Tuesdays With Dorie: Whole Wheat Bread

Sliced!

Nice, tight crumb.

For our second Tuesdays With Dorie assignment for September, we made whole wheat bread. This recipe was really straightforward and easy to make. I loved the way the bread turned out. At some point, I will try it! Due to scheduling issues, I ended up making the bread, slicing it, then freezing it. On the one hand, lame! On the other hand, I have two beautiful loaves of bread in the freezer. Can't beat that.

Henceforth in my blogging, I am going to label posts when appropriate with the tag "insane ingredient." If I don't have it, it has to be pretty out there. In this case, the bread recipe called for malt extract. After a quick search online to determine what malt extract is, I substituted molasses. Malt extract. Good grief.

Visit this week's hosts, Veggie Num Nums and The Family That Bakes Together, for the recipe.

Tuesdays With Dorie: Nectarine Upside-Down Chiffon Cake

For this edition of Tuesdays With Dorie, I think I need to invoke the McKayla Maroney "not impressed" face. I'm not sure what happened, but this one didn't work out as planned. While I didn't have a 10-in. springform pan, which the recipe called for, I do have one that measures 9.5 in. That seemed close enough.

I ended up with way more cake batter than was going to fit in the pan, so I filled a couple of ramekins with cake batter and baked them off separately. I also decided not to layer in the streusel given the volume of material already going into the pan.

On the plus side, the cake didn't bake over. However, I baked the cake for far longer than the suggested oven time (55 min., believe it or not), and took it from the oven when it tested done. Twenty-five minutes later, when I removed it from the pan and flipped it over -- surprise! -- it wasn't done in the center. I flipped it back fruit-side down onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and popped it in the oven for 20 additional minutes. The cake portion of the event deflated terribly, and much of the brown sugar/butter topping leaked out and puddled in the protective casing of foil I'd wrapped around the pan.

All in all, kind of a disappointment. If I were to make this cake again, which I might just to see if it would work, I would make it in a regular 10-in. cake pan, with parchment on the bottom of the pan. On the plus side, it was edible and didn't taste bad at all. Also, in a fit of amazing efficiency, I made the next TWD project yesterday, and that one turned out great.

Recipe is available at this week's hosts, The Double Trouble Kitchen and The Little French Bakery.