Fibermania

Bread-Letter Day

I had this great idea to let my bread dough do its second rise in the pan that I intend to bake it. This pan fits nicely in the covered roaster, aka La Cloche that I have devised as my humidity chamber. This all has to do with my No-Knead Bread jones, um, I mean enticement from my pal Joan Samuelson, via the NY Times video mentioned in previous blogs.

However I neglected to flour the pan before I dropped in the dough, which is a very wet dough, so of course it stuck in the pan. Adios disposable pan.

I also am experimenting with a shorter baking time, from 40 minutes to 30 and this seems to work just fine. I got two nice loaves with good crumb, and no discernable taste difference from allowing it to rise for 18 hours + 2 more in the pan. I was hoping for a sourdough flavor. Eh. I am dreaming. The fact that the ambient temperature is not quite 70 degrees, I was lucky to have the rise it achieved.

But the real beauty of the batch was this apple-cranberry pecan loaf, flavored with cinnamon. The bread recipe is so flexible that I am able to experiment with fruits or garlic or whatever inspires me for the day. I am thinking olives or figs for future loaves...

The apple cranberry pecan loaf. Very artisanal looking, no? Really delicious and so moist. Excellent for toasting. Imagine it for French toast... I put it in the freezer for another day.

Because of the success I had with the applecran loaf, I decided to use apple cider in place of the water in the recipe, as sugar is what feeds the yeast. I found the dough did rise beautifully when I looked this morning. The bake-off will be later today. I will post.

Did you know there are bread blogs? I really like this one, Breadbasket Case. I guess there are blogs for everything these days.