SUCCESS!
I’m sure you all remember (you do hang on my ever word, right?!) that my first try at the Anadama bread for week 1 of the BBA Challenge was a complete failure. What I haven’t told you yet is that I actually tried again only a week later and on the second try, it came out wonderful! I don’t know why it took me so long to post about it, but here it is a month later, time to document for posterity! Looking at these pictures makes me want to make this bread again, it was really delicious!
First things first: Ingredients! After the fiasco of the first time, I wondered whether some questionable ingredient choices might be to blame. For this redo I decided to buy new cornmeal, because the stuff I used the first time was really old and not the thick “polenta” style called-for in the recipe. After consulting with my fellow BBAers I didn’t replace my decade-old molasses, though, everyone assured me it would be fine since the bottle had been sealed all this time. I really do think that the change in cornmeal made a huge difference in the finished product!
Last time, I didn’t quite achieve a windowpane, but I chalked it up to the bits of cornmeal. After hearing from others that their windowpanes were very nice despite the kernels of cornmeal, I decided to knead the heck out of the bread when I redid it. Look at the difference between the dough when I turned it out onto the counter:
And after 15+ minutes of kneading:
It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it? The book says there’s very little danger of over-kneading bread, so I figured I would just go for it. My windowpane was very nice, but unfortunately there was no one home to help me take a picture of it so I have no pictures to prove it. Just trust me!
I set the dough to ferment in my awesome dough rising bucket from King Arthur Flour:
The best part of using a bucket like this? You can clearly see just how much the bread grows!
The first time I made this bread, I only baked one loaf. This time, I decided to bake 3, even though I don’t have 3 loaf pans of the right size. The recipe makes either 2 big loaves or 3 smaller loaves, but I have 2 smaller pans and one larger pan . . . so I decided to just use all 3 and not worry about different-sized loaves:
For this bread I didn’t use the book’s loaf-shaping technique, I just made log shapes and plopped them into the pans. I’m not sure it would have made much difference honestly, but I may experiment next time and shape the loaves using different techniques to see what happens. My gut says that some techniques might yield better oven spring than others, but I have no scientific evidence to back up that thought!
As you can see, the loaves grew very nicely this time, much better than they did last time:
When they came out of the oven, I knew they were going to be awesome!
I gave one loaf to my neighbor (the one who’d given me the molasses), took one loaf to work, and Adam and I devoured the third one.
Doesn’t this crumb just make you want to rip right into a slice?!?
The texture of this bread was very unique due to the polenta cornmeal, and the flavor was rich and hearty, like something you’d eat in Vermont in the winter (I’m totally making that up, I’ve never even been to Vermont!). Even though there’s molasses in it, it’s not sweet at all which was surprising. We both particularly liked it toasted with butter, but it was plenty good just plain. I’ll definitely be making this again in the future now that I’ve figured out how to do it right!
Want to join us in the BBA Challenge? Get yourself a copy of Peter Reinhart’s Bread Baker’s Apprentice, the incredibly comprehensive how-to-book for bread, and play along! Full details on the challenge are here.
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You did great. Nice looking loaves. Aren’t you glad you tried it again?
Wonderful baking along with you.
Susie