Artisan Bread Weeks 3 & 4

I love taking the pictures of our breads; it allows us to compare the breads we've been making versus the ones we are making now. It's really cool to watch how our bread-making skills improve over the course of just a few weeks.

First of all, products from Week 3 Day 1...

Carrot Herb Bread. Has grated carrots, parsley and rosemary. The recipe called for thyme, (not rosemary) but we didn't have any--I love rosemary, so I didn't mind. It baked into a very flavorful bread with good carrot and onion flavor.

This one's called a Tiger Bread. The bread is smeared with a fermented mixture of yeast, flour and water, and allowed to proof. The coating bubbles and crackles as it ferments, and bakes into this cool leopard-like pattern (...so why is it named "Tiger Bread" instead of "Leopard Bread"? I have no idea). The bread is super-soft, with the coating creating a crunchy crust.

For Day 2....

Clockwise from top: Multigrain Sourdough, Nine-Grain, and Black Pepper Cheddar Bread. Multigrain didn't taste sour at all. It was delicious, with nutty flavor from the grains and subtley sweet from the honey. The 9-grain was pretty good too--unfortunately, it got a little overproofed and wasn't as light as we had hoped. The Black Pepper Cheddar actually contains no cheddar--we substituted Gruyere, since we were out of cheddar. Other groups subbed blue cheese, which interestingly gave the bread a bluish-grey color, but had no blue cheese flavor. Another group used Parmesan cheese, which was a great alternative.

Then on to Week 4 Day 1...

Foreground: Milk Bread. Those are Kaiser rolls way in the back. The Milk Bread is enriched with eggs, shortening and (of course) milk. Very tender and slightly sweet bread. We shaped ours into a boule, and a row of 5 rolls with almonds on top.

French Bread. For our third bread, Chef let us choose whatever bread we wanted to make, so we picked this one. It's versatile, and who doesn't like French bread? They turned out great, so soft on the inside, awesome crust--we're getting better at shaping the breads!

Then on Day 2...

Clockwise from the top left: Pullman loaves, Plie Breton (Brittany French rye), American hamburger buns. All our breads turned out beautiful and great, I think we had the best Pullman loaf in the class. Great flavor, texture, and color on all of them. One group made their hamburger bun the size of a tortilla (whether by accident or on purpose, I don't know); another group's Plie Breton's "lip" wasn't pressed down very well and the whole thing kinda fell apart; and all the other groups' Pullman loaves were somehow chewy on the outside, while ours were nice and crusty.

Close-up of the Plie Breton. Exactly the way they're supposed to look :)

I shall post Week 5 update very soon!