June 25, 2008 - 3:48am
cinnamon raisin oatmeal bread
I was wandering around in here the other day and saw what looked to be great looking raisin bread on Floydm's pages. The recipe was originally from Hamelman's book "Jeffery Hamelman's Bread". (I just tried to read Hamelman's tome, Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes and returned it to the library after aborting about ten pages in. With what's left of my mind, I just couldn't quite manage to retain enough to comprehend anything he was saying.) But happily, Floydm could retain and comprehend what he read, enabling him to translate this fabulous recipe.
Thank you Floyd! The bread is absolutely delicious!
Here is what I did to Floyd's version of the recipe:
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Comments
Your bread looks great. No question, you are a good baker. Regarding your comments on Hamelman's book I would recommend you give it some more reading time. He does not "hold your hand" like Rose Beranbaum in the bread bible. Hamelman's book is not for someone new to baking. What he writes it accurate information, as a certified master baker, based on a lifetime of professional experience. For example, spend time to learn his way to modify recipes using bakers math. For me, his book is the first place I go on baking day.
Thinking of books that do not work for me I don't trust Beranbaum's book for recipes as she is often off on her math but she does have some good tips.
Enough, off to make some cinnamon raisin bread. You guessed it, using a Hamelman recipe
Thank you for your kind words. I might try the Hamelman again, now that I have a shiny new digital scale and will be able to use baker's percentages. But really, I do get the impression that Hamelman is writing for the professional baker, not the home cook. On the other hand, I very much liked what I read in Rose Beranbaum's book... chacun à son goût!
I'll be really interested to see how this bread turns out now that I have a real scale. (The first time round, I could not believe that the amount of water was right - I'm pretty sure I measured correctly. The dough was SO stiff.)
Hope your cinnamon raisin bread turned out well!
ejm,
You are right, Hamelman does favor the commercial baker. You have made an important step with a digital scale. Using bakers math all of his recipes are easy to convert for home use. The one area where he is confusing is his yeast percentages. He is accurate in his recipes that use fresh yeast. if you are satisfied with the size of his recipes for home use and use instant yeast, again, he is accurate. If however, you use active dry yeast like I do, because it is so inexpensive, and change the batch size you need some additional information. In general, for many recipes, the bakers percentage for active dry yeast is .63%. This is not an exact percentage to use with active dry yeast but a good place to start and, perhaps, modify when you bake next time.
Both at home and in the bread making classes I teach I like to increase the batch size of most recipes. Hamelman makes it easy to scale up or down. Having the information to free up your creative baking experiences is a great feeling.
good luck
I too use active dry yeast. In general I have used the same amount spoon for spoon when a recipe calls for instant yeast (yes I know that one is supposed to use a little more active dry than instant) But so many recipes call for way too much yeast (or at least that's what I think). Our bread has always risen very well even with the smaller amount of active dry being used.
-Elizabeth
Thanks for the information regarding your experience with active dry yeast. I have always been in a quandary regarding how much to use. I increase the amount of active over instant by 125% and then often round up. I am going to try your method of 1x1.
John
Yesterday I baked the raisin-less and cinnamon-less version of Hamelman's Cinnamon-Raisin Oatmeal Bread. It's listed as Oatmeal Bread and it is delightful. No photos this time around; it got scarfed down pretty rapidly.
I definitely recommend this recipe to anyone with the book who has not yet tried it. I made it into a sandwich loaf but it would make a pretty good boule too.
Mary
Thanks Mary, I have been looking for something new to try. I looked up the recipe in Hamelman's and will figure out how big of a batch I want to bake. We buy our oatmeal in 25lb sacks just to make cookies. Don't know why I have never tried Hamelman's recipe before. Great suggestion!
John