unbibium

The 100% Whole Wheat recipe in the book had a lot of new, viscous ingredients in it, like oil and honey and milk, in strange amounts, which grew even stranger as I only had a big enough bowl to do a 2/3 batch.

I got all the ingredients except the flour together, and then I spilled the bowl. FUCK.

I could have given up, but instead I started over.

The dough is resting and rising now. I probably won't have time to bake it tonight.

The new Cornish Pasty Company location is so much larger than the old one. And brighter, too; not like a coal mine at all.

Ordering a Royale with Cheese, and enjoying a Guinness, why the hell not.

Incidentally, I tried some of the cheese bread before I left. It's not that different tasting from the cheeseless bread I've been baking. Either it's supposed to be subtle, or I need to add more cheese next time.

Bread turned out the best yet.

And I have freshly-ground peanut butter from Whole Foods to spread on it.

But eating it now would impede my sleep, so I'll save it for breakfast.

OK, I think I didn't pre-heat it enough. Even though it doesn't look very brown, the crust is very stiff. Also, I don't think I used enough dough; even after two hours of resting at room temperature, the dough didn't fill the bottom of the loaf pan, and after 40 minutes of baking, it was still the same size and shape it seemed; sliding around the loaf pan when I took it out....

I'm letting it cool down overnight. I'll bring it to work and share it.

shit, I lost the book that tells me how to finish up this bread.

where the hell did I stash it?

Update: I even got my last load of garbage out of the dumpster. Still no luck. But I guess this means it's still in the apartment somewhere. But I'll never get back the hour and a half I spent searching for it, during which time I finished up that bread, burnt the top, found a loaf pan that's actually nine by four inches, and started letting that one rise.

I had work I needed to get done.

oh well. I can always buy another copy. And it'll show up right when I find my original copy.

Poor little original copy. It's sitting around somewhere, with the book jacket tucked into that sandwich bread recipe, just itching to tell me how the hell I'm supposed to slice it neatly without a mandolin.

tamtrible convinced me that herbs bought at the 99-cent store could be trusted. Plastic bags would have been unacceptable, but I chanced upon plastic jars, so I bought them. And I used some 99-cent rosemary and thyme in my latest half-batch of dough.

If you thought my apartment smelled good before, then just you wait.

Now, my nose isn't very well-trained, so if this stuff turns out to be mistletoe and crab grass, I can't say I'll be able to tell in time. I suppose I should at least buy a more expensive brand of dried herb. But later.

I suppose it might be in my best interest to grow an herb garden, but I have a very shady south-facing balcony; anything I grow wouldn't get all that much sun in the winter, and practically no direct sunlight in the summer.

Yeah, I think that's where it got snagged.

I finally figured out what I did wrong with the last batch of dough.

I halved the recipe, but I didn't halve the number of loaves per batch. Well, I moved from fourths to thirds, but they still weren't big enough to survive 30 minutes at 450.

I figured my current lidded bowl was big enough for a full batch. Well, it wans't enough to let a full batch rise. So I moved a fourth of it into a second bowl, and baked it so it wouldn't dry out.

And it turned out perfect, too.

Didn't mix the herbs in like I'd planned. Next batch, for sure. I'll use this dough to make a baguette first.

I had very little dough left. This one didn't burn. It's cooling now.

As suggested by the book, I made my next batch of dough without washing out the original bowl. It's supposed to make the sourdough notes appear faster, as if I were using a starter, but my batches are so small that I don't know if I'll ever reach that point.

I put the second loaf in the oven about 20 minutes ago, and just realized that I forgot to score the hash mark in it like the first one.

I'll get the third loaf shaped now.

Update: FAIL. The whole top half is black. Internally it might be OK, and I'll let it cool so I can see what it's like, but I'm going to rely on my third one for tonight and tomorrow morning.