Bread. hmmm.... failing sucks

One of the things I love to hate about food and baking is failure. I fail at baking a lot. I explain it by thinking that either the temperature or humidity levels are too high, but then I have friends who somehow SOMEHOW manage to make french macaroons (my personal nemesis), on tropical islands (Andrew T. you mock me!!!) kind of show me that maybe, just maybe, I just suck ;) Or maybe it's Karma, or maybe the stars, or maybe.... well anyways... But I try anyways, because I like a challenge. So today I decided to bake this no yeast Irish brown bread from the "Kiss my Spatula" food blog.


The mixture was fine, the mixing fine, the ingredients fresh, the cooking time perfect and yet the inside came out too heavy and moist. I think I may have taken it out of the oven too early. The bread is tasty, but I like a dry bread.... Most people... Like a dry bread. OK, well, here are the pictures. I consider this a half-fail. I'll try it out again, cause it only took an hour and a half to make and bake. The second picture shows my pastry cutter. My mum taught me a long time ago that when you have to cut butter into bread or teabiscuits or pastry, you have to cut it in with this magical tool until every grain of flour is "wrapped" so to speak, in butter (see this in the third picture). Another thing she taught me was that "folding in" something really has to be done delicately. It's literally folding together the wet with the dry until it's still a little crumby but sticky at the same time (fourth picture). This recipe asked to knead only 4-5 times. Very gentle....


And then there's the finished product. Looks beautiful. For most breads, if you knock on the top of a bread and it sounds hollow, the bread's ready. One of my HUGE mistakes in all my cooking is my anticipation. It screws me in the end. I can't wait for it. I cut my loaf of bread as soon as I took it out of the oven. I'm almost positive this is a big no-no with this type of bread (no yeast and heavy wheat flour = moist bread) and that the inside would have continued to absorb the moisture and bake until it cooled. Sadly, the outside was perfect, but the inside a little bit too moist for my liking. Still... tasted ok. Ah well, next time.

Lesson of the day: respect the bread, respect the process.
Edit: If I slice it in thin slices and toast it, it's really tasty!

Art link: Check out this weird "The Bread Art Project", where artists donate "bread art" and each art piece stands for a contribution of one dollar given to the foundation that works towards ending children hunger in America. hmm... interesting....

Speaking of Ottawa bread: Check out Ottawa's Enriched Bread Artists, a collective of artists from Ottawa!