Author: Dramatic Lyric

This recipe in the King Arthur Baking School cookbook is titled French Bread, but it’s similar to “straight” breads made in multiple bread traditions. I love this kind of bread.

The night before baking I mixed the preferment (a poolish in this case, with equal amounts of flour and water): flour, water, yeast, and time.

14 hours later I mixed the dough in my KitchenAid mixer. I dislike the feeling of a very sticky dough on my hands, so I prefer to use tools to mitigate the stickiness. After the initial mix I kneaded the dough in the mixer for a few minutes, then covered it and set it aside to rise.

The dough rose for 1 1/2 hours with a fold in the middle to enhance the gluten structure. in the photos below you can see how much the bread rose during this period.

I divided the dough in half by eye, and preshaped each half.

While the preshaped dough rested I floured my bannetons. After 20 minutes I did the final shaping, put the dough in the bannetons (seam-side up), and covered them for the final rise. I also started my oven and my baking vessels preheating.

The bread needed a full hour for its final rise.

After the final rise was complete I turned the dough out of the bannetons onto parchment paper. I brushed away the excess flour, and scored the dough before putting the dough into my baking vessels and into the oven.

I kept the lids on the baking vessels for 15 minutes to allow the dough to bake with steam. I removed the covers and lowered the oven temperature after 15 minutes.

The bread baked for an additional 30 minutes uncovered (45 minutes total).

First of all, this bread is pretty. I love how scoring can be decorative as well as functional. Secondly, this bread is delicious. It has a tight crumb with few large holes. It tastes almost like a sandwich bread, except for the thicker, tougher crust. I love a crusty bread. This bread does feel more sophisticated or refined, or maybe less rustic than similar breads made with less yeast and more time.

Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out.

My mom is known for her cinnamon rolls. I remember staying up with her until midnight to make the cinnamon rolls, and then she would get up at 5 or 6 AM to bake them. And when she made the cream cheese frosting my brothers and I would always fight over who got to lick the beaters. Yum!

As I prepared to bake the next recipe in the King Arthur Baking School book I wondered how these would compare to my mom’s cinnamon rolls. This dough starts with a tangzhong. I weighed my ingredients, then whisked them together on the stove until the mixture thickened. This only took a minute or two.

Then all the ingredients went into the stand mixer, starting with the hot tangzhong.

I mixed the dough in the stand mixer until it was elastic and no longer stuck to the sides of the bowl.

Then I allowed the dough to rest for an hour. During the rest I prepared the filling. I have never used a cinnamon roll filling that incorporates melted butter into the filling. I’ve always spread room-temperature butter on the rolled-out dough and then sprinkled the cinnamon sugar over top. This filling also incorporated flour, which was new to me as well.

After an hour the dough was ready, so I rolled it out into a rectangle and sprinkled the cin Amon sugar mixture on it.

Then I rolled it all up into a log, pinched the seam closed, and cut the log into 8 pieces.

I greased a 9×13 pan, arranged my cinnamon rolls in the pan, and left them to rise for an hour.

When the rolls had risen I baked them for 18 minutes: a shorter time than I would have expected. The rolls were just barely golden on top when I took them out of the oven.

While the cinnamon rolls baked I made the frosting. This is a butter-based frosting that does not use any cream cheese. The frosting was very easy to whisk up by hand.

At last, I frosted the warm cinnamon rolls and tucked right in.

Ok, don’t tell my mom, but I think these might be better than her cinnamon rolls? The short bake causes the cinnamon rolls to be extremely tender. I do think 18 minutes was slightly underbaked (a few of the rolls were slightly doughy) and I would bake these for 20 or 22 minutes next time. The dough has great flavor and doesn’t taste yeasty at all (a yeasty flavor is the only gripe I have with my mom’s cinnamon rolls). The filling is perfectly spiced and is ooey-gooey without running out of the baked roll. I prefer a cream cheese frosting because that’s what I grew up with, but I didn’t miss the tanginess of the cream cheese with these cinnamon rolls. If I were to open a bakery selling cinnamon rolls, I would absolutely use this recipe.

Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out.

The next recipe in the King Arthur Baking School book is called Tender Sweet Bread. The recipe makes two loaves, and once again I am trying two variations.

Mise en place:

I started by combining my dry ingredients …

… then added the butter and worked it in by hand. The recipe instructed that the butter should be worked into the flour until it was “evenly dispersed,” but did not recommend a method to achieve this, so I rubbed the butter into the flour in the same way I would for biscuits or a pie crust.

Finally, I added the wet ingredients and mixed the dough together.

I kneaded the dough for 4 minutes, then set it aside to rise for an hour.

Once the bulk fermentation was complete I divided the dough in half and pre-shaped it. One half was further divided into three logs for a braid. The other half stayed in one piece.

While the dough was resting I mixed up the poppy seed filling for the 2nd loaf with canned poppy seed filling, egg white, and orange zest. Prior to reading this recipe I didn’t even know that poppy seed filling existed! My local grocery store does carry it, but I had to go twice to find it. If you’re looking for canned poppy seed filling, look in the aisle with the canned pie fillings.

Once the dough had rested for 15 minutes I shaped it. The three logs were rolled out very long and thin and braided. I learned that rolling dough into a thin log works best when you only roll one direction (toward your body or away from your body) instead of rolling back and forth (toward and away from your body).

The other half of the dough was rolled out into a large rectangle (yay! I got to use my rolling pin!), spread with poppy seed filling, then rolled up like a cinnamon roll. Finally, I used a bread knife to cut the roll down the center and twisted the two halves together decoratively.

I left both loaves to finish proofing, which took about 30 minutes.

Before baking I mixed up an egg wash and brushed it over the plain braided loaf.

Then both loaves went into the oven. They both baked up beautifully in 30 minutes.

This bread is quite good. It is sweet, but not too sweet. I plan to make this bread again, but I will leave the vanilla out next time. I found the vanilla flavor to make this bread less of a multipurpose bread and more of a dessert. I do not want a sandwich with vanilla-flavored bread, for instance. The bread excels as French Toast, though!

We tried French Toast with both the plain bread and the poppy seed bread. The orange zest in the poppy seed bread was a bit strong for us in this application. Frankly, the orange zest was a bit much in the poppy seed bread for me overall. Lemon zest would have been better here. My husband made a lemon frosting to eat with this, which was divine.

Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out

This week something very exciting happened: I got a grain mill!! Specifically, a Mockmill Lino 200.

I couldn’t wait to use it, so I skipped ahead a few recipes in the King Arthur Baking School book and made whole wheat sandwich bread. But because I’m me I couldn’t just make the recipe. I had to do an experiment. I was curious how the freshly-milled wheat would compare to store-bought flour, so I setup a head-to-head comparison.

I keep my whole wheat flour and my grain in the freezer, so I put them both out on the counter and weighed out the amount needed for my recipe the morning of the bake so they could come to room temperature. I milled my flour, then realized it was significantly warmer than its store-bought cousin and let both flours sit for a while longer so their temperatures could equalize. I was surprised by the difference in colour between these flours, but that is likely due to the type of wheat used. My flour is milled from Hard White Winter Wheat. The store bought flour is Lidl brand. I can’t find a definitive answer on what kind of wheat is used in Lidl brand whole wheat flour, but whole wheat flour is typically milled from Hard Red Spring or Winter Wheat.

For all steps in the baking process I worked with the fresh-milled flour first, and pictures of the fresh-milled flour will be on the left where there is a comparison.

When I couldn’t wait any longer I laid out my mise en place for both recipes. At this point the freshly-milled flour was 76 degrees F, and the store-bought flour was 61 degrees F. I used water from my fridge dispenser and was surprised to see a 10 degree (F) difference between the first and second cups of water (58 vs 67 degrees F), but that ended up working in my favor to equalize the temperature between the two batches of bread.

First I mixed up the dough with fresh-milled flour.

Immediately after, I mixed up the sister dough with store bought flour.

The doughs both felt quite sandy at this point. I left them to rest and hydrate for 15 minutes.

After the doughs had rested I incorporated the All Purpose flour into the dough with fresh flour and then kneaded the dough for 5 minutes. I didn’t stir all of the AP flour into the dough, but whatever was remaining (plus a little extra) got used during kneading.

I followed the same process for the dough with store-bought flour.

After both doughs had been kneaded I took their temperatures (the freshly-milled dough was 75 degrees and the store-bought dough was 76 degrees F), covered them, and let them rise. My kitchen was at a balmy 74 degrees F. After about an hour they passed the doorbell test and were ready to be divided and shaped. Before dividing I weighed both doughs: the dough with freshly-milled flour weighed 1357g and the dough with store-bought flour weighed 1367g.

I watched the video showing how to shape this bread and followed the recommended shaping method for all 4 loaves. After shaping the dough rested for another hour.

Once the final rise was complete the bread went into the oven.

The colour differences between the loaves continued into the baked bread. The bread made with store-bought flour rose higher than the bread made with fresh-milled flour, which I half-expected after reading this article. However, the bread with fresh-milled flour had much better flavor. It had a sweetness and freshness to it, whereas the bread made with store-bought flour (while still tasting very good) had a bit of a bitter flavor.

Both breads had a buttery flavor and a very tender crumb. In my opinion the crumb is too tender to be used for sandwiches, but the bread is excellent toasted.

Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out.