as a compliment to my newly acquired meat production skills, i bought a book on bread making called The Bread Bible. I’ve always loved bread. The hard, chewy, flavorful kind. It’s amazing the science behind breadmaking. The right combination of salt, flour, water, and yeast can create vastly different products.
My first attempt is a prosciutto ring loaf. I picked this first as a form of instant gratification. Just mix up the dough, let it rise for an hour or so, and then cook for 30-40 min.
Here is a before the rise
Here is a finished product
A good number of the bread recipes require a starter to help the yeast start moving before you add all of the flour and water. You can make the starter, refrigerate it and then use it the next few days to complete the loaf. The first one I’m trying is a ciabatta. Currently, the starter is rising for 12-24 hours. I’ll then stick it in the fridge over night, bring it out an hour before, mix in the rest of the ingredients, let it rise again, bake it and hopefully have a nice ciabatta when I’m done. I post pictures of that when it’s finished.
edit: here’s the ciabatta. It didn’t rise as much as I had hoped but that’s cause it’s freezing in our house. The book suggests having it rise in a room at a temp of 75-80 degrees. Granted the author is working in a kitchen that has action going on all the time. But in the blurry second pic, you can see some of the lattice work like structure the ciabatta is supposed to have.
I had seen a TV show about bread once and the host talked about getting the bread to rise by putting the bread dough and bowl in the oven on one rack and putting a shallow pan of boiling water on the rack below and slamming the door shut. The oven isn’t on, but the heat and humidity of the boiled water help maintain a consistent temperature for the dough to react and rise whilst avoiding the accrual of nasty dried out crust yaggas on the dough.
i may try that. The only problem that I foresee is that my oven has a vent, so I don;t know how long the humidity would last in there.
One tip on the same vein, is that when you first start cooking the dough, in order to get the humidity up in the oven, you throw a half a cup of ice cubes in a cast iron pan on the bottom shelf. I’ll have to go check the logic behind it but I think it what helps get the nice solid crust on the outside.
All I know is that it was delicious. I’ve got my sights set on the prosciutto loaf again and probably a rye loaf.
I found another solution. I turn the light on in the oven and that produces enough heat to help the dough to rise when I put it in there.
That’s a good idea. The dough doesn’t dry out and crust on the top?
It hasn’t yet.
i keep the doough covered with saran wrap or a lid while it’s in there.