My travels are over,  and I'm back....

Soft Cheese Bread from Peter Reinhart's - Artisan Breads Every Day

The Mill Loaf (Adapted)  - Baked last week,  with my 2 mths dormant sourdough

More details in this blog.

I have been baking bread like crazy over the last three months.   I've tried a lot of things, I've received a lot of great advice in the forums, many breads haven't worked very well since I am so inexperienced, but now I have a list of breads that either came out pretty well or I hope that with more practice will eventually turn out pretty well.   In order to consolidate what I've learned so far, I will try to bake a bread a day (or so) with seven breads that I would like to get right.   I'll start with the easiest, and since it is also quite delicious, I'll call it the best per amount of effort:   Greenstein's Milk Bread.   In Secrets of a Jewish Baker, Greenstein gives two recipes for this - one with a sponge, one without.   The one I made today was with a straight dough method.   This means you just mix everything up, let rise, shape, rise, and bake.   No pre-ferment, no cold ferment, no sourdough no nothing.   And for bread, a fairly short time from start to finish.  

Mix 2 cups warm warm water with 1.5 Tbsp instant yeast.   Add 5 cups unbleached bread flour (I used a measurement of 133 g per cup).  Add 2 Tbsp soft butter, 4 tsp sugar, 2/3 cup dry milk, 2 tsp salt.   Mix it up until smooth.   Let double.  Cut in half.   Let rest for 15 minutes.   Shape and put in bread pans.  Let rise to over top of pan.   Score and brush with melted butter.  Bake with steam for 40 minutes at 375.   Remove from pan for last 5 minutes of baking and put directly on stone.

Tomorrow Madame Doz Pain de Compagne from Bernard Clayton.

    I just got my copy of Secrets of a Jewish Baker, and got up this morning going to make milk bread. Scanning over them I noticed that they all contained milk powder instead of just plain milk. I have seen the ads in KA claiming the the rise is far superior with their milk powder. I had some but it has gotten old. Surely little old Jewish men and women centuries ago were not going out to milk the cow for milk powder to make bread. Maybe its a dumb question, but why can't I just use milk? Help!

                                                                      Audra

I went on a baking frenzy today, thanks to George Greenstein's Secrets of a Jewish Baker.  I followed one of his "Morning Baking" programs at the end of the book and made muffins, milk bread, whole wheat bread, and Italian bread.