Roasted Garlic Rosemary Bread: Artisan Phases

Remember how in my last post about whole wheat bread I referenced that other loaf of bread that I technically baked first? Well, here it is. And as usual, I tend to attempt giant leaps forward before backtracking into baby steps.

My family has this vague history (if you can count 2 parents and 3 children who are barely in their teens and twenties as "history") of becoming obsessively fixated on hobbies or interests. This is pretty convenient for someone going into academia, but can kinda make you look crazy when it comes to hobbies. Like one summer, I went to hot yoga every single day at 6 AM. I'm still trying to figure out how I did that. Oh, and of course the one time my mom decided to go on a food network inspired cooking phase of multi-course dinners, it ended a few short weeks before I was home for Thanksgiving. And don't get me started on my cross-stitching phase of 2 months thats slowly dwindling, or my mother's recent gardening revival.

In this case, I would say bread baking is in its infancy as an obsession. For me, I think my obsessions tend to either 1) wax and wane fairly very quickly (i.e. cross-stitching), or 2) wax very slowly until I become the type of person who spends their weekend nursing an oven. Bread might be in category 1 at the moment, but it way has the potential to become 2. Especially if I actually do go through with buying a bread mixing stick, a giant bucket, and this fancy artisan bread book (which is where this Roasted Garlic Rosemary Bread recipe originally comes from).

I'm a huge sucker for garlic in general, but especially roasted garlic. It's the sign that I've truly fallen in deep with the "food snobs," "foodie culture," or you know, whatever label. As usual, the rise of this loaf was less than optimal- at only ~2-3 inches max. This is this thing I hate about food photos on blogs. At certain angles, you would totally not notice the lack of rise in a bread photo, and just think "omg, delicious, must try myself." But if you stare at it long enough, its totally obvious that the bread is not particularly tall. And then doesn't that just make you feel cheated?

Regardless of my high yeast/rise standards, the bread itself tasted great, albeit a little dense due to the rise problem. It was great as a tiny sandwich, or just by itself lightly toasted. Aside from the rise thing, the recipe is very easy to make (no endless kneading!). I think my rise problem was due to letting the dough initially rise for too long in a slightly heated oven. Since the bread is also left to sit overnight in the fridge, I think allowing the dough reach its rise peak resulted it in having massive deflation while in the fridge. Well, this is all untested conjecturing, so you know, don't listen to me.

Recipe via The Noble Pig

Whole Wheat Bread: Rewrite v2

The problem with being "busy" (read getting stuck in airports) is that I get halfway through writing blog posts, but don't get far enough to publish or queue it, and then when I do get back to it, I'm left with a half written post that isn't even relevant anymore. For example, the last time I worked on this post was last Sunday, when I was partway through revisit trips for future MD/PhD programs. So a lot of this post was about feeling fit, how you're supposed to pick out the things that make you happy for 8 years etc. And this was all supposed to tie to bread. Probably some reference to comfort or simplicity because sandwich bread is the thing that ties lunches through some ridiculous metaphor.

But honestly, similar to my mood when I probably made this back in March (geez how time flies), bread is boring, and I just wanted to test my yeast-skills again. This is actually the 2nd of two breads I've made so far in 2015, but again "busy" (read: lazy) made me totally forget about that other loaf till now, so you'll get a peak of that later. The idea of making sandwich bread is mildly amusing to me (and to my roommate). It's such a simple, ubiquitous product that machines and extra fancy bread slicers do a far better job at doing than myself. And don't even dare suggest that homemade bread has fewer chemicals and is thus more natural and wholesome or I will ban you. Anyways, while I generally prefer my sandwich bread a bit larger, and studded with more grains and chewy textured bits, the combination of honey and molasses I used for this bread added some nice flavors that the bread I buy doesn't always have. At its worst, bread is just a vehicle for other things. At its best, bread is something I would happily eat alone for all my meals if I could. This was probably 75% best bread- I definitely ate slices of this on its own for breakfast, but it also made great sandwiches.

I was pretty happy with the rise I got from this bread (success!). Aside from my pizza crusts, I've never been happy with my past n=~3 experiences making bread. For reasons that I think may be related to letting bread dough rise too much, my other breads have been short. Delicious because carbs, but short. This time, the bread happily puffed up to a reasonably height. The loaf pan I used was a bit on the smaller side, which I think helped with the rise, but made for some pretty tiny lunchtime sandwiches for that week. Sigh, I just can't win with yeast, but I think I'm getting closer.

Recipe from King Arthur's Flour