breadsecrets blog

The first recipe in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice (buy the book here) is Anadama bread. The recipe originates from New England and contains cornmeal (polenta) and molasses (I used Lyle’s Black Treacle, which has a runnier texture and slightly less bitter taste than raw molasses, but is close enough).

As other bakers in the group have found, I needed to add about 3oz/100g (I didn’t weigh it) more flour to get a firm, tacky dough. The dough rose quite quickly - the recipe uses a fairly generous amount of yeast, and the molasses/treacle will no doubt have made it very active - and there was a good oven spring. I dusted the loaves with polenta before baking, which makes for a nicely crunchy top - I might start doing this on other loaves.

The crumb has a soft, close texture, and I think it is slightly moister than standard loaf tin bread, possibly because of the molasses. It tastes good - the molasses flavour is perhaps more dominant than I’d like. So far, I’ve only had it toasted with butter. Someone else mentioned that it’s good with peanut butter … so perhaps I’ll have to nip out to the shop before lunchtime.

This week’s challenge is a traditional Greek Christmas bread called Christopsomos, I’ll post my results next week.