Hummus Bread

Prep Time: 10-15 minutes
Rise Time: 2 hours
Bake Time: 35-40 minutes
Cool Time: 30 minutes
Grade: C+ (B, when you eat it really fresh)
Make Again: Maybe
Recipe Source: Whole Grain Baking
Recipe: Hummus Bread

The link to the recipe above is not exactly the same as in their Whole Grain Baking book.  The ratio of Whole Grain to regular flour is flipped.  There is no bread improver called for in the book, and it uses olive oil instead of garlic.  The amounts are slightly different on some of the ingredients, but otherwise the ingredient list looks pretty similar.

This one didn't start out too well.  I weighed the flours and hummus but my dough was super soft and sticky.  I have been having this problem on the last few doughs, so I'm wondering if I am not doing a good job of measuring the liquids - I should probably weigh those also.

Sometimes this book gives good instructions, but usually not as thorough as Cook's Illustrated.  This one wasn't too explicit and didn't say how long I should need or if it was okay for the dough to be so sticky.  It said a soft dough.  Well, the dough never got very "soft" in my mind because it was using a whole grain flour (with a little all-purpose included.)

I ended up adding another 1/4 c of flour.  The dough still wasn't anything that I could shape really well into a loaf, so after the first rise I poured/pulled it into the pan.  I couldn't tell if it had doubled and I wasn't sure if it would rise 1.5" above the pan so I used 8x4 instead of 8.5x4.5 to be safe.  I didn't want a shorty loaf.  It ended up tall enough.  It smelled really good while baking.

This recipe uses 1 cup of hummus.  It also calls for toasted sesame seeds which I skipped.  Mine was really garlicky and I would probably try to avoid that next time although I still liked how the bread tasted.  There was a more crusty version of the recipe in the book and I can see why.  The crust on this bread is delicious.

The bread has a unique taste and I did like it. I wanted to eat more when it first came out of the oven.  However, it has more of a quick bread feel to me, and I don't feel like it was quite special enough that I will long for this in the future.  Since I made it right around the time I made the Rustic Rolls, which I loved, it does not live up to those high expectations.  I may make again if/when I have leftover hummus.