I can rise!!! :)
After a week full of "disaster breads", I am happy to report that I was *finally* able to produce a few loaves that didn't make me laugh when they came out of the oven :) So now I will post some photos as evidence so that when I create my next major flop or paperweight, I can come back and be inspired to try, try again...
***The final results of my baking day:
[1]
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***One of the secrets to my newfound ability to rise dough again:
[2]
Our apartment is very cold right now (no central heating here), but for some reason I thought my bread baking could continue as normal as long as I just let the dough rise for longer periods of time...apparently not. If you enjoy reading about and laughing at baking misadventures, you can see my previous blog entries for descriptive [3] and *gloopy* & *rock-hard*pictoral evidence [4] of my recent streak of jaw-challenging and vertically-challenged loaves :)
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My mother-in-law came for a visit yesterday, and when I showed her this photo of my dough rising, she laughed and said she used to rise bread in a similar way...but she actually created a little warm "rising tent" by putting a large piece of fabric over the kitchen table, then putting the heater and the dough under that. Maybe I will try that next time...maybe I will sit under the tent too!!!
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I was SO happy to see (and taste) these results again...finally! Bring on the cold!!! :)
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***Whole wheat/flax seed/oatmeal dough
*Before...
[5]
*After (it rose!!!)...
[6]
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***Baguette dough
*It rose too!!! (I didn't put this dough by the heater because I didn't want it to rise too quickly...I just put it on my kitchen counter while I was baking the other loaf so the room was a bit warmer than usual).
[7]
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That's all for now...this is one *much happier* baker signing off for now :)