I have been on a pretty roll for the past month or so with by bread baking. We haven’t had to buy and bread from the store, and everybody is really happy. It’s interesting how quickly you lose your taste for store bread (even the good stuff) after you have been enjoying home baked bread for an extended period of time. I am rotating whole wheat/whole grain nut and see loaves, whole wheat cinnamon raisin, baguettes, focaccia and various banana/fruit/nut quick breads.
And it has all been working really nice — until a couple of days ago. I think I was getting too confident and doing a little less weighing of ingredients and I accidentally made my first really dense brick in a really long time. Looking back, the dough was not hydrated enough (I should have really felt it in my hands), and any chance it might have had in developing while proofing was cut short because it was late in the day and the time had come to put it in the oven (one way or the other).
So here it is. These are two loaves made from the same pre-ferment; I split it in half to start the two loaves. Guess which one is the brick. haha.
