Bread

Baking Bread (in which we experience a failure.  You might want to grab some hankies)

It's time for another Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge : Pretty As A Picture 

Challenge 7:   If you're a fan of cooking competition shows (like I am!), you know how the saying goes:  we eat first with our eyes.  Make a dish that looks just as spectacular as it tastes.  Extra points for historically accurate plating - and don't forget to post pictures!

This is a tale of dashed expectations and hopes.  Sorrow and woe!  I had debated long and hard over what to make that would be pretty and realized that prettiness would be complex to achieve.  Some Victorian food sounds rather amazing, using complex pudding or ice cream molds, which I do not own.  Looking at a simpler food, such as a roast, I realized that the various accompanying sides are what brings color to a table.  Wanting to limit my challenge food to one item, I knew I would have to seek elsewhere. 

Bread is a food I find attractive and appealing on many levels.  A good loaf of home baked bread is a thing of beauty.  In addition, it features in the painting "Grace," by Eric Enstrom.  Originally created as a photographic study, bread is the one food on the table.  Although created in 1918, I still liked the idea of making the staff of life.  I started looking for a bread recipe from the antebellum period.

"Grace" by Eric Enstrom

Finding an usable recipe turned out to be more complicated than I had thought.  Most women baked a much larger quantity of bread and the recipes reflected that volume.  I needed to either downscale a recipe or find one with a smaller yield.

The Recipe, Year, and Region

From The English Bread Book for Domestic Use \by Eliza Acton, published in 1857 in London.  I chose this specific recipe because it was scaled to produce a smaller volume.  Even though I know how to bake bread, I enjoyed her directions for beginners, since one does seem to begin anew when approaching period recipes.

The recipe is rather lengthy

What I Did

Ingredients

                

3 1/2 lb King Arthur White Wheat Flour

1 T dry active yeast

3 c milk and water mixed, at blood temperature

1 t salt

After weighing the flour, I mixed the yeast and liquid and poured them into the center of the flour in a large bowl.

 I stirred hard, then tuned out onto a lightly floured pastry board to knead.

After kneading 10 minutes, I placed the dough into a large bowl and left it to rise.  The dough had seemed unusually dry and hard, but Mrs. Acton said that it should be firm. I added a half cup more of water to hedge my bets.  Still, I had my doubts.

After an hour, the dough had risen a small amount, not what I had expected.  I punched it down and left it to rise a second time.  Unusually, the recipe specifies that the loaves are to be shaped after the second rising and that no additional rise time is required.    At the end of an hour, I had severe doubts and left it to rise for 2 more hours.  Not all that much had happened, but it was getting late and I could either leave the dough for an overnight rise or bake.  I chose to bake.  

No oven temperature is specified.  The internet suggested 375 for a plain loaf of bread, 350 for one that had been enriched with sugar, butter, or eggs.  I decided to bake one loaf at a time, giving that second loaf a little more time to rise.  I shaped as suggested in the recipe, rounding, then cutting a girdle and then slashing the top,


Neither loaf rose while baking, which they should have.  The correct bake time was 40 minutes.

How Did It Turn Out?

Not well at all.  My husband was courteous, telling me that the bread was good, but it was a heavy solid mass.  In texture, it resembled the tight heavy grain of a bagel, which is NOT the way bread should turn out. I was devastated.  Why in the world didn't it turn out?  I had taken a lot of precautions about proofing areas for the the dough.  Instead of my lovely inspirational painting, I felt this picture better expressed my feelings about the results.

"The Scream: by E. Munch, public domain

How Much Did It Cost?

  In my honest opinion, far too much for such a disaster.  If you can't tell, I get somewhat bitter about cooking failures.  The primary cost was a bag of King Arthur Flour, which is somewhat pricey - between $5-$6.

How Long Did It Take?

Far, far longer than it should have.  It should have taken about 3 hours, with two risings of an hour each, bake time of 40 min, and about 20 for making and kneading the dough.  Instead, from start to finish, it took me about 5 hours and 15 minutes.