I’m mad at bread right now.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
This was the Lean Bread recipe from “Artisan Breads Every Day,” \u00a0it is almost identical to the French bread recipe (Loaves 11 and 14) \u00a0– 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u00b0 after putting the bread in, so these baked at 500\u00b0 for the first 12 minutes; I used 1 cup of water for the steam, I might have used 1 1\/2 cups before.<\/p>\n
Clearly I need a more scientific methodology to what I’m doing. So…<\/p>\n
The Big Lesson<\/strong><\/p>\n\n