Loaf 16 – I’m Mad at Bread

Posted on Feb 8, 2012 in loaves

I’m mad at bread right now.

These loaves, like about 50% of my other loaves, were a failure. I expect mistakes, which is why I decided to make 100 loaves in the first place, but this batch seemed so similar to my prior Loaf 14 success that I figured it was a sure thing.

This was the Lean Bread recipe from “Artisan Breads Every Day,”  it is almost identical to the French bread recipe (Loaves 11 and 14)  – it has a skosh more water to make it a little more hydrated. I expected a very similar result to the French bread, but these loaves were terrible.

The crust was soft and very chewy, even toasting or reheating in the oven would not make it crisp. The flavor at best was bland, Sarah thought it tasted even a bit moldy.

My biggest frustration is that I don’t know what went wrong this time – there a a lot of variables at work and even though I track it all in a notebook, it’s impossible for me to tell if it was a single issue or a lot of smaller things compounding.

Some of the variables: I used King Arthur flour this time rather than the Gold Medal or Whole Foods Organic that I’ve used before; I forgot to turn the ovens down to 450° after putting the bread in, so these baked at 500° for the first 12 minutes; I used 1 cup of water for the steam, I might have used 1 1/2 cups before.

Clearly I need a more scientific methodology to what I’m doing. So…

The Big Lesson

• I’m not going to dwell on what went wrong on this batch, instead I’m going to create a better methodology to learn from. Update 3/6: it was the salt! More info here: It’s the Salt, Stupid