The amazing non-stale bread

Since it was just me here this week, I didn't quite finish my loaf of this bread. (The second loaf was given away - I knew two loaves were beyond any reasonable capacity for bread-eating.) Amazingly enough, when toasted it was still tasty today - a full 6 days after baking it!

I credit this to my storage technique. Under P's influence, we were keeping the bread in the refrigerator. According to the King Arthur Flour cookbook, this is wrong, all wrong. The best way to store bread like the whole wheat loaf I made is by wrapping it well in plastic wrap and keeping it at room temperature. A refrigerator creates the magical best circumstances for staling (so if you want something to go stale, that's where you should put it).

Lesson learned. The next bread - a cinnamon swirl bread - is on hold until I can get to the store to buy one more necessary ingredient that got left off the list today...

An end to Meatathon 2009 - 2010 (but a beginning to reasonable meat eating 2010)

We've given in and scaled back to a "small" share for next month - so this last month we'll be in the final throes of Meatathon 2009 - 2010. For those of you living in the Toronto area, this meat CSA has been a fantastic investment - and with the small share, we'll be spending approximately $13.00/week on meat - organic, locally-raised and butchered, well-raised meat. You can not beat the deal or the quality of the meat. 

I highly recommend you check them out if you're in the area: Twin Creeks Organic Farm. If you see them at the farmer's market (last year it was at Trinity Bellwoods), they also carry eggs and vegetables. If you're not in the area, I recommend checking out something similar for yourself in your area. This would have even fit into our budget as grad students, and it beats anything you'll find at Whole Foods.

Vermont Whole Wheat Oatmeal Honey Bread

I said when the year started that I wanted to bake more bread. Well, I've now met that goal, since last year I baked no bread, and now I've baked two loaves. An increase of 200%! Now that I've had the experience of success, I'm ready to move forward with further attempts. 

This recipe came from my King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion cookbook - the same recipe can be found on their website here. 

My changes: I kneaded half by machine, half by hand (I need to build my kneading muscles!), and used rapid-rise yeast. Apparently, you can substitute one for the other in equal measure - just don't expect the rapid-rise yeast to rise as quickly as the instant yeast. I didn't find a significant difference between what was predicted in time for the instant vs. the rapid rise, but it all depends on the environment in which you're baking. My apartment building tends to be on the warmer side due to an old heating system and even older residents, so that helped, I'm sure.

I started the recipe mid-morning, and (although capable of adding), underestimated how long it would take for the bread to go from start to finish before we had to go out in the afternoon. What to do? After the first rise, I divided the dough into two greased pans, covered them with greased plastic wrap, and put them in the refrigerator. I had never tried this before - I had only heard that this could slow down a rise considerably. 

When we got home, I pulled them out of the fridge and let them come to room temperature for a few minutes. Then I borrowed an idea from the King Arthur cookbook: I heated my oven for a few minutes on the lowest setting, turned it off, and then put the rising loaves inside. The loaves rose to their prescribed height in about 45 minutes. 


After 35 minutes in a 350 degree oven, out came these pretty little loaves! The cinnamon in the recipe made the apartment smell heavenly while the bread baked. And the taste? Slightly sweet, sturdy enough for sandwiches, and while I know it's healthy (so far as bread goes), it doesn't taste that way to me. (P, however, won't be entirely happy unless it's some sort of white loaf that comes out of the oven. Oh, well - more bread for me!)