Monday, May 11, 2009

My first loaves with the BBA and my love of Anadama Bread!

About a week ago Nicole of Pinch my Salt sent out a twitter message saying “I need a challenge. Am thinking of baking my way through every single recipe in The Bread Baker's Apprentice. Anyone want to join me?” Well I jumped right in. Both feet, no thought at all. I think I was one of the first 10 that joined…did I even have the book? Nope but I ordered it that night!!!

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The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread

We are now almost 200 strong with members everywhere on the globe. It’s an incredibly enthusiastic group that wants to share like no group I have ever belonged to before. Awesome!

Our goal is to bake our way through Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread. An intimidating book at anytime but to think that you are going to be baking one of these recipes a week is slightly overwhelming to say the least. But I love a challenge and feel a real need to get out of my comfort zone. Oh yah, I bake all of our bread but I never seem to have the time or the desire to try something new and different. This will change all that!!!

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Our first challenge was Anadama Bread. This is a delicious sandwich type loaf that is made with cornmeal and molasses. I did change a couple of things around with this recipe and it turned out absolutely perfect.

The recipe calls for 6 Tablespoons of light molasses. All I had was regular and it is pretty strong so I used 4 Tablespoons of molasses and 2 Tablespoons of honey. I used the coarse cornmeal that the recipe called. The only other thing I changed was using only 1 1/2 teaspoons of yeast. I used Rapid Rise as that’s what I have and the recipe called for Instant Yeast. Still not sure about the difference but mine turned out prefect. Light and fluffy. We enjoyed this bread over the weekend as sandwiches with black forest ham and muenster cheese. The sweet in the bread complimented the sandwiches perfectly!

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Will I make this again? Most definitely!!!

As Always…

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com

14 comments:

Maria said...

Great job on the bread. It looks wonderful!

Brian Meagher said...

Wow, your bread looks amazing!

This looks like a great project... wish I had time to jump in. Got too much BBQ-ing to do this summer.

I did make a James Beard recipe (Beard on Bread) for Sour Cream Bread that is awesome.
http://bit.ly/37GTCU

Arundathi said...

Lovely looking slices! Everyone at home loved the taste of the bread too!

Bob said...

Oh wow, that looks stunning! I can imagine it went great with the ham. Looking forward to more fancy pants loaves. :)

Susie said...

Beautiful! You did great. :) Are we having fun yet???????? LOL.
Susie

Andrea Meyers said...

I'm getting ready to tackle my bread tomorrow, and glad to know your substitution for the light molasses worked. Your loves turned out great!

Rebeca said...

Looks nice! Mine is sponging at the moment.

Kat said...

Beautiful bread! I bet it would be good toasted with butter too! Good luck with your challenge. Kat

NKP said...

Looks great! I'm just on my first rise.

MrOrph said...

Great job on the bread. I am such the wimp when it comes to making bread. I really need to get off my arse.

Thistlemoon said...

Wow, this is awesome Judy! Wish I had time for this challenge right now - it sounds like SO MUCH FUN!
Your bread looks totally perfect!

Jamie said...

This bread looks perfect! Fabulous! I wanted to join this as I just bought the book but was afraid I wouldn't find all the ingredients.

Allison said...

I thought I'd have problems finding ingredients, but it wasn't bad. I found golden molasses in the specialty section of the regular grocery store, near the Bob's Red Mill items. I used Red Star quick-rise yeast, and Quaker white corn meal. These loaves look great!

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