Christmas Bread

This was the bread that I brought for Christmas with Matt's parents. It's Rose Levy Berenbaum's mushroom bread from The Bread Bible, and it has duxelles in it. Duxelles are chopped mushrooms sauteed in garlic and butter for a long time. The idea was that if I baked it in a coffee can it would take the shape of a mushroom. Sort of. Um.

It was very good, and better toasted. The mushroom/garlic flavor wasn't pronounced-maybe next time I would use a mushroom broth instead of the water to intensify.

Bread Baker's Apprentice: Focaccia

The BBA challenge crawls on. I may not be speedy but I'll be there in the end.

This is Reinhart's second variation on Focaccia, which starts with 3 cups of poolish (preferment). He suggests fermenting the poolish (about the 'consistancy of wet pancake batter') overnight in the refrigerator, but I just left it on the counter, Daniel Leader style.

Then, I mixed the dough this morning before work, stretched and fermented a it a few times, and then stuck it in the refrigerator at 10am. Coming home around 5, I pulled it out, let it warm up a bit, then gave it its final stretch and fold, then let it rise.

When I was ready for the final proofing, I dimpled it (possibly not enough, it still rose high), spread it with oregano/garlic herb oil, and covered it with cherry tomatoes, dried onions, and bits of shitake mushroom and turkey sausage leftover from another dinner.

The final result seemed softer and taller than the picture in the book, but it was wonderfully tender due to all the oil the recipe required.

Bread Baker's Apprentice: Ciabatta

Moving right along with the BBA challenge (my carb-hungry household needs bread), I made ciabatta the other night. I had made ciabatta at least once before, using Daniel Leader's method, with middling results. In the BBA book, there are two versions, poolish and biga. Both are pre-ferments, with different proportions and methods, but according to Reinhardt, create similar results. The poolish fermented for a few hours in the open air, then hung out in the refrigerator for a few days until I was ready to make dough.

Ciabatta is one of those breads that most cookbook writers advise making in a mixer, because it should be as wet as possible, and is hard to handle. My mixer can't even begin to handle bread dough, so that was out. Instead, I used a new method, suggested by Reinhardt, that involved using my hands as if they were a mixer--squeezing with one and rotating the bowl with the other. It was messy, and I feared for my ceramic bowl on my faux-marble countertop, but it was successful.The dough is then stretched and folded up, and left to rest for a while. After that, it is cut, folded again, and put to proof in an improvised couche.
At this point, I slipped the dough into the refrigerator and went to dinner. When I came back, I gave it a little time to warm up, then dimpled and stretched it as advised, and baked.
It came out beautiful, if a little wiggly, but I wasn't entirely satisfied with the inner crumb. Ciabatta is supposed to be almost non-existant inside, full of huge, glossy holes, and mine achieved more the texture of soft flatbread. I think this was due to all the temperature fluctuations, possibly also to my failure to stretch it out enough, and definitely to the lower hydration caused by using a cup of whole wheat flour (although I did add a lot of extra water to balance).

Has anyone else doing the BBA project noticed that they are routinely adding more water than Reinhardt suggests, even after compensating for flour substitutions? I wonder if I just have really dehydrated flour.

When I took this loaf out of the oven, Sophie said, 'Oh, it looks like Batman.'