GOAL:
I really want to learn how to bake
delicious homemade bread and rolls. My grandpa owned a bakery for many years,
and his homemade wheat bread is soooo good! My mother inherited his baking
skills, and she makes his wheat bread all the time. She is an excellent baker
and her homemade cinnamon rolls are the best. To date, my bread making
experiments have been pretty miserable failures, so I am taking on the
challenge of figuring out what I have been doing wrong, and learning how to
make my own tasty bread and rolls.
I plan to use some family recipes and also
try some new ones. I have an excellent resource in my mother, and also plan to
watch some online tutorials. I have a family of 6, and a very large extended
family. They are all more than willing to be my tasting critics, so I've got
that covered too.
BANANA BREAD:
This week, I had some ripe bananas that
needed to be used or thrown out, and decided to try to make some banana bread.
I have a great recipe for banana bread. It is my grandmother's, and I have made
it before with decent results.
I had some prior knowledge going in to this project. I had a great
recipe, I had heard that ripe bananas were the best (but wasn’t sure why), and I
knew that you were supposed to grease and flour your baking pans before putting
in the batter.
Before starting to mix the ingredients together, I decided to turn
to the internet to confirm the ripe banana theory, and figure out why ripe
bananas are better. According to the Better Home & Gardens website, ripe banana
have fully developed sugars and a soft texture, so they will help your bread
have more flavor and be very moist.
So, I mashed up those ripe bananas, and followed my grandma’s recipe, and 50 minutes
later, I had this:
When I have used this recipe before the crust is really overdone,
but it was not this time. I am crediting this success to my new oven. We just
moved into a new house, and this oven seems to work much better than the oven
in my previous home. In my previous oven, I had to turn the temperature down at
least 25 degrees and cook things for a shorter amount of time. My current oven
seems to work exactly as it should, so I think that helped my banana bread turn
our better.
The taste and texture of the bread was really good. Apparently my
family agreed too, because the two loaves I made were gone in less than 24
hours. I did have one mishap:
Apparently, I did not grease and flour the corner of the bread pan
well enough, because this chunk stayed in the pan. I will have to remember that
for next time!
REFLECTION:
I am glad I had some prior knowledge, because it helped me to feel comfortable in making this bread. A good recipe goes a long way, and I never realized how much of a difference a good oven can make. Without the right tools, I could not have made the bread turn out so well. I learned that I need to grease and flour my pans with more precision, and I also learned another tip from the Better Home and Gardens link above. They suggest that you should be patient, and wrap up the warm banana bread in plastic wrap overnight, because this will help develop the flavors even more. I tried this with one of the loaves, and it did seem more moist that the loaf that was not wrapped overnight. I will definitely try this again next time.
