Pullman Loaf

I have a new kitchen mixer, a Kenwood KM636. It's way better than my wimpy Phillips HR1565. It costs a lot more but it's by no means a rolls royce in the kitchen appliance world. More like a entry level straight forward kind of appliance. It's also very heavy. When I first used it, I tilted the head to remove the bowl and I almost sent the whole machine crashing to the floor!

My first bake using the mixer was of course bread. I was dying to try out the dough hook and it was not bad at all.

This was after mixing in the machine for 4 min at the slowest speed. See how clean the side of the bowl is?

And this was after adding butter and mixing for 5 min at medium speed. I only had to coax the butter into the dough using a spatula twice.

The machine is super noisy and my dining table vibrated crazily. Because the machine is heavy, I don't like the idea of putting it away in the box and taking it out whenever I want to use it. So I left it on the dining table. Permanently. Unfortunately it's in the way.

The recipe I used is similar to this one. There's another version for a smaller scale. Next time I want to try the whole wheat version here.

So what I baked is called Pain de Mie which is a sandwich loaf.

And here's my mise en place.

My dough waiting to be transported to the baking pan.

The magic happens when you bake in a pullman loaf tin. See all that corrugated metal?

lt translates to this. I'm so fascinated by how perfect the shape is.

I did not watch the proofing too carefully and it reached the top of the lid. That's why you see some ugliness.

Before I used the pullman loaf tin, I googled for a way to calculate how much dough my tin could bake but came up empty. Does anyone know? I wonder if I should just pour water into the tin until 3/4 and weigh that amount of water. Does that sound logical?

The bread was a tiny bit dense but tastes ok.

We made luncheon meat sandwich and I want to declare it's as good as any bread from a bakery.