Bread or a doorstop?

I’ve written before about the desire to bake bread during the pandemic and the other day I decided to dig out a recipe that was one of my favourites when I lived in the small suite in Banff in the building that was once the Bankhead railway station.

During the winter most weekends weren’t particularly busy, and I’d often spend my Saturdays baking bread for the next week. I had a gas heater in the living room and I’d put the dough near it to rise. My circumstances are much different now than they were then and I haven’t made that recipe for over 30 years. Time for a little adventure. The recipe used rolled oats and molasses and I remembered the dough being very sticky. I used to refer to it as bubble gum bread. Be prepared to use lots of flour on the counter and hands when kneading it. For most of my bread baking I have used ordinary rather than quick-rise yeast. The jar I have at the moment is quick-rise. Okay, I can find out how to deal with that.

To the internet for the differences between regular and quick-rise yeast. Let the dough sit for 10 minutes and then form it into loaves instead of doing the first rising in a bowl, punching down the dough and, after a second rising, shaping the loaves. Sounds good. Sounds quicker. Now where to put the dough to rise? I think the last time I made bread I put it in the oven with the light on and that worked.We use our convection oven most of the time now and low and behold, there’s a setting for proofing bread on it. I put the loaves in the convection oven and started it on the ‘proof’ setting. I forgot to cover them. I kept checking on the bread and it didn’t seem to be doing anything. I began to think of the bun recipe my mother gave to one of my aunts. It was a standby for Mum but when my aunt made it one my cousins called the results ‘cement patties’ and the other referred to the buns as ‘asphalt balls.’ I began to envision doorstops.

Too late to do anything about it so I left it alone until the timer went off an hour later. When I looked again, the loaves had actually risen but they didn’t look quite right yet. I set the oven to proof for another 20 minutes. At the end of that time I took out the loaves and poked my finger into the dough near the edge of the tin. The indentation remained. Time to bake them. I followed the directions I had for the temperature but used some convection and cut down the time. When the beeper went, I removed the loaves, turned them out of their pans and thumped them on the bottom. There was a satisfyingly hollow sound. Bread done. I waited for them to cool a bit before cutting into one of them. Mum would not have been satisfied with the texture, too many air pockets but the bread tasted fine. Doorstop averted.