The Bread Project Week 9: Oatmeal Banana Bread & Corn Bread

In my mind I will only officially be obsessed with baking bread when:

a) I own and use a kitchen scale to measure out ingredients
b) I have a pizza stone/quarry tiles/bricks in my oven
c) I maintain my own sourdough starter

Until that point I'm on the cusp. But! I did end up making...uhhh...five loaves of bread this weekend? There were only three batches (and only two recipes between them), but still. So much bread.

How did this happen? Well, I'd already picked a bread for this week (the cornmeal alternate to Buttermilk Potato Bread from The Bread Bible), when I noticed I had a few extra bananas this week. Food Blog Search has become a great friend of mine, and I stumbled upon this Whole Wheat Oat Banana Yeast Bread from Judicial Peach. There is literally no part of that name that didn't sound good to me. So it was set. Lots of bread. And it all ended up being tasty.

Putting in a page jump as this thing will be loooong.


Recipe #1: Whole Wheat Oat Banana Bread from Judicial Peach

Two of these three things are my breakfast everyday at work:

And I've been trying to eat more whole wheat bread so this was the perfect project for me. Everything came together well- I was worried since Banana Breads were usually quickbreads that something would go wrong with the rises, but the end result was very good. I probably needed to cook it a bit longer, but the honey (I believe) was already making the crust rather brown and I was worried about it burning.

As I knew I'd end up with two loaves I decided to try a roll method I'd read about. I created little boules and squished them together in a pan, creating a lovely crown of bread that could easily be pulled apart for consumption. I think next time I'm making bread specifically to bring somewhere I'll use this technique, it ends up much less messy than cutting slices.

The Results:

I didn't take a picture of the loaf. I used this bread for peanut butter sandwiches (delicious!), dunking in a few spicy soups I'd made to combat a cold I felt coming on (weird tasting...), and as a bun for sliders (actually good, though I couldn't taste the bananas over the burger so that's probably why).

Recipe 2: Tangy Cornmeal Bread from The Bread Bible

This is the tastiest bread I've ever made. No kidding. Leaving the biga (flour, water, and yeast you mix ahead of time to develop flavor) in the fridge for three days gave it a lovely acidity- almost a sourdough flavor. Kneading the dough was kind of scary as it was (intentionally, per the recipe) very very wet. I have to rethink my kneading surface as the cutting board I use wasn't working well at all. Luckily my mom had gotten me a dough scraper a while back. That definitely helped.

The Results:

As I said the flavor was delicious and tangy. The crumb looked lovely as well, and the crust was thin but chewy.

Will definitely be trying the biga method again, perhaps next week!