Monday, December 26, 2011

Recipe #2 - Artos: Greek Celebration Bread



The Scene

Say what you will about the Greek people, but throughout history they have proven that they are a culture that knows how to party.
Celebrate good times!
And of course, any great party needs a great bread to snack on whilst in the throes of Dionysian ecstasy. And that is where Artos comes into play.

The Artos section in the BBA book includes three recipes. The first is the basic Artos which is an enriched bread with a handful of spice and flavorings. The second is Christopsomos, which is the same as the Artos but with dried fruits and nuts added. The third is the Lambropsomo which is the Artos with different dried fruits and nuts added, and is formed into a braided loaf with hard-boiled eggs that have been dyed red pressed into the top of it.

I chose to make the Christopsomos out of a desire for something a bit more elaborate, yet not bloody-looking egg elaborate. I have made this bread once before during my first attempt at this challenge. It was also the bread that led to me abandoning my first attempt at this challenge. I had prepared it as part of a Thanksgiving dinner that I was hosting at my house and in a last minute display of hubris, I decided that my skills were such that I could leaven the bread entirely with my wild-yeast starter instead of the half wild-yeast, half commercial yeast that the recipe called for. I was wrong, and was instead serving the prettiest hockey puck you have ever seen. This failure, along with the impending holiday season, and a healthy dose of procrastination led to my initial abandonment of this challenge.

Recipe Deviations and Issues

I learned from my mistake the first time around on making any drastic changes to the formula, but did make a couple small changes. First, I left out the orange zest and instead used orange-flavored dried cranberries that I picked up at Trader Joe's. I also left out the raisins and replaced them with even more of the orange cranberries. Finally, I decided not to use the optional glaze. When I made this the first time, I did use the glaze and it proved to make the bread really sticky and a bit unmanageable. Since I wasn't serving this for a special event, I went without it.

The only real issue I had was forgetting to add the almond extract. This was especially frustrating in that I had spent a significant amount of time searching for the little bottle of it that I had purchased for my previous attempt at this bread. Oh well.

Final Results

Success! It was very difficult waiting for this aromatic beauty to cool before tearing into it. This time I had a spicy, light bread with enough flavor of it's own to eat without doctoring in any way. The crumb was similar to a Challah, but with nuts and dried fruit. The crust was slightly firm and amazing looking. Overall, a good looking and tasty bread!

And, it also made some of the best french toast ever.

Make Your Own

This is the closest recipe I could find online. It calls for a couple spices I have never heard of (with recommended substitutions), and doesn't use the wild-yeast starter preferment. It also uses figs instead of dried cranberries.

Christopsomo at artisanbreadbaking.com

Up next, Bagels!

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Starting Over! Recipe #1 - Anadama Bread



The Scene

Well, I started this challenge to prove to myself that I could follow through with a project. It is now almost a full year after my first and only post, and here I am starting it all over again. I could blame the weather, the holidays, the fact that I screwed up the second bake, and any other number of things. I think I'll blame myself though, cause honestly, I have the attention span of a gnat. A gnat on a meth bender with an epic case of ADD. That's me. At least a lot of the time.

Anyway, here I am again to give it another shot. This time, I have already finished the first three breads in the book which guarantees at least three entries to this blog. Since I am on a quest to better myself, my career, my video game skills, and various other things of importance, I am hoping that this well of motivation can carry through to the less important things like baking awesome bread.

Also, I got a new camera. As much as I loved my first-generation Olympus "VGA" digital camera, it had come to the point where it was being held together with pieces of tape and the pictures were starting to look more and more like Polaroids from the 1970's. I still love it, but I now also love my 8.1 megapixel Sony!

As for the bread, you can find my witty retelling of it's origin story in my original post.

Recipe Deviations and Issues

As before, I used regular dark molasses instead of the suggested golden molasses. I also didn't sprinkle cornmeal on top again due to the coarse grain of the meal that I use.

When mixing the dough, I eyeballed the water in a measuring cup to a few ounces above the required amount. When I went to pour it into the bowl of ingredients, I forgot to measure the right weight, instead just throwing the whole amount in. This resulted in having to add a bit more flour than the recipe called for.

I also ended up with the sides of the tops of the loaves splitting due to an extreme oven spring. I think that this was because of an insufficient rise time. It was rising rather slowly and I had to let it go for about an hour longer than it called for, but it still wasn't enough. I am pretty sure that this was due to old yeast that had probably been in my fridge for too long.

Final Results

Even with the two mistakes mentioned above, these loaves were still amazing. Light, rich, and oozing with molasses goodness. After sampling, I gave my friend Beth half a loaf to take home with her and she bitched about only getting half a loaf. Methinks that means success!

Bake Your Own

The recipe at the following link has some differences from the BBA book, but looks like it will get the job done.

Anadama Bread recipe at thefreshloaf.com 

Up next, Greek Celebration Bread!