Our Daily Bread: Encephalitis (aka Buttermilk) Bread

I stuck with “Beard On Bread“ this week and made his “Buttermilk White Bread”.  I’m calling it “Encephalitis Bread” (no offense to the swollen-headed intended) because it rose so much that the top was gigantic! 

The crust had bite but was softer than that of other breads I’ve made, and the crumb was pillow soft and very airy.  It made great toast for breakfast and bread to eat with dinner.

So how did this odd shaped bread come to be?

I’m pretty sure the was that I mis-measured the amount of flour when mixing the dough.  I’ve had a problem with this for as long as I’ve been baking bread, which began after Kara and I went to a free seminar in town put on by King Arthur Flour (KAF).  They taught us to measure flour by spooning it out of the bag and sprinkling it into the measuring cup.  I’m sure this is the “right” way to measure flour, but I think non-KAF recipe books figure that most home bakers just plunge the measuring cup into the bag, scoop out a cup at a time, level it off, and put it in the bowl. 

Because I measure flour the KAF way, even when using non-KAF recipes, my dough often starts out looking too wet to me – it doesn’t release from the sides of the bowl while I’m mixing it.  And so I have to add flour, bit-by-bit, until I get a consistency of dough that looks right to me.  As a result, maybe I end up with too much flour in the bowl, which causes bread with a gigantic head!

As a result, this loaf finally inspired me to go buy a kitchen scale.  I ended up buying the EatSmart Precision Pro Digital Kitchen Scale which arrived just the other day.  I’ll let you know how it goes!

See more delicious breads here, at YeastSpotting!

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