Bread Number One
I have kick started a bread series where I try to make a different kind of bread every week. Sad for you, gentle reader, because you are coming along for the ride. Happy for me because I get to eat (hopefully) amazing breads!
Imagine an electrified rat with disheveled hair jumping around, that is me, every night on the internet, trying to find exciting things to bake. So, I could entertain you. Everything for you.
Week one. Bread one.
I was scouting around the internet and found a rosemary bread recipe. Inspiration struck like a lightening, and I got to work. The recipe requires 8 to 12 hour resting time, so I left the dough to rest overnight.
The next morning it was super-hot when I started kneading my dough. It was getting sweaty and sticky, but the show must go on and I worked the dough till it looked smooth. Then I left it to bake in the oven. I made sure to take a lot of pictures to have a good laugh together.
I divided my dough into two while one was baking, I was working on the other. I sneaked a look into my oven and the bread did not resemble either a bun or a loaf instead was resembling a whale. Wish I was exaggerating but please look at the loaf yourself and tell me it does not look like a blue whale.
This blue whale gave me an idea. I constantly see the prettiest sourdough designing pictures and videos on the internet. My dough was turning into deep water creatures in the heat anyways, so thought I could take advantage of this and make a cute pattern of sort on top of the loaf. I did manage to make a few cuts to resemble a flower. Ambitious. I know.
Of course, none of these patterns stayed put. The top of the second loaf was nice and flat. No pattern. No flower. No design. Like my life. Jokes apart, both the loafs came out looking smooth and cooked.
Please ask me how they tasted! Bland. The blandest bread ever. With no fault of the recipe, of course. Yours truly put a teaspoon of salt. Like that would be enough for 500 grams of all-purpose flour. Also, the recipe calls for fresh rosemary which my mom grows in our backyard, but I did not feel like using it, so I skipped it and instead added pizza seasoning into my dough. And even tablespoon or so of that seasoning did not help the blandness.
I am still going to finish both the loaves myself. They will be doused in salted butter, of course. Going heavy on the salted butter for sure. But other than that, for my first bread I think I did well on the texture front. The loaves had crunchy exterior and fluffy interior.
I am going to rate myself 5.7 out of 10. Good going. Can do better.
