I knew the scheduling would get me
Yesterday was the big premiere: first wholemeal loaf made with home-milled flour, and also the first try at baking a loaf from Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads: the Rye Sandwich Meteil. Of course, I can't help but tinker, thus replaced about a quarter of the rye meal with a multigrain mix.
So I started this a day ahead, did the whole mother starter thing (why he can't just call it sourdough, I don't know), I soaked, and mixed, I rested overnight, and after work yesterday I mixed, I rested etc etc.
It rose very nicely, I put it in the oven just before midnight (thanks to all the resting), in a loaf pan and dutifully turned it after 20 minutes. Then, while I was browsing through bread books, I must have closed my eyes, just for a minute. Unfortunately, when I opened them again it was 2:30 am and the flat smelled decidedly toasty.
The bread was a black brick. I took it out, and cooled it. Then I spent half an hour trying to get to sleep while berating myself for my stupidity.
This morning I cut into it to assess the damage: a 1 inch crust, mostly inedible. However, the inside, once you cut off all of the coal, is still really delicious. It looks pretty much like his picture in the book: crumb nice dense but not too dense, no pastiness. It has a nice sweet flavour (though next time I would slightly reduce the amount of cane syrup in his recipe) and has no hint of that wholemeal aftertaste of most commercial wholemeal breads. It's delicious but cutting off all the charred crust breaks my heart, just a little.
Lesson learned: get more sleep the day before you bake & set the bloody alarm.
Comments
Hey SydneyGirl
Do you think your average nightbaker gets his/her 8 hours in on a regular basis then?
Easy to spot the black bags under many bakers' eyes!!!
Still you got the middle out of your bread
Welcome along
Andy
Don't be so hard on yourself! You can see that if you hadn't fallen asleep that the loaf would have turned out wonderfully!
If it makes you feel any better,
My Dad (great baker) makes this "silver palate fruitcake" every year for Christmas- not the yucky kind of fruitcake. This one is really good, and has really expensive ingredients in it. He would go all the way downtown to a specialty store and spend like $100 on ingredients for these loaves. One Christmas, after a long nigh of baking, he went to bed with his last loaf in the oven. He was so tired he didn't hear the timer go off....we all woke up to black smoke everywhere.
It can happen to anyone. :-)
I'm looking forward to your upcoming posts on successful loaves using your home-milled grains. :-) It'll happen
LOL...
That story reminds me of the year my mum prepared two large roast geese for a big Christmas Eve dinner (yes, from live birds). We left them in our woodfired oven while attending the Christmas service. Instructions were left for my great aunt to pull them out after a certain time. We arrived home to two lumps of coal in the oven and a lot of side dishes.
I've found that "getting more sleep" is my most frequently failed resolution. On the other hand, I always set an alarm to go off when my dough next needs me. Since I usually have 2-4 breads going at once, I have 5 alarms at my disposal in the kitchen.
Oops. Gotta go. The alarm just went off to check the artichokes and put the salmon in the oven.
David
I managed to reduce a ciabatta to a smoldering ruin by going into the next room to finish a sudoku puzzle and getting so wrapped up in it that I didn't hear the oven beeper going off. Wasn't till the smoke alarm sounded that I realized what had happened.
Good luck with the extra sleep!
Larry
Well Sydney Girl,
Looks like your not Robinson Crusoe (on your own) on this one. Come on, there should be more owing up on this issue. Lets have some stories and a chuckle.
Pete