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I used the same Great Smoky Mountain stone ground corn meal that I used in the Anadama bread on Friday. In many breads with cornmeal, the cornmeal soaks in boiling water until it reaches room temperature, but this one started in lukewarm water and soaked all night. I wondered if it would make the bread less "crunchy" than the Jones' recipe.
On Saturday the real Anadama work began. Reinhart uses instant yeast, something that isn't a staple in my kitchen but will be in this year of BBA baking! First you put the soaker in a mixing bowl with some of the flour and let the sponge sit for about an hour until it is bubbly. (I almost forgot to take the photo below so the rest of the flour is sitting on the right half of the sponge).
Then you add all the other dry ingredients along with the molasses (2 T less than in the Jones' recipe), the salt and the shortening and mix it all together. I used and will continue to use my Kitchen Aid for this project.
Really difficult to mix this in - in most bread recipes, you add the flour 1/2 cup at a time. I would have been happier to mix the rest of the ingredients in more gradually.
But it did all come together as described into a "tacky" dough.
Then the bread had an opportunity to rise until doubled:
I weighed the risen dough to put equal amounts into each pan. Mine weighed 26 ounces per loaf instead of the 24 ounces that the recipe said. I don't think I added flour, but I don't know what was different.
The bread was supposed to rise for an hour but in my warm kitchen, it was cresting above the pans at half an hour. Reinhart would say that the bread would have a deeper flavor if I had a cooler place in which it had risen - I'll do that the next time.
I had preheated the oven so I brushed the tops of the loaves with water and sprinkled them with corn meal.
They had good oven spring and looked lovely when they were done. One side looked perfect:
But the other side looked like this. I guess I didn't secure the seam very well when I rolled the loaves or they had too much oven spring in my convection oven.
The BBA Anadama sliced beautifully, had a nice crumb and was a much lighter loaf than the Anadama from the Book of Bread.
Here are the two side by side. The loaf on the right is from the Book of Bread. The Anadama on the left is from BBA. They have approximately the same amount of flour. The bread on the right has 2 T more of molasses which makes it a darker, more colorful bread. The BBA bread used instant (rapidrise) yeast and the bread on the right used active dry yeast.
In taste, the Anadama from BBA is much lighter and has a crunchier, crispy crust. The Anadama from the Book of Bread is sweeter and denser than the BBA loaf. Both are delicious. I gave one of my daughters the second loaf from the Book of Bread and another daughter the second (prettier) loaf from BBA. As for me, I had two soft boiled eggs for breakfast - one on one type of toast and the other on the other type of toast. A truly luxurious treat.
This coming weekend, the challenge bread is a Greek bread and has a starter, so I got my sourdough out of the downstairs refrigerator and will be feeding it all week to get it up to the task!
