Anadama Bread

A few years back I received Baking Illustrated. This was around the time I was really starting to get into baking. There was a recipe for Anadama bread that caught my eye. The story behind how this bread got it's name intrigued me enough to try it. It instantly became a favorite.

I recently purchased a bread machine. I'm a huge fan of making bread by hand. Extremely therapeutic. But, sometimes life gets busy and it's just plain easier to throw the ingredients into a machine, press a button or two, and go about the rest of your business while the machine does business of it's own (A review of the machine is a post all it's own).

There was a bit of lab time and mathematics involved here. The recipe in the book is for a one pound loaf. From experience, if the dough is not going to make a two pound loaf, the top won't brown and will probably fall. I didn't want to double the dough because I wasn't sure how much it would rise. So, I did some quick calculations to set the recipe at 1.5x.

There is tweaking to be done to get this completely machine ready. At least, for this machine. But, the loaf that it turned out was baked all the way through. The top of the crust did not brown. But, it also did not cave. So, that means I got the rise times right for that amount of dough. I just need to fully double the dough and should get a full rise and complete browning. 


As for the taste? Divine. It makes great sammich bread. I used 100% whole wheat (freshly ground with my mill, but...that's another post). And, honestly, I think I like it better than the ones I've made with all purpose flour.

This will go to The Lab until I have a chance to tweak the recipe and settings on the bread machine. I want to be able to get a consistent loaf each time.