morning through the kitchen window

I’m sitting here this evening, writing and waiting for the first loaves of the pumpernickel from the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day (p. 115) to come out of the oven.  I’ve peeked in and they look good and smell wonderful!

(Why does it seem that it takes so much longer for bread to bake once it smells so good that your practically drooling on the keyboard? I just know that one of these loaves is not going to get to cool as it should even though I know cutting it immediately will not help–that’s one of the reasons I like baking two smaller loaves–I can treat myself, and still have good bread for sandwiches.)

Waiting, and not very patiently….

Just because of the way that I use bread, I’ve baked these in the perforated Italian bread pan.  The crust is probably not quite what it would be directly on the baking stone, but it quite good and I have the longer, slightly skinnier loaf, and it’s easier if I want to bake a second loaf to share with friends.

This healthy bread has whole wheat flour, rye flour, and flaxseed meal in it…and I did put in the caraway seeds this time too.  I did tamper with the recipe that was given in Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.  I really do make an effort NOT to play with the recipe until after I’ve made it as given once, but I did not make it this time.

Since I had white whole wheat flour which gives a milder flavor instead of regular whole wheat, my dough wasn’t very dark, and it just lacked something in the kind of “bitter” smell that I’ve liked about that last batch of pumpernickel.  The “missing ingredient was the unsweetened cocoa powder, so I got carried away and put in cocoa powder.

It’s out of the oven now, and cooled just enough so I can ravage one of the loaves–I’m cutting the one that didn’t rise quite as well, but it’s a keeper.  As you would expect with more whole grain flour, it’s more dense than the first batch, but a good crumb–which I’m sure would have been better had I not cut it so soon.  The flavor is great–the cocoa powder did the trick to take up for the white whole wheat flour, and I think that the flaxseed meal is really undetectable.  The amount of caraway seed called for in this recipe was only 2 tablespoon for four loaves–so it stays as a kind of “dark” background flavor.

This will get made again–with the modifications.  I think that I can work with this (without caraway) to try to get the Russian black bread recipe (the Smitten Kitchen) adapted for the no-knead technique. (It’s not just that it’s no-knead–I have a KitchenAid® mixer.  The real attraction is that I can have this dough in the fridge for a long time–10 to 14 days–and have freshly baked bread quickly and often, too.)

I’m now enjoying my warm (actually, hot) freshly baked bread with some unsalted butter and a light sprinkle of sea salt since the butter has no salt.  I do have some radishes in the fridge to have a radish sandwich tomorrow after the bread has really cooled!  That will be time to break out the bubbly!

…A son goût!