18 March 2013
Today we had a relatively long drive between Augusta, Georgia and Williamsburg, VA. It was enough time to bake two separate loaves of whole wheat bread in the car. This time I modified the wet ingredients to include some genuine maple syrup, hoping that the addition of something sweet would give the little yeasties some additional incentive to rise and make for a less dense loaf. The addition of maple syrup appears to have caused a slight improvement in texture, but baking in a slow cooker invariably seems to produce relatively dense, moist bread.
One of batches of whole wheat bread I made last week was ultra-dense, and almost inedible to Great Husband. I suspect it was because I added water that was too hot, rather than just lukewarm, and that killed the yeast. Beware!
Last week I also made two loaves of gluten-free bread, and those were successful and tasty. That recipe was also from "Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day." It includes expensive non-wheat flours, but we considered it a worthwhile experiment for the sake of variety. The wet ingredients included eggs and honey and oil in addition to water. We liked the resulting bread very well, but it is also a fairly dense, moist one.
Update: Considering how small and dense the slow-cooker bread has been, I can't recommend this style of bread-making for future trips. After getting back home, I took one of the leftover pre-mixed bags of ingredients and baked it up in our Zojirushi bread machine. So much better!
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