Whole wheat molasses bread

Sort of a whole wheat variation on anadama bread this week. To start off, put 1/2 a tablespoon of salt and 2 tablespoons of molasses in a mixing bowl. Add 3 teaspoons of yeast that have been proofed in 7/8 of a cup of warm water and 1/4 of a cup of warm milk. Blend together and slowly add 1/2 a cup of all-purpose flour and 1/2 a cup of whole wheat flour to make a medium-thickness batter. Add 1 1/2 tablespoons of Crisco, mix thoroughly, and then stir in another 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour and 1 cup of whole wheat flour. Knead for a while (this dough is pretty easy to work with) and set aside in a covered, greased bowl for the

First rising (2 hours )
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Since moving into my new apartment this August I've been almost universally happy with it. While cooking bread I've occasionally been suspicious of the oven, though: the loaves I've baked in my new place have come out, on average, more tender and much moister (and hence much tastier but occasionally just a touched undercooked). So, I've off-and-on been wondering if the temperature gauge has been substantially off, but until now I haven't had any particularly strong evidence to that effect.

Earlier in the week I thought I would try a new recipe for a sort of Indian-spiced chicken dish that required baking the chicken in liquid for a while. I cooked everything as directed, except that I accidentally left the chicken in for about 25% longer than I was supposed to - but then, I've cooked some nearly inedible meals in my time, so I figured that at worst the chicken would be too too dry, but I would still eat it. Well, much to my delight, the chicken was absolutely delicious! In retrospect, I should have been tipped off by the fact that the liquid the chicken was cooking in wasn't boiling - or bubbling in the slightest - despite sitting in what was ostensibly a 375 degree oven. That didn't really register at the time, though, so I just merrily kept eating what the relatively dim light in my apartment tricked me into thinking was some tasty dark meat.

Well, I realized with quite a start that when taking the chicken out of the oven I had cut open the piece to see if it was cooked, and that piece, now sitting half-eaten on my plate, had been white meat. Turning on some extra lights confirmed that, indeed, what I thought was dark meat would be more accurately described as almost totally uncooked meat. That was really quite a strange sort of feeling...I mean, what could I do? I had already eaten maybe half a pound of uncooked chicken before realizing anything...not like I could take that back! So, I quietly got up, cleaned my plate, did the dishes, and spent the next three days worried that I was about to get horribly ill. Happily, in fact, that never came to pass, so crisis averted. I do plan to find an oven thermometer the next time I go shopping though...this seems like it should be a correctable problem.
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Punch down the dough, knead for a few seconds, and shape into a roll a bit longer than the greased 9x5 baking tin you'll be using. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes, and then gently put 2 1/2 twists into the roll. Put in the tin, cover, and set aside for the

Second rising (1 hour and 15 minutes )
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Anyway, other than that little scare, it's been a pretty quiet week (some days quite literally: I think the only words that have escaped my lips today have been "Just a small hot chocolate, please" and "Thank you.") But it's been nice. Nice to be back at school without the crushing workload that hit me at the end of last semester, nice to have time to work on research without any distractions (or, at least, any distractions not of my own devising)...just nice to have a calm, gradual ease into the semester's start next week.
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Bake at 375 degrees for 40 minutes.

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Tasting verdict: One of the more mediocre loaves I've made (or at least, it certainly seems that way compared to last week's bread, which currently ranks among my very favorites so far). Good texture, rather tender, but a fairly forgettable flavor. Well, it'll probably be alright for deli sandwiches at least.

Dark herb bread

Time for another sandwich loaf after last week's flatbread, and since I had less work than usual this weekend I thought I would make a marginally fancier-than-usual bread.

So, start out by proofing 5 1/2 teaspoons of yeast in 1/2 a cup of warm water and 1 tablespoon of sugar. In a large mixing bowl, mix together 3 cups of whole wheat flour, 1 cup of dark rye flour, 1 cup of bread flour, 1 tablespoon of salt, and 1 teaspoon of pepper. Add to this 2 generous tablespoons of olive oil, the yeast mixture, and another 1 1/4 cups of warm water.

Now, for the final addition to this mix, chop up three cloves of garlic, and grind it with a mortar and pestle, along with 1 teaspoon of rosemary and 2 tablespoons of parsley, into a paste. Or, if like me your kitchen has a semi-temporary (okay, okay...permanent) shortage of mortars and pestles, substitute instead a cereal bowl and soup spoon.

Anyway, it turns out cereal bowls and soup spoons aren't good at getting things to a paste-like consistency. Well, dump everything into the mixing bowl, stir, and then knead for a good 12 minutes, making a slightly moist but quite elastic dough. Put in an olive-oiled bowl, cover, and set aside for the

First rising (1 hour and 30 minutes)
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This Week in Breakfast: the "Lemons-to-Lemonade" edition:

This week I was faced with what seemed at first to be quite the crisis (on the scale of breakfasts, anyway). I had apparently badly miscalculated how much milk I had left when I had gone grocery shopping last weekend, and so I woke up this Wednesday to discover that at just less than half a cup, I didn't even have enough milk for a bowl of cereal. What was I to do?

Confession time (link - page 4): despite having been in the Midwest for almost a year and a half now [update: I'm not trying to call pancakes particularly midwestern...just that I've only been really cooking for myself since moving here], when I woke up on Tuesday I had yet to actually make myself pancakes. (I'm going to be honest: I really like pancakes) So, faced with the possibility of not having a decent breakfast and thus getting the day off on totally the wrong foot, I decided there was only one thing to do. So, overcoming all obstacles -- for instance the fact that, upon closer inspection of the recipe, I didn't actually have enough milk to make a batch of pancakes [um...I tried using an extra egg and adding a little water...not the best result, but still pretty tasty], or the fact that the size of my frying pan, combined with my relative ineptitude when it comes to flipping things, forced me to make one pancake, turn everything off, eat the pancake while still warm, turn the stove back on, make one more pancake, and so on -- I went and made some of the best pancakes I've had since the last time I was home.

So, it turns out that pancake batter keeps in the fridge fairly well, at least for a day or two. So, since I couldn't really finish off a batch of pancakes all by myself, I ended up saving a bunch of the batter and having delicious, delicious pancake breakfasts for the next two days. And then, when Friday morning rolled around (still a day away from my usual Saturday grocery run) and I was out of batter....well, I just had no choice but to make myself an extra-large omelet to use up the last of the Cheddar cheese I got last week.

Anyway, on the whole I had probably the best consecutive series of breakfasts since I moved out here. I might have to forget to buy milk more often.
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Punch the dough down, and knead for another minute or so. Then, shape into a loaf and put in a greased 9x5 bread tin, re-cover, and let stand for the

Second rising (1 hour)
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Currently reading (with commentary):

Late last weekend I finished that David Foster Wallace essay collection (on the whole, I quite liked it... a fun read), so now it's on to the other book I picked up when I bought that one, which happened to be a paperback copy of four of Milton's poems (but mostly, just Paradise Lost for my current purposes). Now, I didn't think about it when I was buying it, but in retrospect I think that just pushed Paradise Lost, with three copies I can think of, into the lead in the "most copies of a given text appearing in books I own" competition (out of multi-way tie with "The Master and Margarita" and a handful of Shakespeare plays that I happen to have two copies of for whatever reasons). Which made me start to wonder why I would like Milton enough to have three copies of one of his works scattered across my collection (please, no comments on my general apparent prediliction for old-dead-white-guy literature :) Or, if you must, at least join me in wondering why this particular old dead white guy as opposed to others.)

So anyway, I think my tentative explanation (I haven't thought about this too too hard so far) is that sometimes I feel like reading Milton is a breath of fresh air (albeit, admittedly, a breath of very dense, literate, and occasionally overly stuffy fresh air). Which I think I mean in two senses. First, I feel like there's less of the "cleverness-for-cleverness' sake" in his works. Objectively, this may or may not be true, and I have no doubt that he enjoyed turning an especially fine phrase as much as his contemporaries, but at the very least I'm less conscious of it in his writing than in some others. So, when I get tired of writers whose very writing screams "oh, look at how awesome I am" I think I enjoy going back to something whose art is more in service of its theme.

Second, and perhaps more relevant in my current state of mind, I've always thought Paradise Lost possessed of a certain intellectual honesty in the way Milton sets up the argument he's about to expound. From the very beginning he declares the purpose of the poem (that whole "justifie the wayes of God to men" thing), and he then proceeds to set up a poetic universe where God very much needs that justification. Or rather, where (even though we all know where he is going to come down on the issues) he gives the side he is opposed to one of the strongest versions of its position he can, instead of just setting up blatant straw men to knock down. After listening to perhaps a few too many of the political "arguments" that have been swirling around as we approach this election, where I think at least 90% of the debates I've had the pleasure to be in the same room as have quickly devolved into ad hominem shouting matches largely divorced from any point anybody had been trying to make...I think having a touch of that sort of intellectual, argumentative honesty -- even just reading a literary version of it -- helps calm my nerves. Or something like that.
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Slash the top of the loaf three times with the sharpest knife you own. Bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees, then turn the oven down to 350 and bake for another 25 minutes. Cool before slicing...this loaf seems a little less stable to fresh slicing than some of my other breads.


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Tasting verdict: Actually, I think this one turned out rather well! The taste is not really what I was expecting...after baking the parsley flavor came out a little bit more than I expected it to, so in the future I might want to add some extra rosemary. But the really pleasant surprise was the garlic: after baking the bread still has some of the heat left over from the garlic, but largely without the taste of it. An intriguing result, I'd say! Anyway, I'm a little concerned with how well this loaf will hold up over the course of the week (my past experience with whole wheat based breads has been that they lose a lot of texture and get overly crumbly about 4 days after they come out of the oven), but for the time being really quite a tasty little loaf.

Moral victory of the week: I hadn't really planned either of my little random digressions for this week's post (as I'm sure you've already guessed by now!) So, in retrospect, I'm immensely pleased that I managed to get both Milton and pancakes into a single blog post.

50% Whole Wheat Bread

This week, another of those bizarre, extra-long-rising sorts of breads. To start things off: about 28 hours before you want to start eating freshly baked bread, we'll need to prepare two initial bowls of dough-like substances.

First, in a bowl combine 1 3/4 of a cup of whole wheat flour with 1/2 of a teaspoon of salt and 4/3 of a cup of milk. Stir this together until it has the consistency of a very moist dough, then cover and set on the counter. In a different bowl proof 2 teaspoons of yeast in 1/2 a cup of warm water. After a few minutes add in 1 3/4 cups of bread flour, and again stir into a shaggy sort of dough. Cover and set in the fridge for the

Chilly pre-rise (24 hours)
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So, I've been on and off mentioning the Qual for the last little while, and now that it's over I suppose it's best to have done with it. It was just about seven hours of pure joy (counting the absurd amount of time the professor spent giving us really elementary instructions on the first day of the exam), but in retrospect it really wasn't all that bad. Of course, just as with any test, when you've studied the material so much you almost inevitably feel overprepared for things once you actually sit down, get over the last-second panic, and just start taking the thing.

Anyway, I passed the thing, and now I just don't have to worry about it anymore. So, hooray! On the one hand, it's fairly traditional to say that, at the moment you take the Qual, you know more physics than you will at any point in your life. Of course, you'll know more in some intensely specialized field, but since the Qual essentially brings back to mind all of the physics you've learned up to that point, the argument is that at that moment you have the broadest and most general grasp of the subject you ever will. That, needless to say, is nonsense. Assuming there's some slow (but maybe exponential) amount of time for the memory of all the qual material to die away, and assuming that I learn anything in classes this year (perhaps some linear increase in physics knowledge), surely there is some point, probably at some not-well-defined time this semester or, possibly, the next when I will know more physics.
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After 24 hours, take the second bowl out of the fridge and allow to come to room temperature. This might take about two hours or so; a perfect window of time to do some laundry, perhaps, or a problem or two on a homework set. Anyway, once the dough is warm and easy to work with, divide both bowls of dough into 12 pieces each. Put the 24 pieces in a larger bowl, and add in 2 1/4 teaspoons of yeast proofed in 2 tablespoons of warm water, 1 tablespoon of melted butter, 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, and 3 tablespoons of brown sugar. Stir this all together vigorously, and the let it rest for a few minutes. Then, start to knead (it will be the most exceptionally slimy dough to date, but add in only enough flour to keep the dough workable). After all of the ingredients are well integrated and the dough feels smooth and elastic (but again, still quite moist) put in a greased bowl, cover, and let sit for the

First Rising (40 minutes)
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To be honest it feels a little strange now that the exam is over... after spending, as a rough estimate let's say at least 8 hours a day, every day, for a month preparing for the test, I think one of my friends captured the feeling best when he said, "It's like I don't know how to not study for the Qual." A bizarre statement, but very true, I think. The fact that the last exterior obstacle to the degree is simply gone is rather unnerving in a way. Of course, the dissertation and defense will be both much more work and much, much more difficult...but those difficulties feel different, able to be overcome by shear perseverance if necessary, whereas the Qual is something that you could, quite legitimately, work very hard at, try your best, and still not pass.

Anyway, even if I say it feels strange that it's over, don't believe me. It just feels good.
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Punch the dough down, and shape it into a loaf suitable for a 9x5 bread pan. A second rising is not really needed...just let the dough sit for a few minutes, and then wait for the oven to preheat to 400 degrees. Once the oven is to temperature, put in the bread and pour a cup or so of water
into that new steam pan. Turn the temperature down to 350 degrees, and bake for 35 minutes.

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Tasting verdict: Pretty good. Actually, I think this loaf perfectly captures both what I like and dislike most about whole wheat breads. The flavor of the bread is great: hearty, just a touch of sweetness, and generally perfect for sandwiches. The texture is somewhere between okay and good, but then the crust is just immensely flimsy and disappointing. Still, on the whole worthwhile.

Currently reading: "Whole Grain Breads," by Peter Reinhart. This book, regardless of any of its other merits, has gained a place in my Valhalla of Literature by being the first time I have seen the word "Baboom!!" in print.

Brown Bread

Well, I am continuing my streak of bread posts beginning with the letter "B" this week with what turned out to be, the easiest loaf to make. And also, owing to some unorthodox instructions (no kneading, only one rising), far and away the fastest loaf, clocking in from cluelessly looking at the recipe to slicing a piece of cooling-on-the-rack bread at just under two hours.

Now, don't call me crazy just yet, but start things off by putting 3 3/4 cups of whole wheat flour in a mixing bowl, and put that mixing bowl in the oven. Turn the heat to the lowest setting and leave the door slightly ajar. While the flour is warming up, proof 3 3/4 teaspoons of yeast in 1/2 a cup of warm water. After a few minutes, stir in 2 tablespoons of molasses, 1 tablespoon of salt, and 1/2 a tablespoon of butter.

Add the yeast mixture to the flour. Oh, actually, it's probably best to first take the flour out of the oven. Then add the yeast mixture to the flour. Pour in as well another 1 1/2 cups of warm water. After some vigorous stirring, you should end up with some warm, wet, sticky dough, not at all unlike what we wound up with when making the limpa a few months ago. Pour the dough straight into a buttered 9x5 bread pan, cover, and set in a warm spot. Keep a sharp eye on it while it rises:

First Rising (25 minutes)
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I think I've finally figured out one of the things that, in the back of my mind, I've been thinking is strange about this town: I almost never recognize people walking down the street. That struck me last week, when some of my friends and I were out and someone walked past that I knew I had seen before but was not in the physics department and had not been in any of my classes.

I spent the next few days idly trying to figure out where I might have seen this person before (and realizing on Saturday that it was someone who worked in a coffee shop I had gone to maybe twice over the last year), and it really hit me that when I'm walking around town I've just altogether stopped expecting that I might know anybody I run into outside of the few buildings where I work. Now, I know right now all you city folks are just chortling away, but that's really quite a change from both my hometown and where I went to college. But mostly, I wonder why it took me so long to realize this.
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Basically there is nothing left to do. While the bread is rising preheat the oven to 450 degrees, and once the dough is level with the top of the pan, put it in the oven for all of 35 minutes.
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Tasting verdict: Well, last week I may have made a horribly unhealthy loaf, but this week I fear I've swung too far in the opposite direction. This bread tastes entirely too wholesome for me to really enjoy, although I'm sure it will make at least passable sandwiches. Also, although you don't notice it so much while chewing it, this loaf has a distinct and non-too-pleasant aftertaste of molasses. Definitely a loaf only to be made once.

Currently reading: Brushing up on the "confluent hypergeometric functions" part of my math methods lecture notes. So, as I'm sure you can imagine, at the moment I am still welcoming any alternate suggestions.

Elissa's Maple Walnut Oat Loaf

Well, another exciting milestone for Daniel's Bread Blog this week as I made the first in what I hope is a series of mailed-in recipes (I mean, after all, my cookbook only has so many recipes...and besides, it's awfully fun to make something that you know comes so recommended that they took the time to send it through the mail!)

So, first, take about a cup and a half of oatmeal, and put it through a food processor for maybe a minute or so. Now, I didn't have a food processor before I started this, but I had to go to the supermarket anyway to pick up some of the ingredients, and I found one on the shelf. If it were a radio station I would get to describe it as "broadcasting live from Illinois with 30 watts of bone-crunching power!" But, sadly, it was not a radio station; it was a cheap $6 blender that groaned and struggled through the oatmeal, leaving me to wonder what it would actually be good for...parsley, perhaps? Or maybe it could stir liquids? I'll think of something to do with it, I'm sure.

Anyway, back to the bread! Add 2 1/2 teaspoons of yeast to just more than a cup of warm water, and then stir in 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and 3 tablespoons of some delicious, homemade maple syrup. While you leave that to proof for a few minutes, combine the (very coarsely) ground oatmeal with 1 1/4 teaspoons of salt and 4 tablespoons of vegetable oil (to be honest, I didn't have veggie oil, so I substituted the some of the immense store of peanut oil I had left over from my very infrequent attempts at Asian-inspired cooking). Add in the yeast mixture, and then stir in 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour. Add 1 cup of chopped walnuts and, when they are pretty well mixed in, stir in 1 cup of all-purpose flour.

The dough will still be quite sticky, but fortunately it is a very easy dough to work with. So, knead in about another 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour (until it becomes much less sticky and much more resilient.) Also, I have to admit that even though this dough doesn't put up the kind of fight I usually like when kneading, it is still a lot of fun to work with. The coarse oatmeal gives it a funny kind of texture, and having sharp little bits of walnut waiting to stab you adds a little variety to life. Anyway, when the dough is ready roll it around in a buttered bowl and put in the oven (turned to it's absolute lowest setting) for the


First Rising (1 hour and 10 minutes)
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Well, I'm happy to say that I am once again well rested, and that hopefully I won't have too too much work for another few weeks or so (just the usual problem sets...very manageable). Also, over the last week I've gotten to see my share of absurd and absurdly hilarious things. Two quick examples: first, whoever lives downstairs from me (Side note: I've never actually seen anybody else that lives in my 4-unit apartment building...I only ever see trace bits of evidence that I'm not the only person there...the mail will disappear from mailboxes every week or so...sometimes somebody else has moved the trash cans to the curb on pickup day, that sort of thing. But never any lights on in the house and only twice in the last eight months have I even heard music playing elsewhere in the house) left a stack of old magazines outside her door by the steps. And the only one whose cover is visible has two big, bold-faced headlines: "The 10 Most Dangerous Health Issues for Women" and "Tasty-Yummy Meals for Thanksgiving!" So anyway, that's been sitting on the steps for about a week now, and so far it hasn't failed to make me laugh a bit each time I see it at the end of the day. And then there's the fact that somebody brought the game "Rock Band" to the physics grad student lounge. Of course I'm not really good enough to play, but it is certainly hilarious just watching other people go at it. I don't think I've laughed as hard as I did listening to someone try to sing "Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a good time to comment on how variable this baking and rising times can be. The original recipe suggested that it would take closer to 1.5 hours for the first rising, and even more different close to 2 hours for the second rising. But, apparently different temperature/humidity conditions can have a ridiculous effect on baking, so I've learned (correctly, I hope!) to mostly ignore the times and just go by a few rules of thumb (i.e., something is done rising when it's about doubled in bulk, or when it doesn't spring back at all when poked).

But, anyway, back to the fun: time to punch that dough down! Then knead it a bit, and shape it into one large free-form loaf. Put a few diagonal slashes on top to add that extra pizzazz to the presentation, and then put on a buttered cookie sheet and put it on the kitchen floor by the window. Give the cookie sheet a periodic little kick to keep it in the moving square of sunlight as it goes through the

Second Rising (50 minutes)
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And, spring is most definitely here, it seems. The robins showing up last week were a hint, but the pigeons that appeared yesterday seem like a pretty strong confirmation. So anyway, the last few days have been pretty much glorious: bright and sunny, but still not too hot for me. Today I very much enjoyed the opportunity to do my work while sitting outside at a park. Off hand, I'm going to go ahead and say that under such circumstances I work about three times slower than I would if I were at home or at my office. But I'd also say that I work about four times happier, so I think that all works out for the best. Hope it's as nice wherever you happen to be these days!
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Bake in the oven at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes (as usual, until it sounds hollow when tapped).

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Tasting verdict: Two things have to be acknowledged about this loaf. First, and perhaps most importantly, it is phenomenally tasty (a quick aside - Does anybody else remember the Bill Nye spoof of the lucky charms commercial... "Frost-ed luck-y stars are astro-nomic-ally delicious"?...well, that's the first thing I thought of after trying this bread...aaannd I'm a huge nerd.) But seriously, the taste is fantastic. There is a great balance between the hint of maple syrup that still comes through and the walnuts, and the oatmeal (I'm not sure if it was supposed to be ground more finely, so this might be an unintentional benefit) gives the bread a nice, medium-density texture. However, the second thing that must be acknowledged, and which the photos don't really show very clearly, is that this bread is, in addition to being fantastically tasty, also fantastically thin. Maybe an inch and a half at its highest. To get a good idea, if you cut a medium slice of this bread you would get something almost exactly the size of a coffee shop biscotti. This makes it slightly awkward when it comes to lunchtime sandwiches, I'm afraid. So, next time I make this I think I'll have to either use bread tins or just make two small free form loaves in the hopes that they would be stiff enough to hold up better and not spread out so much (admittedly, this is what the original recipe called for...sadly, my second cookie sheet apparently had a prior engagement and was thus nowhere to be found when I needed it).

Currently reading: Still reading Mencken, and, based on the length of the book, probably will be next week, too. He's such a good writer that even when I don't care much about what he has to say (frankly, political conventions during the 1920's aren't exactly what I spend my spare time thinking about), I just love hearing how he goes about saying it. I think he should have been required reading in substitute for some of the nonsense we had to read for Writing Workshop, but maybe that's just me. Anyway, the book is awesome and hilarious.

Next week: Ah, the great mysteries of life!

Norwegian Whole Wheat

Today I'm a bit crunched for time (trying to get some problem sets done), so this entry will, in fact, be almost entirely about the bread. But don't worry, this week's effort was exciting...

So, this weekend I found myself needing to return a glass plate (one that had been lent to me bearing a chocolate cake!). Of course I couldn't return an empty dish, so I decided to try a recipe that would yield two loaves. What I found was this free-form Norwegian
whole wheat recipe, supposedly used by the "Government School for Domestic Science Teachers" in Oslo sometime in the 70's, and if nothing else, it taught me several valuable lessons...for instance, "If you are making a gift loaf, it is probably best to go with a bread you already know how to make," or " make sure you have the correct ingredients before starting."

So, start off by adding 5 teaspoons of yeast to 1/2 cup of warm milk. After about five minutes, add two tablespoons of salt and then notice that the recipe calls for 3 1/2 more cups of warm milk, when you only have about 1 cup left in the fridge. Run to a local convenience store to buy the milk, warm it up, and then add it. Next, the recipe recommends slowly adding 2 cups of rye flour, 2 cups of all purpose flour, and 8 cups of whole wheat flour. I suggest something more along the following lines: in a separate bowl get the flours ready by adding the 2 cups of rye flour, and about 6 cups of whole wheat flour. Now, and this is important, the first key step is to actually run out of the wheat flour. Then add somewhere between 1 and 3 cups of all-purpose flour. Have the sudden inspiration to check other recipes in the book to see how to substitute wheat and all-purpose. Confirm, thankfully, that you can swap them one-for-one. Here's the next critical step: forget in that intervening time how much all-purpose flour you've already added. Then add about 2 more cups all purpose flour. Convince yourself that you've done everything right, and start adding the flour mixture to the liquid mixture. If you've followed these steps carefully, by the time it is simply impossible to stir any more flour into the dough, there should be at least 2 cups of flour left. Sigh slightly at the waste, and get ready to knead.

Ajax v. Hector...Roland v. Oliver...Beowulf v. Grendel...these epic battles all paled in comparison to the vicious struggle awaiting any who would dare try to knead this mass of dough into shape. It is not just the relative stiffness of the dough (certainly not any worse than the pumpernickel)...no, that would be easy to deal with. It is the shear quantity of dough this recipe produces that makes it so difficult to work with. Normal kneading techniques really only work the surface of this forming blob of pre-baked bread, so I recommend some alternatives. For instance, don't just lean your weight into the kneading motion; actually jump in the air and use your entire airborne mass to fold the dough over and into itself. Best make sure nobody is watching you first, though.

After about 15 minutes of such cardiovascular exercise, do the usual: put bread into a well buttered bowl, cover it, set in a warm place, and wait until it has doubled in bulk during the

First Rising (1 hour)
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A few days ago I agreed to help out a friend by volunteering to participate in a functional MRI study (they were looking at something related to how the brain signals swallowing and certain tongue motions). Basically, I got to sit motionless in a very noisy, rather uncomfortable contraption, able to see nothing other than the image of a computer screen reflected in a mirror giving me instructions ("prepare to swallow"..."swallow") for about an hour and a half. On the upside, though, I did get some imported Greek chocolate out of the deal, and it was delicious. Also, the sound of the magnets in the MRI going through their cycles reminded me vaguely of the music in Koyaanisqatsi.... strange.
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Alright, punch the dough down, and knead it for another few minutes, being thankful that it is now somewhat more workable. Cut it in half, shape each half into a ball, and place on cornmeal-sprinkled cookie sheets. Use a sharp knife to score the top of the bread. The recipe calls for a cross-shaped scoring, instead of the more traditional parallel cuts. Try each method, one per loaf (I have to say, the crossed one came out much nicer!). Anyway, cover and return to that warm place until each loaf doubles in bulk during the

Second Rising (The recipe says this will take as long as 2 hours. It took all of 40 minutes for me...I wonder if my modifications to the recipe made any difference...probably not, right?)
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Last week was my first week of teaching this semester, and by and large it went much better than the first week last semester. Except for the fact that during my Thursday morning section I started laughing at the absurdity of my teaching a class of college students. I didn't laugh overly loudly, but it was right in the middle of my trying to deliver a lecture, with nothing remotely funny going on. Those students must think I'm insane.
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Heat oven to 375. Brush the top of the loaves with milk to give a textured crust, and bake for about 50 minutes (until they sound hollow when tapped). Deliver the prettier of the two loaves back to the glass plate's rightful owner, as during this time the other loaf will have cooled off enough to be sliced, buttered, and eaten.

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Tasting verdict: A solid effort. Truthfully, not nearly as good as the last two loaves were...the taste was fine, but not particularly remarkable. Still, the crust is excellently crisp (even better than the anadama last week), and the bread is certainly dense enough to make for some very filling sandwiches.

Currently reading: "Mathematics for Physics II - A set of lecture notes by Michael Stone"... a particularly choice excerpt: "You can't comb flat a hairy sphere, but you can comb a hairy doughnut." How true.

Next week: I'm leaning towards something that will yield substantially less dough than this week's recipe. Perhaps a Bavarian rye bread?