Sesame bread maker in training + applesauce bread

This week we used up applesauce, and I taught my husband how to make one of our favorite breads, Josey Baker's sesame bread.

Sesame bread: always good!

Josey Baker's sesame bread is an easy recipe, but it has certain time constraints. It calls for mixing the pre-ferment, waiting 12 hours, then mixing in the rest of the ingredients, then waiting 3 hours, and then refrigerating at least 3 hours before shaping the bread. Once you've refrigerated the finished dough, the timing is fluid. All in all, this bread takes 23 hours to 6+ days to make, with the first 15 hours being the least flexible.

We usually like baking the bread Friday or Saturday, so we can share it with friends, but that requires starting during the week. My weekday mornings are not usually flexible, so it was time for Nate to learn how to take my place. I happened to work from home Thursday, so we could make some bathroom remodeling decisions. That meant the education of Nate could start Wednesday evening.

We toasted the sesame seeds, then started soaking the seeds that would go in the bread (as opposed to on it), and made the pre-ferment—some whole wheat, a little yeast, and some water.

The next morning, we mixed the dough. We'd had uneven dough coloring before, but we solved it by mixing the water with the pre-ferment before adding the other ingredients.

Mixing water with the pre-ferment before adding solids made for a uniform color (finally)

Thursday night we shaped the loaf and put it back in the fridge.

When I came home Friday evening, the bread was in the oven. What a treat! It came out well, the only flaw being a couple of big bubbles near the surface.

I started digging at a bubble and couldn't stop until it was a gaping maw

On to the applesauce. Nathan made it last week with the last of our pink lady apples, along with a healthy dose of ginger. I used 2 cups of it in applesauce bread, and Nathan used the rest in applesauce muffins.

Applesauce bread: tasty yet imperfect

The applesauce bread I'd made before. It's based on the applesauce variant of The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book recipe for banana bread (p. 323).

I made this bread similarly to last time, with the following adjustments:

• Maybe half the vanilla called for (we were running low on vanilla, and the applesauce was strongly ginger flavored)
• No spices (because ginger)
• Hazelnut oil (probably didn't matter)
• No salt (as usual)

As usual, I used no-sodium baking soda (a bit more than doubling the called for amount) and baking powder. I love these no-sodium substitutes. Real bakers say they aren't quite the same, but they do the job for me. The baking soda substitute has a huge amount of calcium, interestingly.

No quickbreads for me unless they're made with no-sodium leavening,
like Hain's Featherweight baking powder and
Ener-G's baking soda substitute

Unlike last time, I had whole wheat pastry flour, so I used exactly the flour the recipe called for. Instead of walnuts, I used pecans—a full half cup in the recipe itself, with more on top. And like last time, I used giant raisins.

The recipe recommends double-panning, so the crust doesn't burn before the inside is cooked

We cooked the heck out of this bread, and yet it still seemed undercooked on the bottom.

Less cooked the further down you go

We couldn't cook it any longer without burning it. I wonder if you can ever get an eggless applesauce quickbread to seem fully cooked.

The top: plenty cooked

By the way, let me just say that I love my little Oxo measuring cups. Measuring 3 T of oil (1.5 oz), followed by 1/3 cup of honey (80 ml), was no problem at all.

This little beaker makes measuring oil & (afterward) honey easy

I have no pictures of Nate's applesauce-oatmeal muffins, but they were good. We didn't double the topping, but that's not a bad idea. Nuts would also be good added to the batter and the topping.