Good morning, all! I
truly enjoyed baking bread using Julia’s recipe. It’s quite different than the one I’ve used
for years. At my weekly grocery
shopping trip, I made sure to buy a fresh jar of yeast. The one in my frig was
a few months old. I didn’t want to take
any chances! Yeast can be temperamental
when it gets old.
I can be a messy cook.
I’m usually a pretty organized person but with cooking or baking, I tend
to do it on the fly. I’m inclined to
modify recipes, too. This penchant I
have for modifying recipes is automatic. I hardly know I’m doing it until after
it’s done. I needed to follow this
recipe to the letter so I suppressed the urge even while processing the modifications
in my head.
I pulled out my container I use dough as well as all the
other ingredients for White Loaves from the cookbook Baking with Julia by Julia Child and Dorie Greenspan. My next step was to ready the Kitchen Aid
mixer. Now, I haven’t been baking much
lately. Since it takes up so much
counter space, I put it away some time ago in the lower portion of my buffet. I forgot how heavy it is! It’s got a home on the counter again because
I don’t want to be moving it back and forth for all this baking. The recipe is pretty simple really. I decided to bake the bread after church on a
Sunday. I really can’t do too much
baking during the week. I am gone from
6:30 in the morning to almost 6 PM every weekday. By the time I get home, I don’t have enough
energy to bake cookies let alone bread!
I placed the butter on my counter to soften while I was gone so I could
be ready to go when I returned from church.
Now, it’s been some time since I used the mixer. I can truly say I have never mixed bread in
the Kitchen Aid. I guess I’ve been old
school. Most of my bread, I mix by hand
and turn out on a floured board to knead.
I was really interested to see what the machine could do. It would certainly save a lot of time and
energy. I wasn’t sure I could knead the
loaves properly anyway. My right wrist
has been giving me problems and the thought of 15 minutes of kneading was not fun. I attached the dough hook and placed the
proper ingredients in the bowl according to the directions then turned the
mixer on very low. Flour all over the
kitchen was not an option! Since it had
to mix for 10 minutes, miss smarty pants though she could multitask. Boy was I wrong! I looked away from the mixer for about 30
seconds to prepare a pan on the stove for lunch. I heard this loud bang! It was the mixer dangling off the edge of the
counter, still running! It had walked
off! The sheer force from the motor
moving through the dough had allowed the mixer to travel all the way to the
edge of my counter. The plug pulled out
from the wall which cut off the power.
My model has a pin the connects the head (which houses the motor and all
the main working parts) from the cast iron stand. The pin worked its way loose and the head
disconnected from the stand. I just stood there looking at it in shock! Once I got my wits about me, I ran over to
pick it up wondering how I was going to get this thing back together. Actually, it wasn’t that hard. The dough was still in the bowl as it had not
fallen on the floor. I picked up the top
first then the base. The pin had fallen
on my kitchen floor but at that time I was not aware it as missing. I examined the mixer wondering how in the
world I was going to put this back together.
I looked it over and
realized that the pin existed and the top portion needed to align with the base
using the holes where the pin should go.
I looked on the counter and finally on the floor and found it in front
of my dishwasher. I spent the next few minutes trying to line up the two
sections. Once it was back together, I
used my meat mallet to pound the pin back in completely and I was back in
business. My only concern was whether the mixer would work! I turned it on and I was good to go. After breathing a heavy sigh of relief, I
continued with the kneading for a few more minutes and never took my eyes off
the mixer again! I did not mix it the
entire amount of time called for in the recipe.
As you will see later, it turned out wonderfully without mixing a full
eight minutes. As long as the bread is
smooth and elastic, you will have a good loaf.
After letting it rise about 1 hour, it looked magnificent! Here is a picture:
I always use either ceramic or stoneware for bread. I find it helps create a great crust which
makes an excellent loaf. I am using here
an Emile Henry loaf pan and a Bialetti Stoneware 9 by 5 loaf pan.
After allowing to rise again for another 60 minutes, here
are both loaves before I placed them in the oven. Clearly, one loaf is slightly larger than the
other but that could be the pan. My
Emile Henry pan is a little smaller than the Bialetti.
Another new experience for me was using a thermometer to
take the temperature of a loaf to confirm doneness. I was always taught to knock on the loaf with
your knuckle to hear a sort of thump.
Now, I know that is not scientific or terribly professional but it
worked most of the time. Using the
thermometer was a real eye opener. It
was so much more precise and I truly believed I got a much better loaf. The other thing I never knew was to let it
rest. In the past when I baked bread, I
could barely get it out of the oven before my husband Joe had a bread knife in
hand waiting expectantly for me to take it out of the pan. He loves hot, fresh
bread. I was lucky this day. He wasn’t
home! Now I know to keep his hands off
it until it cools. The loaves were
beautiful! Here is my finished product.
This crust is beautifully crunchy with a soft center and the
taste is simply wonderful. Slather some
butter and go to town! I will definitely
make this bread again.
Happy Cooking! Karen
