Interlude: A Tale of Bread Dough

Since I'm no longer going to the store, and most of what I can get delivered to me is just ingredients themselves, I'm baking my own bread these days, and probably eating less of it overall. I have been concentrating on recipes that don't ask me for butter or milk as those are somewhat trickier things to get in their vegan forms (and probably non-vegan ones, which I haven't attempted). This is a story about one of my forays into baking.

I tried this recipe for bread, since it promised a steady supply of bread dough for up to two weeks, and four little manageable loaves for me to spread out as I wanted to. But I never really got it to rise properly.

Loaf #1 looked okay but it was flat. We're talking flat.

Whatever. I sliced up loaf one and turned it into toast. It was fine.

And on a day I refused to cook, it made for a okay meal of peanut butter and banana open face sandwiches.

But things got weird. The rest of the dough rose in the fridge, endlessly, repeatedly, and yet if removed from the fridge, formed into a loaf, and left out...it still did not rise. It got mildly puffy in the oven but nothing all that different from Loaf #1. And yet, though dense, the bread was soft, and stayed softer longer than the first loaf. It had a flavor I can't describe, exactly, but it was amazing. Nothing like any bread I've ever baked. I regret not getting photos of Loaf #2.

With slices of the second loaf, I took two narrow little things and made them into a Boca chicken sandwich with some Vegenaise, lettuce, and tomato. I had to make it open face and cut the Boca patty in half, because the bread was so flat and the slices so skinny. It is not easy to eat that way. But I ate it!

And I liked it. So I tried round three.

Inexplicably, this one rose the most out of all the loaves I made from this batch, though still not a whole lot. And very oddly, only on one side! This was probably the best loaf. You have already seen it paired up with my mung bean omelet.

By the time I got to loaf four, the dough had begun to smell strangely of beer, but I figured that probably wouldn't hurt me (and didn't, by the way), especially baked at such a high temperature. I was prepared for bread that didn't really rise, and, well, it didn't really rise that much, though it rose a bit more than I thought it might. I think I pulled this loaf out a bit too soon, but it still tasted pretty good.

So, what do you think? Should I halve this recipe and see if it stays contained in its bowl in the fridge, so I don't have to deflate it? Or do you have a recipe to recommend that can give me the option of refrigerating the dough until needed?