I love bread. However, I’m not very good at making it. I don’t know if it’s the recipes or my technique but my breads never seem to turn out quite right.
A couple of weeks ago I decided that it was time to learn how to make good bread. Using a combination of the library’s catalog and Amazon, I determined that there were two books most people agreed were excellent bread books:
- The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart and
- Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman.
Happily, Weld Library District owned one and Longmont Public Library owned the other. Unfortunately, they were both checked out. I put holds on both of them but impatience got the better of me so I also checked out from Weld The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum.
Last Thursday night, I read Beranbaum’s first chapter, “The Ten Essential Steps of Making Bread,” and then flipped through the rest of the book looking for a recipe that wanted to be made. A hearth bread, the “Tyrolean Ten-Grain Torpedo,” caught my attention. I decided that I’d make the bread and serve it Monday night with a Artichoke and Cheese Sandwich topping.
It seems like most of the breads in The Bread Bible require quite a bit of work. The Tyrolean bread is no exception 
First, you must start the sponge the night before. The next day you finish making the dough and let it rise two times. After the second rising, you shape the dough into the “torpedo” loaf shape and let it rise for a final time while you preheat the oven (Beranbaum suggests preheating the oven an hour ahead of putting the bread in).
Late morning Monday everything was going according to plan. The bread was almost ready to be put in the oven. It looked perfect. I was putting an 8 X 8 glass pan away when it slipped out of my hands and crashed, spraying shattered glass all over my kitchen and onto my beautiful bread dough.
For a couple of insane minutes I contemplated picking the glass out and pretending nothing had happened. Fortunately, my common sense asserted itself and I came to the conclusion that bread dough and glass shards don’t combine to make healthy eating Unfortunately, that ruined my supper plans. I didn’t have enough time to make another bread loaf. I could have run to the store and grabbed some french bread. However, I was too depressed by the whole incident (hours wasted!) and so convinced Jaeger we should eat out instead.
However, I still really wanted to make the bread. So, Tuesday night I started the process again. Wednesday night there was a “Friends of the Longmont Public Library” meeting that I wanted to attend. I hadn’t been to one before and I thought it would be a good chance to meet other people. I dashed home Wednesday night to start the second part of the bread process, whipped up dinner and scarfed it down in time for bread preparation part three. Then I set it up to raise and dashed off to the library getting there just a couple of minutes late.
The flyer had mentioned that there would be a book sale afterwards and as a result the meeting would be brief. However, I didn’t realize how brief the meeting would be. It lasted a total of 15 minutes. It was obvious that everyone suffered through the meeting just to be first to the book sale. Ever time the masses thought the meeting was over, they leapt to their feet. This happened several times before the meeting actually ended. It was most amusing to watch.
Finally, the meeting was over and there was a stampede to the books. I continued sitting in my chair for a couple of minutes bemused by the enthusiastic crowd. It was almost like store sales the day after Thanksgiving. Eventually, since I was already there, I decided to look and see what was available. Nothing in Fiction looked terribly interesting but I did find three cookbooks and one sex book that looked interesting.
I made it back home 2 minutes before the timer started beeping indicating that my bread was finished with its first rising. The bread making process continued until I finally took the bread out of the oven at 10:30 (for once Jaeger actually made it to bed before me).
This evening is hacking society so Jaeger wasn’t around. However, I made my Artichoke & Cheese sandwhich on the 10 grain bread for supper. It was very good. I’m impressed by how well the bread recipe turned out (especially considering a couple minor mishaps that occurred along the way).
I’m definitely going to make this bread again. However, I’ll probably start trying to replace the bread flour with whole wheat flour. I realize that this will be a complicated process but Jaeger has rubbed off on me enough so now I always feel slightly guilty when eating white bread
My next epic bread undertaking? Either pizza dough or bagels.