My bread baking for this week is a pair of Farmhouse Potato Bread loaves, recipe from Gardenway Publishing's Bread Book: A Baker's Almanac. (This remains my favorite bread recipe collection, published in 1979 and given to me by Nana when she was culling her shelves in preparation for moving.) As the introduction to this traditionally autumnal (October) recipe reads, "this is the definitive white bread, redolent of things which were found in abundance in an old-time farm kitchen (a prosperous one, I might add): milk, eggs, butter and honey." I'm craving a little abundance on this last day of January, and am pretty sure a slice of this bread, hot from the oven at dinner time, will be fantastic with butter and jam.
12 noon
Apparently my kitchen is only just redolent enough; I used my last cup-and-two-tablespoons of milk, my last two eggs, and all but a thin scraping of the dark amber honey I brought to Brooklyn with me from Ballston Lake. The milk/potato/honey/butter mixture cooled down to a temperature that wouldn't kill the yeast, the yeast mixture frothed beautifully, and the addition of ginger with the eggs and salt and the combination of all with silky smooth bread flour has made my kitchen (and my hands) smell terrific. Kneading was a particularly good arm workout (thank you cold weather) and a good Zen-for-the-mind moment. (Yes, I love the No Knead Method as well as the next pressed-for-time person, but sometimes it's wonderful to bake the old-fashioned way.) Now to let the rise do its thing.
3 p.m.
I really need to buy a pastry brush at some point; my current method of finger-dotting melted butter onto rising bread takes too long and is more than a little messy. Upside: my super-dry skin always feels better afterwards. That said, loaves are shaped and placed in their buttered pans and the oven is preheated to full temp, hopefully speeding up the final rise.
4:02 p.m.
The scent of butter-soaked bread baking to perfection just wafted into the bedroom, where I'm sitting at my desk filing my taxes. Exquisite anticipation!
4:22 p.m.
Know what happens when you spill egg-and-milk glaze on the floor of the oven while setting the loaf tops? Yeah, burned egg smell throughout the apartment.
4:36 p.m.
Super soft crumb. Dark, chewy, non-crunchy crust. A tiny hint of lingering sweetness (that would be the honey). Heaven -- and worth every minute of effort, even including the mountain of dishes that need washing. Yum!
If you're reading this post via Facebook Notes or a Livejournal Mirror or via RSS, please click through to the actual blog if you'd like to leave a comment; it helps me to keep all of the conversation in one place. Thanks!
0 comments:
Post a Comment