The other day I got a wild hair for a sandwich, an unusual urge considering I generally don't keep bread around, but I wanted it, and I wanted it NOW! Which, of course, was then. So I set off to make ordinary bread the fast way, and by fast I mean bread within five or six hours and not bread within the customary three days for my beloved natural culture type bread, so-called sourdough. The bread was started with one and a half cups surplus whey with a scant one fourth teaspoon sugar for the commercial yeast to feast upon. So right there is a slight acid and a faint sweetener acting in conflict. I allowed the yeast to hydrate for a few minutes then added the remainder of the home-milled whole-wheat flour which amounted to about 1/3 cup, and enough flour marketed for bread sufficient to create a wet sticky dough. On a bizarre whim, and I cannot explain this beyond a desire to clean out the refrigerator, I added a few tablespoons of held-over hand-made hummus that was spiced untraditionally. I figured that might help keep the bread moist, boldly, bravely, idiotically setting up myself for disaster.
The dough got off to a slow start. I began wondering if the hummus might prevent it from rising properly. Once it started, though, it really took off. I pushed it back down and did the whole streeeeeetch fold over, rotate 90˚, streeeeeetch fold over, rotate 90˚, streeeeeetch fold over, rotate 90˚,streeeeeetch fold over, rotate 90˚, all within the bowl so that the bowl contained a stack of four dough folds as an unsightly mass. I lifted the mass of dough out of the bowl and with both hands stretched the surface down around the stack as if firmly petting a bowling ball and tucking the ends underneath. No wait. More like applying mouse to an wild Afro so that it lay flat on the person's head with a part down the middle. No wait, wait, wait. More like making a bed in a barracks so that it would pass inspection and a quarter dropped on it will bounce. Yes, exactly like that, except with dough and not a linen sheet or a wool blanket. I shaped it into the general shape of a standard bread pan. See? I did not punch it down like the books say to do, rather, I treated the dough with kindness, but nonetheless with firmness, stretching it in four directions so the yeast was completely redistributed but without having all the air knocked out of it then made it presentable.
Then I erred, miscalculating how quickly the second rise would be inside that bread pan. The dough was wet. I wanted to catch it well before it reached maximum height so it would have impressive oven rise. It was pretty much topped out by the time I got around to it, so when I sliced the top to prevent the airplane hangar effect that occurs by a giant bubble forming directly under the skin, the whole thing deflated unbeautifully and it baked up to be not so pretty.
Le boo, le hoo. My embarrassment was such that my face felt the heat of a massive star gone super nova, or perhaps the heat of a 40 Watt incandescent light bulb. I stomped my foot and huffed, growled like a snarling dog. I almost threw it out in disgust.
But instead, I made a ham sandwich with mustard and lettuce like that one up there ^^^ and that changed my whole attitude. It's delicious. The shape is not so bad. I can live with it. The hummus was a stroke of genius! But if I ran a bakery, or if I was in a competition, I'd privately hang my head in shame, but publicly defiantly proclaim starchily and with a French accent, "I meant to do that!"
No comments:
Post a Comment