Bread-Arrogance leads to burnt loaves

A picture of the convertible-top loaf eater as no finished product could, or would be photographed.

            One of the books that was recommended to me was “The Complete Book of Breads,” by Bernard Clayton Jr.  Flipping through the book reminded me that there was almost no end to the different bread-creations one could make.  Every single kind of bread or baked good that you could think of was in this book and I was having a hard time choosing one to help me prepare for the project I was beginning.  One of the other breads that I had baked called for buttermilk, but of course, you can’t just buy a small container of buttermilk that contains a cup or two.  You have to buy an entire quart, which will inevitably go bad before you have the urge to bake something else with buttermilk.  It’s the stuff that Larry David turned into Seinfeld episodes.  One of my goals in the kitchen is to make just enough, but not too much.  I have yet to achieve this goal when making pasta.  I hate leftovers and almost never eat them even though I have the best intentions to do so.  I should have learned from my mother who wastes almost nothing, and eats leftovers every single day for lunch, but there is something about eating a less-tasty version of the thing you had the night before that turns me off completely.  So it was my goal of not wasting that led me to make the Buttermilk Bread from The Complete Book of Breads.  That and the fact that I remembered buttermilk bread makes the perfect sandwich bread; something that I learned from my dad whose ideal lunch staple is a ham and cheese sandwich on buttermilk bread.  On rainy days in the winter when I was a kid, I can remember sitting at the table in the dining room, my dad, sister and I each playing a game of solitaire, eating sandwiches that required the help of a beverage to wash the bread out of the roof of our mouths.

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One of the things that I liked most about “The Complete Book of Breads” upon first sight was the layout of the recipes.  On the left hand side of the recipe are the titles of the step in the recipe (kneading, first rising, preheating, etc) along with the time needed to complete each step.  It makes for a very easy recipe because instead of wasting your time reading through the entire paragraph to find out which step you are on, you can zero right in on it.  I wish that I could say that the perfect layout of the recipe led to the perfect loaf of bread, but unfortunately, that is not true.  Everything was fine in the process of making the dough and letting it rise and placing it in the loaf pans with the egg wash and sprinkling of poppy seeds and sesame seeds, but the last crucial step of baking, the baking itself, was where it all went wrong.  I knew it would happen eventually.  It was only a matter of time before I would open the oven to pull out a loaf and it would be a failure.  But, my bread-arrogance pushed that thought into the back of my mind and tricked me into thinking that my flour creations would always turn out just right.  It’s the miracle of bread making; it can turn the average humble baker into an overly confident braggart.  Almost every time you bake a loaf, you are witnessing something truly amazing and it is easy to confuse the stunning nature of bread with the stunning nature of the baker.  I was starting to feel confident about this whole baking thing after having successfully pulled off Focaccia and the no-knead bread several times and after listening to the compliments that came with these successes. 

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            I had an audience as it was baking; Jake, Caroline, Luck and I were hanging out in the kitchen.  It was a beautiful sunny day when the rays of light were pouring in through the skylights and the hardwood floor was warm and the smell of the bread baking in the oven provided the perfect aromatic experience, until it started to smell a little bit like something was burning, and only 15 minutes into the 40 minutes of baking the recipe called for.   I pulled the loaves out after about 10 minutes more, thinking that there must have just been some food scraps on the bottom of the oven that were burning, and that it couldn’t be my perfect loaves burning.  Sure enough, when I pulled them out, they were burnt.  And not just a chestnut brown burnt, but burnt to the color of French roast coffee grounds.  My heart sank, I was embarrassed, and sad that I had spent the whole day nurturing those loaves only to have them die a premature death.  Jake, being the sweetheart that he is, said, “Look, they aren’t too bad, let’s just cut off the top!”  We cut off the top and realized that the crumb was almost cooked through, that it was just a really soft loaf on the inside.  It was salvageable, but not what I had hoped and expected when I put the loaves in the oven.  There I was, standing in the kitchen, in my apron with oven mitts still on, ready to cry.  I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, but Jake, being a supportive person and also a problem-solving oriented man, asked me to think about how I could avoid that in the future.  I snapped back at him, “I followed the recipe exactly, so I don’t know how!” and left the room to sulk in the privacy of the bedroom. 

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Then I heard Caroline calling from the kitchen, yelling about something.  I walked into the kitchen and saw Luck with the convertible-top loaf clutched between her paws on her bed, chomping with a great sense of urgency.  I had to laugh, it was hysterical, and apparently the loaf wasn’t as bad as I thought if Luck would eat it.  She is a picky eater, choosing to eat only tomatoes and butter and not carrots or lettuce.  It was at this point, that I apologized to Jake for being short with him, and thought about how I could prevent this from happening in the future, largely by trusting my own senses (of smell for one thing) against what the recipe called for.  I knew that that egg wash should have had water or milk in it, I knew that the oven was about 25 degrees too hot, and that the rack should be on the lower third, contrary to what was in the recipe, but I didn’t follow my baking instincts.  Overall, it wasn’t too horrible of a baking experience because I learned the valuable lesson that a baking/cooking instinct should not be ignored in favor of a recipe.  Also, Luck was pretty happy about her mid-afternoon snack, and in the end, I did use that buttermilk.

Luck reminiscing about the bread consumed.

Here is the recipe for Tassajara Bread #2 Rye Oatmeal Bread, that I made after the burnt loaves which turned out quite lovely.

#2 Rye-Oatmeal Bread

From the Tassajara Bread Book

3 cups lukewarm water

1 1/2 tablespoons dry yeast

1/3 cup molasses

1 cup dry milk

2 cups unbleached white flour and 2 cups whole wheat flour

4 tsp salt

1/3 cup oil

1 1/2 cups rolled oats

1 1/2 cups rye flour

whole wheat flour for kneading

Proceed with the directions in recipe #1 (see And So it Begins blog).