BBA Challenge Bread #1: Anadama

I’m sorry to say that week 1 of the BBA Challenge was a bust for me. Even though this picture makes the bread look sort of OK, my Anadama was an almost complete failure. It’s not easy to see in this picture (look after the jump for a better shot of this), but my bread had almost no spring in the oven. If you’ve been following other Challenge members, you know that this loaf is significantly flatter than everyone else’s, and my crumb leaves a lot to be desired as well. I’m gearing up to try this again now that I know one key thing: My oven’s all of a sudden running cold! It used to always run hot, but after making this bread and trying to figure out what went wrong, I used 2 different thermometers to test my oven and figured out this VERY IMPORTANT detail.

See how flat I am?

This recipe calls for a few ingredients that aren’t that common in bread, like molasses. I’ve never cooked with molasses and therefore didn’t have any on hand, but when I casually mentioned this to my neighbor she said, “Hold on!” and ran back to her apartment, returning with a jar of Grandma’s Molasses for me. You can see it here:

You see those numbers on the label? “3-89″? Yes, that stands for the month and year when this jar of molasses was purchased by its original owner, who back in 2001 gave it to my neighbor while cleaning out her apartment to move out of the city. My neighbor’s kept it in the back of her pantry, still sealed, all these years! When I mentioned I needed some, she almost squealed with delight at the thought that it might get used! It’s 20 years old, but it was still sealed, so we figured it was still good, right? It tasted fine . . .

Also in the picture above is the cornmeal soaker that is the first step in this recipe. It seems like every bread in this book uses some sort of starter, which I guess makes sense since it’s a fancy make-bread-like-a-real-baker sort of book. But it does require some planning ahead to get the timing right! You can’t just open the book to a page and decide to make bread right now, all these recipes require several hours of waiting with lots of short steps in between. Keep that in mind if you decide to join us, you definitely need to plan head!

Even though I usually like to mix and knead breads by hand, I decided to go with the mixer for this one because of all the goopy ingredients, I didn’t think it would be pleasant to stick my fingers in this mess. Mixing in the mixer was really easy, but when it came time to knead, I wasn’t happy with how the dough got stuck to the hook and mostly just rotated around without getting worked much. I ended up using the mixer for about 6 minutes and then taking the dough out and finishing the kneading by hand. At that point the dough was pretty easy to handle so it was easy to do it by hand. My windowpane test wasn’t 100% successful but I figured that was due to the large grains of cornmeal in this dough and called it good enough.

Here’s where the planning-ahead part bit me in the butt: by the time I had let it proof, it was 11pm! There was no way I was going to be able to shape the loaves, let them rise, and THEN bake them for 40 minutes, it was a weeknight! So I did as the recipe instructed and refrigerated the loaves in their pans, intending to bake them the next day. When I checked on them in the morning I was shocked at how much they had risen while in the fridge, I didn’t expect almost any rise but they were about half-way done!

When I came home that night I took out one pan and let it sit on the counter for 4 hours like the books says. It kind of collapsed after coming out of the fridge, and then rose again as it heated up. I was a bit worried but not that much. After 4 hours it passed the “poke” test so I decided it was done even though it hadn’t risen as much as I expected. Here’s how it looked when it went into the oven:

It smelled amazing as it cooked and I had high hopes, but after 20 minutes when I went to rotate it, I knew it wasn’t going to be good. The bread had fallen again, and it looked nothing like every one’s. I let it cook for another 15 minutes to reach the required internal temperature, then took it out and let it cool:

The final verdict? Meh. If it only looked mediocre but tasted good, that would be one thing. But it was seriously lacking in every way: taste, texture, AND looks. It wasn’t inedible, in fact Adam finished up the loaf within a few days, but it definitely did not meet my expectations. I think I’m going to need to make this again so I can see what all the fuss is about!

Tagged as: anadama bread, baking, BBA Challenge, bread