BAKE 11 – MAY 13, 2020

Yeast Utilized: 1 1/8 teaspoon

I got this recipe for Brown Bread from my friend Tracie. It uses molasses! Also, coffee and cocoa? Yes, and yes.

Worth mentioning: Repping my old workplace with the apron. Shoutout to the H-T.

This apron was part of my “uniform” when I worked the Cooking Show at the IU Auditorium.

Now, I don’t have bread flour versus any other type of flour. I tend to categorize my flour as The Flour That I Have and I use that in my baking. (I think my results demonstrate that level of detail and care.) I also had to cut this in half to make one loaf instead of two. Look at me: Gone rogue before the baking has even begun.

Firstly, this recipe called for letting the yeast “bloom” in a mixture of coffee and brown sugar.

Yeast In Bloom

Cool. I really enjoy the chemical-reaction aspect of baking with yeast. It’s quite fun. Even if molasses still stinks! Oh, my god! But it does make for dough of such a lovely color.

*Also pictured: Foreshadowing to a future loaf.

Rise!

Another reason I was keen to try this recipe is that it called for it to be baked in a cast-iron skillet! I have one! Yay! (*fights off flashbacks of making my own French oven*)

Now, the original recipe does not say anything about greasing the skillets or using parchment paper, but having cooked with my cast-iron skillet before, nuh-uh. I have spent too many long minutes scrubbing viciously at eggs or pancake batter permanently affixed to the cast iron, there’s no way in the world I wasn’t going to use something to spare myself that pain. And that something I chose was parchment paper.

Rustic chic, in that it’s not actually rustic but certainly has that *feel*.

Now, I acknowledge and accept that the parchment barrier might defeat the purpose of cooking in cast iron, but I don’t care. I might try just greasing it next time. This will do for now.

And it did very well for now!

My scoring could have been more uniform. That looks like a weird moth.

I could probably have given it even a bit more time in the oven (the one in the recipe photo is much darker than mine–that couldn’t all be from the bread flour, right?), but this was super tasty. Soft, rich, delicious. I like how well it holds its moisture and doesn’t dry out like many of my other breads do after a day or two.

This made for a pleasant breakfast. I mean, it has coffee in it, so…

To the next loaf—–>