Tasty Tuesday: My New Bread Pan

For this Tasty Tuesday I want to share with ya'll my new obsession...

I'm in Love.

I just purchased a terracotta bread pan.

And it's beautiful.

My inspiration was my friend Amber, who in all of her rustic-ness uses a stoneware bread pan to bake her breads.  We'll talk more about Amber and her bread in a minute.  But all I've ever been used to is the tin metal non-stick loaf pans.  Which work fine, but...

They don't work like terracotta.

I will never go back to those metal pans.

Mine actually comes from Henry Watson's Pottery in England as part of the Original Suffolk Collection.  As if the bread baker (as it's called) isn't enough, there's a whole kit and kaboodle set, from flour canisters to milk pitchers.  Check them all out here.

Here's my little beauty...

So, I buy a bread pan, I need to make bread right?  Well fortunately the pan came with a recipe, one that  I attempted to make three times, all of which ended in disaster.  I don't know if it was me or what, but it seemed I was destined to never put my new pan to use.  I followed the instructions explicitly, but all I got was sludge.  I moved on....

Now, here is where I tell you about Amber and her honey wheat bread.

In one word...It's AMAZING.  I've had it on multiple occasions and the flavor, texture, color, even the smoothness is all DIVINE!  Amber's blushing now!

But Amber, unlike myself, is patient enough to make her bread from scratch.  Like with all the mixing and activating and proofing and such.  She does it all!  It makes me tired just writing about it.  Make sure you read all about her bread here over at ClassiclyAmber if you're the do it from scratch kind of gal.  She's got a great picture tutorial of the whole process.

Me...I'm not that girl!  I love those girls, but it's not me.  So I set out to find an in between.  A recipe that combined all the good ingredients, produced an excellent final product, but without all the elbow grease!  And what I came up with is a combo of various recipes, thrown into the bread machine, then baked (in my beloved bread pan) in the oven.

Here it is:

• 1 package Active Dry Yeast (2 1/4 tsp)
  
• 3 Tablespoons Honey ( I only use local raw honey)
  
• ½ Tablespoons Salt
• 1-½ Tablespoon Crisco or butter ( I prefer butter)
  
• 1-½ cup Whole Wheat Flour ( I use King Arthur's unbleached Whole Wheat)
  
• 2 cups All-purpose Flour (also KA's unbleached All Purpose)
  
• 1 cup Warm Water

First you put all your dry ingredients in the bread machine, then the honey and butter, and lastly the water.  The water should be warm to the touch, but not hot.  Turn the bread machine to the dough setting and let it go.  Mine was about a two hour gig from start to finish.  Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.  Finally, once it's done in the bread machine, transfer it to your greased loaf pan and bake it for roughly 45 minutes.

Now, I did not knead or shape it out of the bread machine.  Next time I will just so it'll look prettier, but it's not necessary to do so.  Hey~ it's all going straight to your belly right!?!  And watch your time...apparently terracotta pans heat a little better so you don't need to bake it as long.  45 minutes is probably a good judge for metal pans, but the bread will be brown and crusty on the top...it'll look done.  Just eye it.

And that's it!

Delicious homemade bread!

For now, this is the way for my kitchen, but maybe one day I'll graduate to the Amber way of things!  In the meantime, I can enjoy her bread at her house!

For more on Tasty Tuesday, make sure you head on over to Balancing Beauty and Bedlam to get the scoop on a ton of other scrumptious recipes!

Enjoy ya'll!