It’s bread week
Working on that Hollywood handshake
I made so much bread in the last week. I discourage the belief that baking is super precise—many baked goods are more forgiving than you’d expect—but have to admit that it’s true for bread. If the last week is any indication, bread is stubborn and set in its ways. It knows what it likes and will let you know what it doesn’t. I haven’t quite figured out what it likes yet, and I might be doomed anyways since I keep my home at arctic temperatures, but I am stubborn too.
The first bread I attempted was shokupan, Japanese milk bread. I bought bread flour from a farmers’ market vendor and learned the hard way that the recipe I used was probably meant for the supermarket variety; what I had was far less absorbent. My friend shared this recipe with me that expects dough by the third step; I had soup. I managed to get it into something resembling dough, and the finished product wasn’t bad, but it’s a stretch to call it milk bread.
Bread #2: focaccia. It was much less challenging, as I’ve been making focaccia for years, but this was the first time I played around with flavors beyond rosemary. I took one recipe and divided it into two round loaves. One was sweet, flavored with blackberries, goat cheese, and thyme, and the other was savory, topped with roasted mushrooms, caramelized onions, and smoked ramp salt. If any bread is foolproof and forgiving, it’s focaccia—these both turned out wonderfully with no hiccups along the way.
Beer bread was the final bread of the week. I’ve been making beer bread for quite a while, but have never quite perfected it. Unfortunately, this attempt didn’t get me any closer. The yeast in beer helps with the rise of the loaf, but I added a new kind of cheese to the recipe and it came out pretty dense and bland. I’ll be attempting it again, dairy-free and herb-forward.
Bonus: our kids’ activity at the farmers’ market was about bread! Participants tasted milk bread and sourdough, then learned about the liquids that go into brioche, sourdough, and focaccia. The milk bread was a real favorite!