A bread of pure luxury

Tomorrow is my one year anniversary at my current job, and to celebrate, and to thank my great co-workers for making it such a great year, I decided to make a special treat to bring in to work tomorrow. So what do I make for my treats? Bread of course!

The idea solidified when I was selecting the produce for our weekly delivery this week. I noticed they had concord grapes. I always meant to try making this recipe, and I thought, here is the perfect opportunity. Order placed, grapes arrived, home from work, kids in bed, time to bake!

To start, make my recipe for foccacia that you can find here:

http://moeknowsbread.blogspot.com/2011/09/pesto-bread.html

While the dough is rising, sterilize some tweezers and go to work seeding the grapes. And now, I will bestow upon you a great gift. All the concord grape recipes I read simply said to seed the grapes. What they didn't say was that the larger grapes have TWO seeds. In my case, this meant I spent 30 minutes seeding the grapes, and then 30 minutes re-seeding the grapes. Learn from my mistakes.

After the bread has risen, and hopefully more grapes have made it into the bowl than your mouth, shape the bread into foccacia and proceed on.

Once you've got the bread shaped and on the tray, make sure to press 15 dimples in each loaf. These will hold the majority of the grapes in place. The rest are on their own. Put a grape in each dimple, and then supplement with however many you want until they are basically covered.

Now, take some of your dried rosemary (you grow and dry your own, right?) and crush/sprinkle it over the loaves. Follow that with some Fleur de Sel that your mother in law brought you from France. Finally, cube butter into 1/4" cubes and drop about 8 cubes on each loaf. The butter will keep the tops of the loaves moist during the early stages of baking to promote a better rise, and will give the tops a beautiful golden brown color. Also, it's butter, do I really need to justify it?

Let the bread rise for 10 minutes more outside of the oven, and then bake one tray at a time at 375 and follow steps 17-20 on the linked foccacia post to bake. Total baking time is about 20-25 minutes.

Now, go throw on your best toga, lounge in your favorite chair, and eat some concord grape foccacia like it's 9. BC, that is.

A few key ingredients

Distribute the grapes, sprinkle with rosemary and salt

Add dots of butter

Perfection! Mangia!

I digress, but in a good direction. Doughnuts anyone?

So I failed miserably at sourdough. I decided to wait until the weather is warmer (which it is now, very nice and humid) to try again. The day after my last post, the starter refused to grow at all. Hopefully my next attempt will work better, and I can continue to post the process when I catch up to where I was.

In the meantime... today is National Doughnut Day. That seems worthy of a post, no?

Here we go. I made plain cake doughnuts tonight, I will certainly revisit this again to try other kinds of doughnuts as well.

This recipe is courtesy of Allrecipes.com, and is very similar to the doughnuts I used to eat by the handfuls at coffee hour after church when I was growing up.

2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp salt
1 T baking powder
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 dash ground nutmeg. (Ok, I used two dashes)
2 T melted butter
1/2 cup milk
1 egg, beaten
Oil for frying

1. Preheat the oil in your deep fryer to 375 degrees.
2. Mix together in a large bowl all the dry ingredients.
3. Mix in the butter until it become slightly crumbly (there's not enough butter to make it ALL crumbly)
4. Stir in the milk and egg until it forms a smooth, very soft dough. If the dough is like a drippy batter, knead in extra flour, a tablespoon at a time, until it is thick enough to form a very soft ball (see photo)
5. Knead lightly, then place on a floured surface. Dust the top of the ball with flour to lightly coat.
6. Roll the dough to 1/4 inch thickness.
7. Cut into desired shape. I cut most of mine into traditional doughnuts (and doughnut holes). Then I took the scraps, divided them into thirds, and made a braided doughnut. (See pictures)
8. Carefully drop the doughnuts into the hot oil. Do not crowd the fryer.
9. Fry for 3 minutes, turning at 1:30. Drain on paper towels.

These came out really good - a bit crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside. The cinnamon and nutmeg add great flavor - no frosting or glazing needed (although use of either is not discouraged!)

Enjoy! Happy Baking... er... frying!

A perfect ball of dough

Rolled out and ready to cut

That looks about right.

Save those doughnut holes!

Using every bit of dough

The first one is in!

These cook much more quickly - watch them closely

Three minutes worked for the braid too

Those look perfect

Those came out pretty good too

Enjoy! Yum.

Sourdough... Day Four

Day Four - last day of building the seed. Today it should have doubled or more (mine doubled) and should be developing a great sour odor. If it has not at least doubled, let it sit out another 12-24 hours until it does.

Once it has doubled, discard half again, and one more time add a cup of flour and a half cup of room temperature water. Fully incorporate, mark it with tape like a champ, and wrap it up.

Let it sit until it doubles (at least) in size. This could take anywhere from 4-24 hours. It should be soft and spongelike - if you tap the container, it should fall. That is your sign that it is ready to turn into a barm.

Get excited! You are only a few days from sourdough!

Happy Baking!

A good doubling. Smells great!

Ready to be barm tomorrow!

Sourdough... Day Three

Day Three is super exciting. Probably the best day of the whole process.

Ha ha ha.

Today there should be a bit of rise on the dough, about 50% or so. I saw about a 1 cup increase in volume, so mine is about right on. Today, I discarded half of my starter (well, actually I split it into a second container for a friend) and fed it with the same ingredients as yesterday - 1 cup bread flour, 1/2 cup room temperature water. Mix thoroughly and re-cover with plastic wrap, set out for 24 hours.

Don't worry, this day is not a glitch in the matrix...

Tomorrow, assuming there is a good enough rise (at least doubled) I get to turn my seed into a barm, which is sort of like the sourdough equivalent of pre-med.

Happy Baking!

Sourdough... Day Two

On day two, we are simply feeding the seed with some more flour and water. A high gluten flour is important - I don't have any "high gluten" flour on hand, but bread flour will do.

The seed dough won't have risen much this first day. It will be much softer and wetter than yesterday though.

Simply add 1 cup of bread or high gluten flour and 1/2 cup of room temperature water to the seed dough, mixing with a spoon until the added ingredients are well distributed.

Re-pat down the dough and move your tape to mark the new height of the mixture (should be close to 2 cups total)

Re-wrap, and store at room temperature another 24 hours.

See you tomorrow, happy baking!

Remember me?

I used to blog here... long ago. Well, it's time to start again. So without boring you with a sob story about work and kids and cleaning my garage, let's get to it.

I've decided to make sourdough. Sourdough is a bread that has been made since ancient times. The sour taste comes partially from the fermentation process, which cultures natural, or "wild" yeast naturally present, rather than adding yeast. The process of preparing the start also cultivates acids, which share responsibility for the complex sour flavors added.

I've chosen to start with the traditional, "basic" sourdough recipe in "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" - a book I've referred to before (search my blog for keyword Anadema)

The entire starter process takes about a week, first I will make a "seed" which cultivates the wild yeast that will then be developed in the starter, or "barm"

Tonight is night 1. The seed process will probably take about 4-5 days, depending on the environment you work in. Temperature and humidity in your kitchen will both affect the quality of your seed and the amount of time it takes to properly develop.

The seed in the recipe I'm using calls for starting with Rye flour, but I don't have any, and whole wheat flour can easily be substituted. The flavor is really all that will be affected. The nice thing about sourdough is that once you are comfortable with the process, you can make all sorts of changes - nothing will ruin the flavor, it will just make it unique.

The steps for tonight are easy:

1. In a small bowl, mix 1 cup of whole wheat flour and 3/4 cup of room temperature water. Ensure that all the flour has been hydrated. Depending on how you measure your flour, you may end up with either a thick paste or a very stiff dough ball (should be more like a paste - if not, see prior recipes for a discussion of how to measure flour)

2. Press the dough into the bottom of a 4 cup liquid measuring cup. Mark the current level of the seed with a piece of tape, and wrap the top with plastic wrap. Set it on the counter and let it rest for 24 hours.

That's it. We'll come back tomorrow and feed it, re-mark it, and re-wrap it.

Happy Baking!

Start with good flour



Good old fashioned water



A proper cup of flour



The seed mixture



Marked and ready to rest

Give a holla for Challah!

Of all the breads that I make on a regular basis, Challah is the most popular with most of my friends and family. When I worked as a baker at the Italian restaurant in my hometown, we made Challah once a week - there was no other place to buy it in town, and there were some dedicated customers that would buy it from us every week.

Challah is a Jewish sweet egg bread, typically formed as a braid - the number of strands braided mean different things. I typically do a three strand braid, which traditionally symbolizes truth, peace, and justice.

More on the history of Challah can be found here:

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/culture/2/Food/Ashkenazic_Cuisine/Germany/Challah.shtml

On to the recipe. This is another recipe I would usually mix by hand, but I've tried to adapt it to a stand mixer. It came out pretty well, although the dough ball pretty much maxed out the capacity of my mixer bowl.

2 Cups lukewarm water

3 tsp highly active yeast

1/4 Cup olive oil

1/4 Cup + 2 T granulated sugar

3 large eggs

8-9 Cups all purpose flour

1. Start with 2 cups lukewarm water in your mixer bowl.

2. Add the yeast, mix on low speed for 10 seconds. Let it rest for a few minutes until bubbly.

3. Add the oil, sugar, and eggs, mix on low speed 30 seconds until incorporated.

4. Add 3 - 3.5 Cups of the flour, mix on low speed until a thick batter is formed. (See photo)

5. Remove the paddle and attach the dough hook. Add 4 Cups flour and begin to knead on low speed.

6. Continue kneading and adding flour 1/4 Cup at a time until the dough loses its stickiness, cleans the bowl, and forms a somewhat firm ball. (See photo)

7. Lightly oil the bowl, turn the dough to coat, cover with plastic wrap and set in a warm place to rise until slightly less than doubled. (About 30-45 minutes, see photo)

8. Turn the risen dough out onto the counter and shape into a log for easy dividing. Divide into 6 equal pieces. (See photo)

9. Shape each piece into a smooth tight ball. See the 4 steps in photos below. Start by pushing the center of the ball down and pulling opposite sides up to meet on top.

10. Rotate the ball and repeat. Each time you rotate and repeat, pull a little less up so the pinched portion on top gets smaller and smaller. This stretches the other side out forming a smooth, tight ball.

11. Repeat to form all six balls.

12. Now, working with three balls at a time, roll the dough out, playdough style, into strands about two feet long, about one inch in diameter. (See photo)

13. Pinch one end of each strand together, and braid the three strands together. When you get to the end, pinch them together and tuck each end underneath. (See photo)

14. Place the shaped loaf on a pan (no greasing necessary) taking care to lay it straight. Repeat with the other loaf.

15. Prepare a simple egg wash by beating an egg in a bowl, and thoroughly brush the top of the loaf with the wash. Make sure to get all the crevices where the braids meet.

16. Sprinkle the loaf generously with poppy seeds. (See photo)

17. Do not set out to rise before baking. Immediately bake in a preheated 375 degree oven.

18. Spray your oven with water, set your timer for 5 minutes. Spray at 5 minutes, and 10 minutes without disturbing the loaves.

19. After spraying at 10 minutes, set the timer for 8 minutes. Rotate the loaves every 8 minutes until nicely browned. (See photo) Baking time will be about 30 minutes total.

20. Cool for 5 minutes, then transfer to cooling racks.

Enjoy!

P.S. - If any of the bread lasts beyond the first day, Challah makes the most amazing French Toast you'll ever have...

Happy Baking!

Some basic ingredients	After the first flour addition
The final dough ball	Risen and ready to shape
Shape the dough into a log	Cut into six equal pieces
Forming a ball step 1	Step 2
Step 3	Step 4
The finished ball	Ready to roll
Rolled out	Braiding the loaf
Braided	Ready to top
Egg wash and poppy seeds	Out of the oven