Masha's Marble Bread

I have to say, I was a little bit disappointed by you (dear Reader)...not a single soul responded to my request, my plea for a recipe for the bread I was to bake this weekend. But no matter. As Masha both requested this entry and was the only one to supply me with so much as a hint as to what marble bread even was (much less how to make it), I've named this loaf in her honor. (As an aside: last week, you may recall, I traded a loaf of bread away for a cake, and now this week I've created my own recipe for a bread...I feel like I'm getting steadily closer to removing the "amateur" from my profile description!)

Now, you might think I was slightly nervous about trying to create a fancier-than-average bread with nothing more than a picture to guide me...au contraire! You see, I have a vague, two-part theory about making bread. First: bread can smell fear. Like a ravenous attack dog (of the sort that used to startle me when I would go for a run around my hometown). So, then, when making bread one must be supremely confident, certain that at every step you are doing just the right thing; doubt is only permitted when the bread is safely within the oven. Second: well...we'll save the rest of my theory for another day.

So, to the bread! We'll be preparing two different doughs for this week's loaf, so let's start with the one that has to rise for a longer amount of time, the dark layer. Start things off by proofing 2 1/2 teaspoons of yeast in 1/2 a cup of warm water, with 1 tablespoon of sugar added. After a few minutes, add 2 tablespoons of butter, 1 tablespoon of salt, 2 tablespoons of molasses, and another 3/4 of a cup of warm water. Now, this liquid mixture probably still doesn't look dark enough to provide the sort of contrast you want, so cast about the kitchen for other ingredients you could add. Settle on two Hersey's Dark Chocolate Kisses. Then, with as much panache as you can muster, use a nutmeg grater to add the chocolate powder to the mix. Finally satisfied, add two cups of rye flour, two cups of whole wheat flour, and 1/3 of a cup of cornmeal, stir together, and start kneading. The dough will not be terribly resilient, and will still be slightly sticky, but not to worry: the bread is not yet in the oven, so you can do no wrong. Anyway, place in a buttered saucepan, cover, and set in a draft free spot to start rising. Wash all of the dishes so as to start fresh with the next batch of dough.

The light layer should (as if I know?) just be the whitest white bread possible. So, proof 2 1/2 teaspoons of yeast in 1/2 a cup of warm water and 2 teaspoons of sugar. Then add that to 4 cups of all-purpose flour mixed with 1 tablespoon of salt, and pour in another 3/4 of a cup of warm water (to get the consistency right). Knead this second batch of bread, which won't take nearly as long as any of the other kneading session discussed on this blog. Place in a buttered bowl, cover, and set next to the saucepan for the

First Rising (1 hour and 30 minutes)
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Another tale of woe today (although, I think, not nearly as frightening as the anadama fiasco)... Early last week a bunch of us, all working late in the physics building on a particularly nasty problem set, went out to get some late-night Chinese food as a way of taking a break. Well, dinner was nice (sesame chicken - delicious and, I realized, only the second time I've had Chinese food since leaving New England), and it was good to not think about the work for a while. But at the end of the meal came a terrible shock. Naturally along with the check came a pile of fortune cookies, so I picked one, opened it up, and...

There was no fortune inside!! What kind of horrible omen is that? That I have no fortune, no future? I'm not sure I like that at all. Now, admittedly, I've gotten fortune cookies with two fortunes inside, and so obviously fortune-cookie-quality-control isn't anything folks brag about, but still...the idea of a fortuneless cookie shivers my soul. Anyway, I took another cookie from a large basket by the door, but of course that fortune (something like "You will soon be presented an with an unusual gift. Accept!") hasn't come true...after all, that fortune was not meant for me.
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Take the doughs out of the oven, punch them both down (twice as much fun as usual!), and divide them both into two slightly unequal pieces. Take a rolling pin and flatten the each piece to about the width of the bread pan and long enough so that each is maybe between a quarter and half an inch thick. Then, put the light layer pieces down first, lay the dark layer pieces on top of them, gently press together, and then roll each up (I suppose I should say "like a jelly roll" to have an appropriate food analogy here, but really this reminded me of nothing so much as rolling up a sleeping bag before trying to store it away). Anyway. place the two rolled-up loaves of dough in an 8x4 and a 9x5 bread pan, re-cover, and return to a warm, draft-free spot for the

Second Rising (1 hour and 15 minutes)
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So, I've been teaching this semester's classes for about a month now, and I'm afraid I'm not enjoying it nearly as much as I did last semester. Not only have I taught exactly the same material already (last semester), but even worse is that I've basically already answered every question my students ask me on any given day. I'm still working on fine-tuning both my responses and also, of course, my mini-lectures (I feel I'm slowly getting more competent at that, but really, they need quite a bit more work), but there's just much less excitement to it all, and I'm not surprised nearly as much as I was the last time around. So on the one hand, I'm not nearly as nervous as I was last semester (and have almost gotten used to the idea of standing up and talking to a class of people), so there's less nervous energy, but I'm afraid that also means there's just less total energy.

In part it's also that my students this semester seem a lot less energetic themselves. All of the older grad students have told me they tend to notice the same thing each year, that spring semester always much less fun than the fall (even when teaching different classes), but still...I don't remember students seeming substantially different from spring to fall semesters in college, and I can't really think of a good reason why that would be the case. What do you think?
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Set oven to 387.5 (we've made everything else up, so why not pick an unusual number?). While the oven is heating up, brush the tops of the dough with cold milk to try to give the crust some texture, and bake for 40 minutes. The crust on this bread will be only marginally thicker than last week's cinnamon bread, so again, wait a while before slicing.

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Tasting verdict: First, a quick comment about the appearance...on the one hand, I rather like the, let's say, elegant curve of the boundary between the two doughs inside this loaf. On the other hand, I had hoped for more of an interlocking spiral than what I got. So, I think a good future modification to the recipe would be to make slightly more of the light layer than I did, and then flatten out both doughs much more thinly before rolling them together. Having said all that, though, I'm quite happy to report that my first foray into creating my own bread recipe yielded quite tasty results. The two breads are just mixed together enough that you get some of each with every bite (well, except maybe for one chunk in the middle), and they really do complement each other pretty well: one very light and airy, the other dense and flavorful. All in all, a success!

Currently reading: Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (just finished), and Borges' Labyrinths (just starting)

Next week: After this week's whirlwind adventure in making stuff up, I'm not sure what I'll try next...any suggestions?