No-Pullman-Pan-De-Mie

I've been privately kvetching for a few years now about not having any Pullman pans.  Pullman pans, with their square sides and lid, allow one to make a loaf with square slices for sandwiches (not that you can't make a sandwich out of a non-square piece of bread, but you know what I mean).  My kvetching level increased when I started doing JLMBBC bread, because I thought maybe a Pullman pan would seal well enough to let me use the JLMBBC technique with one.  Alas, I never found one nearby within my price range. 

So yesterday I'm perusing my copy of The Bread Bible, looking at recipes for small rolls and the like.  Ms. Beranbaum has an entire section devoted to soft sandwich style breads, and includes rolls in that section.  I've certainly been spending plenty of time over the past few years making loaves of bread; the thing that's missing are the smaller items: rolls, buns, crackers, flatbreads....  Hence my making crackers and small rolls lately.  Anyway, I'm looking at the pain de mie recipe, which started my Pullman kvetching again.  But this time I thought, "Hey, there's no reason I can't make a Pullman-style loaf: it just won't be square."  Also, Ms. Beranbaum's pain de mie recipe goes very quickly.  So....

I mixed and kneaded the recipe.  The volume for the Pullman pan she recommended was way more than the volume of one of my "footboule" pans, so when I got ready for my final shaping, I weighed out an amount proportional to my smaller-volume pan.  I took the rest and shaped little balls for rolls, which I cooked first in a muffin tin. 

The bread came out fine.  White sandwich bread has very little structure compared to other bread, so having a pan that's essentially a mold helps get you the loaf shape you want.  Also, having all sides pretty well cooked gives you a little more structure to hang the airy bread off of.  As you can see, the footboule pan worked fine.  I oiled the pan and the inside of the lid, just as one would do with a Pullman pan.  The directions called for the baking to be done half with the lid on, and half off.  The loaf did want to hold on to the lid a bit, but it came off with only a little coaxing. 

One interesting thing:  If you look closely at the pictures (all the pictures link to bigger versions, so go click), you might notice that the top of the loaf is slightly concave.  It's certainly not domed like the lid itself is.  I think that air was trapped in the top of the lid  and had nowhere to go, and may have actually decreased my loaf volume a bit.  I guess I need have no worries about how tightly my pan closes.  :)

This bread, as intended, is much less dense than, say, the JLMBBC footboules I've been making.  One of those usually weighs just under 1½ pounds.  This loaf weighed about 18 ounces, or almost 6 ounces less.  But it had maybe 50% more volume.  And as you can see from the picture on the right, the crumb is much more fine and even -- maybe not so much as a loaf of store-bought sandwich bread, but certainly nothing to be ashamed of.  The thin-well done crust all around helps hold together the slices, whose crumb has not much more cohesiveness than a slice of cake. 

The taste: pretty good, and about what I wanted.  Milk, butter, and a little honey give the bread that barely sweet, tender taste I wanted out of white sandwich bread.  There's also a pleasant, acidic note; I have no idea how it got there.  The bread toasts well, browning a little more quickly with the added honey.  The honey also helps the loaf stay soft. 

And the rolls?  I wound up handling their dough a lot more than that for the loaf, so they were a bit firmer and more resilient, but not at all objectionable.  I ate most of them last night -- some hot out of the oven, and a few more with dinner last night.  But fortunately, I did have a few left for the pictures this morning.  :)

By the way, there are Wikipedia pages for both "pain de mie" and "Pullman loaf," but they're both sub-par for Wikipedia articles.  They do have smidgens of information I don't include above, so I've linked to them.

So there you go -- a non-JLMBBC bread post.  Woo-hoo!  :)

Comments

[--Lisa S.]

Gorgeous!

[Joe Eater]

Why thankye!

[Jack]

Pullman Pan, hunh? As always, I learn something new from Eat at Joe's!

[Joe Eater]

Gods: I made this thing Wednesday night. I ate maybe half of the rolls that night, between dinner and what I ate when they came out of the oven. I didn't slice the loaf until Thursday morning, when it had fully cooled. I'd say you could admire my restraint at not slicing it immediately; however, it's Friday afternoon, and I've got maybe a 1½ inch end piece left of the loaf. All the rolls were gone sometime yesterday.

[Fritz]

Damn... your bread is a masterpiece

Looks like you have acheived crust perfection

[Joe Eater]

Thanks Fritz! The crust on the JLMBBC loaves is what I really love though.

[chris]

Pain Dormir?

When I was a kid I watched Julia CHild make a loaf, I can here her squeaky nasal 6'4" tall voice. She is my altime favorite food person.

I though she said pain Dormnir, sleeping bread, and I think on one show she said it, but as you have put in your post it is Pain De Mie. Heck , they taught me bay french in catlick school and I could not parse the words right and her speaking voice canned it for me.

I paid 53 bucks 26 years ago and it is wonderful. You can get them from a supply house, you just need to to be perisistant. There is a chain store that sells it on line only. My friend is away from her desk so I can't call for the name, but it is a biggie like Willaims Sanoma or someother high end crap. BUT the price for this item is reasonable. But a good LOCAL bakery/cooking restaurant supply house can get them for you.

The recipe for the bread and a great demo is in 3 disk set

The French Chef, on disk 3 , 1's episode. buy it or go to the library, (that is what I did)

She is weird and a caricature, but she IS an original. She is , "DABEST". She said they didn't have money to do retakes, so mistakes and flubbs happen and her commentary when asked was simply, words to the effect: things go wrong in a kitchen , if we have a problem we will keep going and show how to fix or show a mistake, and explain it.

I made this recpe for the first time when I was 16, from memmory. I made it every week for a few months. My dad thought it was bakery bread and flipped a gasket when I stopped making it. It was a momment frozen in my memmory it was a scene from EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, or another over the top family sitcom.

I urge you to try it. If you can't find the pain JULIA suggest a cookie sheet on top of the loaf pan and brick or iron on top if it. The beauty of Pullman Pan is simple perfect rectangle. And done right I get hash marksd on my bread on the bottom sides. I put it back in oven for 5-10 mins to dry up the sides.

toasted and buttered this is killer bread, (just look at the fat content)

Mangia Qui Fait Grande

ciao

christoff

[chris]

It was W/S

URL:

http://www.williams-sonoma.com , then search for loaf pan

you should get a page that shows it and others, click the pic.
here is the page of just the pan:

http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/sku5839592/index.cfm?pkey=xsrd0m1%7C16%7C%7C%7C0%7C%7C%7C%7C%7C%7C%7Cloaf%20pan&cm%5Fsrc=SCH

this is LESS then I paid for mine when I was first married(over 20 years ago). I bought mine in a fancy foodie store on upper east side of NYC well in the upper 50's. I knew if I could have found it in a supply store I would have paid about 40-60 % less.
So this price is excellent. my pan is very heavy and has a design on the bottom of the loaf, that sometimes can be seen in the bread. If you use Julia's recipe the bread keeps nicely in a brown bag with a piece of foil on the cut end. A waxed bag from a bakery is better. The fridge is ok, plastic bags are gross, but if you are going to toast it before using it, then it is fine. Mine never lasted long enough to have mold issues. Toasted buttered and cinnamon dusted is great, made into a raisin bread with cinnamon and (sometimes) nutz is fabulous toasted and buttered, or cream cheesed!

ciao

christoff

[Joe Eater]

Christoff: Thanks. Probably the main reason I don't have a real pain de mie pan is that I'm lazy and cheap. :) But I was surprised at how well the oval roaster worked, especially since I also had to adjust for pan size.

I usually use a plain paper bag to hold my everyday homemade bread, either leaving it cut side down on the stove or with the entire bag in a basket. A waxed bag might be better for the pdm, since it does probably want to stay a little moister than my usual bread. But 90% of the time I toast bread anyway, so even though it's bad for it, I do sometimes store it in the refrigerator.

And, by the way, I also hear Julia's distinctive voice when reading her books. :)