Maple Syrup Bread

The Ultimate Game Changer in the Bread World...for me

As is only appropriate during midterms, I seem to have acquired a bug in my stomach. Immediately defaulting to the BRAT (bread, rice, applesauce, toast) diet, I began wondering how to make these four basic foods more interesting. In addition, I have been think about how to appease a sour stomach while still incorporating protein and vegetables. That's all bull, well not really, but I made a fabulous dinner tonight consisting of steamed spinach, a fried organic free range egg, and maple syrup bread.

You can figure out how to cook and egg and how to steam spinach. More importantly, here is the bread recipe. This recipe is awesome because you get a sweet crust that is balanced by sea salt in the crust's "sauce". The bread was super light, airy, and moist. The basic bread is adapted from Anissa Helou's "Savory Baking from the Mediterranean: Focaccias, Flatbreads, Rusks, Tarts, and Other Breads".

Ingredients:
Makes 1 small loaf: this was clearly not enough

1. 3-4 tablespoons maplesyrup
2. 1 packet of yeast (active dry)
3. white flour
4. a dash of olive oil
5. salt
6. water

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, combine 1 packet of yeast with about 2 tablespoons of warm water. Stir together until creamy, and let sit for 2 minutes. Then, add about 1/3 cup of flour to the yeast. It may be necessary to adjust the proportions a tad, but you want a goopy looking blob of dough, some may call it the biga. It should be able to hold its form of a blob, it should not be runny.
2. Put one cup of flour  and 1/2 tsp of salt in the bottom of a larger bowl. Add the biga blob to the flour, on top of it, do not stir it in, and then add 3/4 cup of flour on top of the big to cover it. Let rise underneath a towel in a draft free space for 4-8 hours. I only gave it 4.
3. Take 1/2 cup of warm water and 1 1/2 tablespoons of maple syrup. Stir together so that it looks like watered down coca-cola. Add this mixture to the flour and biga and begin to mix together. Keeping add this ratio of water and maple syrup to the dough until it was an elastic texture. Knead for 3 minutes and then invert the bowl on the dough for 15 minutes.
4. Knead the dough for another seven minutes. Let the dough rise for 1 hour.
5. Fold the dough... I watched a video on youtube and this seemed to work swell. I always feel like I do this part wrong, so watch below if you are unsure. 
6. Let the dough rise for 1.5 more hours in the bowl covered by a kitchen towel in a warm area.
7. Remove the dough from the bowl and place on a baking sheet. Let the dough recover from the movement and just let it sit for about 15 minutes.
8. Heat the oven to 400F. Place a pan in the bottom rack of the oven to heat with the oven.
9. In a glass, or bowl, mix together 2 tablespoons of olive oil with 2 table spoons (or more!) of maple syrup and about 1/4 tsp of sea salt. Spread the mixture on top of the dough
10. Put the dough in the oven. In the pan below it, add 3-9 ice cubes.
11. Close the door and let cook for 17-25 minutes or until the bottom of the loaf sounds hard when you tap it and the top of the loaf is golden.
12. While the bread is cooking, steam up some spinach and fry an egg! 

PS. In the course of writing this post, I may have already finished eating the loaf.