Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Baking Day Check-In #4 I'm Done...Some Success & an Epic Fail

Well, this update is late.  After getting home from Date Night with hubby, baking off the rest of the breads and cleaning up the kitchen(sort of), I was too pooped to write & post this update....so it's posted now, on Wednesday.

I baked off the French Bread dough loaves before leaving for dinner....

Before.....

And After.....



Then we had to leave for dinner.
When we returned 2 hours later I went to prepare the batards to bake(slash the tops and egg wash them).
Here is what they looked like when I left....


And here is what I came home to....



When a recipe calls for letting a bread rise for 1.5 hours, they expect you to bake it promptly at this point.  Since my loaves(which I baked off before going out) needed to bake at a different temperature than the batards I couldn't bake it all together before I left, as there wasn't enough time. And I didn't trust the kids to turn off the oven and take bread out if I had started baking the second batch and went out before it was done.
So my batards continued to rise until they filled the cookie sheet.  Not being in a pan with sides, like the other dough in the loaf pans, the dough had nothing to grab onto, like the sides of a pan and climb it.  They did have some height when I took the kitchen towel off.
Then, since the batards were too full of gas bubbles/air, when I brushed on the egg wash, they crashed like the Hindenburg....oh, the humanity!!
I could have punched the dough down and reformed the batards and left them to hopefully rise enough a third time to have a better product.
But....oh well!  I just baked them off as is.....


Nice and toasty French Flat Bread!lol 
Now I've been bread baking off and on since the '80's.  In my previous uptight self I NEVER would have shown anybody this Epic Fail disastrous bread!!  But life is all about learning and taking the good with the bad.  And if some new homemaker who is attempting their first try at baking bread sees this and sees that ANYBODY can SCREW it up, even someone with many yrs. of experience, so they shouldn't feel too badly when something they try doesn't come out right, then I have done my job here. 8-))
And by the way......this monstrous mutant cojoined loaf still tasted fine.
Especially warm.
With buttah!

Then I put the Brioche in the oven after a quick brush of yolk/sugar wash.....

And I took it out later looking like this....


Good enough to eat!



This was my first time baking in this oven since getting it this summer.  I've discovered that it is runs hotter than the temp. dial indicates(thank you oven thermometer!)so most things came out a tad darker than I like(plus my camera tends to make dark pictures).  Hopefully I've made adjustments to my temp/timing for any future baking.

I still have half a can of pumpkin puree to use, so I'll do the pumpkin/chocolate chip bread later today after my errands.  I never did get to the Scones, Brownies or Bread Pudding.  I just had my hands full with the yeast breads.  Between that and the Pumpkin Rolls, I had fewer items to show for my Day of Baking, but what I did make were the labor intensive items on my list.  I think in the future, if I do a whole day of baking again, I'll stick to 1 labor intensive(yeast bread) product, 1 or 2 quicker products(like muffins/quick breads and pie)and a couple of easy/simple items(bar or drop cookies and cake).
I need more items that are definitely more forgiving if you have to leave them to sit for hours when something comes up or you run out of time.

So, what have you baked lately?  Tell us in the comments below...

Sluggy

2 comments:

  1. haha, I read your latest post first, and I didn't even realize that loaf didn't come out the way you wanted. It does give me hope though! I moved out of my parents house last year (I lived with them a little after college, and didn't have to do much cooking while in college for various reasons) but in the past year I have been trying to become more "domestic" and sometimes I do get discouraged. Especially when trying to bake bread! So thanks for this! I now know even experiences pros can make mistakes sometimes and I will just keep my head up :)

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  2. The batard situation is hysterical! I have been there, done that, but it never fails to make me laugh (think "I Love Lucy" and her homebaked bread attempts). Glad the rest of the breads worked out!

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