Yesterday’s baking challenge was Basic Soft White Sandwich Loaf, and it was my first sponge-based bread. I made it on Sunday because I’m a nervous baker and my husband, who cooks most of our food and who attended culinary a billion or so years ago, is home to help me out.
I read the recipe several times before starting, as usual, but I wish I’d added up all the rise times before starting!
I found the recipe on Epicurious (though it’s actually taken from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s book The Bread Bible). I find Epicurious recipes to be detailed and reliable, answering your questions before you know to ask them, which is great for a new baker. I read the recipe several times before starting, as usual, but I wish I’d added up all the rise times before starting—the darn thing took 9 hours from start to finish! Not that 9 hours is a ridiculous amount of time for bread, but the bread I’ve made so far has taken 3–4 hours. I’d definitely have started before 11:30 AM if I’d realized how long a sponge takes!
Getting the sponge ingredients and the flour mixture ingredients was a comedy of errors—well, at least getting the flour mixture together was a comedy of errors. The “Flour Mixture and Dough” list calls for 311 grams of unbleached white flour, 1/4 cup dry milk (yes, I freely mix my cups and grams, depending on which is easier for me), 3/4 teaspoons instant yeast, 9 tablespoons unsalted butter, and 2 1/4 teaspoons of salt.
First act in my comedy of errors: I added 3/4 cup of powdered milk to the flour instead of 1/4 cup, so into the garbage pail it went.
Second act: I added the salt to the flour mixture—I do wish they’d separated the Flour Mixture ingredients from the Dough ingredients. I knew well enough that the 9 T of unsalted butter didn’t go into the Flour Mixture, but I wound up adding the salt—it’s a dry ingredient, right?—to the Flour Mixture by mistake. Into the garbage pail with the second try.
Third time’s the charm, dammit—and it’s a good thing I have plenty of yeast: Oops, it’s supposed to be instant yeast! Into the garbage pail again.
The third time may be the charm, but four is my lucky number. Those 311 grams of flour, check. Into its own tiny bowl went the 1/4 cup of powdered milk, check. Into its own tiny bowl went the 3/4 teaspoon of instant yeast.
I asked my husband to look at everything, and he decreed it good. I heaved a sigh of relief and dumped the powdered milk and instant yeast into the flour and stirred them together. Whew!
After making the sponge, I covered it with the flour mixture and let it rise for 1 hour—the recipe says 1–4 hours, but I assumed, for no reason at all, that 1 hour would be fine. But after 1 hour, the sponge hadn’t bubbled up through the flour blanket, as the recipe had indicated. Okay, lesson learned. I left it for another hour, but still no sponge bubbling up through the flour blanket. Another hour later, and the volume had increased a fair amount and the flour blanket—at least an inch thick on top of the sponge in my KitchenAid mixer bowl—had several deep cracks. I called it good enough, added the butter and mixed for 1 minute, then scraped it down and covered it in plastic, then let it rest for 20 minutes.
I sprinkled in the salt—finally!—and let the dough hook manhandle it for 10 minutes. Into the oiled bowl it went to rise. And rise. And rise. The rising time was “until doubled, 1.5–2 hours”. Of course it took the whole 2 hours. Though I wish I’d pushed down the dough before letting it rise, as I realized the recipe called for just when I went to turn it out. Oh, well, what the hell. It’ll either be edible, or it won’t.
After turning it out onto the counter, I folded each corner into the center, trying not to squish out the air bubbles, and returned it to the bowl to double again. Yup, it took the whole 2 hours to double in size.
Finally it was time to separate the dough into two. I eyed the splodgy mass and split it with a pastry scraper. Well, it had looked like an even split. One was, of course, fairly bigger than the other. Next time, it gets weighed.
De-airing, folding, sealing, shaping, and general fussing done, each half of dough went into a greased bread pan.
To rise AGAIN, for 1.5 hours. Oh, my God.
As it turns out, making sponge bread gives you plenty of time to clean the kitchen, eat lunch, clean the kitchen, bake a pudding cake, clean the kitchen, watch a lot of TV, give your husband a haircut, vacuum the downstairs, watch some more TV, do some reading, do some mending, eat dinner and pudding cake, clean the kitchen, do some more mending, and watch some more TV.
But then you finally, FINALLY, get to put it into the oven! Which has been tricked out, per the recipe, with a preheated baking sheet on the lowest rack and a preheated cast-iron skillet on the oven floor. And then you try to finagle the 1/4 cup of ice cubes into the cast-iron skillet, which is kind of difficult because, you know, the baking sheet is taking up all the room on the rack, and pulling out the rack just hides the skillet further. But your husband inserts himself into the process and manages to get the ice cubes into the skillet, saving you some second-degree burns without incurring any himself, which is really nice for both of you.
And then you dutifully turn the loaves around at 25 minutes, as the recipe instructs.
And then you pull them out 25 minutes later.
And then you stare daggers at them, willing them to cool enough to take them out of the loaf pans so that you can just go to bed because it’s already way past your bedtime and waiting an hour for them to cool just to taste them and see how they turned out is not gonna happen.
In the morning, they’re nicely wrapped in a bread bag, courtesy of your husband, who’s gone off to work while you slovened away an hour in bed.
And you stare daggers at them, waiting for your husband to come home from work so you can try them together.
Ah, true love.
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