From Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice...

Beautiful, soft crumb with exceptional flavor.

My sourdough starter had been doing quite fine the past few days,as I had been paying closer attention to refreshing it lately. It was so lively yesterday morning I decided to make one of the recipes in Reinhart's BBA. 

I was driving like a mad-man to get home from office (as best a mad-man Singapore's traffic laws would allow) anticipating my bread-baking adventure. I had to make a quick stop-over at the grocery as I had wanted to get some sharp cheddar cheese.

My wife was wondering why I had gone into the kitchen and started to mise en place in my shirt and tie. I brought out my starter from the fridge to take off the chill before I changed clothes. After which, I dove into my baking.  And here is the result...

I was so pleased with the results, I nearly ate half as soon as they cooled. I brought one to the office today and  was quickly consumed by my team with a few gulps of coffee. Seeing how my staff enjoyed it was even far better than great taste of the bread itself.

Very satisfying indeed!

There'll be a better write-up on my blog,
mentalexperimental.org, but I wanted to thank Floyd for a good starter recipe. I'm still working on modifying this one. I think that I have the general consistency of the bread down that I want, but I want a bit more tang. I think that there may have to be a sourdough component to really get it where I want it to be. But that's a completely new bread.

This is Floyd's recipe with a few modifications. The first is adding a bit more sour cream. The second was adding cheddar cheese instead of chives. The third is the addition of half & half in the dough and the mashed potatoes.

I think that getting a stand mixer will help me with this type of bread the most. I mixed for 8 or so minutes on speed 2 and then folded twice during the bulk fermentation, giving it an hour at the end to come to full bulk. The crumb is light, fluffy, and very tender.

I'm writing the recipe on the blog now. I wanted to share the photo because I'm so proud of how this one turned out. :)

For another bread suitable for the holiday table:

 http://www.breadcetera.com/?p=170

SteveB

http://www.breadcetera.com

This is from a recipe in Peter Reinhart’s Bread Bakers Apprentice and I didn’t make any changes to the recipe, being the first try at it. 

Well, ok, one or two very minor changes: he asks for fresh rosemary, I only had dried which I soaked for an hour while the dough was warming up. He says to mix in roasted garlic - didn’t have any. I guess next time I’ll have to make that ahead of time along with the extra mash. 

Anyway… here’s the final product, first try (slashed a bit too deep) and the loaves are still cooling so I haven’t cut or tasted yet but boy-oh-boy, does the house ever smell wonnnnnnderful!!

Full post on the blog:
Potato Rosemary Boules

I found this recipe in one of my grandmother's cookbooks, which is at least 50 years old. The recipe states that it's "an old recipe handed down in the family" (not mine). I tried this recipe once, but found the sourdough taste more pronounced than I care for. The loaves had a lovely, even crumb.

Swedish Limpa

Cook potatoes with peelings. Peel while hot and mash or put through a ricer. To 5 cups mashed potatoes stir in as much rye flour as you can. Set this in a warm place for 2 days. Stir a few times. It will get thinner as it ferments. To this mixture add:

1 quart buttermilk
1 cup water
1 cup molasses
3/4 cup shortening
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup salt
1-1/2 teaspoon crushed fennel seed
3 yeast packages
(More rye flour and white flour, to be added during kneading)

Have all this lukewarm. Let this rise until light. Knead using about 2 cups more rye flour, rest white flour. Do not knead it too hard. Let rise and knead down again. After second rising form in eight small loaves. Let rise until about double in size. Bake at 350 for 1 hour. Brush top of loaves with molasses water a couple times during baking. This bread is heavy so it will rise much slower than ordinary bread.

I wanted to make dill bread so used Floyd’s wonderful recipe for Potato Rosemary Rolls yesterday but replaced the rosemary and sage for a huge pile of fresh baby dill.  Then I added another huge pile of freshly ground black Tellicherry pepper.  We really like things spicy but I was afraid the amount of pepper I used would overpower the dill.  Not having made dill bread before (Tingull's looks so good) I also wanted to try using fresh dill to get a feel for the amount desired.  I ended up using 2 1/2 teaspoons of freshly ground pepper a

Last night we had some mashed potatoes.  I had just read the BBA pugliese formula recently, and thought that I would make it with some of the leftovers.  Well, as it happens, I found the Potato Rosemary bread on my way to the pugliese, and it also contains mashed potatoes!  Then I saw that the general formula for the biga makes enough for both the pugliese and the potato rosemary breads.  And then I discovered that my leftover potatoes weighed EXACTLY as much as the amounts called for in the two recipes.  A sign from the universe, perhaps?  So I made the biga last night and s

On Mother's Day I found myself without a prepped starter or poolish. There were some leftover mashed potatos in the fridge, so I hit the cookbooks and found a recipe that fit the bill in Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads.

Marcel's Grandmother's Potato Bread (Kartoffelbrot)

Marcel's Grandmother's Potato Bread (1)