So the morning has gone fairly well. After starting the French style loaves I realized that I needed to get containers to hold all of the flour, wheat germ, etc. as the bags on shelves are not acceptable. During the first rise I made trips to both Wal-Mart (ugh) and Target (only slightly better) to find containers that will hold a 5lb bag of flour.
I got home and the dough had risen nicely. I punched it down, rounded it, and let it rest while I got all of the ingredients for the whole wheat loaf. The nice thing about the structure of the Cookwise bread recipes is that they make it very easy to bake sequentially. During the rise of one there is time to prepare the next to start in the mixer. As a loaf is shaped it’s time to let the next one rise. It keeps all parts of the kitchen busy, kneading, resting, rising, baking.
So here’s what I’ve learned so far:
1. If you’re going to grind your own bean flour (I wasn’t about to buy a bag of flour for 1 tbsp. and I have dried beans), don’t do it at 5:30 AM while your spouse is sleeping. Grinding beans into flour is LOUD.
2. The brand of semolina flour I use weighs 12g a tbsp or 48g for 1/4 cup (at least today).
3. Adding 1/2 the amount of very cold water seems to be an acceptable substitute for the crushed ice — in the wheat bread 1/8 cup water in place of 1/4 cup of ice.
4. An x-acto knife makes an excellent tool for scoring.
5. Three batches of bread is way more than two people can rationally eat before it goes bad. This means I’ll be putting off the yeast starter for a midweek baking session.
Now it’s on to making the rice bread, chosen because we have gobs of left-over rice from the Indian food the other night.