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| Toasted sesame bread #1, uneven as usual (but tasty) |
The toasted sesame bread seems to always turn out much higher on one side than the other. I thought maybe it was due to my not sprinkling the salt on evenly, but even when I mixed the salt with the water for loaf #2, the loaf was uneven.
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| Toasted sesame bread #2, still uneven |
Now I'm thinking that perhaps the problem is simply that the bread is 100% whole wheat, and (even on the whole wheat cycle) the bread simply tends to clump around one mixing paddle more than the other.
A possible solution might be to check the dough when the raisin/nut beeps sound, to make sure it's even. It's not a big deal, though. The unevenness doesn't affect the taste or texture at all, just the size.
Toasted sesame is becoming my go-to bread. It's 100% whole wheat, it smells great, and it tastes great with everything except sweet toppings. It's great with tuna or pesto, and very good as a PBJ bread, but not so great with butter & jam or butter & cinnamon sugar.
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| Inside toasted sesame bread |
Last week's Bohemian black bread (BBB) was fairly even, but a bit lower in the middle. I think that might be caused by the dough separating into two halves, each one centered on a mixing paddle. BBB has less whole grain than the sesame bread, fwiw.
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| Bohemian black bread (BBB) |
The BBB was much lighter in color this time, since instead of using black cocoa I used Lake Champlain Chocolates cocoa, which is a light reddish brown. I need to get some more of that black cocoa.
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| The inside of BBB |
On to baguettes.
A week ago Thursday and Saturday, I refreshed the white sourdough starter. Saturday morning I refreshed the whole wheat starter. Sunday I made baguettes.
I used a variant of King Arthur Flour's sourdough baguette recipe, ending up with these ingredients (almost identical to the first batch, except I used all-purpose flour + gluten instead of bread flour):
- 1/2 cup + 2 T lukewarm water
- 1 cup sourdough starter (I used white only)
- 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp gluten
- 1 t salt
- 1/2 T bread machine yeast
Around 5:45 I took the dough out, shaped it, and put it in the gheed baker (where gheed is to ghee what oiled is to oil).
I wet a dish towel, put it on a cookie sheet, and then awkwardly dipped the top side of each baguette onto the sheet. I put the largest baguette in the middle. I added raw, whole buckwheat to the top baguette.
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| From top to bottom: buckwheat, biggest, prettiest |
I accidentally turned the oven on before putting the baker in. I didn't realize until it was already hot, but I turned it off while the loaves finished rising.
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| About to go into the oven |
I might have overbaked the bread a little bit, but my family and I liked it. It had a nice crust (though perhaps a little thick) and tasty, tender innards. And it didn't stick to the pan, at all!
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| Buckwheat covered baguette |
We started with the buckwheat-covered baguette. A lot of the buckwheat fell off, but that just made it that much more fun for my daughter and me to go on a little treasure hunt of the cutting board.
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| The buckwheat-covered baguette didn't last long |
The next day we had about 1.5 loaves left, which we used for chicken sandwiches. It was so nice to have a real baguette sandwich again! It made me want to find a recipe for banh mi bread, the craptastic bread that makes a terrific holder for delicious Vietnamese fillings. Here are some recipes that I might try:
- Viet World Kitchen: Vietnamese Baguette Recipe (Banh Mi Tay)
- Andrea Nguyen's recipe for banh mi rolls (also see this)
- Vietnam Online: Vietnamese Bread Rolls
- EvillyChic: Recreation of the mysterious Bánh mì baguette
- easy crusty baguettes (overnight)
- the almost no-knead baguette (overnight, or up to 7 days)
- classic baguettes and stuffed baguettes (overnight)
- french baguettes (overnight)
- french-style baguettes
- baguette pan baguettes (overnight)
- whole wheat baguettes (overnight)
- wild yeast baguettes (overnight)
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