Breadish

Danielle hooked me up with a totally random bread making gift. Which required me to buy equipment…..it is a bit of a buzz kill kind to get a book and then instantly realize you need to buy equipment, but it’s good equipement so I’m glad that I was forced to buy it. What I learned is that pizza stones make for harder crusts and buckets of saturated dough can be kept in the fridge for weeks. To keep the dough for weeks I bought the suggested food grade bucket on Amazon which arrived in time for me to realize that it is a BPA nightmare. So I bought a 2nd kitchen aid mixer bowl that was made of stainless steel that could eventually have dual purpose.

I’ve learned from past bread implosions that I really need to not kill the yeast with super hot water. Warm is luke warm. I tend to take showers that make my skin bright red and wash my hands with water that makes them numb, so I may be a really bad judge for “warm” as a general concept. I did realize in the last batch of bread failures that the northern lights affect that I loved watching so much was actually the yeast dying. So I let the cold water get to the point of no longer feeling cold and dropped it into the mix.

This dough ball sat for 5+ hours while we went to hang out with the Lee family, jump started our car that over stayed it’s welcome at their house, and ate delicious Korean soup.

I was amazed to see that the dough actually did RISE! Maybe it over rose? Not quite sure yet, but this was the opposite problem of what I am used to seeing. So I was very excited.

After a day of refrigeration… I took a cut to try to make a loaf. Tried my best at gluten cloaking and baked away. In the end, my bread was way too dense, so I must have failed at this cloaking procedure.

I also forgot to make slashes in the dough. I ended up with a bit of a cock-eyed loaf that made a split for itself. It was actually crusty, actually flavorful, but still definitely too dense. I must say that after a year plus of bread failure that I was very excited for this level of success. It was definitely the most bread-like bread that I’ve ever made. I’ve got a couple more loaves ready in the bucket in the back of my fridge, so hopefully iterations 2 and 3 only get better!