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

Baking Day Check-In #3

While the Bread Dough was rising I mixed up the Pumpkin Roll batter.  Here it is in the pan....before adding the walnuts.

It was baked at 375F for 15 minutes.

After it cooled, I carefully removed it from the pan onto a clean kitchen towel.

Oops!  It cracked.....

Since it cracked I decided to divide the sheet of pumpkin into 3 strips.
I then sliced each strip, so I had 2 layers.  I had to do this because I had doubled the recipe(because of the size of my pan).  Unfortunately, that made my cake too thick to roll.  So I had to split it to make it thin enough to roll.

This gave me 6 pumpkin sheets to roll......well, actually it gave me 4 sheets to roll and 1 thick sheet that cracked. 

Each split sheet was placed on a clean kitchen towel.  Then the sheet and towel were rolled up together.  You have to do this while the cake is warm and let it cool rolled up.  If you don't and then try to roll the cake after it's room temperature with the filling and nuts on, your cake will crack badly.
Leave your cakes rolled in towels to cool.
Then unroll carefully.

 Each sheet gets covered with the filling of cream cheese, butter, vanilla and powdered sugar.
Then chopped walnuts were added.

A sheet of parchment paper was laid down on the table and the towel with the filled pumpkin sheet was placed on top.  Now began the tricky part--the rolling.
Using the towel for a guide, reroll your cake, but this time, don't roll the towel with the cake.  It's kind of like making sushi rolls....the towel is your bamboo mat.

 Rolling in progress.....

Roll some more.....

Almost done now....

Ta-Daa!!
 Now for some powdered sugar on the outside.....

Doesn't that look good enough to eat?lol

Then you roll the Pumpkin Roll up into the parchment paper it's on.  These are destined for the freezer, so I then rolled mine in a sheet of foil, crimped the ends and labeled the outside whether it had nuts in it or not.

Four Pumpkin Rolls all done and ready for the Holidays ahead.

So what to do with the 1/3 of the Pumpkin Sheet that cracked?  Cut squares, put the filling on top and sprinkle with nuts.....a plate of Pumpkin Bars to enjoy now.

While I was playing with Pumpkin Rolls, the French Bread and Brioche finished rising.
These were divided and shaped into 4 balls.  Covered and left to rest for 10 minutes.

Then half the dough was put into loaf pans(2 balls=2 pans) and the other half of the dough was formed into batards....the traditional French Bread shape....on a greased rimless cookie sheet.   The tops were snipped with kitchen shears.

All loaves were covered and left to rise again for 1 hour or so.

The Brioche Dough was also formed into balls and plopped into greased rectangular pans to rise again under their kitchen towel covers.

I cleaned some major baking messes and I am off again to check on my Bread loaves and hopefully pop them into the oven, as it's been about an hour since they were left to rest.

Sluggy