The Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge

About a month and a half ago, Pinch My Salt issued a challenge to all bread makers to join them in a quest to bake all the breads in Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I was just starting to get my feel wet with sourdough breads, and really liked the idea of joining. I have gotten the book from the library before and just never got around to buying it, so this seemed like a good time. I am a big fan of Reinhart, as he really loves what he does and does it really well. So I ordered my book and began! I am a bit behind everyone else, of course, but it's not a race. Just a way to motivate us to make the best bread possible. In fact, I have already decided that after I am done with this book, I will be buying Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads and working through that book as well. Along with my occasional forays into sourdough, I think I will be baking a LOT of bread in the next year!

Here's what I have done so far. The first bread in the book is Anadama, that quintessential eastern American bread. I was lucky enough to be able to procure some freshly stone ground cornmeal from the Old Graue Mill to use in the Anadama bread.

Reinhart uses a soaker for the cornmeal and a sponge as well to get the darn best Anadama bread I have ever tasted. While the color make the crumb look denser than it is, I assure you this was light and fluffy sandwich bread. It made me look forward to the rest of the book, that's for sure!

This is the second bread I made for the BBA challenge. It is Artos, described as a Greek Celebration Bread. Reinhart offers several different versions of this, using a base dough and altering slightly the leavening, the spicing, added various dried fruits and nuts, and altering the final shaping to recreate the traditional Greek breads of various religious holidays. It is a subtly complex flavor enriched with oil, eggs, and milk. Yummo! I chose to make it with cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and cloves, and also used dried orange rind and acacia honey. Since I have two healthy sourdough starters, I chose to make this with my Russian starter instead of the commercial yeast based poolish.

I glazed it with his recipe, using acacia honey and orange extract, sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds. This was another great hit. I will make this again soon, using the more traditional Greek spices of mahlab and mastic, which I was only able to procure after baking this batch. I also want to try one of the more fancy shapes. I am struggling with shaping bread dough and just need more practice I guess. I overhandled this one and I think it helped contribute to a thin layer at the bottom of the loaf that didn't rise as well as the rest of the loaf. I also overproofed the bulk fermentation. Yet despite this thin layer, the bread was wonderful and I think is a great choice for housewarming gifts.