The thirty-ninth Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge (from the book by the same name authored by Peter Reinhart) is Vienna Bread, and is found on pages 261-264. I made a half portion of this bread, which was one loaf, I should have made the whole recipe of 2 loaves (and had one to keep on hand in the freezer) as Vienna Bread is one of our very favorites for grilled cheese sandwiches, and this recipe was excellent.
The ingredients: bread flour, sugar, barley malt powder, salt, instant yeast, egg, butter, and water.
This is a two-day bread: one hour and fifteen minutes to make a pate fermentee on the first day (one hour of that is a rising time), and another approximately six hours for the assembly, rising times, forming, and baking on the second day. (Really, most of it is rising time, so this is a great bread to make when you are going to be home or out running errands as you can time the rises between other things you are doing, so don't let that 6 hour bit throw you.)
I managed to again talk Margaret into baking it with me as it is always more enjoyable to be baking along with someone else and she and I are determined to finish the book together.
This bread is excellent for eating out of hand, just a really great flavor to it, and it crisps up nicely for grilled cheese sandwiches, definitely a keeper, and definitely one that I will make time and again.
(Note: Please forgive the photo as I forgot to make the slashes in the bread before it went into the oven, so the outside looks rather plain and dull...that, however, does not affect the taste in the least, so when I bake this again, I will sneak in here and change the picture to a more lovely version of the outside of it, but for now I wanted to get this posted and did not have time to again bake a loaf for photo ops.)
You can visit the main group and marvel the breads. I'm getting there...Slow and Steady. Our next challenge: White Bread found on pages 265-267.
