Category: Bread

Recipe Review: Italian Herb Bread

I spent most of Sunday baking.  First I tested a new bread recipe (see previous post on the Vermont Whole Wheat Oatmeal Honey Bread recipe). Terry and I wanted to have Italian for dinner, so I decided to make some Italian herb bread.  I reviewed my two ‘stand by’ recipes, Italian Supermarket Bread and Rosemary Sourdough, and decided I really needed to program my Zojirushi for a custom dough cycle (less kneading, more rising).  I couldn’t find the print edition that I received with the BB-CEC20 bread machine (I filed it away with all the other appliance manuals), so I downloaded a searchable copy (aka as a PDF file).

As I paged through the “How to Enjoy Your Home Bakery Supreme Breadmaker Operating Instructions and Recipes” for the Zojirushi Model BB-CEC20, I got distracted by the recipes listed under the Basic Course.  Continue reading “Recipe Review: Italian Herb Bread”

Recipe Review: Vermont Whole Wheat Oatmeal Honey Bread (via King Arthur Flour)

Vermont Whole Wheat Oatmeal Honey Bread

by P.J. Hamel at King Arthur Flour

Rating:  TBD

Converting the original recipe (click on recipe name above) to fit in my bread machine:

In a the bread pan for your bread machine, combine the water, oats, maple or brown sugar, honey, butter, salt, and cinnamon. Let cool to lukewarm, about 10 to 15 minutes

Continue reading “Recipe Review: Vermont Whole Wheat Oatmeal Honey Bread (via King Arthur Flour)”

Cracked Honey Wheat Bread

Other ingredients1 1/4 cups boiling water
1/4 cup cracked wheat

4 T canola oil (or butter/margarine)
4 T honey
1 cup KAF White Whole Wheat Flour
2 cups KAF Unbleached Bread Flour
1 T vital wheat gluten
1 1/2 tsp sea salt
2 tsp yeast

∞∞∞

Cracked wheat soakingUsing my bread machine, I placed the boiling water in the bread pan first with the cracked wheat to soak (min of 30 mins) while I gathered the other ingredients.  I added the honey and oil to pan.

Ready to mix∞∞∞

Then I added the dry ingredients, except for the yeast.  I made a crater in the mound of flour mixture and placed the yeast carefully in the crater.

I set a delay on my dough cycle (my bread machine includes a 20 min preheat feature I can add for all programmed cycles) and let the machine do the rest.  I prefer to back my bread in my oven, rather than the machine, so I almost always use dough cycle.

My Precious
My Precious (click image for rest of album)

[flickr video=8350532602 secret=d75c012cf5 w=400 h=327]

Once the cycle completes, remove the dough from the pan, shape it and allow the dough to rise, covered, for about 1 hour, or until it’s crowned about 1 inch over the rim of the pan. Bake the bread in a preheated 350°F oven for 35 to 45 minutes, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center of the loaf registers about 190°F. Remove the bread from the oven, turn it out of the pan, and let it cool on a wire rack.

∞∞∞

Check back in a couple of hours for updated photos and the results of my bread dough epiphany.

Cooling on rack
Cooling on the rack

Soured on Sourdough

I tried valiantly but failed miserably twice this past weekend to bake a simple sourdough loaf.  I fed my sourdough starter and let it bubble for several hours Saturday before attempting the first loaf of Rustic Sourdough.  I read the recipe through quickly, but not very coherently.  I added the ingredients to the bread machine and started the dough cycle.  Thirty minutes before the cycle ended, Terry and I left the house to buy a handful of items at the grocery store.  I asked him to remind me to take the dough out of the machine when we returned, for shaping and final rise.  Instead, we sat down and started watching a movie.  Forty-five minutes later, the light bulb went off in my head and I remembered the dough.

As soon as I took the pan out of the bread machine, the dough deflated.  I quickly shaped the dough without kneading it too much and placed it in a loaf pan.  Forty-five minutes later, it had hardly expanded more than a half inch or so.  I preheated the oven and baked it anyway, even though it came out of the oven resembling a brick.  Terry tasted it and loved the flavor, so I’ll probably chop it up and turn it into croutons.

Sunday, I repeated the process with my sourdough starter, feeding it and letting it bubble for several hours.  I reviewed the Rustic Sourdough recipe again and again completely ignored one of the key ingredients, forgetting to add it to the bread pan of the bread machine before starting the dough cycle.  I didn’t forget about the dough, though, since we had already run all of our errands.

I took the dough out, shaped it, placed it in the pan, and put forty minutes on the kitchen timer.  As I walked away from the counter, another light bulb went on in my head and I rushed to my Nook to review, for the third time, the recipe.  I finally connected the dots.  The key ingredient I had forgotten happened to be the sugar, necessary to feed the yeast.  I had not forgotten the salt, which is also necessary, to keep the yeast from expanding forever.  Not once, but twice, I forgot to include sugar in the sourdough.

The dough rose slowly, but not nearly as much as it should have during the final rise.  It would have risen higher had the yeast had some sugar (beyond what it could glean from the flour).  I preheated the oven and baked the loaf, which now resembled French bread rather than Sourdough.  I even spritzed the oven with a water bottle to simulate a steam injected French oven.  The steam crystallizes the crust.

I haven’t sliced this loaf yet, but will taste test it this evening during dinner.  This second loaf may also be consigned to crouton duty.  Do I dare try a third time to capture the elusive perfect sourdough loaf?  Thunderstorms are forecast for Thursday, so I may take advantage of the low pressure system to try again on that day.

On the Second Day of Christmas

I spent the day baking bread.  Always enjoyable for me and any of my house guests.  The aroma of baking bread permeates our home.

My first loaf of the morning I made for my father.  Since our family is celebrating Christmas (by opening presents and feasting on an Italian themed dinner) tomorrow, I wanted to make a fresh loaf of his favorite: White Sandwich Bread <= (click link for recipe).

The second loaf will be my version of the Italian Supermarket bread recipe I found last year at the King Arthur Flour web site.

The third and final loaf will be Rustic Sourdough, modified to mix and rise in the dough cycle of my bread machine.  The original recipe from King Arthur is really a double batch (makes two loaves) and I would have to drag out my Kitchen Aid mixer to accommodate five cups of flour and the other ingredients.

Once the loaves are all baked and cooled, I will take some photographs and post them below.

Merry Christmas!

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

I realized a couple of weeks ago, when we received our new refrigerator, that I had been neglecting my sourdough starter when I removed the crock from the shelf.   I remembered to feed the starter this morning so that I could bake a loaf of bread this afternoon while a roast cooked in the crockpot.  Since I’m up to my elbows in flour, I thought it fitting to focus my next-to-the-last entry in my ‘Thirty Days of Thankfulness‘ blog posting series on making and baking home-made bread.

I much prefer to bake my own bread.  Yes, I occasionally breakdown and purchase a loaf at the grocery store, but for the most part, I prefer to control all the ingredients and I just adore the smell of fresh baked bread.  Nothing says ‘Welcome Home’ like bread baking in the oven.  My preferred flour, graciously available via my local Dillons grocery store, comes from the King Arthur Flour company.  I live in Kansas, the wheat state, where the prized hard red winter wheat is grown specifically for King Arthur Flour, which based in Vermont since 1790 (KAF is 221 years old, 71 years older than Kansas, which is celebrating it’s 150th birthday this year).  In addition to having my flour shipped back from Vermont (albeit it conveniently by my local grocery store), I do special order yeast (by the pound), toppings and other handy gadgets a couple of times a year.  In fact, I recently took advantage of a free shipping sale to re-stock my pantry.  That’s the kind of spam e-mail I like to receive (and why I specifically opted in for their newsletter and e-mail notifications of specials).  I even ordered my sourdough starter (plus the crock shown above) from KAF, because it’s a descendant of a New England sourdough that has been bubbling away there for over two hundred and fifty years!

Once the sourdough starter bubbled up (three to four hours after feeding), I decided to take the ‘easy route’ today and make a Rustic Sourdough loaf in my bread machine.  The link above includes both a traditional recipe and a bread machine version. I will include the latter in this blog posting:

Rustic Sourdough

1 cup “fed” sourdough starter
1 cup lukewarm water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 cups King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour
2 teaspoons instant yeast

Place the ingredients in the bread pan in the order suggested by the manufacturer.  Select the basic white cycle and desired crust and allow the bread machine to do the rest.

If you prefer to shape and bake the loaf in your oven, then select the dough cycle.  Remove the doug and gently shape it into an oval loaf, placing it on a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet. Cover and let rise until very puffy, about 1 hour. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 425°F.  Spray the loaves with lukewarm water. Make two fairly deep horizontal slashes in each; a serrated bread knife, wielded firmly, works well here.

Bake the bread for 25 to 30 minutes, until it’s a very deep golden brown. Remove it form the oven, and cool on a rack.

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Besides sourdough, I enjoy making Italian supermarket-style bread, Honey Whole Wheat variations and White Bread (made special for my dad).  For more of my recipes, which are frequently variations on recipes posted at the King Arthur Flour web site, please visit My Bread Baking Epiphanies web page.