The Fresh Loaf

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Fun!!!

pmccool's picture
pmccool

Fun!!!

This past weekend was double fun, actually.  First, I had Friday off.  Second, I had been asked to provide some bread for a fundraiser bake sale, so I spent Friday and Saturday baking.  It was a very welcome break from a long baking hiatus while working down the backlog of breads in the freezer.  I don't believe I have had the opportunity to produce this quantity or variety of breads at home previously.  

First up was a pair of gluten-free loaves from a recipe of my own.  This particular iteration featured buckwheat flour, sorghum flour, brown rice flour, quinoa flour, potato starch and tapioca starch.  Psyllium husk was used as the binder, rather than gums.  It seems to have offer better keeping qualities than gums since the bread stays flexible and moist for upwards of a week instead of going all crumbly and dry in a day or two.  Here it is, crummy lighting and all:

The next bread on Friday's bake schedule was Sweet Vanilla Challah from Beth Hensperger's The Bread Bible.  As written, the recipe says it yields two loaves.  Knowing how large those loaves are, I decided to divide the dough into three loaves instead.  And I made a double batch so that I could shape three as turbans and three as 4-strand braids.  As expected, the loaves were eye-catching for both the shaping and the coloring.  The headline photo for this post shows all six bagged and ready to go.  Here are some close-ups:

Later in the day, after running some errands, I also baked the Whole Wheat Multigrain from Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread.  I doubled this recipe and divided it into 6 loaves, instead of the stated 4 loaves.  This bread includes a hot soaker with the baker's choice of grains; I used Bob's Red Mill 7-Grain Cereal and millet seeds.  It also utilizes a liquid levain and bakers yeast for leavening.  I managed to get a good oven spring and a bold bake.  The photo looks lighter than the bread did to the naked eye.

Before going to bed Friday evening, I built the biga for Portugese Sweet Bread, working from Mark Sinclair's (mcs) recipe.

Saturday morning I mixed the ripe biga with the rest of the final dough ingredients.  For the PSB, I chose to shape it as rolls, instead of as loaves.  I scaled them at about 65g each, which yielded 4 dozen rolls.  Once baked and cooled, I packaged them in half-dozen blocks per bag.  A friend who bought a package told me that the taste was what he remembered from his childhood growing up in Connecticut.

The last bread was a focaccia, which is another recipe of mine.  I scaled it up to fill two half-sheet pans.  This bread features herb-infused olive oil.  In this case, I used garlic powder, thyme, rosemary, oregano, and black pepper in the oil.  One pan was also studded with some kalamata olives, just for variety.  Each focaccia was quartered and the quarters were individually bagged for the sale.

All told, I loaded two medium-size boxes with the bread to take to the sale.  Since I didn't know how familiar people might be with some of the breads, I also typed up labels with the names and ingredients for each bread, thinking that might help answer some questions.  Later in the morning, I happened past the tables where the baked goods were displayed and noticed that pale and sweet was moving a lot faster than dark and hearty.  The people running the sale were pleased to have the bread and, as far as I've heard, so were the buyers.

I suspect, though, that I was happier than any of them since I was the one who got to make it all.

Paul

Comments

AbeNW11's picture
AbeNW11 (not verified)

Now you're just making me drool. They all look absolutely wonderful.

I'd buy them. One of each please.

pmccool's picture
pmccool

Thank you, AbeNW11.  I hope your shirt doesn't get too wet.  :-)

Paul

cp3o's picture
cp3o

Hi PM, all these breads look fabulous!  Can you tell me whether your biga for Mark's rolls was started from scratch or did you use a portion of the recipe's ingredients.  I'm new to baking and need all the help I can get.  Thanks.

                                                Chris

pmccool's picture
pmccool

And yes, it was started from scratch.  Consequently, its ingredients aren't a deduction from the final dough ingredients.

Paul

nmygarden's picture
nmygarden

And for a good cause. It's surprising how much can be accomplished with a bit of organization and overlapping stages, Efficient from a variety of angles.  They all look spectacular, Paul! Well done.

Cathy

 

pmccool's picture
pmccool

The house smelled so good on both days. 

Yes, there was some thinking about the order and the timing of the various breads and their components to make sure that I didn't wind up with two of them needing to go into the oven at the same time.

Thanks for your compliments.

Paul

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

home baking going on.Paul. I'm freaking out to make a dark pumpernickel and a 1:2:3 SD over 2 days!  They all look great and you have the mass quantities baked at home down pat..  Well done and

Happy  baking Paul.

pmccool's picture
pmccool

For all practical purposes, making a double batch is about the same work as making a single batch, so that makes it easy to pump out twice as much bread in a given period of time.  Plus, these were all yeasted, rather than SD, which makes the timing more predictable.

You, on the other hand, are wrangling a couple of SD breads, which isn't more work but is more challenging for time management.

Thanks,

Paul

cp3o's picture
cp3o

Thanks so much for helping me understand the process better.  I appreciate your quick reply.

                                             Chris

Mebake's picture
Mebake

What fun indeed, Paul! you know you are a baker at heart when you get"respite" by engaging , in your free time, in  labor intensive activity such as baking. All bakes look superb, only the gluten free wasn't as spectacular ( I'm sure it was plenty delicious, though). 

lovely braiding skills by the way. It is funny how people associate lighter breads with properly baked, as against dark "healthy" breads. 

thanks for sharing this , my friend.

Khalid

 

pmccool's picture
pmccool

Yes, baking is definitely more entertainment than work for me.  That is one reason I haven't succumbed to the suggestions from friends to start a bakery.  I would not want to turn this into a job. 

Other than the poor lighting, the gluten-free bread had been covered with oiled plastic while fermenting.  The oil seems to interfere with the crust browning, which I have noticed on conventional breads, too. 

Paul

Isand66's picture
Isand66

All your breads look great Paul.  Congrats on a successful bake.

Regards,
Ian

pmccool's picture
pmccool

Everything turned out pretty much as I hoped it would, so I'll count it as a success, too. 

Paul