Bread Baking: One Year Later

It was one year ago (plus a week, but I was too busy baking to edit photos and write), that I started making all of our bread at home. I started off with possibly the easiest bread making book techniques I'd ever run across from AB5M and produced some fantastic loaves. Yummy and easy, what more could you want?

Well, next thing I knew, I was trolling bread baking blogs and seeing some pretty amazing stuff. The book The Bread Baker's Apprentice kept getting mentioned and there was even a challenge that started last summer to bake every bread in the book. I'm not actually part of the challenge, but I am amused to think there are other people as crazy as I am that want to cook every bread in the book (I've made 12 out of the 43 breads in this book since I received it for Xmas. Some, even twice since they were sooo good!). The constant practice with AB5M and now the technical info and step by step photos of BBA have completely taken my bread baking skills to another level. The first 100 pages of Reinhart's book are worth the purchase price alone*. I learned a lot!

Which is how I went from simply stirring flour, water, salt and yeast together and letting it rise, to creating a biga and a soaker one day and then combining them and working on the dough the next day. From easy to almost silly levels of complexity (One day maybe I'll be almost as good as Steve from Breadcetera!). It's not that it's any harder. It's just a little more work.

But the bread! The bread!

The difference is amazing!

Mise en place for multigrain transitional (half wheat, half white) bread.
This recipe is from Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads. I wanted to see how different the techniques are for whole grains vs. plain all-purpose flour. The answer is very!

The biga and soaker are made the day before you want to actually make the bread. This helps to get more flavor into the finished loaf, soften the grains and break out the sugars in the flour and grains.

Biga

Soaker

The soaker is made up of buttermilk, whole wheat flour, oats, coarsely ground corn, finely ground flax seed and cooked brown rice. Or, whatever mixture you like.

Kneading

The next day, the biga and soaker are mixed together with the remaining ingredients and kneaded together. I use my mixer for the majority of the work, but had to do a little hand kneading to get to the right texture here.

Smooth ball

Once it's all lovely and smooth, rounded and sexy, it's ready for rising.

Risen dough

Then, once doubled in size, it's time to de-gas it and get ready to form it into a loaf. That's right, de-gas, not punch down. Far too violent a thing for my bread.

Degassing dough

You don't really need to "punch" the dough and you don't need to roll it out with a pin. Instead, you can just gently stretch it into the shape you want with your hands. This way you'll get a nice open crumb when you're done.

Rolling up loaf

As for rolling up the loaf, the new technique I've learned it to fold it over, seal that edge, then again, sealing the edge each time. Don't worry about de-gassing the dough, it's going to have more time to rise again after it's formed.

Sealing the seam

Make sure to seal the seam well so it doesn't split open while baking. The seam always goes down into the pan.

Formed loaf

Roll the dough under your hands to even out the shape of the loaf, if you end up with one side slightly fatter than the other.

Poppy seed coated

For grins I decided to roll mine in some poppy seeds. I think if I'd washed the exterior with egg wash they've have stuck on better. Just rolling them in the seeds meant that after it was cooked they all just fell off as I sliced into the bread. Oh well!

Cresting the pan lip

Once the dough crests the lip of the pan, it's ready to go into the pre-heated oven (I probably should have let it rise a little higher here.). Oven spring is what we're looking for to make the bread even taller.

Slashing the dough

I like the idea of slashing the dough. Mostly it's for aesthetics. Sometimes it helps the bread to handle expansion without splitting on its own in unsavory ways in the oven. Each recipe is different.

Finished multigrain bread

Then, finally, when the bread is baked and then cooled for about 2 hours (You have to let the crumb set and the moisture inside the loaf equalize before slicing. Trust me, it's better this way. The other way will often get you gummy bread. A little waiting is worth it!), you are ready to finally taste it!

Multigrain bread crumb

Yes, that is an awful lot of work for a single loaf. However, once you've seen how it works, you can then fiddle with the recipe: doubling it, altering ingredients, lengthening the rise, etc. I like to make bread by following the exact recipe at least once and then fiddling with it after that. This way, if there's a failure, I know a little more about where that failure point may have been introduced. Also, it's not a bad idea to try a promising recipe 3 times before giving up on it.

I think that is the key thing I've learned over the last year: to not be afraid of yeasted doughs. All else fails, I can always try again.

I have to warn you, though. This bread baking becomes an obsession!



* Just in case you're wondering, I am not being compensated by anyone mentioned here. No, it's just me, buying yet more cookbooks and going a little crazy baking. But a yummy kind of crazy!

Little Readers

I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but somewhere in the last couple of weeks Emma has discovered that books aren't just for gnawing on anymore.

Instead, if you take that same board book over to mom or dad, they'll make those mouth noises that can be so much fun. Sometimes there's barking, or singing or rhyming words. You never know! Each time you grab another book and drop it on the head or lap of the correct parent, words come out! Often times, there are snuggles, unless you feel the need to go grab another book mid-reading. Or poke your brother. A girl's gotta have priorities.

Does anyone else have a hard time not being allowed to finish a book? I find that my reading suddenly speeds up and I will attempt to finish the book from memory if the book is snatched away.

Babies! No respect for plot development!

Eric pointed out one difference between the twins: Emma will bring you book after book to read to her, while Logan will pick up a book and flip through the pages. OK, so sometimes the book will be upside-down, but he's "reading" to himself, while Emma has others read to her. Caitlin was exactly like Emma, actually. She loved to be read to and she was never happier than when she was curled up in your lap, her two middle fingers stuck in her mouth, listening as you read Goodnight Moon* or Pajama Time! or Hippos Go Berserk to her One. More. Time.

It's amazing just how fast all of the words come back to you, too. Now that we're reading them to the twins, on fast forward and constant repeat, I'm amazed that there's room in my brain for anything other than children's books. Good thing I like Sandra Boynton so much.

Oh, another cool change is the sign language. Emma is on top of the sign for "more". She's not specific yet as to what she'd like more of, but we figure it out through the process of elimination. If the grunting, screaming and "more"-ing stops, we've found the right thing. Logan has learned the sign for "eat". Somehow, this wasn't a surprise that he would pick up on that sign first. The both sort of occasionally will sign for milk, but are just as happy to grab my shirt and try to disrobe me.

No patience. No subtlety.

Emma is crawling up stairs like a champ now, while Logan sits at the bottom step and squeals at her. He's just not interested in even trying. Lazy!

Both babies love having baths in the big tub together. Now they can splash at one another, squeal and flail around with no waiting! Their biggest complaint about being washed in the kitchen sink was that one of them always had to wait while the other was having all of the fun. Now, they both go in at the same time but they go out separately. After I've washed them and let them play, whomever is ready to get out first gets handed off to daddy for the drying/lotion/diaper/PJ cycle. Then there's the running around their room in footed PJs, squealing, and flinging books at our heads for reading.

Then, finally, sleep. Whew!



* Ever notice how almost all children's books end with a plea to go to sleep? We're trying to raise a nation of narcoleptic readers, aren't we?!

OMG! I'm Pregnant with Twins! Now what?!

Since I seem to get a fair amount of traffic from people apparently trying to determine if they are pregnant with twins, I thought I'd let you in on what you should do next. (As for searching for a quiz to determine if you're pregnant with twins, I don't know how useful those things are. The same answers apply if it's only your second pregnancy: gaining weight fast, being hungry all the time and being nauseated - either more or less - are all normal since every pregnancy is different.)

1. Panic. No, really. Feel free to completely and utterly panic. Give in to your instinct to freak out over discovering you're about to have twins. You may as well, since everyone else around you will be busy telling you things like "How fabulous!", "You're so blessed!", "Better you than me!", or laughing hysterically at you (I'm looking at you, Mom!). Feel free to set up an appointment with yourself to freak out, possibly on a weekly basis. After you've gotten it out of your system, it's time to get to work.
   
2. Do your research. Get a good book. I highly recommend When You're Expecting Twins, Triplets, or Quads, by Dr. Barbara Luke. There's a boatload of information in there and it's very reassuring to read about the research she has done specifically on women pregnant with multiples and how much better your odds actually are than the "common wisdom" seems to indicate.
   
3. Make a goal. Decide now what is important to you for this pregnancy and then pursue it. What do I mean? I mean that when I was pregnant, my whole goal was that at the end of the pregnancy I would have two healthy, full term babies with no NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) time. That was the mantra that I kept running through my head when I got frustrated by how things were going during the pregnancy. It also meant I had to come to terms with gaining a lot of weight, no longer being able to work at the market and being physically unable to do many things that I would normally do.
   
4. Eat. One of the key things you will need to do to support a double (Or more!) pregnancy is to eat and eat well. Take your prenatal supplements. Eat nutritious food. Lots of it. You may not have all 40 weeks of a regular pregnancy to put on weight, so you have to front load your weight gain. Ignore the information in the What To Expect books that suggest you should only need 600 calories a day extra. You're going to need more than that. See Dr. Luke's book for details. Before I knew it was twins I was continually stunned by just how hungry I was. I would be tooling along, lah-dee-dah and then suddenly: Pow! Starving to death, shaky and somewhat nauseated. So eat! You only have one shot at doing pregnancy right. Weight gain is temporary, especially if you nurse.
   
5. Drink water. Do you think 8 8 ounce glasses of water daily is a lot? Guess how much you have to drink? About twice that. A little more if it's summer time while you're pregnant. You are supporting the life support systems for three people. You need a lot of water to do so. My doctor had me drinking 5 liters a day. Do you know what happened if I didn't? Contractions. Whoops! Not wanting any NICU time, I sat the hell down and drank yet more water.
   
6. Sit down. All of that weight gain means additional stresses on your system and lower back. Your feel will swell up. You'll probably contract a bunch if you're standing too long or working too hard. If you're lucky, you'll feel the contractions and have enough warning about when you're over-doing it so that you can sit down. During my first pregnancy, I never felt the Braxton-Hicks contractions, I'd just occasionally notice that my belly was really tight! During this pregnancy, they were very obvious when they occured. More than 4 contractions in a half-hour period is cause for concern. The solution is to suck down yet another liter of water and lay down, then you track your contractions over the course of an hour. Still more than 4? Call your doctor. Do not mess around when you're body is trying to tell you to Slow Down!
   
7. Slack off. Sitting down all of the time means you won't be able to wash the dishes, do the laundry, go shopping or any one of the hundreds of little things you'd normally do that involve standing and walking. Get used to it! I really resented the enforced idleness. I couldn't even focus enough to read a book after awhile. Now, of course, I really wish I had more time to slack! I don't, however, so learn this from me: enjoy your time off your feet and slack off. There will be plenty of work later. Make a list of all of those books you've been wanting to read and plow through it!
   
8. Plan ahead. Here's where most everyone I know seems to mess up. Eric and I kept talking about how we should make double batches of food and freeze it for when we'd need it after the twins were born. Great idea! Did we? Nooooo! Which was crazy because we really needed easy to prepare food after they were born. Be ye not so stupid! (As Dooce would say.) Plan ahead for mealtimes. You'll be glad you did.
   
9. Get help. You are going to need help. I. Am. Not. Kidding. YOU are going to NEED help. Whether you have Superman/Wonder Woman for your spouse or not, you will need all the help you can get. Ask for it. Accept it if offered. Pin down friends and family members for specific help. Laundry? Shopping? Cooking? Cleaning? Any of it and all of it: accept it. Your life becomes a blender set to Frappe! after your multiple babies arrive and trying to get your act together while immensely sleep deprived is hard enough. Get help. It doesn't mean you're a failure or a bad mother or a horrible housekeeper. It means you are overwhelmed. Trust me: twins are overwhelming!
   
10. Delegate. Are you normally Super Woman? Do you run the family errands, do the cooking, cleaning, maintain everyone's schedules and all that jazz? Guess what? A whole lot of that is about to come to a screeching halt. Your spouse doesn't cook/clean/do laundry? Now, while you're pregnant, is a great time for them to learn! Things are only going to get harder after the babies arrive. Work those issues out early. Especially if you're planning on breastfeeding. If you are going to breastfeed multiples, you will spend the majority of your time doing just that and only that. Newborns are awfully hungry!
    
11. Hire out. When all else fails, pay the money for in-home services. I'm using my Christmas money for a cleaning service. Best Christmas present I've ever received! (Thanks Mom and Dad!) Don't have the money? Barter with friends. Do you have skills you can trade for services? Suggest a swap! Also, be prepared to lower your standards...a lot. Cleaning the house is the lowest of my priorities at the moment. I'd rather be working on the farm, getting dirty, hot and sweaty outside than dusting and mopping inside.
12. Hang in there. Pregnacy may "only" be 36 to 40 weeks long, but it will be the longest 8 to 9 months of your life. Pain and exhaustion will become really familiar to you. Just try to keep in mind that it will eventually end. In yet more - but different! - pain and exhaustion. I am fully aware that twin pregnancies can be risky and that I was very lucky with how well mine went. There's never any guarantee that everything will be OK, no matter how good your attitude or how perfectly you follow the doctor's advice. Just do the best you can and remember that it really is "only" 36 or so weeks.
    
    Eat well. Drink a lot. Sit down. Slack off. Take care of yourself and your babies. You're the only one that can do that and they are counting on you.

Good luck!

Siren Song

I gave in to the siren song that is the final Harry Potter book.

I'll be back tomorrow.

[Echoes, as if from a well.]

Or, as they say in the land of my mother: Soon come.

Soon come!

My reaction:
From Sally Forth. I liked it!