rumors say this bread keeps well, but hell if I know.

[kaigou]

Still waiting to hear from my dad about his mother's chocolate cake recipe (and his rhubarb pie recipe, just because it sounds bizarre but it's best evidence to cite of making pie from anything) -- but here's my Mom's (and now also my) favorite bread recipe for when guests come to visit. I could've sworn I'd posted this before, but apparently not.

1 c scalded sweet (whole) milk
1/4 c butter, salted
1/3 c honey
1 pkg yeast
1/4 c warm water (about 80F)
1 tsp table salt
5 c flour (all-purpose or bread flour)
2 lg eggs, beaten lightly

Scald milk in hot saucepan, and drop in butter and honey. Butter will melt faster if you slice the stick and drop in a few pieces at a time. Stir until butter melts, and let cool until lukewarm, about 70-80F. For faster cooling, stick the pot in the fridge, but remember to stir it every 8-10 minutes.

Dissolve yeast into warm water; proof. I always throw in about a tablespoon of granulated sugar, or a large dollop of honey -- the sugar makes the yeasties especially happy. Proofing is when you make sure the yeasties are happy -- the mixture bubbles -- but sugar is a way to stimulate them if they were feeling emo. The sugar doesn't impact the overall recipe much, because the yeasties will have eaten most of it by the time the mix is proofed.

Add yeast mixture to milk mixture, with salt & 2 c of the flour. DO NOT SKIP THE SALT. It's not there for taste; it's there for chemistry. If you use unsalted butter, then there's a proportion of salt you'll need to add to compensate. Most baking books should tell you.

When that's all mixed well, then add eggs & the rest of the flour. Keep the mixer on low, if at all possible. Too much mixing and/or too-strong of mixing will damage the yeast critters. Pressure is one thing, like when kneading, but mechanical mixing can be too fierce for bread.

Knead until not quite so rough, but not smooth: remove from mixer and knead the last five minutes by hand.

Form into a large round ball, and pour about two dollops (roughly a 1/4 cup) of canola oil into the bottom of a large bowl (I just re-use the mixer bowl). Put the bread in top-down (your grip is on the 'bottom') and swirl the bread around to get the oil coating evenly. Then roll the bread over, so now it's coated nicely with oil. Now you're ready to let it rise, but if it's not about 80% humidity and over 80F in your kitchen, you'll need to help the bread along. That's not because you can't make bread when it's not humid... that's because this recipe's proportions are based on making this bread in Georgia.

(The recipe is also based on making the bread with Southern flour -- which, if you didn't know, flour is very regional. I've made this bread when living in New England, but I had to work extra-hard to keep it humid, and I also believe I ended up adding a bit more liquid because the flour's water content was low compared to the flour I bought in Virginia.)

If your kitchen is dry: get the tap water to as hot as you can stand it, and soak a dish towel in the hot water, wring out most of it so it's hot-damp, and cover the bowl with this cloth. Fold the cloth over for a double-layer if your kitchen is especially dry, to keep a little more water/humidity inside the bowl for the bread.

If your kitchen is cool: stick the bread in an unheated oven, and turn the oven light on. Cover the bowl with a damp-hot cloth, and set the timer for about 20min (so you'll know to come check the bread before it rises right up out of the bowl, which would be bad).

If your kitchen is cool AND dry: boil some water in a teapot or pot -- microwaved water cools down too fast, IME -- and pour this water into a pan. Set that pan on the oven-shelf BELOW the bowl of bread. (DO NOT set the bowl of bread INTO the pan of hot water! You will kill the yeast critters!) Close the oven door, to trap heat and humidity in there with the bread.

Back home in Georgia and Virginia, I always left the rising bread out on the countertop, but with damp cloth to protect it. Now I'm in the lower Midwest, and I do the oven+water+cloth trick to make the bread happy.

When the bread's risen to about twice its size, take out the bowl, punch down the bread, and then knead. Doesn't have to be too much, and no major pounding is required -- this isn't that kind of bread. Best is to squeeze it between your hands, to pop the bubbles. Fold it over, press down, fold, press down, do that about a dozen times. Form it into a ball again, add more oil to the bowl, swirl the dough-ball around to coat it, then re-cover with re-warmed damp towel and stick it back in the unheated (but probably rather humid by now) oven. Redo the hot water in the pan, if you need to.

Repeat this rise-and-beat-down process... well, at least twice if you don't have a lot of time. Four times if you want the bread to turn out decently fluffy. Six times if you've got in-laws coming and you really want the bread to melt in their mouth. A'course, I almost always do 5-6 times, but that's mostly because I get distracted and don't want to deal with baking it quite yet, so I just let it keep rising. More than six times, though, start to undo all your hard work (unless your kitchen is really hot, and humid, like by midway through a family holiday with sixteen dishes being made, in which case let the bread rise on the table because it'll be happy enough with the warmth that it won't need the oven's protection).

When you're ready for baking it, use a big chef's knife and CUT the bread-amount you want. Do not tear/rip! Uhm, there's a reason but I can't remember it now. Anyway, this should make about three of the usual loaf pans, or two decent-sized loaves and maybe a smallish half-a-loaf (your tester loaf). Again, oil the pans and swirl the dough the same, then let it rise a last twenty minutes or so.

Bake in a 400F oven for about 20 minutes. The tops should be a soft light brown, and the loaves should slide easily out of the pan. Turn a loaf over; the bottom should be no more than medium-brown. Thump lightly on the bottom with two fingers. If the bread sounds 'hollow' -- like there's nothing inside the loaf, really, but a lot of air -- then it's done. If unsure, sacrifice the small loaf to test, but at most you may need another minute or two.

In case you do need more time, don't leave the oven door open while you check the bread (or the temp is escaping and that'll whack your estimates for time needed to bake). Just open the door long enough to pull out the small loaf. Overall, you probably shouldn't go over about 24min total in the oven; if you need more than that, something's really wrong.

When warm, the bread is best if you pull it apart (which also shows off the multiple layers and strands of all the folding with each rising time) -- when cool, you can pull or slice. Slicing when warm, for some reason, tends to be more likely to crush the bread a little. That's assuming that you still have any bread left by the time it's cooled off.

This is not a bread that's ever kept well when I've made it, simply because there are always two-legged rats willing and able to devour the bread as soon as it slides out of the baking pans. This is also why I always make a double-batch, which gets me three large loaves, two medium loaves, and two small loaves: that's the only way to make sure there'll be some bread leftover for me.

Comments

[tesserae]

Now you're ready to let it rise, but if it's not about 80% humidity and over 80F in your kitchen

If I do this in August, I'll have the heat, but heat comes with low humidity in CA, so I've always let the bread rise under a damp cloth. One of my bread-baking pals wears by using a mister to damp is down before & during baking, and his crust is amazing...

DO NOT SKIP THE SALT. It's not there for taste; it's there for chemistry

It's also there for taste. THey make unsalted bread in Tuscany, under the theory that you're going to put something like olive oil, bruschetta-type yummies or just pasta sauce on your bread, and salt in the bread will interfere with the flawless seasoning of the rest of the food. Makes for utterly tasteless bread.

[kaigou]

The sweet on this bread is balanced so perfectly that we don't even put butter on it, most of the time... but that also seems to make some people think, "salt is bad for the heart, and besides, you wouldn't taste the salt, anyway!" Proportionally the salt is quite minor (compared to other breads, like, I think foccacia used more than I expected, and so did some other Italian breads) -- but it's still required. If you say, "it helps the taste," I've found this to be counter-intuitive for some people, who don't realize just how much salt does make a difference, however subtly. But they can get the notion that it's chemistry.

Skipping it makes this bread... well, it just doesn't work. I never have figured out exactly what, but it's like the bread is heavier, somehow.

My mom used a mister when she'd bake during the winter, thanks to how house-heating tends to make houses much drier. When I baked during the winter in RI, I just splashed water on the (oiled) dough before covering it. Figured it could use all the water it could get.

[maire]

My experience of using (and not using) salt in baking bread is that it's a careful balance. There are certainly breads that work fine without it, but one often has to change the rising time and so on to make it work. The salt inhibits the yeast growth by a certain amount, and a different amount of salt (including less) changes the timings completely.

[hokuton_punch]

... nnnnnnngh this sounds SO GOOD, I have got to keep this recipe for next time I'm home. (North Carolina is good at heat and humidity, should work perfectly. =d )

[kaigou]

As long as you do the oven & hot water tricks, I can't see why you couldn't make it even in England. But you might want to make it with bread flour instead of regular flour, which may help compensate for the difference in the flour mix. (Not entirely sure, but I seem to recall that bread flour is a little more consistent.) A'course, if you make it back home, no adjustments will be required!

[hokuton_punch]

Ah, I probably could, but I don't trust the oven here at all - it's not particularly consistent. ... also I have no baking things whatsoever. Was planning to blow all my money on croissants, and then got a sudden cheap streak. BUT WHEN I AM HOME... *plotplotplot*

[kaigou]

If your oven gives you hassles, try a breadstone -- see my reply to Jeopardy, below.

[thejeopardymaze]

One of the important things I learned about bread storage is that breathable bags made for it and sold to bakeries and patiserees make a really good difference, or you cool them on the racks and freeze them right afterwards. You still have to eat them by a certain date before they go stale, of course.

If you want I'll work on a list in my journal for any books I know of about real artisan bread, but you'll have to remind me from time to time.

[kaigou]

Ahaha, see, that would presume that there's ever bread available to store. The only time that's happened is when I ruin a batch -- which does still happen -- and the bread's edible but not giveable. The oven's off somehow, the yeast was still too emo, the flour didn't come to room temperature... but most of the time, I'm still lucky to have the loaves to give away, seeing how CP will immediately come sharking around (leo'ing around?).

I mean, my mom used to stand guard in the kitchen, once she realized that asking any of the rest of us to guard fresh-baked bread from the rest of the family was a lot like that old saying about foxes and hen-houses.

I think I just misread the post

[thejeopardymaze]

But I miss read bread. Too bad my oven sucks. I'm less bothered by what I can't eat now, just how I can't experiment like I want because my oven is simply awful for baking.

[kaigou]

I have heard that if your oven is inconsistent, that a breadstone is a major help. I think you're supposed to heat the stone thoroughly, which probably means a pre-heat of a good forty minutes or so... but once that's done, the majority of the bread-baking comes from the stone radiating heat. If the oven dips in temp at points, the stone is what's doing the work, then.

[thejeopardymaze]

Unfortunately, my oven is too small for something like that. They don't have a lot of good ones available in low income apartments.

[dragonhand]

Thank you for sharing this recipe! I'm determined to work on my breads next, and with all the notes, well, it's gonna be so helpful. Thank you!

[kaigou]

You can always just call, if you run into trouble, y'know!

[soukup]

if they were feeling emo

<3

A good trick I've learned from baking in cold weather in drafty low-rent apartments: cover the rising dough with a soaked-and-wrung-out dishcloth. Stick the whole thing in the oven, turn it on for about thirty seconds, and then turn it off. Open the door and feel the air temp with your hand quickly -- it should feel like a really hot summer's day. Close the oven door to hold the heat in.

I'm flabbergasted to hear you say you can get your bread to make six successful rises! Mine rises twice and then no more, and if I try to keep it going I lose the whole thing. I mean, granted, I am living in a cooler place and baking with whole-grain flours; but I think even if I used straight-up white flour I'd get no more than three rises at the absolute max. Do you happen to know what brand name of yeast you typically use?

Also, have you really not ever had rhubarb pie? What else would you use rhubarb for? *scratches head*

[kaigou]

Yep, that's the damp-and-hot dishcloth cover trick, but I've never had the gumption to do the "heat the oven and then let cool" -- killed a double-batch of bread that way once, and since then, I've found steaming water in a tray under the rising bread, in enclosed oven, works just fine. (Although it might work better now that I have electric oven, not gas, but still, burned once! ...so to speak.)

Also, have you really not ever had rhubarb pie?

Not had it? I GREW UP ON IT. Now I'm trying to figure out how I gave the impression it's unfamiliar. Hmm.

Anyway, six rises... I never thought of that as strange -- but it could be that there's enough honey in this recipe that the yeasties just keep munching. I've never actually tried more than, oh, maybe three rises on any of the rustic breads I've (very rarely) ever made. As a kid, I made this using my mother's bread flour, and the six rises were a necessity one year that turned out awesome. Starting around 5th grade, I was put in charge of the dinner rolls at every holiday, but the 2nd year I made them, the oven was in use from like 9am to nearly 4pm. I only needed 20 minutes! But I'd had the bread ready and rising by 10am and just kept getting shoved to the end of the line... so every thirty minutes or so, I'd squeeze the little rolls back down, cover them again, and leave them. By dinnertime, they were absolutely as light-as-air, and I realized there's something to this rising stuff.

A'course, this is also why I say to knead gently. Less of a pounding action, and more of a gentle but firm push downwards. More folding, and squeezing, than anything else -- work the bread like you're popping those sheets of bubblewrap, and you should feel the air popping. Then fold, press, fold, press, fold, press. It's not nearly as energetic as I've seen people do for harder/thicker breads.

I don't even use bread flour, most of the time (and if I do, the bread's even lighter) -- mostly I just use the all-purpose flour, though I try to get unbleached whenever I remember. And the yeast is just Fleischmann's, I think it is -- gold & red bottle, the same brand that's been around for ages.

it should feel like a really hot summer's day

Although we should probably define "really hot summer's day" -- for me, that in the area of over 100F, and the yeasties would be dead by then. 80F is a nice cool summer's day!

[soukup]

his rhubarb pie recipe, just because it sounds bizarre but it's best evidence to cite of making pie from anything)

I think I got the impression that by this you meant that until your father told you about this recipe you had never heard of anyone using rhubarb (of all random things) as a pie filling, and that you found the idea kind of odd or at least surprising/unlikely. As in, "This recipe sounds bizarre, but is the best evidence I can point to that there is no limit to the weird shit people will put in pies." Glad to know you haven't led the deprived rhubarb-pie-less life I was imagining you had!

(Now I really want rhubarb pie. Damn.)

[nagasvoice]

For some reason your mention of rhubard with that particular DW icon is making me imagine Bertie Wooster saying, "Rhubarb," with different absurd inflections as if he's trying to make Jeeves crack up, but of course he's not managing. Instead Jeeves says something, perfectly calm, which makes Bertie howl with laughter. Can't imagine what it is. Possibly the scientific name of rhubarb or something equally ungainly?
And BTW, lovely recipe, making me hungry for fresh bread, or toast, or just generally something carb-heavy.

[kaigou]

Remember, it's not carb-heavy if you baked it yourself! You, uhm, burn off all the calories ahead of time in the making process, anyway.

That's my story and I'm STICKING TO IT.

[nagasvoice]

Must go fossick in the fridge now. If the science experiment eats me, know that I went bravely, not even armed with a stick--just a butter knife.

[kaigou]

Dude. Rhubarb are like turnips, and if you can make a pie from turnips, what can't you make a pie from? The fact that I grew up with it doesn't mean I recognize any less just how, well, wierd it is -- as a pie filling -- compared to standard pie fillings.

Although I don't actually know if rhubarbs are like turnips, but they seem to end up in a lot of the same dishes. Then again, I'm sure if artichokes were common in the South, my relatives would've found a way to turn those into pie-fillings, as well. Enough cane sugar and you can pie-filling just about anything, after all.

[nagasvoice]

Out here, not far from the artichoke capitol of CA, they turn them into stuff like fried ice cream. Really, county fairs are amazing places (especially for fryups).
Of course, they also do this in Gilroy, the garlic capitol of the world, I think. I mean, yes, garlic ice cream, garlic everything. You could probably kill every virus ever found in your body just visiting the place during these events, because the dust alone during harvest time is ... industrial-level garlic.
And of course, yes, there are varieties of garlic pie...

Never ever say a thing like that to me, even in jest, because

[soukup]

now I've got the oddest urge to make some kind of dessert out of parsnips. And not a cake, either. I'm thinking sliced and baked in a really ginger-y applesauce and then served warm with vanilla ice cream, like baked pears. Or I could grate them and add eggs and milk to make some kind of pudding-ish thing with cardamom and nutmeg and almonds, sort of like a carrot Halwa. Would citrus be too obvious a choice? Would lavender be too weird? *ponders* This is going somewhere soon. We shall see.

[kathmandu]

I could've sworn you posted this recipe before, too. Isn't it the one at http://kaigou.dreamwidth.org/232276.html ?

[kaigou]

AHA. And here I thought I might be going senile or something, because I could've sworn. Just one of those weeks, I suppose. Hrm. Maybe I should merge the two, or something. Or link back. *ponders*

Naw, too much effort. I claim early senility as my defense. Clearly I need more chocolate.