Chico, a quiet northern California city, an Island of Blue in a sea of Red, is where I have moved after liviing most of my adult life in San Francisco. Chico is only a few hours north of SF, but is also a world away. The cost of living is a lot slower, and things are a great deal cheaper here, and life is slower here, missing is the Ocean and the fog, but in replacement we get the worlds freshest, most tasty fruits and veggies at the almost daily farmers markets around the city!
But I need a daily activity to help keep me sane and focused during the transition to my new life. Then I came across Beth Henspergers The Bread Lovers Bread Machine Cookbook, with 300 Favorite Bread recipes. Being inspired by the movie Julie on Julia, I decided to bake my way through the book. This gives me a task to do everyday, and something to write about daily, not back for someone going through psycho-social recovery, and gives me something to do with my roommate, Paul, ( http:&xC5;shanaginzwithpaul.us ), daily. Bread tasting.
So todays bread was to be Greek Bread, called psomo. The key here is that the recipe calls for evaporated milk. I happened to have a can in the pantry, and I have no clue what decade I had bought it in, but I had it. When I opened the can it was sorta a light brown color. I thought I remembered it being white, but oh well, I couldn't really recall how it was supposed to look, and it smelled fine, and taste, well odd!
Now to be really fair The most authentic versions of this bread that I found on the web call for canned evaporated goat's milk, but up here in the Wonder Bread capital of the World I am not sure they even know what a goat is, let alone that it gives milk. I checked a couple of Health Food stores and nadda. So I decided to use the Cow EVaporated Milk I had.
GREAK BREAD 1.5 POUND LOAF
3/4th Cup Water
2.75 Cups Bread Flour
1/4th cup Whole Wheat Flour
1 1/4th Tablespoon Sesame Seeds
1 Tablespoon gluten
2 teaspoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 1/2 teaspoons Bread Machine Yeast
I put everything in the bowl and set the machine for Basic, medium crust and let her rip. I set the buzzer on the stove for 5 minutes. At 5 minutes I like to check the dough ball, get everything out of the corners and either add a tablespoon or two of water or of flour depending on if the ball is to sticky or flaky. After a while you just learn through trial and error what should be the right moisture in the ball of dough.
Once everything was right with the dough ball I left the machine do its work, after 3 hours of work I went to check the bread and it was a BIG FAIL. The bread failed to rise while baking. It was the heaviest, most dense cooked ball of bread I have ever seen, an epic FAIL. My guess the evaporated milk was bad and that domino-ed to effect the entire recipe! Fail!
What to do. I didn't want to run out and get more ingredients, so I looked at the next recipe, which was for YOUGURT BREAD. Well, we do what we always do when things happen beyond our control and not our fault, we clean-up the mess and move-on, so YOGURT BREAD it will be. I happen to have some Whole Milk Greek Yogurt in the fridge, so here we go:
YOGURT BREAD 1.5 Pound Loaf
3/4 Cups Water
1Cup Whole Milk Yogurt, (I used Trader Joe's Greek Yogurt)
3 1/5 cup Bread Flour
1 Tablespoon Gluten
2 Teaspoons Salt
2.5 Teaspoons bread machine yeast
2 Tablespoons Honey for the Yogurt
I put all the ingredients into the machine, Basic, Med, START again. This time I raised up a prayer of thanksgiving and home for a good loaf.
What can I say it was a perfect loaf. It backed up almost as much as the Sour Cream bread did. To put it bluntly this bread is PURE bread - simple ingredients that back up wholesome and flavorful. This has to be the most [perfect bread for sandwiches. The flavor is wonderful! The bread is to die for. Great with Honey, Nutella and Bananas, and I just used the last of it for french toast, YUMMY!
This bread has moved to the top of my favorite bread list followed closely by the Sour Cream Bread.