Genius Hour-Bread Making

The art of bread making. I'm not sure which I liked more, making the bread or eating the bread.  There is something to say about homemade bread.  It definitely took me back to my grandma's kitchen when she would make her bread and the house would forever smell like fresh bread.

My sister Ellen brought the bread baking back to the family a few months ago when she found herself with too much extra time during the work day.  I know how that sounds but you have to understand a little piece of information about Ellen...she is a very impatient person.  She gets stuff done in an efficient manner which can lead to having a lot of down time, especially since she works from home.  Ellen can and will sit in her home office and just hammer out her work until it's done.  She was finding that she would be done with work in the early afternoon and would have nothing to do.  She found small tasks to occupy her time, but even those she'd get done quickly and still had time to spare. After about a month of this routine, she finally decided she needed something to occupy her time...enter baking bread.  Ellen found that baking bread was a good way to break up her day and teach her about patience.  Since most bread recipes have longer rise times and require some kneading, Ellen would start the dough in the morning, allow it to rise while she worked, then she would knead it, allow it to rise again, do some work, shape the bread, allow it to rise, do some more work, then finally bake it.  By the time all of that was done, her husband was on his way home and the day flew by.  She has made some pretty impressive loaves of bread which inspired me to begin my own journey of bread making.

Before diving right into baking bread, I asked Ellen if there was a beginner bread recipe that I could use.  She immediately pointed me in the directions of Cook's Illustrated.   Cook's Illustrated is under the umbrella of America's Test Kitchen where they test different cooking tools, ingredients, recipes, etc. If you want to find the best way to bake a cheesecake, they have a way for that!  If you want to know what the best apple cider vinegar is, they have tested them all.  So it wasn't a huge surprise when Ellen gave me a recipe from them. Easy Sandwich Bread was the first loaf of bread that Ellen ever made.  The dough does not need to be kneaded and it's what is called a "pour dough" meaning the dough is soft and wet and is able to be poured into a bread pan. It's main job is to teach you the basics of baking bread.  You do, however, need a stand mixer like a Kitchen Aid. You can for sure go old school and mix everything yourself, but it takes away the "easy" part.  Using the stand mixer saves a lot of time and it kneads the bread for you.

I was pretty excited about baking this bread because I have never done anything like this before.  I wanted to make sure that everything was perfect.  I even watched the video to make sure I was following the steps correctly.  However, no matter how much you plan, something usually goes wrong or you miss a step...which is exactly what happened to me.  Below are a few pictures of the process.

The dough on the left is in the beginning stages.  So far it looks exactly like the video and the step by step pictures from the recipe.  On the right, you can tell the dough has doubled in size and is ready for the next round of ingredients and Kitchen Aid kneading.  At this point, I had no clue that anything was wrong with my dough.  It looked great and it was doing everything that it was supposed to do.

When I transferred the dough into the bread pan, I finally started to realized that something wasn't right.  I tried to place the dough evenly in the pan and tried to spread it out so to get an even bake on it.  However, the dough was stickier than what was showed in the video.  I couldn't figure out what had happened.  I was sure I followed the recipe word for word.  I went ahead and put the dough in the oven and baked it for the said amount of time.  When it was done, the bread looked nothing like the pictures.  In the picture on the right, you can tell the dough spread and it did not rise correctly while in the oven.  It still has a nice brown crust, but it had an awkward texture.

From this angle, you can see where the bread had some issues rising.  Needless to say, I did something wrong.  I went to the recipe because there was one more step to complete before cutting the bread.  The last step was to take the last tablespoon of butter and baste the bread while warm. Wait....WHAT???***LIGHT BULB!!!*** I put all three tablespoons in the dough when the recipe only called for TWO!  I felt like such a moron. When I cut the bread open, you can see it's pretty soft on the inside, but there is a small ring of density at the bottom where the dough was too heavy because it was too wet. However, the bread was still delicious and there were no complaints.

Because I'm a competitive person, AKA: Perfectionist, I couldn't go through the weekend knowing that I messed up this "easy" bread on one tablespoon of butter.  Soooo...I made a new loaf the next day. As you can see, the top is much rounder than the first loaf and it wasn't as dense on the inside either.  I still need some work with shaping the bread, but Ellen says that comes with practice.  I would eventually like to work up to more difficult types of bread, but I think for now, I'm going to let my sister have this hobby.

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