Thursday, January 20, 2011

HBinFive January 15th Bread Braid


There seem to be some grumblings circulating among this bread group of muted flavors and spouses tiring of whole wheat breads.

I'm sure none of us expected these concerns to be part of our learning experience, but a year in and a year to go, I think it's time to put our flours out on the table and take stock, examine, vent even.

I passed on the dill rye bread in this assignment because I'm not really a dill-lover. Maybe a little fresh with poached salmon on a fair weather day, dining outdoors, with a glass of white wine...Instead I headed back over to ABinFive and made a Caraway Swirl Rye that I had yet to try.

I have made the dough before for the Deli-Style Rye, but not with the extra caraway interior. It was delicious, and I found reward in my swirl. Honestly, I was so relieved to be back in ABinFive territory, knowing that even if the swirl didn't look perfect, that the bread would be good. I am that confident with this book.

I couldn't pass up a rosemary experience, so I made the 100% Whole Grain Rosemary Potato Dinner Rolls with a Salt Crust. When I read that this dough used diced, raw potato, I was immediately wary. I considered making an ABinFive dough that called for mashed potatoes, but I wanted to remain with the group for one bread.

I thought these would be inedible. Half the amount of potato would have sufficed, as I couldn't seem to incorporate a lot of the cubes into the dough. I skipped the soy flour and added extra whole wheat flour.

Most of my bread baking friends seemed to have made larger rolls. I followed the instructions and divided a pound of dough into eight balls ("the size of golf balls"--the recipe said). Well, I made golf balls all right. They rose a tad.

We ate these with a lentil soup. They were edible, and better than expected, considering what my expectations were. The potato was cooked, which I was suspicious wouldn't happen. O. said they looked hard. Well, not so much, just heavy.

Sometimes when I write my posts, I imagine my HBinFive friends sitting around my kitchen table with me. So, gathered around, I ask you, what's going on here?

I recently have made a 50% whole wheat bread and a 100% whole wheat bread from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day. In the former, he suggests olive oil and honey as optional ingredients. In the latter, they are not optional. He says they are needed to mellow the wheat flavor and soften the bran. Both the breads were wonderful, even O. ate the full whole wheat, which she calls brown bread.

What do you all think? Would some vegetable or olive oil and a little honey give us some flavor back, allowing us to taste some of the additional flavors, like the herbs for instance, without cutting back on the whole wheat like some of you are thinking about?

Well, maybe I'll be brave and give it a try with the master dough. I'll let you know what happens if I do. I want to make the most of the next year baking together. I'll just go pull up some more chairs around my kitchen table.

6 comments :

  1. I love caraway and now have the ABin5 book. My problem is that I need to diet and my other half just simply will not eat the brown breads and it takes a while to work through them from the freezer.

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  2. WOW...the Deli-Style Rye Swirl bread looks amazing!!! I've not made that recipe yet and now I'm so looking forward to it!

    I'm not sure what's going on with the HB5 breads. I'm thinking it's after the holidays and maybe we all just need a break for a bit???

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  3. I'm with Michelle. WOW!! on your Deli Rye Bread.
    I, too, have not made this, but have put it on my to bake list.

    As for the WW spouse problem, am thinking of using half white WW & half WW. My hubby grow up with Wonder Bread and Howdy Dowdy time and doesn't like the heaviness of WW bread. So, somehow, I'm hoping to switch his taste buds over to healthier grains.

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  4. Your swirl was beautiful.
    I think maybe we've hit a taste plateau right now with our WW breads. Of course, being a beekeeper, I think everybody should use a little honey in the breads. :)
    I have the King Arthur whole grain baking book and they suggest orange juice, saying that it mellows out the WW taste that some people object to.

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  5. I guess I am fortunate in that my spouse, and my children, all love the whole grain breads, actually prefer them to white. I do think that the flavor profile of the whole wheat mutes the add-ins, but that is something we can usually compensate for by adding some extra whatever, which most of like to do anyway. And don't forget the old adage, the whiter your bread, the sooner you're dead!

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  6. Your caraway swirl rye looks wonderful!! I checked the library, but all copies of ABin5 are currently out. I'm kind of frustrated with the HBin5 book right now too, because alot of the breads just don't seem to be that good. I love baking with whole wheat and grains, but I want the end product to be good. I love this group so am not sure what to do.

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