It's all about food and heat
I am sitting here in our sweltering apartment, gleaming with sweat like nobody's business. It's the kind of weather that makes you wince when you cross your bare legs. 90 degrees, the weather forecast said. It's probably closer to 100 degrees in my little kitchen after roasting chicken breasts. And baking bread.
I've had this dream of baking perfect bread from scratch for quite some time. Armed with my new KitchenAid stand mixer, I'd really hoped that my days of dense, unleavened homemade bread were over. Using the recipe that came with the mixer, I tried it out first thing this morning. But even after two hours of rising time, the dough was as flat as the moment I slipped it into the greased bowl. It was also unusually hard and lumpy.
Disappointed, I shaped the dough into loaves and placed them gently in pans to rise some more. Same story: an hour later, the loaves still bore my fingerprints and had not risen even an inch.
So I chucked them into the oven with very low expectations. 45 minutes later, I was met with these golden beauties:
They are dense, yes. They are flat and look unleavened, definitely. But they are so very, very yummy and have just the right hint of sweetness and wheat-yness. They also go marvelously with my curried chicken salad (the reason for the roasted chicken breasts):
The curried chicken recipe is from Ina's Barefoot Contessa Family Style, which has been my favorite cook book lately. Because I didn't have curry powder, I made my own with cumin, coriander, white pepper, black pepper and a touch of turmeric. Delicious!
This is totally unrelated, but I just remembered a hilarious conversation I had with Kumi tonight.
Kumi (pointing to the refrigerator): Oh! Daddy in there!
Me: Daddy's in the refrigerator?
Kumi: Yeah! Daddy's underwater in there and BIG OWIE.
She was very certain of this and very concerned. I had a vivid mental image of MF floating in water in the refrigerator, banging on the door to be let out. I adore these fantastic little exchanges. I opened the refrigerator to assuage her worries and she looked relieved to see lots and lots of food with no Daddy in sight.
I have to step away from the computer now...my wrists are actually sticking to the keyboard because it is so freaking hot...how I long for air conditioning...
Being a well experienced bread-maker, of which I know you have read some of my exploits, I found that the biggest difference in my bread making was made by using the right flour. I now use bread flour rather than just your everyday run-of-the-mill plain flour. I don't know what the difference is technically, but it certainly made my bread much less dense.
Thanks Prue! You're right, I tried using bread flour today and my bread was actually fluffy! Do you use recipes or do you just make up your own? Your breads are beautiful and I'm impressed with the variety too!
I have a wonderful Dorling Kindersley book called Bread, by Eric Treuille and Ursula Ferrigno. I chose it because it had many many different types of breads from lots of different countries. I didn't just want to make different shaped breads of the same variety all the time. I am getting to the stage where I have started to adapt recipes to my own whims though.