Almost two months ago, Stacie attacked this recipe. Afterwards she informed us about the time required to complete this task. In addition to this, she told us that the recipe size being about twice as big as an amateur baking experimenter should attempt.
With those things in mind, I was not terribly excited to jump in and bake the rolls. So about a month later, I dove in and took these rolls to task. The result? Very similar to Stacie's. Fresh out of the oven, these were a delight. A short amount of time though rendered these to be almost inedible. They turned out to be very dry and dense. Corrina and Stacie can vouch for their mediocrity.
On a nice Saturday, I labored over a pile of dough that had potential. The baker overseeing the growth of this beauty just couldn't steer the reigns. As Stacie recommended, I halved everything in the recipe. That allowed all the ingredients to fit in my 4 1/2 quart mixer. This may have been the deal-breaker before we even began. I am not certain that halving every ingredient exactly in half was proportionally correct. Tom mentioned that everything should be relative to the amount of bread flour.
One of the other issues that Stacie spoke to was that she didnt think the rolls had enough rise. She used the dry instant yeast that you have to activate in warm milk. To that end, I recalled that we all had issues with the yeast the last time. I wanted to circumvent that issue entirely. So I decided to use the Rapid Rise yeast that I could just add in with the dry ingredients. Along with that I used powdered milk. Tom said that would aid in the rise as well.
I mixed the ingredients together and the dough looked good. I set it aside to Bulk Ferment. I left it to ferment for twice as long as in the recipe. Tom said longer is better than shorter, so I took the scenic route.
After it seemed to double in size, I scaled out 2.5 oz pieces of dough. I relentlessly covered each one as Tom stated. I allowed them to rest for 10 and began to shape. Once they were all shaped, they were ready to bake. Or were they?
They still looked like dense doughnut holes, so I brought them outside to let my Yeastie Boy Brethren do they thang. After about 15 minutes, I thought they looked a little more plump so I threw egg wash on and threw them in the oven.
Golden brown, I pulled them out of the oven. They looked great and tasted delicious. They were moist and tender, though slightly smaller than envisioned. A day later, they were chewy and dense. They tasted almost stale. That was that.
Since then, I have started to eat better. Istarted buying Healthy Life Bread. I was convinced that I could make loaf bread cheaper and at the same caloric intake myself. I started with a recipe from a low calorie website for a quick bread. Ingredients included Bread Flour, yeast, salt, suger, water, and olive oil. I assumed that the quickness of the rise is a result of the sugar in the loaf. Nonetheless I followed the specs and came out with a pretty good loaf. Pretty bland, slightly dense, and cake-like.
For my next foray into sandwich bread, I wanted to add some wheat bran to the bread to give it a slight nutritional boost. Followed the recipe but substituted about 20% of the flour with Wheat Bran. The resulting bread did not rise as much, I think it needed more time to rise than I gave it. It tasted better, but was more dense.
For my most recent loaf, I decided to drop the sugar and keep the wheat bran. I wanted to let the dough sit for longer. Well I covered the dough and I left to go to the Muny to see Meet Me in St. Louis. The dough sat for about 4.5 hours. It rose and started to fall. It really smelled like beer, it was very pronounced. I punched it back down, put it in the fridge, and went to sleep.
After work the next day, I took the dough out of the fridge and put it outside for about 45 minutes. It rose quite a bit, then I put it in the oven. This is bar none the best bread I have made so far. There is still room for improvement.
I need to get the rise right so that its not as dense, still trying to figure that out. I also want to do a No-Knead Bread. More to come
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