culinary near-miss

[cellio]

I wanted to make banana bread last night using the bread machine. I've never made banana bread before (with or without a machine). I got out the book of recipes only to find that the only banana-bread recipe is for a "quick bread". I've never made quick breads, because the manual contains warnings about them being fragile, about needing to tweak cooking time on the fly, and so forth. That's too much work; I want to dump stuff in the machine and ignore it until it brings forth bread three or four hours later.

So I started comparing quick-bread recipes to regular-bread recipes to figure out the mapping. The big difference, of course, is that quick-breads don't use yeast; they use baking soda instead. There was nothing that existed in both quick and regular forms, but after looking at several recipes I concluded that this was the only major difference. I was concerned that the quick-bread recipe might have too much liquid, but I decided to forge ahead anyway. (I did make one other substitution, water for milk, because I keep my bread machine parve.)

So I used the quick-bread ingredients, without changing quantities, but then instead of the baking soda I used the canonical 2 teaspoons of yeast from the regular recipes. During the first mixing the "dough" looked positively soupy, so I added one more cup of flour and helped the machine stir it in. It still looked soupy, but I decided to leave it alone.

Three hours later the bread looked like bread rather than soggy glop. However, it had overflowed the pan rather thoroughly, creating a mess that I will deal with more thoroughly tonight. Because of this, there was no chance of removing the loaf cleanly from the pan. I ended up using a spatula to carve out the main part. I still didn't know what I would find inside at this point, but I had just given up on presentation.

The interior is bread-like and tastes fine. There was some caked flour in the corners, but otherwise the mix of ingredients seemed to be right. Next time I'll just scale it all down to 75% or so.

Comments

[amergina.livejournal.com]

Actually, chocolate chips belong in donuts. I need to pull out the donut maker one of these days.

[cellio]

Chips in donuts are ok (donuts are sort of like cookies with attitude), but chips in bagels are Just Wrong. That's bread in disguise, and I'm in to their sneakiness! :-)

Mmm, donuts... I didn't know you had a maker. I assume it makes the cake-style ones?

[geekosaur]

I keep thinking about making doughnuts in my deep-fryer....

Guess I shouldn't show you the recipes I have for chocolate chip bread, then? (Not that I've been much inclined to try them either :)

[cellio]

You know about fried doughnuts for Chanukah, right? Seems like you should start practicing in advance so you'll be sure to get them right. :-)

Guess I shouldn't show you the recipes I have for chocolate chip bread, then?

It's ok; I have my own such recipes that I just ignore. Dani is a big fan of chocolate chips in bread, muffins, pancakes, and pretty much anything else that will stand still long enough for chip insertion. And then he has the nerve to object to blueberries in those same venues! Hmpf. No accounting for taste. :-)

[magid.livejournal.com]

I have made dessert breads with a swirl of chocolate through it, and a wonderful not-sweet chocolate bread that uses a lot of cocoa (again, from the DK bread book). Both were also good recycled into chocolate bread pudding...

[mishtaneh.livejournal.com]

I know about latkes; I've never been a big potato pancake person, though, so I was considering looking at some of the more Sephardic traditions instead :)

[jducoeur]

but [chocolate] chips in bagels are Just Wrong

While they're not quite my cup of tea, I don't really agree. Chocolate chip bagels are not Wrong. Chocolate chip and garlic bagels are Wrong.

(He says, remembering an infamous bagel-making party at Gyrth and Melisande's house some years back. Vissevald made a chocolate chip and garlic bagel, and spent the rest of the morning trying to find someone willing to eat it...)

[cellio]

I would eat garlic bagels if they didn't also contain chocolate chips. :-) (I assume you're saying that the combination is Wrong, not that it's Wrong to use garlic in bagels.)

You mean your food parties don't have an implicit "you make it, you eat it" rule?