My 47th experiment: Bacon bread

Just took a break from the routine life. Coming back home, I find myself renewed strength to try something new again. Here is another adaptation of Bernard Clayton's recipe. His original recipe gives a sandwich loaf. Mine yields a big round loaf. Quite a success. I bake this loaf to thank the friend who introduced me to bacon. What better gift can you give in return for such an act of kindness?? None other than a loaf of homemade bacon bread.

Recipe: Bacon bread (1 round loaf)

Ingredients:
- 2+1/2 cups King Arthur bread flour
- 3 tps active dry yeast
- 1 tp coarse kosher salt
- 2-3 TB brown sugar
- 1 egg,  saving 1 TB of egg white for egg wash
- dash of crushed coriander seeds
- about 3/4 cup warm water
- about 8-10 pieces of bacon, cooked to crispy and drained of fat, cut into very fine pieces

Procedure:
1. Proof yeast in about 1/4 cup of warm water.
2. Mix bread flour, salt, brown sugar and coriander seeds in a large bowl. Use hands to break the brown sugar into fine grains and mix well with the flour.
3. Add proofed yeast and egg into the large bowl. Start mixing. Add warm water incrementally in 2-3 TB until the dough is roughly formed and very moist.
4. Allow the dough to rest for a few minutes. Knead the dough again to make the texture homogenous. Then allow the dough to rest covered with plastic wrap in a warm oven until its volume has doubled.
5. Stretch out the dough and add the bacon. Knead well. Then allow the dough to rest in a bowl, top-side-down, until volume increases by 1.5 times. Then turn dough out onto a baking pan lined with parchment paper.
6. Preheat oven to 400F. Brush dough top with egg white while waiting the oven to heat up.
7. When oven is hot, place the dough in the middle rack and bake at 375F for 10-15 minutes, until top is golden and hardened. Then cover the loaf with foil. Bake for another 30 minutes, until internal temperature reaches 190F.
8. Take loaf out. Brush with butter.
9. If not served right away, then return loaf to oven without turning heat on, to let the crust harden in the residual heat for about 30 minutes.

Results:
2:04pm, pre-cooked bacon:

2:47pm, bacon heated for nearly 2 minutes in total,

2:47pm, initial dough:

2:54pm, texture of dough after some short rest and kneading:

2:59pm, dough ready to rest:

3:17pm, dough rested 18 minutes in a warm oven:

3:19pm, dough mixing with bacon, observe the stickiness of the dough (probably because its bread flour):

3:23pm, final dough:

3:28pm, final dough ready to proof in a bowl, with the top side down (observe the clean hand):

3:45pm, final dough proofed 17 minutes with non-sticky surface:

3:49pm, final dough turned out of the bowl to rest top-side-up on aluminum pan lined with parchment paper:

3:50pm, dough's height:

3:55pm, dough ready to bake:

3:56pm, dough in oven:

4:06pm, loaf baked 10 minutes uncovered, then covered with foil for the remaining time:

4:32pm, loaf baked 36 minutes:

4:33pm, loaf's internal temperature:

4:33pm, thermometer coming out clean:

4:34pm, loaf's height:

4:34pm, loaf's bottom and side:

4:34pm, loaf's top buttered:

4:36pm, clean parchment:

5:11pm, loaf cooling:

5:11pm, loaf along the long side:

Next day morning:

On baking day, a small piece of final dough is taken out to make a sample roll for tasting

3:30pm, sample roll made to rest:

3:45pm, sample roll proofed 15 minutes:

4:11pm, sample roll baked 15 minutes:

4:11pm, sample roll's top and bottom:

4:11pm, sample roll's interior:

Observations:

1. In the experiment, the big thing is the use of bacon. Since bacon has fat, there is no need to add any extra fat to the dough. The original dough is a bit sticky. But once the bacon is added, it makes magic, turning the dough into a bouncy one.
2. When the loaf comes out of the oven, it is very big and spongy. I rub the top with butter to give it a shiny soft crust. However, because the crust is soft, the loaf soon shrinks and wrinkles when the air inside cools down. Since I plan to give this loaf away only tomorrow, it makes sense for me to keep its shape as much as possible. So I return the loaf to the warm oven. This allows the crust to harden a bit. However, when the bread comes out of the oven, it continues to collapse and shrink.
3. The egg white wash gives the loaf a golden colored crust during baking. However, it's the butter that gives the crust a shiny glaze. The butter also serves to soften the crust.