Bread Baking

Since my birthday in January when I got my awesome bread baking book from Zach and my wonderful grain mill from my Mom and Dad, I have been trying to make home made bread instead of buying bread at the store. I have been pretty successful with sticking to this. I don't think we have purchased sandwich bread since January. Since I am just leaning to make home made bread I have been experimenting with a lot different recipes. I have had some loafs that turned out as heavy as a brick and some that have been pretty good. It has really been a learning process for me. This week I searched through my bread book (The Bread Baker's Apprentice) and found 3 new recipes I wanted to try. I was very please with how all 3 kinds turned out. Below are the pictures and description of each type of bread I made this week.

Light Wheat Bread

This wheat bread is part whole wheat flour and part white flour. It is some of the best sandwich bread I have made since I started baking. It turned out very light and moist.

Cinnamon Rasin Walnut Bread

This bread was all white flour and so yummy!! It made the most perfect breakfast bread.

Ciabatta Bread

This is the bread I was most excited to make. This bread was a 2 day process. It was much more involved than the sandwich loafs i normally make. I had to make a Poolish sponge the 1st day and let that sit in the fridge overnight. The following day I made the dough that you add the Poolish sponge into. This really wasn't all that complicated just a more time consuming than other breads. It was the shaping and proofing process that was much more involved. This bread has a very distinc shape and you have to let it proof in a couche (this I made out of an old white table cloth) to get its shape and size right. Then the bread has to be baked at a very high heat with a steam pan under it to provide a burst of steam to the bread to give it shiny and crisp crust. I told Zach that this better be some really tasty bread for all of the effort I was putting into making it. It turned out amazing!! I am very proud of my first attempt at this kind of bread.