peter reinhart – In Good Taste

BBA Challenge (Week 20): Multigrain Bread Extraordinaire)

Maris Callahan — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 15:41:00 +0000

Remember the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge? Well, that’s okay. I don’t either. Last May (or maybe it was June?) I signed on to bake my way through Peter Reinhart’s book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, along with a bunch of other bloggers who would be baking their way through the book. The rules, very Julie-and-Julia style, were that you had to bake each bread from A-Z, no skipping, at a clip that suited you. For awhile I baked a bread each week, sometimes two breads. That didn’t last long. So here we are, on #20, which is actually a bread that I would make again and again. I’ve made it twice since my initial trial and love that you can shape it into a lovely little boule, my favorite bread to bake or follow the instructions for a more traditional loaf. If you’re serving a heavy meal like pasta but bread on the table is non-negotiable, this is a good one to try. It’s full of grains so you’ll get a dose of filling fiber and wind up eating less bread and saving more room for the main dish, whatever that may be. We aren’t blogging the recipes (buy the book!) but […]

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BBA Challenge (Week 15): Italian Bread

Maris Callahan — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:16:08 +0000

When I was a child, I wasn’t very good at finishing the things I started. If I fell during ice skating lessons, I never wanted to go again. If I didn’t feel like going to dance class, my parents pulled me out. I quit the field hockey team mid-season during my senior year of high school and I changed majors about fifteen times in college before settling on two. Since it’s been two weeks since my last Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge, some of you might have thought that after an embarrassing attempt at hearth baking I decided to throw in the towel. The truth is, I’m over not finishing what I start. I’m going to see this challenge through, even when my photos are less-than-stellar, like in Artos: Greek Celebration Bread or when the my bread turns out inedible and I have to resort to store-bought, such as my French bread. Now, in addition to the bread baking challenge, I’ve signed on to another, albeit informal challenge with two of my blog friends. Over the past few months, I’ve let my workout habits slide a little (I’m only a little suspicious that that my lack of exercise is indirectly proportional to […]

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BBA Challenge (Week 13): Focaccia Bread

Maris Callahan — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:00:00 +0000

I’m no stranger to focaccia bread. Specifically, foccacia bread with onion and rosemary that was so good I even recommended making it to impress a date (and I promise you won’t wind up with onion breath). I wish I could whole-heartedly recommend Peter Reinhart’s recipe but for the strapped-for-time bread baker, I wouldn’t suggest anything other than the olive oil dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. If you’re entertaining, though, this is the bread for you. It makes enough bread to easily feed a crowd, and a hungry crowd, at that. Peter Reinhart’s dough was difficult to manage because there was so much of it. Between each proof, I thought it might outgrow the pan. I had visions of it ballooning in my oven like a big, sticky dough pillow that I would have to untangle from my oven racks….and what kind of photo would that be?Luckily, the bread that emerged from my oven (crisis averted) was crispy and soft in all the right places and was perfect, when served as an appetizer or as a sandwich, stuffed with fresh basil, tomatoes and mozzarella cheese. Since one of the rules of the Bread Baker’s Apprentice challenge is that […]

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