I titled this post Bake Home as sort of a portmanteau of back and bake, as I am back home from Alaska and this is the first chance I've had to bake! My girlfriend and I had a little tradition going, I'd head down to her house and make bread on sunday to share with her and her sister's dog. Well, she's gone up in Alaska now, but I headed down to bake (and make sure her/her sister's dog got some bread too).

Today was a triple threat from Bread Baker's Apprentice, Italian Bread 2 ways (commercial yeast and sourdough) and Portuguese Sweet Bread.

I spaced out a bit when I was making the commercial yeast Italian Bread and added an extra cup of water (the recipe calls for 3/4 cup to 3/4 + 6 tablespoons... OOOPS). I didn't realize this until much later, so I added more flour in while mixing it, but I didn't want to add too much because I'd be WAY off the recipe (oh if I only knew...). So I tried to give it a number of folds hoping that'd make it pull together, it did a bit but it was still a very wet dough. I proofed the loaves using parchment as a couche (as well as a new brotform I got for my birthday!). Turned out I didn't flour the parchment quite enough so when I turned them over onto another parchment on the peel... they stuck. Was no big deal, I was able to pull it off without too much trouble, but it was becoming really obvious the hydration on the dough was higher than it should've been.

Hi there,

I'm hoping someone can help me find a recipe for a bread I know as Porguguese Bread.  I've serched for it and I'll I've found is recipes for Portuguese Sweet Bread. 

The bread I had was white bread that had a hard bottom with a chewy crust and was usually a free form loaf.  The bread itself was similar in texture and moisture to rye bread.  I had it in northern New Jersey, but I was just discussing it with my roommate who also ate it in Philidelphia. 

Does anyone know what I'm describing and can maybe point me in a direction of a recipe?  Maybe this bread has another name?

Thanks a lot for any help!

Becca