enriched bread, but it's the kind I like. We're not talking sugars and eggs, we're talking olive oil and herbs. Specifically, herbed olive oil - which is easily made by warming up some oil with your choice of herbs. I used mostly Italian herbs, plus cayenne.

Meanwhile, you get to mix up the dough. This is a very wet dough, no kneading required. Just stirring. The dough is turned onto a floured board and gently folded in thirds much like the ciabatta.


After the folding process, some oil is spread on a pan. The dough is placed atop, and topped with some of that lovely herbed oil. Then comes the fun part. Using your finger tips, you poke the dough gently to spread it out over the pan.

Look at those bubbles!

Now comes the hard part - overnight refrigeration. Heartbreaking, I know, but worth it for the flavor.

The next day, more oil is applied, more finger poking commences and then comes the moment when you bake it. You can add toppings and everything!

Now, I have to say - if you are going to eat this straight out of the oven, no toppings are needed. The next day or so, they're okay. And since this makes so very much focaccia, I topped half of mine and left the other half plain. Delicioso!

Next time I make this, I think I will either omit or cut down on the oil beneath the bread, as I find I like a crispier crust. But overall? Not much else to change - this is a winner!

BBA #12 - English Muffins

The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread

I was really excited going into this - even though I rarely buy English muffins these days, I have many fond memories of them from my childhood. I meant to make these before The Husband left again, but slacked off. Oh well.

The dough was pretty fun to work with, nice and smooth. I did not, however, keep my dough wet enough. More on that later.

After rising, the dough is divided into 6 sections and each is shaped into a small boule. They rise again!

Most of the cooking of this bread is done in a skillet instead of the oven, though they do get finished in the oven. It's neat to be able to watch them cook!
This is where I realized that my dough wasn't wet enough. As you can see above, the muffins didn't spread out at all in the pan, and stayed quite round and thick. Still, they did brown nicely.I also did not get the much coveted "nooks and crannies" in my muffins, but they still tasted good! I don't know that I will be making them again, not until I figure out how to fix some of the troubles I had!

BBA #11 - Cranberry-Walnut Celebration Bread

The observant among you will notice that, while my bread has a lot of cranberries, the walnuts are decidedly lacking. That's because I didn't use them. Sorry, walnut fans!

Anyway, I think this is the last "sweet" bread for a while. Huzzah! Quite frankly, I just can't eat sweet breads like I do basic breads. I think it's because they don't go so well with cheese, and cheese is the best.



This bread was very "meh" for me. There was nothing new in the preparation - we've mixed in berries before in the cinnamon raisin bread. The braiding was just like the challah. Oh! The recipe called for something like a tablespoon and a half of lemon or orange extract. I used orange and it's a bit overpowering. Definitely cutting it down if I make this bread again.

I moved the oven rack higher, to avoid the toasty bottom that my challah got. It was a good thing I did, this bread cooked quickly for me, too!

Anyway, the bread is tasty enough, especially with a dollop of apple butter.

BBA #10 - Cornbread

The BBA is, with one exception, a book of yeast breads. This cornbread is the exception. It's a quick bread, using baking powder and baking soda as leaveners. Looking at the recipe, I wasn't sure what to think. First, it only uses 1 cup of cornmeal. Second, it uses whole corn kernels, which I am not generally a fan of. And third, there's bacon. Now, I like bacon, but it just seems weird to me!

As a quick bread, this bread was simple, easy, and fast to make. It did require an overnight soaker of buttermilk and cornmeal, but apart from that it was very much a "mix it, toss it in the pan, and bake" recipe. I ended up soaking my cornmeal for an extended length of time, due to some time confusion on when I'd actually make the bread. It worked alright, though!

This bread is very sweet. Surprisingly, I really didn't mind the corn kernels as much as I do in other recipes. The bacon, however, didn't add anything at all to the bread. If I make it again, I will probably skip the bacon.

While this isn't a bread that I would just eat alone, it is a very good companion bread for a meal - particularly some chili! The sweetness combines perfectly with the spice in the chili, creating the perfect mouthful!

BBA #8 - Cinnamon Rolls

This week the Husband has an exercise to deal with - basically, lots of time at work. So he requested some goodies to bring in for the guys. As cinnamon rolls were next on my list and I didn't much want to have them around my house, this seemed perfect! Of course, less than perfect was trying to cram a whole bread into the 4-5 hours in between the end of work and bed-time. But it all worked out in the end!

The dough-mixing went very smoothly. I was able to use my hand-mixer to cream the butter and sugars together. The actual kneading went super fast - to my surprise, instead of the 12-15 minutes the book suggested, the dough was passing the windowpane test before 10 minutes were up. I set it to rise then, which was silly move #1. The dough, despite passing the test, was still quite chilly. I'm blaming that on the fact that it didn't rise much. However, being on a tight schedule, I went ahead anyway.

The dough was very easy to roll out, but I do recommend flouring the counter first. It did stick a little. I did have trouble rolling the dough. It kept wanting to fold instead of roll! But eventually I ended up with a log (though the middle was much fatter than the end!). Slice, slice, slice, and there was a tray of cinnamon buns ready to rise.

Eventually.

Sometime.

I think...

Well, eventually I gave up and popped them in the oven. Didn't seem to harm them at all, they still came out tasty and fluffy!
The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread


Next time, I think I'll try making the sticky bun version, largely so that I can make my own grilled stickies in true Penn State fashion! Maybe even for Christmas day, if I'm really ambitious.

One thing I wasn't a big fan of - the fondant topping recipe the book provided. It was far too sweet for my tastes!

In other news, I'm right on track to reach the cranberry celebration bread for Christmas. But before then, cinnamon walnut bread and corn bread!

BBA #7 - Ciabatta

I love ciabatta. Love, love, love, love, love.

That said, this bread was a bit intimidating from the get-go. Wet dough, me mixing only by hand... and I've read the accounts of those BBAers who have gone before me. Bubbles? Said most of them. What bubbles?

Actually, it was probably a good thing that I'd read the other blogs, so that I wasn't super depressed with my own mini-bubbles. But I am getting ahead of myself.

I started last night with a poolish, which I had used previously for BBA #2. Unfortunately, I'd been making bread earlier that day as well so all of my bowls were dirty. I loaded up the dishwasher, scavenged a bowl out of the camping supplies, and got my poolish bubbling happily before popping it into its chilly refrigerated home. Fast-forward to this morning.

I wandered into the kitchen, put on my apron, got out my flour and other ingredients, opened the dishwasher to take out some freshly washed bowls...

Oh. Apparently I forgot the all-important step of actually turning on the dishwasher last night.

Ooops.

So there I was, scrubbing dried bread-dough-bits out of a bowl. Not the way I wanted to start my day!

After that little mishap though, things proceeded smoothly. The recipe given called for 6 tablespoons of water, plus whatever was needed to make the dough the right consistancy. The option was also given to replace the water with olive oil. I definitely needed a lot more liquid than the 6 tablespoons of water, so as I added more I alternated between water and oil. I'm really not sure how much I ended up adding!

Then it was time to stir.

And stir.

And stir some more.

My arm felt like it was about to fall off, but all the ingredients were incorporated! Hurray! I was afraid of stirring too little, as not kneading long enough is one of my weaknessess, but in retrospect I think I went a little long this time.

Ciabatta is a very delicate dough and must be handled gently. Shaping is accomplished with careful folding - under no circumstances do you want to degass this dough! So I was most cautious as I folded, rested, and folded it again. I thought it looked a little funny, but after it rose for a while it looked more like what I expected.

While it was rising, I was improvising. Because the dough is so soft, the final rise after shaping calls for using a couche. A couche is basically a little nest for the dough so that it will keep its shape as it rises. I do not have a couche, so I floured a dishtowel and balled up some other towels to make the sides of my "nests" a little stiffer. It seemed to work well!

The baking went quickly - two minutes occupied with the steaming process, then another 20 or so (with a turn of the tray in the middle, of course). And boy did my house smell good! I waited the bare minimum before cutting into my bread, eager to see if it looked as good on the inside as it did on the outside.Well, the holes weren't anywhere near as big as in the picture, but they are there, little tiny ones in the middle-top! And really, it tastes so good no one will notice if you don't tell them!


The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread

BBA #6 - Challah

The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread


I have to say, I am getting very tired of all these enriched breads. I went into the challah episode just hoping to get through it so that I could move on to some ciabatta. However, this bread has proved to be very intriguing - particularly the braiding of the bread.

All together, this was a very fast bread - less than six hours from start to finish. It's fairly basic, apart from the addition of the eggs: mix, knead, rise, degass, rise, shape, rise, bake!
At first the dough was a little sticky and it never quite got the silky texture I was looking for, but it was pretty quick to pass the windowpane test, so I commenced the rising process. After the second rise, the dough had become quite silky and was really fun to work with during the shaping process.

After some debate, I decided to make one smaller loaf, then use the other half to make rolls. I wasn't entirely sure how big the rolls ought to be, so I just divided that half of the dough into six. Then it was time to braid.
This is where I really fell in love with this bread. It just looked so gorgeous sitting there, and the little roll-knots were so cute! I could scarcely stop taking pictures long enough to pop it in the oven. I'm glad I did though, because this bread browned up beautifully. The rolls came out a bit larger than I had expected, but I think they're the right size. Perfect for sandwiches!One note: this bread cooked a LOT faster than the book indicated. I expected the rolls, being small, to cook quickly, but even so they were a bit scorched on the bottom and I pulled the loaf out just in time!