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.