I baked off the French Bread dough loaves before leaving for dinner....
Before.....
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....
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.....
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.....
Good enough to eat!
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
