Since the previous try at Cornmeal Molasses Bread came out quite tasty and edible even if the dough was too sticky to form into a loaf before proofing. I decided to try again, with changes to hopefully make the dough less sticky.

My daughter gave me a nice loaf pan she got at a yard sale or something. It’s got a white coating on it that I assume is non-stick. I thought it was the 4 by 8 inch size, so I proportioned the ingredients to be enough for a 2 pound and a 1 pound loaf. If you look at the photo above you’ll notice that the two loaves are about the same size. The white pan was 5 by 9, not what I thought. What I did was divide the dough in half and make two loaves, each about 750 grams, The result was two sqatty loaves. I should have followed my original plan and used one of the 4 by 8 pans I have. Next time.

To cut down on the stickyness I made a couple of changes from a strictly proportional mix. Water would have been 537 grams, so the 510 is 27 grams less. The cornmeal would have been 127.5, so the 150 is 22.5 grams more. Continue reading →

Since the result from the bread machine in Cornmeal Molasses Bread – part 1 was reasonably acceptable I decided to make a full size loaf and bake it in the oven to get a better idea of where to go next. The goal is a good loaf of Anadama Bread, not just a somewhat recognizable one.

So I made a full size batch of dough using the same formula as in part 1 in the bread machine to bake in the oven.

The left photo shows the dough in the bread machine after it has been mixed and kneaded and before the bulk fermentation (first rise) has started. There is dough stuck to the side of the pan that didn’t stay attached to the main ball of dough that surrounds the paddle in the bottom of the bread machine’s pan. In the initial mixing stage it took a lot more scraping the side of the pan with a rubber spatula to get all the ingredients into the mix.

The right photo shows the dough at the end of the 90 minute dough cycle in the bread machine. The dough has risen nicely, and the 93 or 94 F temperature that the bread machine maintains to encourage the yeast to grow has dried out the thin layer of dough that was on the wall of the machine at the start of the bulk fermentation part of the dough cycle.

The ingredients for this loaf are listed below by weight. They go into the bread machine pan in the order listed. The salt needs to go in at the edge of the pan so it does not come into direct contact with the yeast. The yeast goes into a depression made in the top of the flour so it is separate from the salt until the machine starts mixing. Continue reading →