#14: Oat Bran Broom Bread

So here is my shot at the Oat Bran Broom Bread. I, for what it is worth, could have gone for a less descriptive name. The recipe is very much like the others that have gone before—make a soaker, make a biga, mix these with a few other ingredients the next day, and then jump to another page to see how to finish the bread.

The recipe produces a very pleasant if nondescript loaf. Reinhart suggest making it either in a loaf pan or as a free-standing loaf. There seems to be some inconsistencies with the French terminology. Reinhart calls for making a bâtard, by which he means a torpedo shaped loaf. This seems to be pretty standard usages in the US but I gather the French use boulot for a torpedo shape while a bâtard is more a log shaped loaf. (Any clarification or corrections would be appreciated.) In any event, I opted to make a log-shaped loaf.

The crust is, well, nondescript. It didn't brown very deeply, and the slashes seemed to disappeared into the crumb. This is a loaf that calls out to be brushed with butter or decorated with seeds. In the photo in the book, it appears that Reinhart covered the top of the loaf with bran. With his merging of recipes, this is a detail that seems to have been omitted from the recipe.

Overall, this is a pleasant loaf that I would repeat.

#13: Multigrain Struan

Struan, Reinhart says, launched his baking career. A recipe for struan, in one from or another, can be found in most of Reinhart's books. It certainly seems to be one of the recipes that he is particularly proud of and justifiably so. All the various recipes are for multi-grain breads and use a variety of seeds and grains. There is actually a great deal of leeway in all of his struan recipes when it choosing these. Yet every time I have made one of his struans, it has worked, often with spectacular results. I particularly recommend the recipe in Bread Baker's Apprentice. And, on the off chance you have leftover struan that is starting to go stale, cubes of the bread fried in butter or a good olive oil make an astonishingly good crouton.

For this recipe, I used some of King Arthur's Harvest Grain Blend that I had in the freezer, a product with which I have been particularly pleased. This is an ideal loaf for sandwiches, so I went with the loaf pan, but I expect it would make great dinner rolls as well.

This is a good loaf that I would readily recommend. This particular struan turned out, for me at least, a bit heavier than the others I've made in the past. Still, I just finished a peanut butter sandwich made with this bread and am happy to report that it was quite tasty. A great bread.

#12: 100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread

Starting with this loaf we are leaving the transitional breads behind. Now we are in serious whole grain territory. Although not on the cover of the book, this is (or at least should be) the iconic loaf for this book. This is the first recipe in the book and one of the recipe that Reinhart refers back to in later recipes, "Proceed as in steps 3 through 7 in the whole wheat sandwich bread on page 97."

While the recipe can be made in a loaf pan, as a free standing loaf, or even as rolls, for me a "sandwich bread" calls out for a loaf pan. I slightly doctored the recipe, as can be seen in the before and after pictures to the right. The original recipe gives a crust that is flat and dull. All I've done (second picture) is brush the loaf with melted butter. The recipe doesn't call for this, but it is easy to do and dramatically (I think) improves the appearance of the loaf.

Overall, this is a quite reasonable loaf. The recipe is clearly written, and I didn't encounter any problems. The flavor was good, but I wasn't overwhelmed by it. I found the bread a bit dry and the loaf didn't keep particularly well. Overall, I prefer the first loaf in the challenge, the Transitional Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread to this recipe. But that is just my preference.

#11: Transitional Rustic Bread & Focaccia

This is a recipe I'm returning to. It can be used to make either two loaves of a rustic bread, basically a ciabatta, or one focaccia (or even several mini-baguettes). Although it has been a while, I have done all of these. This time around, as you can see, I went with the ciabatta.

I'm a big fan of both ciabatta and focaccia. In fact, a couple of years ago, I attended Peter Reinhart's Saturday morning course on making focaccia and pizza at Johnson and Wales in Charlotte, a course I recommend. Although this book was out at the time, in that course we stuck to white bread flour. Sometime after the course, I tried this recipe a couple of times.

Overall, the loaves were quite good. They don't quite deliver the light chewiness of a traditional bread-flour ciabatta, but they are still reasonably light, chewy and they do have a good flavor. (Yes, I admit that my preference runs toward white bread flours rather than whole wheat flours. Perhaps focaccia, with the distraction of toppings, is a better choice for me. )

As a transitional bread, it will be interesting to see how this compares to 100% whole wheat ciabattas. This is a recipe well worth making again. Perhaps I can find the time in the near future to redo this recipe making the focaccia. If I do, I'll update this post.

#10: Transitional German-Style Many Seed Bread

When it comes to whole grain breads, my preference runs toward seeded breads or struans, so I was particularly looking forward to this bread. While I can't say I'm big on flax seeds (they have a slightly slimy mouthfeel for me) or even pumpkin seeds (bland), I love sesame seeds and sunflower seeds.

The results were a little disappointing. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a bad loaf, but it just didn't live up to my expectations. I found the dough somewhat stiff and difficult to work with. As can be seen from the picture, I didn't get a particularly smooth dough. Still, this was a good if not great loaf. And it is a loaf that might be worth revisiting sometime in the future when this challenge is over.