Monthly Archives: October 2016

Cornmeal Molasses Bread – part 1

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For a first attempt at make the Anadama Bread I remember as a kid growing up in New England I took the formula from the previous posts for Oatmeal Bread and siwtched some ingredients. Unsulfered Blackstrap Molasses for honey and Yellow Cornmeal for Quick Oats. Since I wasn’t sure that the result would be very good I decided to let the bread machine do the entire job. That way I invested less effort into it than if I baked it in the kitchen oven.



The recipe I was using to mix the oatmeal bread in the bread machine before baking it in the oven resulted in a loaf that was almost a kilogram (2.2 pounds) which is a little too much for my 2 pound bread machine. So I cut back on the formula and used proportionally less of all the ingredients to come up with a loaf that would fit the pan of the bread machine.

As the photo above of the just baked loaf in the machine shows, this recipe is a good fit for baking in the machine. Continue reading →

Purple Bread?

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In the previous post I learned that adding paste color to the already mixed dough and trying to knead it in to get a uniform color was not very practical. The conclusion was that the color needed to be added to the ingredients before mixing. That’s what I did for this loaf. The ingredients for this loaf, other than the purle color are the same as for Oatmeal Bread – part1.

For color I used Wilton Violet paste Icing color. It comes in a 1 ounce jar. I was going to go with 1 gram of the colorant in the just over 1000 gram batch but ended up with 1.1 grams since it didn’t seem practical to take .1 gram out of the color I had just dropped into 50 grams of water.

I mixed the dye into the water and added it to the bread machine pan on top of the honey that was already there. Continue reading →

Dyed Bread?

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The original plan was to make monkey bread, but it changed when the three year old who likes to touch everything visited for the evening. Thoughts of sticky fingers everywhere change the plans. We’d been at a party to celebrate an adoption becoming o-fish-ial. The theme was fish, of course.

With fish you need water, and some of the sandwiches were made with bright green and blue bread. I was told that the Publix Supermarket bakery had made it, and I was inspired.

Since it was too late put the coloring into the mix with the other ingredients I decided to try kneading it into half the dough to make marble or swirl bread. I should have known better, but it was a learning experience.



The ingredients here are the same as in Oatmeal Bread – part1. I have measured the temperature of the dough coming out of the bread machine dough cycle several times now and 93.7 F is typical and warmer than room temperature.



After the dough came out of the bread machine I split it into two roughly equal pieces. The idea was to color one and then flatten both out and roll them up so there was a spiral of color. Continue reading →

Molasses Oat Bread

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After having produced a nice loaf of oatmeal bread using honey as one of the ingredients I decided to try making a Molasses Oat bread. I had some unsulferd blackstrap molasses that I bought to use making Anadama Bread so I decided to just substitute the molasses for the honey just to see how it would come out. If it was awful it would give me a place to start zeroing in on a good recipe. Blackstrap molasses has a pretty powerful flavor, and I was worried that I had so much in the loaf it would have an overpowering taste of molasses. It is definitely a darker color than the Oatmeal Bread loaves in the previous few posts, but I was surprised — it came out great, with a mild molasses flavor.

Continue reading →

Yeast

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When we first got the bread machine I read the instructions and they said to use Bread Machine Yeast. I went to Wal-Mart and after some looking found the yeast. I had several different choices of yeast to choose from, most of them in foil envelopes. Being an optimist I figured I’d be making lots of bread, so I went for the 4 ounce jar of Fleischmann’s® Bread Machine Yeast. It was more cost efficient than the envelopes and with a screw on top there would be no partial envelopes to deal with.

It worked very well. I’d measure out what I needed for a batch of bread and put the jar back in the refrigerator. After 25 or 30 loaves it was almost gone, so I bought another jar. I was just as pleased with the second jar, but I was making a lot more bread and it didn’t last as long as the first one. I needed a bigger jar than 4 ounces.





 

After some research I realized that Bread Machine Yeast Continue reading →

Oatmeal Bread – part 5

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Sitting on the cooling rack the loaf of Oatmeal Bread baked for an hour at 300 F is the best looking Oatmeal loaf yet. It was baked using the bread machine to make the dough before proofing and baking in the kitchen oven. The recipe is here again, with the ingredients listed in the order they are added to the pan of the bread machine. This recipe makes a loaf that is a little over 2 pounds (this one weighed 950 grams when it came out of the oven.)

  • Honey 69 grams
  • Water 358 grams
  • Quick Oats 85 grams
  • Bread Flour 467 grams
  • Sugar 23 grams
  • Salt 7 grams
  • Bread Machine Yeast 5 grams



The dough is nearly to the top of the bread machine pan at the end of the dough cycle. If the recipe above was used with the normal cycle that produces the baked loaf chances are good that the loaf would overflow the pan in the bread machine. I had it happen once and Continue reading →

Oatmeal Bread – part 4

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Every time I bake bread something happens that reminds me I’m really pretty new at this bread making thing and I learn a lesson. The dough for this loaf was prepared using the bread machine. I noticed when the 90 minute cycle was up that it had risen a bit more than the last time and that the pan felt warmer than I expected. I didn’t think much about it, punched the dough down to degas it and formed the loaf. Then I set it in the microwave with the boiling water for warmth and humidity and set the timer for 45 minutes.



The last loaves were proofed just the way I wanted them at 45 minutes. This one surprised me. At 45 minutes when I came to put it in the oven it was about to run over the edge of the pan.





I baked it for 45 minutes at 350 F and was surprised to see that there was no real spring from the heat of the oven. The photos show before and after baking. I put the after back into the microwave to show how the loaf is the same height after baking as before. I’m guessing that the lack of spring may have something to do with Continue reading →