First one is free
For the last couple of weeks I have been baking bread and bringing it into the office. I usually bring in one loaf to share with everyone in the office. I slice it up and steal two beautiful slices for myself.
What can I say I need a couple of good pieces of toast in the morning to go with coffee. I am not sure if or when I will start charging for this bread, so in the meantime I joke about how ‘The first one is free’, you know drug dealer style.
I have been experimenting a little bit with different forms of buttermilk bread. Having made the buttermilk bread in the past I knew how the consistency of dough varied significantly than the artisan breads that I have been making. The dough is gooier and when it bakes up it has a spongier feel to it.
Previously, I made raisin bread with it. The process is relatively easy, you roll out the dough, spread a mixture of melted butter, cinnamon and brown sugar out on the flattened dough and then you roll it up, it will resemble a jelly roll. However, before rolling it up you have to remember to put some raisins in.
The first time I made the raising bread, I felt there were not enough raisins. As you might expect, the next time that I made it, I overcompensated and put too many raisins in.
In the experiment that I conducted earlier this week, I decided to put the cinnamon directly in with the yeast, buttermilk, water and salt. This gave the dough a nice cinnamon smell with just a hint of cinnamon flavor. The first loaf of this experimental dough I felt was OK, but could be better. I agreed with Gina’s assessment that it needed brown sugar (and butter).
The next loaf of this cinnamon infused bread was baked jellyroll style, with melted butter and brown sugar rolled up in the middle. However, I opted to leave the raisins out, figuring why not try the only remaining extreme.
The bread was mutant looking in my opinion (sorry for got to grab a pics before serving it). Myself and most everyone at the office felt it was just great. A few felt it was too sweet, almost candy like.
I decided to try and find a happy medium between the two extremes. Except in an effort to try and evenly distribute the cinnamon and brown sugar flavors, I mixed the brown sugar straight into the dough, foregoing the whole spread it out and roll it up part aka jelly roll style.
I have gotten into the habit these last few times of mixing up and baking the dough the same day, for the most part I usually am only dealing with dough that has been in the fridge for overnight (or a couple of days). I am not entirely sure which version of dough I prefer better. I have found that cold dough is easier to handle is not very sticky. However, a liberal dusting of flour will help keep the dough from being too sticky, regardless of temperature.
I mixed up a batch of cinnamon, brown sugar, buttermilk bread this evening and it is currently baking in the oven. I will remove it from the oven before I go to bed, but in the meantime it is filling the house with a positively fantastic smell of cinnamon (and butter).
I am calling this bread “Fajita’s Sans Raisin Bread”. Here is the recipe that I used for this go around.
- 2 cups of luke warm water (distilled or reverse osmosis)
- 1 cup of buttermilk
- 1.5 Tbls of yeast (I use Fleischmann’s Active Dry)
- 1.5 Tbls of salt (I use Kosher salt)
- 6 Tbls of Brown Sugar (heaping tablespoons)
- 3 Tbls of Cinnamon
- 1 Cup of unbleached whole wheat flour (King Arthur’s brand)
- 5 cups of unbleached all-purpose flour (HEB works OK, King Arthur is better)
Directions
Mix the yeast, salt, water, milk, sugar and cinnamon together. I usually let this sit a minute or two before mixing in the whole wheat flour. After the first cup of flour has created sort of a ’slurry’ I proceed to mix in the remaining flour 2 cups at a time (last cup is solo of course).
The last cup of flour is something that I generally have to mix in by hand, the dough does not mix well via wooden spoon at that point. The recipe book states that you can use a mixer for this, but I have never tried.
After it is all mixed up, I generally sprinkle it with some flour and punch it down to the bottom of the bowl, after it has been pushed out to all the sides, I dust it again and then proceed to pull the edges underneath, sort of pulling the middle out and forming a ball.
Then I let it sit in the bowl/tub for a couple of hours. Afterwards, I dust it again and form another ball with it. Depending upon how much the ball has risen, I will determine (by eye-balling it) whether or not it is ready to bake. If it looks good to go, I set the oven to preheat at 350 degrees.
I grease up a loaf pan and then take 1/2 the dough from the tub and sort of make a cylindrical object out of the dough. I put it cylinder in to the loaf pan and allow it to sit for at least another 20 minutes.
An individual loaf of bread will need to bake for 45 minutes. I have done more than one loaf in the oven at a time and do not yet have a great feel for how this alters to the time frames.
That is the recipe for Fajita’s Sans Raisin bread.
Oh yeah, I should note that if you don’t get the chance to remove the loaves from the pan after they cool initially, then you will have a bit of a soggy spot on the bottom of the bread. Throw the bread in a paper bag for a little bit and everything will be OK.
It is way past my bedtime and I do believe I need to take the bread out of the oven.
Laterz