29 July 2012

Baking Bread

I have enjoyed my bread machine. The bread tastes good. But the bread it produces is too dense (in my opinion). So I used the feature where I just get it to make the dough for me and then  turn it out onto a stone and bake it myself. I thought maybe I would get a better 'rise' if I did it that way. Once turned out onto the stone, I followed the directions from a conventional cookbook for cooking temperature and time, etc.

Just after being turned out of the bread machine
 I placed the bread in the warmest room in the house (my Girl Cave) and went to plink on computer and take a nap ( I can't do cat naps. They just make me more tired. So I left that bread unsupervised for a couple of hours).

When I checked on the rising process--WOW! Nice rise. Too nice. I wondered if I should punch it down and let it rise again, but it had gone through its first rise in the bread machine so I left it alone
After rising. Not sure why this loaded sideways.
I thought, "This is gonna be either the most awesome 'fluffy-on-the-inside-crusty-on-the-outside' loaf of bread OR it's gonna fall when it bakes and be a 'dense POS." I suspected it would fall. It was just too big.

It doesn't look too bad in the photos, but it did fall. Dammit!




Let's take a look at the inside and see just how bad the damage is:

Frisbee, anyone??

A slice with butter.

Yep. That's dense bread. Don't worry. It won't be wasted. I'm thinking bread pudding, cinnamon toast, french toast, door stop, etc.

Bigfoot claims to "LOVE IT!" but he's just being nice 'cause he loves me. (And it's really not difficult to please him when it comes to food.)

7 comments:

tffnguy said...

I like dense bread with melted butter on it. Just send it to me in an envelope. :)

bigfoot said...

will do...what's that mailing address?

tffnguy said...

Might be good for croƻtons by the time it got here.;)

Bigfoot and Littlefoot said...

Whoops! Sorry! We ate most of it last night. I toasted it and made some bruchetta and also made an olive oil mixture with Italian seasoning and cracked black pepper for dipping. Then I ate some with peanut butter. After all of my angst, it was actually pretty good. I'll make more for our next trip. Take care.

tffnguy said...

Sounds real good.

Anonymous said...

Well, I tend to make dense bread too, but I've been experimenting with bulk yeast (vs. the leetle teeny packets from the market), and with a high quality brand of flour (King's). Those two things help...but not enough. So next, I'm using the same stuff I just mentioned but I'm next going to use a bit less flour so as to leave the dough with more moisture. We'll see.

Emjay (newish follower)

Bigfoot and Littlefoot said...

Welcome, Emjay.
Maybe I'll try that, too.