20 Jun
Whey Awesome Bread – easy like your mom
This morning I woke up to the housecleaner arriving – I was obviously still in bed. Besides rushing to throw some clothes on, I realized I needed to get to the kitchen before she did so she did not think the weird milk concoction in the oven was a gross oversight and throw it away. I was making yogurt. Homemade, cured for 12 hours probiotic amazingness. That process will be a separate post.
So this morning I get up and start processing my yogurt before I’ve even had my coffee. While it is not necessary to do this – I strain some of the whey out of the yogurt as I like it a bit thicker. So now I have a bowl full of whey, a ton of yogurt, and a full day ahead of me. What do I do? Make some bread with the whey!
I looked in the pantry and had a little unbleached flour, and some regular flour. Not really much of either. I don’t typically make only one loaf but the supplies dictated it this time.
Mix a couple turns of the salt grinder into about 3-3.5 cups of flour. (Since I had way more whey than I would be able to use for bread, I decided to use the flour as the constant and the amount of liquid as the variable, instead of the typical other way around.) I slightly warmed up about 1.5 cups of whey and added the equivalent of a pack and a half of active dry yeast. Stir the yeast-whey into the bowl of salt-flour until you have a big ball of dough that cleans the bowl. Try not to stir TOO much. Take the dough ball out and give it a few kneads, but again, not too many.
Shape it into whatever shape you want – whether it be for a bread pan, a standalone round, baguette style, whatever. Grease whatever it will be in or on, and grease it well.
I take more whey and brush it over the top of the loaf until the dough is pretty saturated, then loosely cover the thing with plastic wrap and let it rise for 30 minutes or so. More if you are patient. I could only wait 30.
Somewhere in that 30 minutes or more, preheat your oven to 350 degrees, with an old cookie sheet on the rack you are not using to cook your loaf on. Take the plastic wrap off your loaf (which should have risen to look like a normal sized loaf by now) and put it carefully in the oven. Throw some water on the hot cookie sheet and close the door as fast as you can to keep the steam in as much as possible. Oh, and be careful, there will be (ahem) lots of steam and sometimes the cookie sheets will warp when you throw water on them when they are hot. (This is also why we use old ones). Maybe, if you plan ahead, you’ll put the cookie sheet on the rack BELOW where your bread will be baking, so when you throw water on it and it warps and spills the water all over your oven, it won’t spill onto your bread.
Bake the bread for about 40 minutes. Start checking it after 20 and if your oven sucks like mine does, you should turn it halfway through cooking so you don’t get one brown half and one squishy half. When it starts to brown, pull it out of the oven, melt some butter all over the whole top, grind some sea salt onto it, and stick it back in the oven for a few minutes.
Cool it on a rack so it doesn’t get squishy.
Voila! Enjoy.
Reviews: All thumbs up. The texture was described as chewy and it has a very pleasant taste. The sea salt on the top also helped accentuate the extra flavor in this bread. The crust was strong but not dry, and not too hard. I quite enjoyed this bread!
Notes: Did I mention I use King Arthur Flour and it is divine!