The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book_ A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking - Laurel Robertson [26]
For a more emphatic sesame flavor, use sesame oil in the dough as part or all of the oil measure. Or you can add tahini (sesame butter)—use up to ¼ cup per loaf—with the liquid ingredients.
Crust Embellishments
Simple breads without added sweetener or milk have pale chewy crusts when they are baked in a modern oven in the normal way. Baked hotter with steam, the same bread develops a thin crispy crust that shines and browns beautifully. For instructions on how to achieve this effect in your home oven, see this page.
On the other hand, if what you’re after is a nice crust without a lot of heat and fuss, there are other ways to go than steaming. Try some of these:
FOR A SHINY CRUST
Whichever of these ploys you choose, if you are going to go to the trouble to glaze a crust, be careful to cover the whole exposed surface of the loaf or it can look pretty terrible. The best tool is a really soft, fat brush or a feather brush, but a folded, fringed cloth table napkin works pretty well, too. The stiff-bristle “pastry” brushes can dent and deflate poofy unbaked dough if you aren’t inhumanly deft.
EGG WASH
The classic bakers’ bun-wash, good on breads or buns is a mixture of one egg lightly beaten with the water it takes to fill half the shell. For more color, add a teaspoon of honey or brown sugar. You can use milk instead of water for a slightly tenderer, slightly rosier crust. Apply before, near the end, or just after baking. Less shiny, but very good for color and flavor, is to brush the loaf with butter after it comes out of the oven. This will tenderize the crust, too. You can use oil instead of butter, but it doesn’t have the same flavor. If you brush with milk before and with butter after baking you get a glowing warm color and butter’s special flavor.
CORNSTARCH GLAZE
This glaze is normally used on rye breads, but it works on any kind of loaf.
Stir ½ teaspoon of cornstarch into ¼ cup cold water. Boil for 5 minutes, or until it clears completely. Since this is tricky in these quantities unless you have a really tiny pan, you can make more and keep it in the refrigerator for a week or longer. Brush the glaze on the loaves at the end of baking, and then return them to the oven for a minute; or brush them halfway through the bake and then again at the end, as described.
GARNISHES
You can fancy up any loaf by sprinkling one of these on the board and rolling the shaped loaf in it:
sesame, poppy or other seeds
rolled oats or other rolled cereal grain
very finely chopped nuts
slivered, sautéed onions
Another topping, crunchy and pretty: Soak rolled oats in milk and press them onto the top of the loaf after you put it into the pan.
Whatever way you treat the crust, it isn’t a bad idea to keep in mind what expectations you are establishing. If the loaf looks as if it is going to taste one way and in fact tastes another, the folks will be disappointed even if the bread is actually one of their favorites. For example, if you baked a good hearty rye in an angel-food cake pan and garnished it with slivered almonds, even your biggest rye fans would be all geared up to eat Black Forest Torte when they looked at the masterpiece, and even they couldn’t help being a little disapointed—to say nothing of the folks who abhor rye. The garnish should suit the loaf.
Slashing
Just before you put the proofed bread in the oven, you can slash the top crust to produce a three-dimensional crunchiness. Loaves that will be steamed are usually slashed because it helps them rise during baking; also, when these loaves contain no milk or sugar, the inside of the slash is pale, while the outside crust browns much more, and this is very pretty. Breads with sweetener and