Bakin'

After roasting on my way down to Meridian yesterday afternoon, I think my body is starting to adapt to warmer temperatures. Probably a good thing since the sun was nice and red this morning which I have always taken as a indicator that it is going to be another hot one today. Depending on your choice in weather information outlet (NOAA, Weather Channel, Wunderground) today's high is either 96, 91, or 97 (35.6, 32.8, or 36.1 for those of you keeping score in Celsius).


I went through more water than I usually drink on an entire ride just getting down to Meridian and finished off the remainder during the hour of going in circles. I was a pretty standard effort for out there, attack, recover, attack, recover and hope that something would stick. At the end of the evening, because I am a wuss, I caught a ride home with Joey Brenner instead of noodling back to my house under my own power.

I decided to bake the last loaf of the first batch of dough from the Master Recipe in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day this morning, experimenting some more with the variables left to tinker with since the dough had already been mixed. I shaped the loaf last night and let it rest in the fridge overnight. Baked at 465 F, it came out looking like this.


Letting it rest in the fridge as opposed to the warmth of my kitchen left a little more "legs" in the yeast for some degree of oven spring, but the loaf was still a touch flat.

For the next batch of dough, I am going to tinker some more, reducing the amount of yeast to 1T, the salt to 1T, mixing in some bread flour, and adjusting the time the shaped loaf rests before going into the oven. I will try one loaf at room temperature for around an hour and one in the fridge for two hours and go from there. The loaf from this morning came to work with me and disappeared quickly, so it couldn't have been too bad.