This beautiful looking bread is called a Wheatsheaf Loaf. This is actually not part of the 100 breads in the book but in the introductory section. Paul says that if you can make this bread by following his recipe you can make any bread in the book. The reason why I am making this the first out of 100 is because one of the recipes in the book is non edible and WHAT IS THE POINT OF THAT? So this beauty is bread #1. It really was a ton of fun to make. Mix all of the ingredients, knead, only let rise one hour and then the shaping. It was like I was a child again playing with my plasticine and making funny shapes. As you can see by the picture it looks stunning. My problem with it.. it was hard as a rock! It would have been beautiful as a centerpiece at a fete or, as my husband put it, used as a deadly weapon. I am not sure what the problem was. Maybe Paul would tell me that it was underproved or I didn't use the right amount of yeast but yikes. So, not to be discouraged, I went online and watched a bunch of videos of bakers making the wheatsheaf bread and I made up by own recipe. I definetely felt that the hard as rock bread had too much salt so I lessened that, bumped up the yeast, but the biggest change was that I let my kitchenaid mixer and dough hook do about 10 mins of kneading. My poor kitchenaid mixer at 300 watts is really struggling with my doughs, I definitely need to invest in a higher wattage more professional mixer but so far cannot find anything worthy for less than $500. Anyways, this must have done the trick because my second wheatsheafer bread turned out soft, more puffy and stunning, although you can't tell that I made a mouse on the bottom.
I had leftover dough so I put my kid to work and they made a Merlin as a young boy and a bread that says Oatswinger, which is a made up name for how our family heard a wizard on a tv show we watch say a spell out loud.
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