FINALLY. It still wasn't anything fantastic, but it WAS bread. My oven is still absolute crap, so of course the tops got a little burnt, even with a tin foil cover. "Your oven: is it bigger than a breadbox?" No, that's why I can't evenly bake anything. With the bread rising half an inch from the top of the oven, that's what you're gonna get no matter what you do.
One thing that's floored me in this whole process is that nobody makes handmade bread anymore. Finding a decent recipe that doesn't call for a bread machine at one point is like finding a needle in a haystack. I was lucky enough to finally unearth some at allrecipes.com. I used this recipe.
The big difference this time was kneading. Kneading kneading kneading. Ten relentless minutes. I also made sure I was adding enough flour. Something just kept feeling wrong when I would stick to the recipes and I figured there was some innate understanding among the recipe writers that I hadn't been grasping. My process wasn't working like all the videos I'd seen of people kneading bread dough. The dough wasn't dynamic. I was covered in flour but not in the productive way. The dough was sticky. So I floured the bejeebies out of the dough and went to town being all confident and violent like bakers I'd seen before.
Also, it seemed to make a difference letting the yeast sit in the sugar and water to foam up for 5-10 minutes. Later, I also let the mixed bread dough sit long enough. I'd heard things about letting dough rest in order for the gluten to develop, and I'd been doing that, but apparently not for long enough. Once I felt the difference in elasticity between dough that was ready and dough that wasn't, it really drove the point home. Furthermore, I've recently read things about how some people leave their dough overnight and I can vaguely remember back to the old fast food pizza place I worked at in college and how the managers there too would set the dough out overnight. I think a lot of that had to do with thawing the pre-frozen dough, but there could be something to that still.
And something about all this worked. Other than my issues with baking the loaves evenly, the crumb grain was good and the finished product was neither too wet or too dry. It looked like bread. It tasted like bread. I made bread. Finally.
And another success I had, though not very impressive, was with these whole wheat pancakes. Wheat-y, butter-y, and reminiscent of the North American South, they're less like the cakey pancakes I'm accustomed to and more like griddle cakes or flapjacks. One cannot deny their deliciousness. In fact, they were we good I didn't even get any pictures before they disappeared! Pancakes aren't different, but it was only my second recipe using wheat flour and I'm a little touched by its success.
I'd promised myself not to attempt it until I thought there was a chance I could succeed, but I think I'm actually ready to experiment with the honey oat wheat bread I've been itching for >:D
