Burned my Bread

I baked bread yesterday and I burned it.  It was either because the thermometer I used to measure the internal temperature was broken (the plastic melted when we stuck the magnetic back onto a too-hot oven door) or the inside of the oven was too hot.  I turned up the temperature to 500F because according to the oven thermometer I got, the inside of the oven takes a long time to heat up.  That itself may be due to the addition of the 2 large clay tiles I bake my bread on.  Being too hot could mean the sugars caramelized on the outside of the bread too quickly for the inside to finish baking.

I had actually hoped I would burn my bread some time soon.  I've under-cooked it so many times that I knew how to avoid that problem.  Now I know - instead of just checking the thermometer, I should check the look of the bread itself as well.

Rye Bread

I baked some rye bread last night.  This was with dough I had prepared nearly 2 weeks ago.  I'll probably bake the rest of it today as 2 weeks is the maximum they say you should store it.

The first thing I noticed was that the dough was very wet and sticky.  I also wasn't paying that much attention to the instructions so I forgot to dust the top of the ball of dough with flour before I started stretching the surface dough.  I also put it directly onto my peel (aka bamboo cutting board) with what was apparently not enough flour or cornmeal.  I should have put it on the counter first, making sure to throughly flour the sticky outside, then put a ton of cornmeal on the peel, and finally only put the dough on the peel when I was sufficiently ready.

Well, that wasn't the end of it there.  Only after I made cuts in the top of the dough did I realize it was sticking to the peel.  I slid a thin spatula under the dough, trying to cram more cornmeal there as I went.  Given that the dough was already rather formless and soft, it just started to deform more and more.  Plus, the cuts on top were spreading and starting to become part of the outer skin.  Finally I was able to slide it easily - and in the oven it went.

The fun didn't stop there - no...I had my cup of hot water ready to pour into the heated baking pan sitting in the oven.  For some reason I didn't pull the rack out, instead I thought it would be perfectly fine to pour the water into the pan through the upper rack (the one that the stone & dough were sitting on).  In my haste, I missed and ended up pouring hot water on the stone and the dough.  Uarahghggh. I tried to brush it off with my oven mitts, but it was hot in there.  The water was steaming from the heat of the stone, so I thought screw it and closed the oven door.  The water did evaporate pretty quickly, which was good.  I left the bread in for about...25 minutes I think.  The internal temperature was 205F when I took it out.

Now for the bread itself - it's got a nice brown crust.  The part where it split was not the place where I cut it.  Because of all the smooshing around, I turned out this weird shape.  The cornmeal on the bottom gets rather hard and crispy - maybe I should go for a finer ground cornmeal next time.  The inside is cooked through (yay!).  There are a few large holes, but the crumb is mostly small holes.  It tastes kind of like rye bread, but the flavor is not very heavy.  I didn't add any caraway seeds, which might make a huge difference.  Lawrence doesn't actually like caraway seeds.  Next time I'd like to try adding molassses for a dark, or maybe even marbled rye bread.

I've never eaten my bread toasted.  I tried putting some butter on it, but the bread needs to be warm for that to work (to melt the butter and all).  In the end, I go back to dipping slices of the bread in olive oil sprinkled with freshly ground sea salt and black pepper - YUM!

Last of the ABin5 dough

I finished off the last of the Artisan Bread in 5 min dough today. It was probably close to 1.5 lbs. I had to leave a little bit of dough that had dried out on the edge of one of the containers. This loaf I cut with a scallop pattern on top after I let it rest for at least an hour after taking it out of the fridge. While baking I used some tips I picked up from Peter Reinhart's book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I let the oven (including my roasting pan) heat up to 450F while the dough rested.

After sliding the dough in onto the tile, I poured hot water into the roasting pan so it would generate steam. We actually picked up a mist sprayer from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, so I used that to mist the sides of the oven and generate more steam. 15 minutes in I flipped the tile around to help even out the bread's exposure to the heat in the oven.

I think I opened up the oven to mist toooo many times. Nearly 30 minutes in, I stuck in the thermometer and the internal temperature was at ~160F. I needed it to be at 200F, so I upped the heat to 480F and left the thermometer in the bread to monitor the temperature. The alarm feature is awesome. :) The crust turned out a nice color, and this time I definitely slashed it deep enough.

I just tasted it, and I think that I over-handled this dough again. The holes are not as big as I'd like. The crust, although crispy on the outside, is not as thick and flavorful as the first bread I baked with the ABin5 dough. I'll have to think about this a bit more to figure out what I did. Perhaps it was the changes in oven temperature from constantly opening the door?