Tuesday, February 7, 2012

White Loaves - TWD: Baking with Julia

Yum.   Where's the butter, honey, jam, Nutella....?
This is the first installment of Tuesdays with Dorie:Baking with Julia. The recipe is White Loaves.

Wow - what an easy recipe and a great result! Fabulous for toast and sandwiches (glad it made two loaves). I am an experienced bread baker, so this was kind of a no-brainer. 

Some notes:
  • I am the "whole grain" queen in my household, so my family was pleasantly surprised to get homemade white bread for a change :-) 
  • Kitchen Aid mixer was quite helpful for kneading. It worked hard and got warm, but handled it.
  • Added a bit more (2 T.) water at the initial mixing, because it seemed a bit dry-ish. Maybe because of low humidity in the house. Was glad I did, because the dough consistency was just right.
  • It did separate a bit when butter was added, so it was good to have reassurance in the recipe to expect that.
  • Had to leave the house for a while after mixing it, so left bowl of dough to rise in our kitchen (temp around 64 degrees F) for two hours, and then I shaped it when I arrived home.  It was just fine - not over-risen at all.

This seems like a good 'everyday' recipe - I will definitely make it again.
Yeast proofing ("proving"?)


Finished dough
Loaves ready to rise

5 comments:

  1. Unofficial bread reviewer's grade: A

    (Hmm. Looks like someone could use new loaf tins.... :-)

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  2. I have to admit, I had to resist the temptation to sub some whole grain flour for part of the bread flour. =) And I'm going to add a bit more water if I make these again, because the dough did seem a bit too stiff. It still worked out okay, though.

    Welcome to TWD!

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  3. Nice job! Lovely loaves!

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  4. It looks like everything worked out perfectly. I love how flexible the bread making process can be - if you are in a hurry, place it somewhere warm; if you need it to take its time, find somewhere cool. If only more things in life were so flexible!

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  5. Thanks for your comments, everyone!

    I found myself thinking about this recipe again today, wondering if I should just whip it up tonight.

    Cher, I agree about the flexibility! I learned this first hand by working my way through some of the recipes in the Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book. It has a lot of information about how to know when the dough is ready for each stage of the process, and how to speed up or slow things down.

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