Today is the day Olivia spends at nursery, and I’m supposed to be working. However, I had to stay at home in the morning to wait for a package, so of course I ended up in the kitchen! There is a conflux of bread-related projects that I decided to tackle all at once:
1) The normal every-other day bread for sandwiches,
2) A request from Melissa’s co-workers to sample sourdough bread (a mystery, apparently!),
3) Recipe testing for Peter Reinhart‘s new book,
4) Basic brioche, which is new to me.
Those who know my cooking style (life-style, really!) will be surprised (amazed?) that I managed to do all that without leaving the kitchen in utter chaos! (I didn’t, I swear.) Here’s what happened:
For no.1 I meant to follow my normal recipe of sourdough whole wheat, white, and rye. However, in last night’s levain I accidently put in more rye instead of whole wheat! The dough was much more dfficult to work with, but I did manage to get it shaped and in the oven. Bread no.2 I decided to cut out the whole wheat to make it more palatable and to let the flavour of the rye and sourdough come through for people who have not experienced sourdough before. The recipe for no.3 uses commercial yeast and white bread flour which will ferment in the fridge until tomorrow. Finally, no.4 is also a quick-rising bread with commercial yeast, enriched with milk, eggs, and sugar, and I decided to shape in in a braid.
Here is the array of doughs:
Here is the final loaf for Melissa’s co-workers (enjoy!):
And here is the brioche braid:
