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One of the nice things about having my in-laws here for two weeks was that it gave me an excuse to bake bread again. So far I’d baked only about three dozen loaves (or equivalent) this year, much less than previous years due to time constraints as well as a recent focus on healthier eating.

Like me, though, my in-laws are bread lovers, and I’m a sucker for an audience. I fired up the oven six times in two weeks:

• What the Dutch Regale bakery calls Korn Bread is more traditionally called Vollkornbrot, at least by people who can pronounce “Vollkornbrot” (e.g. not me). It is a dense, chewy, moist brick of a bread, baked — gasp! — in a pan, a real change of pace for a hearth-bread addict. Made with 100% rye (whole, cracked, and flour), it’s the heaviest bread I’ve ever made, and one I’m not particularly fond of, although area Germans (and my wife’s volks) tell me it’s excellent. The recipe is from Artisan Baking Across America.
• “Team America Beer Bread,” a recipe developed by Craig Ponsford of Artisan Bakers for the Coupe du Monde, scaled down to home-kitchen capacities by Peter Reinhart, and published in Crust & Crumb, is unusual in that in requires two preferments (one sourdough, one commercially yeasted), a bottle of beer, and a large amount of malt. The finished multigrain loaves have a complex flavor and an unexpected (but pleasant) hoppy and malty aroma. I made an extra loaf for the neighbors, but we ate that one too.
• For a party, I made three pans (~6.5 lbs) of focaccia, using the Crust & Crumb formula. Given minimal handling, and baked at the party, the bread was among the best I’ve made. The toppings were a bit less hearty than I prefer, due entirely to the fact that I was too lazy to assemble anything worthy of this amazing dough.
• Next up was a large sourdough boule, my “house bread,” based on a firm levain approach from Artisan Baking Across America. I add a half-cup of flax meal to the dough, something I have not seen done at any commercial bakery. The flax adds density, but tenderizes the dough (probably due to the high oil content). The resulting color and flavor are great.
• Experimenting with potato dough, I created a large “tortano,” which is a rustic Italian bread that looks like a bagel about 14'' across. The bread is built from a poolish starter, but calls for no additional yeast in the dough… so proofing takes a long time, even with this relatively wet dough. The result is similar to a ciabatta, in that the crumb has large, irregular holes. Overall, though, it was not a memorable loaf, probably my least appealing bread of this period. I thought the potato starch would have a more pronounced effect on the crumb, but I was sadly disappointed, and now I have a half tortano in my freezer that I’ll have to schlep off on some unsuspecting future dinner guests.
• Finally, as a farewell party for the in-laws, we hosted a pizza feast. I used Peter Reinhart’s magical delayed-fermentation dough recipe, from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, with wonderful results. This dough shapes like a dream. It’s unbelievable; a few quick tugs and a ball of dough becomes a well-formed pizza shell. To my dismay, I realized too late that my oven technique is a bit rusty… I over-baked some of the pizzas slightly, although I don’t think anyone noticed. A few of the crusts had dried out in the oven. Perhaps the guests were distracted by our fantabulous toppings: roasted garlic, mostly-fresh Roma tomatoes, basil, fresh mozzarella; homemade pesto and sauteed crimini mushrooms; homemade barbecue sauce, sauteed brined chicken, red onions, cilantro, monterey jack.

So, a million calories later, I’m reduced once again to only occasionally getting my carb fix from bread. Just in time, too — if my father-in-law had had any more vacation time, I’d have ended up looking like the Pillsbury Dough-Boy. Heck, I’ve already got the coloration, the big eyes, and the stupid hat.