Loaf 72 – 9 Grain for Party
Last April we had all the ETC-SV students from that semester over for dinner, something we’ve done each semester for four years now (see Loaves 43, 44). I baked individual loaves for each person to take home afterwards – something I swore I wouldn’t do again…
And I didn’t! For this semester’s dinner I made three batches of bread – a 9 grain (this post), a lean bread (Loaf 73) and a failed sourdough (Loaf 74) that we didn’t end up serving.
Since we were feeding 25 people or so, I didn’t want to take any chances with the bread. This is my standard 9 grain bread.
There was a lesson here though. The three different loaves (72, 73 and 74) were made earlier in the day and heated in the oven before serving to have that warm bread experience and to get a crispy crust. When I’ve reheaded bread before I’ve always done it in a very hot (about 350°) oven for ten minutes. This time we heated them up at a lower temperature (250°). The result was an interior crumb that was a bit gooey. My theory is that the water in the crust and crumb barely turned to steam and soaked into the bread rather than coming out – this sounds a bit far-fetched, but it’s the best accounting I can come up with as to why these loaves were different.
Luckily the flavor was wonderful and the loaves were all happily devoured.
