Keep Your Mind on Your Baking!
Some days I don't know where my mind goes. I was baking 2 loaves of New York Onion Rye Bread from Peter Reinhart's book Bread Baker's Apprentice. Everything was going smoothly. The loaves were proofing in my make-shift proofer (microwave with cup of boiled water in it) but then disaster struck.
I didn't pay attention to the bread as it was rising. The recipe said 90 minutes to proof so I went with 90 minutes, oh so wrong! Bread was proofed and I hadn't even started the oven! In my tizzy, I set the oven 30F too cool and didn't realize it until 10 minutes or so into the bake. Bleh! So I watched my two loaves of bread meet in the middle of the baking pan as they rose (sideways) on the baking sheet. Argh!! No oven spring for me with that cool oven. Here are the loaves as they look, cooling on the rack. NEXT TIME - I'll check the bread about half way into the proof time. NEXT TIME I'll read the ENTIRE recipe through several times to get it straight in my head and not ASSUME anything.
Comments
Back in Usenet's heyday, I knew of two groups with deadicated enough followings that someone made newsgroup-logo'd T-shirts that were snapped up by fellow regulars. I've thought that if someone did that for TFL, it might say "Watch the dough" on the front, and "Not the clock" on the back.
Amazing how good your sideways-risen, no-oven-spring loaves look. I'll bet they taste great. I like a hobby where mediocre is still delicious.
Happy Baking!
Tom
Tom,
That would be really neat to have one of those T-shirts. It is so true. It's funny because I'm usually looking at/checking the dough all the time, but this time it got away from me.
Linda
Thank you for this post! I set up a dough this morning but had forgotten to check on it until I saw this.
A reminder of that old adage "The loaf you save could be your own!"
-Floyd
....THAT for the TFL t-shirt!
-Tom
The loaves don't look great, but boy, do they taste great! I forgot to mention that I also used whey from cheesemaking in place of the water and buttermilk called for in this recipe. Could that have affected the activity level of the yeast and/or sourdough starter? Anyway, the bread sure tasted good with a bowl of homemade borscht.
Happens to everyone, pro and gifted amateur alike. OOOPs in fact, I have a load of croissants I haven't checked.... gotta run
Cheers
I overproofed it a bit too, but still it came out pretty nice.
FloydM
Very Nice! It doesn't look overproof at all! What kind of bread is it? Did you bake it in a Dutch Oven?
Linda
I used the same formula and method as this one.