Day 3: I Throw an Egg at the Dough (40 Loaves for 40 Days)

Found a new recipe, one that doesn't require much kneading. And it only uses 3 1/2 cups of flour instead of 6 1/2! And...once I make it, I can choose to let it rise someplace warm or shove the little dough ball into an airtight container and put it in the fridge for up to FIVE days! And...I thought that would be quite nice and useful. And...the recipe also calls for 1 egg. Egg makes bread yummy (it also makes sauces,salads and tuna yummy). The note with the recipe says I can shape the dough or put it in a loaf pan or make rolls out of it. So versiatile. That's why the recipe is named "Versatile Yeast Dough".

So, I begin with heating up the oven to the 200 degrees and put my pan of boiling water in there. We'll make it like a miniature sauna. I decided I would use my not-quite-the-right-dimension bread loaf pan. (I am supposedly to use a 9 1/2 x 4 1/2 x 3 1/2 loaf pan. Mine is like 2 inches less all way round. Well, all way rectangle). I grab one egg from the fridge and place it in a warm water bath (I've read that when baking, eggs should be room temperature. i.e. warm - not like my house which is...cold). My Kitchen Aid is happy to be working with less flour. I warm the water to somewhere between 105 and 115 degrees, because we wouldn't want to destroy the little yeast thingies. Did you know that yeast is a living organism? It is. I'll have to look up what the science classification is since we are studying genetics and Kingdom, Phyllum, etc. stuff. O.K., back to the bread. My mixer had mixed it so well. There was a beautiful dough ball in the bowl waiting to be put into it's sauna. I pick the dough up to place it into the well greased bowl and OH MY STARS! THE EGG WAS STILL IN IT'S RELAXING BATH! Grrrrr. I put the little ball back in the mixing bowl. I crack the egg and slop it on the dough. I take a spatula and start smashing it in. I turn on the mixer and the dough hook just takes the dough ball and starts sloshing the egg while swinging the dough. It wasn't a pretty sight. The egg was getting beaten and the dough was dripping with the beaten egg. I let this horrific beating continue until it seemed the egg was fully incorporated into the dough. It was hard to be sure, but I couldn't take watching this anymore.

I picked up the dough ball, apologized to it and felt remorseful about forgetting the egg earlier in the process. I placed the dough in the loaf pan so it could...loaf around in the sauna for an hour. It loafed allright! And I'm here to tell you that yeast likes to loaf. Yeast likes the sauna. My precious dough that was egged by me, it rose. It rose really tall. It was 2X taller than the 1 1/2" sides of the loaf pan. Well, as I metioned in the last two entries about having a warm little room in my house, this time, I didn't have the room ready at all. I thought I would try to bake the bread without removing it from it's little warm oven/sauna. I removed the pot of water, and cranked the oven up to 350 degrees. I came back and checked on the little cherub bread after 10 minutes and it was now 3X taller than the sides of the loaf pan. I thought it was going to reach all the way to the top of the oven and scorch it's shapely rounded top. It didn't. After 35 minutes in the oven I took the most beautiful loaf of bread out of the oven and turned it out onto the wire rack to cool. One problem to note though; because of my not-quite-the-right-dimension loaf pan, the interior part of the bread was probably under cooked because I was able to put finger holes in the side and bottom. However, there wasn't any slimy/doughy places either. Finger holes do not affect the taste of this bread. This is my new favorite recipe for dough. Granted, it's only been three days. But, if my bread loafs can turn out this pretty and perky and tasty...with no extensive kneading or too much flour...then, it's a keeper. Next time, the egg won't get as long of a bath and the dough won't get tortured.