Food for Fuel: Bittman’s Black Bread
I have more free time now that I’m not spending so much of it commuting, both to a far away job and from Austin to Houston on weekends. Thus, much more time to bake my own bread. I like making homemade bread and it makes eating a sandwich at work every night much more bearable.
This time I branched out and tried Black Bread from How to Cook Everything. I tried to find the recipe online for you, but no luck. I changed it slightly, so I’ll post my adaptations. Below is just what I did to bake the bread. Bittman’s instructions and recipe are a lot more detailed and I strongly suggest you follow his if you can.
Black Bread
Adapted from Mark Bittman
1/2 cup bran cereal (I used Kellogg’s AllBran)
1 cup white whole wheat flour
1 cup bread flour
1 cup rye flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon instant yeast
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup molasses
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 1/4 strong brewed coffee (I used instant)
Grind the cereal in a food processor. In a bowl (or if you have a big food processor, you can use that), mix the cereal, flours, cocoa, sugar, yeast, and salt. Add the oil, molasses, and vinegar. Slowly mix in most of the coffee. If too dry, slowly add more coffee.
Shape the dough into a ball and place in a bowl. Cover and let rise for at least 2 hours. Deflate the ball and reshape, let rest for 15 minutes.
At this point I refrigerated the dough overnight until I was ready to bake it for lunch after my long run on Monday. (Homemade bread after long run = heaven). You can also bake the dough at this point.
Bring dough to room temperature if you refrigerated it. Knead a few times, then shape into large oval loaf and place on a greased or non-stick baking sheet. Cover and let rise for 1 hour. I sprinkled the loaf with flour and slashed it with a knife.
Heat oven to 325*. Bake for55 to 60 minutes.
This bread is fantastic! I was worried because the dough seemed so tough to me until I kneaded it and let it rise again. It is slightly sweet and full of flavor. It makes excellent sandwiches.
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mmmmmmmmmm! that recipe and photo look DEEEELISH! i wonder if this is similar to what they serve at the cheesecake factory?? it is a brown bread and suuuuper tasty. i can only hope that theirs is as healthy as yours since i consume it in mass quantities while i wait for dinner… lol. maybe i will try this! i am putting it on my life to do list. “life” because i know it is going to take me awhile. lol.
i’m so jelly that you actually make your own bread. it looks fantastic!
Question: How do you keep your bread from going stale/bad too quickly? Do you store it in the freezer? I’ve never been able to figure out the best way to preserve homemade bread.
Chelsea: I store it in a container with a tight lid in the fridge. It still goes stale after awhile, but I think this helps.
Chelsea, One of the wonderful characteristics of bread is its freezability. As soon as the bread cools from either the bread machine or the oven, I put half the loaf in a zip-loc freezer bag and pop it in the freezer. It is good weeks later and defrosts quickly.