This baby is HUGE!

Forgive me for the lame post.  Bad photos, uninspired text that doesn't really explain anything....etc. It's late.

And it took forever.  Of course, that was my fault.  First, on to the bread!

Greek Celebration Bread.  Lots of ingredients!  Lots of spice!  This is the 2nd installment in my Bread Bakers Apprentice challenge!  I think bagels are next.  Can't wait!

This called for some spices, so being the freak that I am, I decided to use fresh ground. 


Allspice, Cloves, Nutmeg, and Cinnamon.  Yes, the photo is dark.  I need a more user-friendly camera!

The allspice and cloves were (individually) placed into my spice mill (aka, coffee grinder that I bought on sale at Kohls) and then finished into a mini mortar and pestle that I happened to have laying around.



From there, the cinnamon and nutmeg were ground up on my rasp.  The cinnamon was further sifted, and there tends to be larger woody pieces that splinter off, and I don't want those in my bread.

My pre-ferment for this bread was a poolish, made from 2 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 cups water, and 1/4 tsp yeast.  Allowed to sit for 3 or 4 hours until it started bubbling, and then put in to the fridge.  This pre-ferment then gets added to the rest of the ingredients.  Which I did.  Blah blah blah. 

This dough...was becoming enormous in size.   Not sure if it was supposed to be this big.  I had to keep adding flour to get a nice ball of dough to form.  It was wayyyy to sticky before that.  I started to knead it with my KitchenAid mixer, but soon realized that this beast would kill the motor.  Then I remembered that I wanted to knead the breads in this challenge by hand anyways, so all was good.

Well...good until I realized that I FORGOT THE YEAST!    I added the yeast and kneaded and kneaded some more!  Of course, this meant that it would take a LOT longer to rise.  And it did.  Probably about 6 hours longer than it should have.


I think this weighed 3 lbs, 14 oz.


Yea!  It's doubled! 


You can see the olive oil that was used to coat the dough and the rising bucket sitting at the top.  Maybe too much oil?  Tough to tell as it all gets pushed to the top.

Here is the almost 4 pound beast shaped into a nice boule, in the proofing stage.



While I'm waiting for this to rise a bit more, it's on to the glaze (which by the way really made the bread !) 
2 Tbs water, 2 Tbs Sugar, 2 Tbs Honey and 1 Tsp lemon zest.



The bread, once proofed, takes about 45 minutes in a 350 degree oven, when done it looks something...ok....exactly...like this: