Cornmeal Molasses Bread – part 4




The last try making Cornmeal Molasses Bread the dough was too sticky for me to form into nicely shaped loaves to go into the pans, so this batch will have some changes to try to get less sticky dough. The last batch was also a bit off as I had planned on a large loaf and a small loaf, but the white pan I had planned on using was 9 by 5 and not an 8 by 4 like I had thought. (I know, I should pay better attention.) To correct that problem this time I will be using one of the small loaf pans and the white 9 by 5 pan to make two sizes of loaf.

Since I was making two loaves I decided to try making raisin bread out of the smaller one.

Here are the ingredients for this batch, to make about 1.5 kilograms or a bit more than 3 pounds of dough.

  • Molasses 80 grams
  • Olive Oil 20 grams
  • Water 480 grams
  • Cornmeal 150 grams
  • Bread Flour 700 grams
  • Sugar 35 grams
  • Salt 10 grams
  • Bread Machine Yeast 7 grams

The Molasses was cut from 104 to 80 grams, the water from 510 to 480 grams, and 20 grams of Olive Oil was added. These changes are shown in the ingredient list above and are designed to make the dough less sticky.







 

I used the stand mixer for this batch as the 1482 total grams of ingredients is more than the bread machine can handle. The left photo shows the ingredients in the mixing bowl. The one on the right shows them mixed enough by hand so the electric mixer won’t fling flour all over the kitchen.







 

These two photos show the results of the bulk fermentation or first rise. The dough was kneaded 8 1/2 minutes on the bread hook and was tacky but not sticky, a definite improvement from the last batch. It took about an hour for the dough to double.




The dough was a bit tacky, but I was able to handle it without having to flour the granite to keep it from sticking.







 

The dough was divided, 975 grams for the large loaf and 487 grams for the smaller loaf.




The raisins I had seemed pretty hard compared to the raisins I see in raisin bread, so I soaked them a bit in warm water. They seemed to plump up some, so I drained them and spread them out on the punched down dough for the smaller loaf. Once I had them spread out I rolled the dough up and formed a loaf.







 

As you can see looking at the loaves in the left photo I didn’t manage to form great looking loaves. The dough was too soft for me to get a good loaf. Hopefully as I gain experience I will be better at forming dough into the appropriate shape for the loaf I want it to become.

It is also apparent that my idea of using about a pound of dough in the smaller bread pans I have was off – they need more than I used this time to fill the pan.







 

Here is a second view of the proofing step, showing a better idea of the way that the proofing expanded the dough prior to baking.







 

Here are the two baked loaves, fresh out of the oven. The larger loaf now weighs 926 grams, down from 975. The smaller loaf is only down by 3 grams, but that’s not a real number as I don’t have a weight for the raisins that are not part of the pre-baking value. For the larger loaf that’s a loss of 5% during the baking.







 

The small loaf if a bit misshapen since the pan was too big for the dough, but it has raisins and tasted good. The large loaf is nicely shaped and also was good eating. This bread is good enough that I can honestly label it Anadama Bread without being embarrassed.




This shows the way the raisins ended up distributed through the smaller loaf. The individual raisins did very well. They were plump and good in the bread. The problem, as is pretty clear in this picture, is that they are not nearly evenly spaced throughout the loaf. Next time I attempt raisin bread I will add the raisins in with the other ingredients so that they will be evenly distributed.