Bread: Friend or Foe?

If one thing thwarts me in the kitchen, it's bread. Making bread has long since proven very difficult for me. My yeast is dead, the proofing water is not warm enough, the rising place is too warm, etc...etc...etc. It's not that I've never made a successful roll, but boy 9 times out of 10 breads involving yeast just do NOT like me.

I figured today I'd use my new purple kitchen aid stand mixer to make a bread recipe. I wanted to get that thing into action! I finally settled on a really yummy and simple looking french bread recipe from my Southern Living cookbook. Well turns out it was one of the few recipes that didn't need a dough hook...but still I proceeded.

I pulled out my yeast.... and it had expired. 6 months ago. Dammit. Well usually yeast will keep for quite a while even past the expiration date, but I was not taking chances! I knew bread was a foe and yeast was temperamental with me...so we got in the car and went to the grocery where I snagged some packets of instant yeast as recommended by my recipe.

At home I proofed it - I even used my candy thermometer to make sure the water was the right temperature. That's right. You think I'm joking when I say yeast is out to get me - I'm not! Over Easter I tried to make hot cross buns and made hot cross rocks instead.... Anyway...vendetta aside it was a successful proofing. A nice foamy yeast top. I mixed in my butter and salt and started mixing in my flour. So far, so good!

I decided to do my first rising in the oven, as it is small and I figured would be consistently warm. I had read somewhere a suggestion to crank the oven to 400 for one minute, and then turn it off and put a pan of hot water on the bottom rack. Well I only have one rack (small oven remember?) But I put it on the bottom of the stove and plopped my lovely dough bowl into the oven to rise! I set my timer...and it wasn't rising. It made it about 1/4th bigger than it began. I even let it rise an extra 20 minutes over the recommended.

As it would turn out, I think turning on the oven to warm it was a mistake since the oven is so small, and I think I killed my yeasties. Damn you yeast!!!! After 50 minutes of rising I decided it wasn't going to rise more and I punched it down and re-formed it into rolls for baking. The second rise happens at this point so I repeated the process I had before (keep in mind I didn't know I had killed my yeast with heat and that only a few were probably clinging to dear life in my dough...this came afterwards with research.) Ahhh well I got about another 1/4th rise, gave it an extra 10 minutes...and then decided to go ahead and bake that bitch cause it was MAKIN' ME MAD.

It wasn't really making me mad, just frustrated. Anyway my oven is hot as the dickens at 400 (Baking temp) and the rolls began to instantly brown...heavily. Uhg. I turned it down to 350 and let a little heat out of the oven and sat vigilantly to watch the rolls. Then I did my egg white wash for the lovely shiny crust...and then I watched vigilantly for 5 minutes until it was time to come out.

Well...at first I was extremely disappointed. The rolls were dense and thick, with a heavy yeast flavor. Ah. As I stood comparing my rolls to the rolls in the picture.... Well... let's just say I wasn't pleased. But we snagged them right off the hot pan. They smelled so good. And we ate them with some garlic parsley butter I had whipped up in anticipation for crusty french rolls. And they were good. Really, they were. It was damn sure not french bread, but they were like yummy dinner rolls. The thick yeasty kind that you meant to come out differently.

Disappointment aside, they are good. Aj's had 3 and so have I. We had them with mini mushroom-garlic hamburgers on them. I had one with blueberry Chevre (yum).

I'm sure you saw the picture up there and you said to yourself "that's the failure? Looks pretty good to me." Well thank you. But now I'll show you a picture of what it was SUPPOSED to look like and you can laugh and say "haha... frankenroll!" Jerk.

Well no matter. I have 2 days off in a row pretty soon and I plan to try again! I'd do it tonight but it's 11:19 and ... well... Yeast has bothered me enough for one day... I'll hand out the recipe for this one when I have the means to tell you how to make it come out right...