Not sure if it was because the stove was too hot, or now that I think about it, it’s probably because I only let it rise once. I suspect punching the bread down & letting it rise a second time would have eliminated the big air gap at the top. Or not.
Regardless, this is what we're eating with our pea soup for supper tonight. The smell of ham & pea soup is wafting around the living room & it's driving me crazy. Can't wait to eat!
Hmm, now that I really look at the soup, I can kind of understand why some people won't even try it. Oh well, more for ME!
Hi Carolyn,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all I’d love to try your soup, to bad we’re half the country apart! Nothings better than home made soup especially cooked on a wood stove or open fire.
As for your unhappy bread (love the eyes) I’d like to offer a suggestion based on my own experiences. It looks like you flattened the dough, then rolled the dough and shaped it to fit the bread pan. I’ve tried this a few times with your same results.
I also only let my dough rise just once in the pan and the punch down I’ve found after hundreds of loaves just isn’t necessary. Occasionally I’ll have a dime sized bubble in the bread but I’m not trying to bake for a bread contest but to eat and with the least amount of preparation time and effort. When I tried rolling the dough the layers created doesn’t bind well to each other and the steam created while baking blows the layers apart.
When blending the ingredients in a mixer let the dough hook do the work and as soon as the last of the flour is blended into the beginning of the dough ball I set the timer and machine knead for just 5 minutes. Take it out of the bowl and shape to fit the greased bread pan, let it rise and bake. This has work consistently well for me.
You know, that's EXACTLY what I did with that loaf of bread, thanks for the tip! Never would have though of that. Normally I don't roll it up, but for some reason I did.
ReplyDeleteI also just came to the same conclusion as you did with letting the bread rise only once. This seems to work just fine with my whole wheat breads as the second rising never gets as high as the first.