Tuesday, July 28, 2009

First Baking Post - Light Wheat Bread

So I've decided to start out with a something that I've baked recently. I have about two years' worth of photos of baked goods stored up, but I still have yet to find a good way to put them up.

Yesterday, I experiment with Peter Reinhart's Light Whole Wheat Break from the his Bread Baker's Apprentice.


Photograph taken from Amazon.com

It is one of the most amazing books ever... there is actually a flock of bloggers who are doing the Bread Baker's Challenge, where they all bake the same recipe, once per month, until they finish the book, but I'm clearly not structured enough for that at all.

I decided to do his light whole wheat bread because I have been looking for a good whole wheat recipe to put on my little menu, and because I love whole-wheat bread. The previous whole wheat breads have been either too coarse, or an unsatisfying texture. I did have an excellent oatmeal wheat loaf, but it's not quite the same.

I'm still horrible at trying to take pictures in the middle of baking, and, to be honest, I'm kind of messy, and I'm not a big fan of getting flour all over my beautiful Canon XT... I abuse it enough as it is, hehe. That, and I have horrible lighting in my kitchen, which is annoying and is a deterrent from taking more photos.

This is the loaf in the pan after the second rise, right before entering the oven!



Look how beautiful it is! The first rise was an hour and a half, almost two hours, which is the recommended time, but the second rise was only for 30 minutes, or even less. The bread was rising a lot faster than usual (which was odd, because it was fairly cold here), and I had to finish baking the whole thing before Target and REI closed. :P

This loaf seemed to be lopsidedly over-excited about rising in the bread pan. Nice and hot, right out of the oven.



As amazing as hot bread is, most places have been saying not to slice bread while it is still hot, or it will dry out quickly. I guess this makes sense, since, once sliced, the steam (i.e. moisture) will escape the bread, thereby making a drier loaf. So, after running errands, two hours later, my roommate and I dove into the loaf.



This light whole wheat loaf was part bread flour and part whole wheat flour, which gave it a nice, light texture, and a slight whole wheat flavor. It gave a nice crust, as well. Personally, I did not like the flavor too much--it was a little too light for me, but my roommate still liked it.

1 comment:

  1. Dude, looks delicious. Continue trying whole wheat breads because I have also been looking for the perfect w-w recipe :D

    -Daphne

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