May 5, 2009 - 6:37pm
Anadama -- BBA Challenge
Hi all --
I just posted about making the first bread of the BBA Challenge, Reinhart's Anadama.
Check out photos and a recipe at Flour Girl.
And feel free to join in on the challenge!
Happy baking!
Heather
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Just looked at the Anadama bread recipe.
I see it specifies ingredients by volume. That disappoints me. I typically weigh all my ingredients. Especially when it's an amount as large as 4 1/2 cups of flour.
I don't have the book yet; it's on order. Does the author provide a weight to volume chart in the book? I understand the "general" rules for converting volume to weight but not all bakers use the same figures in their charts. Some, for example, call 4.5 ounces a cup, others 5 ounces.
Peter Reinhart lists both volume and weight (ounces) for the recipes in BBA.
He'd used metric :/
My scale only measures in 1/8th ounces or 2gram increments. Yes, a better scale is on my wish list. Until then, though, trying to weigh out .13 oz is a pain in the butt and requires me converting everything to metric or relying on volume measurements for yeast, salt and spices.
and write it right into the book (in pencil - I was told as a young'un to never deface books)
There are online converters you can call up and just punch in the ounce measures to get the right grams. I have a converter on my Mac in the Dashboard Widgets that I find indispensable.
I traded (er.. stopped using) my MyWeigh scale from a 2-gram to a 1-gram version, it's much better although the auto shut-off is irritatingly short. I'd go for a 3 or 4 minute auto if I was in the market.
Nice to have an ally on that subject, SulaBlue. I hate volumetric measure in baking so I have to admit that the generally accepted method for measuring by weight as used in the US is better than nothing. But I always appreciate it when a book about baking deals with ingredients in metric weights. It simplifies the process dramatically and makes it much easier to reduce and/or increase a recipe more accurately and it provides a stronger foundation for applying baker's percentages when analyzing the published recipes.
It's not that I can't make the conversions, that's not a problem. It's just that I'd prefer to spend my time making bread rather than converting recipes.
Dear Mr. Reinhart,
Metrics please ...
His later book, Whole Wheat Breads, and the new one coming out in the fall, Artisan Breads Everyday, both use gram measures.
Yep, it does! I was -VERY- happy to see that.
On the other hand, I was highly disappointed to find that "American Pie" is almost exclusively in volume, except for the flour weight being offered in ounces in parentheses as an after thought.
At least I can go through, choose a few that I really like and use the conversion table that he has on page mm... 27-28? of BBA to convert all the recipes in AP to weight. UGH.
Reinhart includes weights in all of his recipes. I can add them in on my site a bit later.
Sorry to disappoint, but they're all in the book.
Happy baking!
Heather
These are PR's conversons:
Unbleached bread flour: 1 cup = 4.5 ounces
Whole wheat flour: 1 cup = 4.5 ounces
Coarse whole wheat flour: 1 cup = 4.25 ounces
Table ground salt: 1 tsp = .25 ounce
Kosher salt: 1 3/4 tsp = .25 ounce
Sea salt: 1.5 tsp = .25 ounce
One large egg = 1.65 ounces (without shell)
Granulated sugar, baking powder, baking soda: 2 TBS = 1 ounce, 1.5 tsp = .25 ounce
Barm (sourdough), 2 1/3 cups = 16 ounces
Poolish, 1 cup = 7 ounces
Firm starter, biga: 3 cups = 16 ounces
Pate fermentee: 1 cup = 5.4 ounces
Honey, molasses, corn syrup: 1.5 TBS = 1 ounce
I've omitted the yeast conversions since teaspoons measurements work as well as weight.
He doesn't give any listing for rye flours. My cup of rye weighs 4.10 ounces so my suggestion is that you weigh your cup of rye a couple of times and use whatever weight you come up with, or the average of the two.
No listing either for AP flour, but in his pate fermentee recipe, he notes 1 1/8th cup equals 5 ounces of AP, and the same for bread flour, so use 4.5 ounces for the AP.
In most cases, if I see a recipe posted by volume only, I ignore it because there's too much room for error.
the recipe at Flour Girl to include weights.
Hope that helps.
Happy baking!
Heather
Thank you so much ... Heather and LindyD
I know I'd rather use the more precise grams measures so I've been converting the recipes to this. Here's the Anadama ingredients in grams plus a one-loaf version (we're just two people so I try to keep the results down to what we can get through easily or I'll have a freezer full in a few weeks):
I like smaller loaves myself. I have been playing with amaranth whole grain and to me it tastes very much like corn. I will pull a substitution. Bio Amaranth for Corn. I just made a small AP wheat loaf using cooked amaranth and it came out lovely.
Mini
but at the same time rings no bells. No wait... I think these were plants we have had in the garden, long, red fluffy stems...
Woah, you can make bread out of that? Cool. Yet another potential "grow your own food garden" crop. Although I presume you'd need a lot of them to get a loaf of bread.
This sort of grain is just too "exotic" to be found as flour in suburbia here.
========================
BTW, I'll be doing metric conversions for pretty much the whole BBA book as we get moving though the Challenge. If this is useful to anyone, I'll post them as I get them done.
Here are metric versions of the next two recipes. The alternate Greek Bread recipes list only volumes of odd stuff like dried apricot, so there's no comparable weights to convert.
Thanks again.
One question: Can you tell me what format (and or software) you used for that?
I can cut and past it but in its pasted form it's compressed.
is Microsoft Excel. There should be (invisible) tabs in there, but who knows what transfers and what doesn't. But what you're seeing is an html table, don't know if this is helpful.
EDIT:
Instead of continuing to provide the conversions for further BBA recipes, I thought it would be better to provide the method so people could apply it to whatever recipes they wanted switched - the old "give a man a fish" deal. This way there's be no issues with listing the ingredients in each recipe (tedious to format here, anyway) and this allows anyone to get the same results from any source.
I have used Excel Spreadsheet and set up this simple formula - you can do this too and use it to rework any US weight list to grams, from any book as well. Spoon measures I've personally found are usually best just kept in spoon sizes but if you have the oz. value, you could switch that too.
Copy and fill the formula in Cell C =A2*28.34 down as many rows as needed, then just plunk in the details of your ingredient weights in columns A & B, the app will do all the heavy lifting for you. From here, it's just a matter of pencilling in the new gram values into your book.
If you don't have Excel, there's a free, open source version of a very similar program, available for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. It's called "Open Office" and you can get it here: http://openoffice.org-suite.com
It's completely free and compatible with Microsoft Office or the Mac equivalent, iWork Numbers.
Conversely, you can take grams and switch them to ounces by using a formula =A2*0.035 instead then putting the original recipe's grams in column A.
Hope this helps people in their conversion efforts!
Sorry to be the difficult one, but I just wanted to be sure that Peter Reinhart is okay with the prospect of all his recipes in BBA potentially ending up on this site. If that is planned, I think in fairness his permission should be requested.
Karen
No one is reproducing his recipes, just giving the gram measurement conversions. I can't see that as a problem.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, it must be a duck.
Ducks can't be copyrighted.
Please do not post all of the recipes from BBA here. I also hope folks will think twice before printing every recipe from a single book in their own blogs elsewhere.
Recipes cannot precisely be copyrighted (though the wording of them can be), but it would be extraordinarily discourteous to reproduce everything of value from someone's book without their permission. Go out and spend $25 once or twice a year and support Peter or Daniel Leader or Jeffrey Hammelman or Nancy Silverton, the people who did the hard work to make our hobby flourish.
I can't even say it one time correctly!
Well it just came out of the oven an hour ago and I must say that I like it. Very crunchy crust but it is tiny crunchy so it doesn't threaten teeth just very crunchy. I decided to get that corn taste from amaranth than from corn meal.
I made the small loaf mentioned above with egual weights of amaranth whole grain letting it stand 24 hours and then using a coffee filter to rinse and drain the grain. The grain did not absorb all the water. I put the filter with grain into a container in the refrigerator and forgot about it.
Two days later in the evening... the sprouts weighed up to 160g (tasted and smelled pleasently milder) and went into the dough (I used butter off the whipping cream and brown sugar instead of molasses) to be refrigerated overnight. Today the dough warmed up and bulk rose. I shaped and panned the dough. Baked it when it had doubled. Did not get a lot of oven spring but crust has beautiful color and sandy look from all the little sprouts on the surface. The crumb is tender & soft and has flecks of sprouted amaranth giving it a whole wheat look. ..oh and it is crunchy... today. :)
Thanks so much, rainbowz. I was just about to run through the conversions and now I can spend time baking instead of doing math.
While I don't like the volumetric method for determining quanties for recipes, I'm also not real fond of the avoridupois method for calculating those ingredients by weight. My scale doesn't provide avoridupois in decimal sets. I get outputs like "2 1/8 ounces" so the metric system, which I came to highly respect and rely upon since I became emersed in electronics as a youngster, is where I am most comfortable.
I can't speak for what other posters will do, but I specifically said in my first BBA post on Flour Girl that I would not be running all of the recipes because that is not fair use. I posted the Anadama and I'll do a few others along the way, but certainly not the entire book.
As for Reinhart and this project, he has posted on his site that he thinks it's great that we're all doing this. (Though I'm sure he wouldn't think it was so great if we transcribed his entire book online!)
Happy baking,
Flour Girl
If you read the copyright in the BBA, it states "no part" of the book may be published without the express permission of the publisher. It is Ten Speed Press who owns the copyright, not Mr. Reinhart.
Ten Speed Press was purchased by Random House in March 2009. Random House has a larger legal department.
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html
http://www.opensourcecook.com/recipes-copyright-law
Here's a great post from David Lebovitz on reprinting recipes at the Food Blog Alliance.
In short, recipes themselves (simple lists of ingredients) are not given copyright protection. But if there is a long description or instructions, the work should be attributed. Preferably, the instructions should be paraphrased and not written verbatim.
Attribution. Attribution. Attribution. Be sure to state your source and indicate whether you've adapted the recipe.
When posting recipes, I try to post the instructions in my own words, adding what I've learned making the recipe.
I urge you all to check out the above post for some good guidelines.
If you look at the two posts above that "reproduce" the recipes, you'll see that they do not, in fact, reproduce said recipes. Rather, they convert the recipes into grams, which are not given in BBA, and give the conversion for making a single loaf. Even if one argues (wrongly) that reproducing a single recipe is a copyright violation, that's not what was done here.
That said, I agree with Floyd that it would be in bad taste to reprint the recipes in toto. However, I don't think anyone who is taking part in the BBA Challenge intends to do so without purchasing the book. Several people have the book on order but don't have them yet, which is how this whole string started.
Sorry to have got everyone distracted by this -- and I really hope I haven't offended anyone. Floyd articulated my thoughts better than I did myself. Whether copyrighted or not and whether legally protected or not, the intellectual property these author-bakers have in their creations should be respected. But it sounds like we're pretty much agreed on that and that I jumped to the alert too quickly.
I did make the Anadama bread, by the way! I was a bit distracted by the kids that afternoon, so I butchered the actual process and basically only got the ingredients right (!!) but it turned out surprisingly well. My family doesn't care for the molasses flavour, but I enjoy it It tastes just like gingerbread without the ginger (now how do you think I know that??!!)
I won't be twittering, but am looking forward to making most of the recipes in the Challenge with the rest of you. Have a great weekend, everybody.
Karen the Highly Distractible Baker
The Anadama was a delicious change of pace from my usual sandwich style breads, and the molasses and corn really shined through when toasted. Just finished baking the Artos; Greek Celebration Bread and look forward to cracking it open!
http://eatingisthehardpart.blogspot.com/
Completed the Artos this morning. Waiting for breakfast tomorrow to crack the loaf and check the crumb and taste.
(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW)
The recipe recommends turning the loaf 180 degrees about 20 minutes into the baking time. I found that the gelatinization was incomplete at that point in time and, in moving the baking sheet, I bumped it slightly and "jiggled" the elastic mass. Prior to that I had a fantastic oven spring. Appeared to me that I lost about 10% of that feature from that action.
Advice: If you turn the loaf as recommended, do it VERY gently. Sliding it on the oven rack is probably better than picking the baking sheet up and setting it back down after making the turn.
Although I did have the baking stone in the oven to help maintain consistent levels of heat, I didn't bake the loaf on it. I had the loaf on silpat on a metal cookie sheet. I used that method because if seemed a better method of preparation for turning the loaf at baking mid point.
Started with a 400 degree preheated oven (20 minute preheat) and loaded the loaf at that temperature, then reduced temp. to 350 after 5 - 7 minutes. Total baking time to 195 degrees was 35 minutes.
Recipe adjustments:
Increaed initial oven loading temperature to maximize oven spring.
Used the typical boule stretching technique for stretching of surface in final shaping for final rise.
Used Active Dry Yeast in place of Instant Yeast at 1.36/1 ratio
Slashed the loaf to enhance expansion
Finish is plain water/honey glaze.
I forgot to glaze mine but it tastes delicious. I never make loaves this big so I don't know what I'm going to do with it all! :)
I just decided to join in today. I've got my cornmeal and water soaker going for baking later today/tomorrow.
I must admit that I'm more than a little intimidated by the Greek Celebration Bread and /especially/ the Bagels that come up next!
Don't let the Artos Greek Celebration Bread intimidate you. I know it looks complicated and I initially felt somewhat overwhelmed by all the steps necessary for its preparation but if you take your time and remember Mise en place is your security you'll be surprised at how relatively simple it is. Only thing I'd recommend to watch carefully is the texture of the dough at each stage, especially when entering the final rise period. You don't want to allow it to get too dry but it's important that it not be "sticky" either.
Go for it - we're all cheering for ya.......
Got it done on Friday, but I've been too lazy to post pictures as of yet.
Now it's the bagels that have me knocking in my boots. I tried bagels once, long ago. I'm honestly worried about the dough straining my KA.
My KA is the cheapest (errr least expensive) model they make and it handles everything I throw at it. It kneaded the bagel dough just fine so don't worry about it failing you. If it hasn't show signs of failing yet I doubt seriously that it'll disappoint you with the bagel challenge.
I decided to convert the BBA Anadama formula to sourdough. Here is a picture of the results.
You can read about what I did here.
Looks like nice crumb in the image on your link, and the flavor must be terrific. Congratulations.......