Mistakes, and retakes

My friend Barb was over tonight to order brioche pans with me.  We found the best selection and prices on Amazon.com of course.  But while we were reviewing the pans and planning our orders, I was playing with the master whole wheat recipe in Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a day by Jeff Hertzberg, M.D., and Zoe Francois, chef extroidinaire.  You can find the master recipe on page 54 of the book or go online to one of their several videos to see them in action and get the recipe. 

http://www.ecookbooks.com/t-Healthy-Bread-in-Five-Minutes-a-Day-Video.aspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSOoH686_b8

I had made this bread a few weeks ago, hoping my husband would like it and start to eat whole wheat bread.  Well, that didn't work!  He has a real thing against whole wheat bread...where I find it chewy and delicious, he finds it tough and like sandpaper.  Sigh. 

I've made the light whole wheat in their original book, Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day, and he will eat that.  While he loves the Deli style rye bread in their book, he just can't get into whole wheat, even the light one. 

So I decided to try again.  This time I took the master recipe and lightened it up a bit.  Instead of 5 1/2 cups of whole wheat, I used 4 cups and increased the all purpose flour from 2 cups to 3 1/2.  I also added 1/4 cup honey to the recipe.  The rest I did as the recipe calls for. 

Since I made the bread this morning before I left for work, I had Ken put the dough in the frig for me when he came downstairs for breakfast and coffee.  That's turned out to be a good routine.  It literally takes just 5 minutes to mix the dough, so it's easy to do before I head to work.  Ken is very good about putting it in the frig.  Course I put the dough and a note right in front of the coffee pot and make sure there is space in the frig for it.  :-)  So where's the work for him I ask you!  LOL. 

When Barb came over tonight I was just flattening out a grapefruit sized portion of the dough.  I slathered on softened "I can't believe it's not butter" and then sprinkled on the streusel topping I had made a few days ago for the pumpkin pie brioche that the HBin5 google group did as a group project.  Next I dropped cran-raisins and walnut pieces onto the dough.  Then I rolled it up lengthwise, and placed it on the parchment paper with the seam side down.  After covering it with plastic wrap that I had sprayed with Pam, I went on to order the brioche pans. 

About 15 minutes after Barb left my timer went off indicating it was time to put the bread in the oven.  So I brushed an egg wash on, and sprinkled more streusel topping on, then made my slashes with my serrated knife.  Turned around to put the bread in the oven and discovered I had NOT turned the oven on!  Argh! 

Great, I've already got my dough slashed and now it's going to have to set for another 20 minutes!  What to do?!  The only logical conclusion I could come up with was covering it back up and putting it in the frig.  So I took out the rest of the dough on the frig shelf and then put the dough in the frig. 

When the 20 minutes was up, the dough still looked great.  It was slightly more raised, but if anything it looked even better, lighter and while a tiny bit "jiggly" it still had form and shape.  Whew!  So into the oven it went.  The slashes still looked perfect by the way. 

I baked the loaf for 30 minutes at 450 as the instructions say.  In this particular case though, the streusel topping burned.  But the loaf inside is perfect.  The crumb is light, and very airy with the big holes that my neighbor Wanetta likes.  The swirl of streusel, cran-raisins and walnuts shows up and is delicious!  Even my husband likes it!  Woohoo. 

The extra time rising in the frig I think helped it overall.  The texture is very soft and would definitely not be used as sandpaper!  Delicious results!  I should have waited at least 30 minutes for the loaf to cool.  But let's face it...who can do that with fresh baked bread?  I mean don't you just have a very hard time resisting cutting into warm bread and laying a film of creamery butter on it?  Come on, you know you can't resist!