Olive Bread

Starting with this Country Style French Bread recipe, I'm going to add olives and maybe some other spices, and modify it to have a bit more whole wheat (using white wheat flour):

For the Sponge Starter:

• 1 cup cool-lukewarm water, preferably spring water (90 to 100°F)
• 1/2 teaspoon active dry or instant yeast
• 162 grams unbleached bread flour
  
• 35 grams white or traditional whole wheat flour

For the Dough (modified):

• All of the sponge starter (above)
• 1 cup lukewarm water, preferably spring water (100 to 115°F)
• 3/4 teaspoon active dry or 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 200 grams unbleached bread flour
• 250 grams white whole wheat flour
• 20 grams vital wheat gluten
  
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• 50 grams unbleached bread flour for variations in consistency
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon milk powder
  

I seem to have misplaced my camera... where oh where is it...

Full of Woe

For Christmas, Rourke got me a subscription to The Economist, and I've been loving it. What really amuses me is the writing style, a kind of mix of journalism and editorial with a sharp bite to it.

Take, for example, this short piece titled "Full of woe" about how Britain ranked low on a survey of children's well-being among wealthy nations:

SEX, booze and horrid friends: those three evils dragged Britain's youngsters to the bottom of a “child well-being” index published this week by UNICEF. The UN agency ranked 21 rich countries on everything from babies' birth-weight to how often children chat to their parents. The Netherlands came top, followed by those infernal Scandinavians, who always seem to do well in such contests, and a raft of Catholics. Britain brought up the rear, standing shoulder to shoulder with America.

Just 43% of British children were willing to describe their peers as “kind and helpful”—the lowest of any country (the nicest kids are in Switzerland, where 81% agreed with this). It gets worse: despite finding their peers so vile, British teens were all too willing to jump into bed with them. By the age of 15, 38% had had sex—the highest of the sample. This may be because they were also much the drunkest, and the third-biggest cannabis smokers (just behind the cheery Swiss).

Such colorful presentation of relatively dry statistics makes the large quantity of data-driven articles almost qualify as entertainment.

Speed White Batter Bread

Dave asked in a comment how long the bread took from start to finish. I was actually pretty prompt with the postings, having posted the recipe and the plan a little prior to starting work, and posting the conclusion right afterwards. I'd say probably a total of 3 hours. I did, however, run out and go catalogue some stuff at Winebank during the first rising, so that lengthened the time more than necessary.

After eating a dinner of ramen, dried fruit, and corn nuts in the office and coming home late, I decided to see how fast I could bake a loaf of bread. Plus, I wanted to try putting in the correct amount of olive oil and increasing the vital wheat gluten by 5 grams.

The result? I cut out the two risings and poured the batter directly into the mini loaf pan. I let it rise until it formed a dome over the top of the pan while heating up the oven. Total time, about one hour and 45 minutes. About 45 minutes of rising and 30 minutes of baking. There was also some IM distraction, so with maximum efficiency, I think it could be done in 90 minutes total and only 15 minutes of actual work.

The bread was okay (definitely less oily) but the texture was noticeably less fine. There were large variations in the size of the air bubbles with some really big ones and some smaller ones, compared to the previous attempt which had uniformly fine texture. What the texture really reminded me of mass-produced store-bought pre-sliced bread. I think less oil and more gluten are definitely winners. Single-rising produces an okay loaf, but not nearly has "homemade" feeling as a double rise.

White Batter Bread Results

Came out surprisingly good given that I made an error and put in 2 tablespoons of olive oil instead of 2 teaspoons.

I was afraid alternatively that I'd used too much vital wheat gluten (too chewy) or would make the loaf too dense as per some of the complaints about the recipe in the forum. Fortunately, it came out really light and not too tough. I could actually use a little more gluten, maybe 5 more grams.

This mini-loaf is worthy of taking to Rourke & Jen's tonight.

White Batter Bread

Recipe reduced to mini-loaf size:

INGREDIENTS

• 3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 1/3 cup and 1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
• 2 teaspoons white sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 130 grams sifted all-purpose flour
• 10 g vital wheat gluten
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
  

DIRECTIONS

1. Mix together shortening, sugar, salt, yeast, vital wheat gluten, 30 grams flour. Add warm water and beat by hand about 300 strokes, or 3 minutes, with an electric mixer. Add remaining flour (100 grams), scraping bowl often, and mix all together until smooth.
2. Cover with a clean cloth and let rise until doubled in volume.
3. Stir dough down gently, and spoon into a lightly greased 9x5 inch loaf pan (the batter should be sticky). Pat down with floured hands to help shape. Cover again, and let rise for about 30 minutes.
4. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
5. Bake for about 45 minutes. Place on a cooling rack.

I modified the recipe to use 2 teaspoons of olive oil rather than 2 teaspoons of shortening (which i don't have). Also added in the wheat gluten.

Forum postings indicate that the loaf ends up pretty dense, so I'm hoping I can lighten it up. Another possibility is adding in some powdered milk to soften the though if it seems tough.