Bread

Yesterday saw the baking of the 250th batch of bread since baking began, back in January 2011 (see, for example, January 20th, 2011 in the other place. Note that Dropbox has done its stuff, it does cope with update and the link given there still works).

Celebrated the occasion in two ways. First, the amount of yeast was upped a bit to three teaspoons of yeast to near three pounds of flour, but still well short (pro-rata) of the amount that BH uses to achieve a rather different rise, albeit with white dough made cooked in a rather different way. No change in either first or second rise, but the bread did rise more than usual during the cooking. Shall I push onto four teaspoons? At least the cost and the bother of getting the yeast is no longer the issue that it might of been in the 19th century, when cottage & country bakers were likely, in consequence, to a make sour dough bread, as indeed the people at 'Mixed Blessings' still do.

Second, following the bit of yesterday's post concerning said 'Mixed Blessings', I thought to add some celebratory glacé cherries, so during the second rise off to Costcutter on the bicycle to see what they do, which turned out to be Heritage glacé cherries which are made with food dye rather than according to the artisinale recipe set out at http://www.glacecherries.com/. But beggars can't be choosers and I was pleased that such a corner shop had them at all. There was, as it turned out, quite a good selection of baking sundries, so one can only assume that the modern mum is more into baking than I had given her credit for. Thus empowered, five cherries were placed on the top of each loaf just before putting them into the oven, taking care not to damage the tops of the loaves, such damage having caused loaves to collapse before now.

The cherries ended up rather brown and embedded about 1mm in the dough which had risen as it cooked around them. I had assumed that the syrup oozing out of the cherries had bonded them firmly to the surface of the loaves, but in the event one cherry fell off a loaf during the night, the loaf having been stored cut face down, cherry face right, to slow down drying out. BH thinks that maybe damping the surface of the loaf before placing the cherries might have achieved a better bond.

However, having discovered over breakfast that cherries baked in this way are quite inedible - hard, burnt toffee - there is no need to investigate further. Maybe the cherries one finds on the surface of fruit buns have been cooked at a lower temperature and so do not turn into toffee. Maybe they started inside the bun and only floated to the surface during cooking, although the BH view is that cherries are more likely to sink, certainly through a cake mix which goes into the oven as a thick liquid, not like bread dough at all.

PS: Dropbox link https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8152054/Bread-20110120.xls included for convenience.