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.

* * *

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.

Sticky Buns

I am thankful to have made it safe and sound through two states to visit my children. So, for my twenty-third installment of ‘Thirty Days of Thankfulness,’ I wish to share their (and mine) perennial favorite: Sticky Buns (follow the link for the recipe and detailed instructions with photos).

Nearly the first thing I did upon arriving at my daughter’s apartment was to inventory her pantry and then head to the largest Kroger grocery store in the state of Texas. As expected, since it was early evening on the day before Thanksgiving, the aisles were jam packed, especially the baking aisle. We survived with most of our limbs intact and only forgetting one item, which we had forgotten to place on our grocery list.

Once back at the apartment, I installed my old bread machine and began mixing up a batch of the sticky buns, using the dough setting on the bread machine. Since it was close to eight o’clock, I knew I would be up way past my bedtime. While my husband and daughter’s boyfriend headed over to a friend’s house who had graciously agreed to smoke a turkey for us, Rach3elle and I streamed a couple of old Star Trek: Voyager episodes from the sixth season, ones I didn’t remember but were quite interesting none-the-less.

We decided to go ahead and bake the first batch of sticky buns last night, using my daughter’s large 9×13 inch glass baking dish. I wasn’t completely satisfied with the way the dough mixed and rose, so I wanted to be able to test taste it in case I needed to re-do a batch early in the morning. Another strange new experience for me: cooking with gas. My daughter’s kitchen apartment includes a Hotpoint gas range. I have only ever cooked using electric ovens. Interesting.

The sticky buns came out of the over around 11:30 but when we flipped them over onto a large cookie sheet, several rolls around the edges stuck to the sides and came unraveled. Prime targets for a taste test. The results were superb but I would need to make another batch in the morning to fine-tune the recipe. While I had purchased what I thought was non-fat dry milk at the grocery store, it was actually labelled ‘instant’ (I really should where my reading glasses while shopping), so I put an eighth to a quarter cup of half-and-half in the liquid portion of the recipe. This morning, I decided to forgo any dairy aspect of the recipe and the dough does look like it is rising better.

I sometimes make this recipe up for friends and family, but I don’t bake it for them. I send them a batch in a disposable aluminum foil pan with instructions on refrigeration, rising and baking so that they can enjoy this treat fresh out of the oven, sticky, gooey and hot, just like it’s meant to be enjoyed.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Blizzard Baking Bonaza

Telecommuting lets me multitask to the aroma of baking breads all day. I’ve already baked a Vermont Maple Oat scone mix from King Arthur Flour, which is cooling on the rack as I type this blog.

Next up, I’ve started my own version of the Harvest Wheat Bread recipe (also courtesy King Arthur), which I call Harvest Cracked Wheat Bread. I’ve boiled the water and have the cracked wheat and water cooling down in the bread machine bread pan.

Later today, after feeding the sourdough starter, I’ll make a couple of loaves of some sourdough variety, probably of the Italian persuasion.

I’ll update this blog with photos later as the results come out of the oven. I just pray the power remains on long enough for me to finish all this baking.

Mid Afternoon Update: The scones mix turned out well. The Harvest Cracked Wheat bread looks scrumptious:

And I’ve got Rustic Sourdough Kaiser Rolls rising for the next hour or so:

Sadly, my bread machine has reached the end of its useful life. As I was proofing the yeast in the bread pan for the Rustic Sourdough, I noticed a puddle forming on the counter under the bread pan. Once a bread pan starts leaking, it’s time to trade up or trade in or whatever you do with old bread machines. This will be my fifth bread machine.

And, of course, I’d like to move way, way up on the fashion scale, from my Chevy model that I bought at Wal-Mart a couple of years ago, to this Cadillac model offered and highly recommended by King Arthur Flour:

ZojirushiBreadMachine — Zojirushi BB-CEC20 Home Bakery Supreme Bread Machine - Stainless Steel

The Irresistable Aroma of Fresh Baked Bread

Sunday afternoon, while Terry and Sean practiced in the band room downstairs, I baked three loaves of bread. My first loaf, baked for my dad who graciously cleared my driveway yesterday, is the ever popular White Sandwich Bread, pictured here:

Immediately following dad’s loaf, I baked my hubby his favorite, which he refers to as trashy wheat bread, but I call Honey Wheat Bread (pictured below):

The last loaf, and my personal (at least recently) favorite is Rustic Sourdough, modified slightly to mix and rise in the bread machine and produce only one perfect loaf, shown below:

So I filled the house with the smell of fresh baked bread and tortured Sean in the process. Terry even tried to sell my bread to him (at outlandish outrageous prices), but Sean did not succumb to the temptation.

Later in the week, I may try a variety I haven’t baked in years … Cracked Wheat.

Quiet Sunday Afternoon

I churned out the last three loaves of bread before the middle of the afternoon yesterday. I also burned The Tenth Inning to two DVDs so my dad could watch it (he missed part of both of them when they aired on PBS a couple of weeks ago). I read almost half my new book Cryoburn by Bujold.

And I tried Westside Family Church’s Online Church for the first time. Terry wasn’t up to travelling to the Legends to attend the Speedway campus service. The Online Church is a live feed from the WFC campus in Lenxa. The message was good (Click Here for my notes) but the music was not as good as the Speedway campus’ praise band.

And I took the dogs to the relatively new dog park in Leavenworth at the north end of the VA grounds just off Limit Street (east from US 73). When I arrived, just before three o’clock, there were no other large dogs. But within ten minutes, and apparently because the Chiefs game was ending or not worth watching, there were ten to twenty dogs in the park. Apollo and Roxy behaved themselves very well. Roxy wore herself out in the first five or ten minutes and eventually just laid down near me to catch her breath. Apollo chased a barky smaller dog (some kind of mottled Shepherd I think) around the park for awhile and then made all sorts of new friends.

My dad met me at the park, as I wanted to give him his fresh baked loaf of White Sandwich Bread and the DVDs I’d burned Sunday. He took a few photos (I had my hands and eyes full keeping a watch on the dogs … people tend to get nervous about Rottweilers). He also loaned me a couple of BluRay DVDs he recently purchased (both versions of Robin Hood from 1991 and 2010). I didn’t think I’d have time or inclination to watch it anytime soon, but when Terry woke up, we started watching it. Very different version or variation on the origins of Robin Hood.

I didn’t even touch the telescope Sunday, except to move it when I was vacuuming the great room. All in all, a very rewarding and relaxing weekend at home.

Sourdough Saturday Ends With Jumping Jupiter and Magnificent Moon

I woke up five minutes before my five o’clock alarm this morning. Not unusual, except for it being a Saturday. But I needed to hit the ground running if I was going to get all the bread baked today.

First thing, I pulled the sourdough crock out of the refrigerator to get it warmed up to room temperature. Second, I quickly mixed up my favorite Honey Wheat bread recipe. While waiting for the bread machine to mix, knead and rise that recipe (elapsed time ninety minutes), I started recording to DVD from the DVR the Belgian Grand Prix (since I’m five GPs behind and only three left for the 2010 season) . I managed to read a few chapters of Cryoburn concurrently.

I shaped the Honey Wheat dough into a loaf and set it to rise for anther forty-five minutes. I took a short break to visit with friends for brunch at Santa Fe Depot. Probably a good choice since the new IHOP in Lansing was overflowing at ten o’clock. After a great visit, I rushed to the Leavenworth Post Office to mail off eight mooched books to various states in the lower forty-eight. I also stopped at the Book Exchange in an attempt to trade some hardcover science fiction novels, but she declined my offerings stating they were currently overstocked with hardcovers.

I returned home, completed my BookMooch and BookCrossing data updates and posted three of the hardcovers to my BookMooch inventory, one of which has already been mooched.

Now the sourdough starter was ready, all bubbly and soury. I modified my Rustic Sourdough bread recipe to work in a bread machine on the dough cycle. My modifications included the following:

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

This reduces the original recipe to a single loaf variation and rather than shaping a traditional round or oval loaf, I used a regular bread pan and scored it like you would a split top loaf.

After I got the Rustic Sourdough into the bread machine, I immediately started the Rosemary Sourdough recipe in the Kitchenaid stand mixer. This recipe should not be over mixed nor kneaded, so it’s a very sticky mess when you scrape it into a glass bowl (generously coated with cooking spray) and covered with clear plastic wrap. Let rise for ninety minutes or more until doubled in size.

The Sourdoughs kept me busy all afternoon. I was able to start another, final loaf before three o’clock, which was one of my family’s favorites: Honey Wheat Black Bread. I shaped it into a braid and waited for it to rise.

With the last loaf still cooling on the rack, I rushed down to Bonner Springs to slip into the KC Ren Fest just before it closed. I have a collection of mugs, steins and goblets going back to 1988. The person at the Will Call window was kind enough to let me into the festival for a few minutes to buy a mug and a goblet. Pickings were slim (this being the last weekend of the festival), but I found a goblet and a stein I liked and quickly returned home.

I was surprised to see my dad’s car parked in the driveway as I thought I had told him to call me if he was going to stop by to partake in some star gazing this evening. Apparently, he arrived at the house just minutes after I left for Bonner Springs.

We waited for the sun to set and started setting up the the telescope in the great room in a polar mount orientation. We moved the equipment out front to the driveway, since Jupiter is not visible from my backyard until around ten o’clock. We determined the sidereal tracking in polar mount worked well and kept Jupiter and it’s three visible moons centered for an hour or so. Feeling confident, we attached the Pentax K100D to attempt a better photo shoot of Jupiter, but quickly realized the weight of the camera was too much for the motors of the telescope. We removed the camera and went back to viewing Jupiter with various eye pieces and barlowes of varying magnifications.

Just before dad was leaving and as we were contemplating putting the equipment back in the great room, the moon (more than half full now) peaked out from behind the pin oak in my side yard (which also shields the driveway from the annoying streetlight planted next to the stop sign in my side yard at the corner of Bambi Court and Fawn Valley. We reoriented the telescope to the moon and began viewing it with various eye pieces. We also tried the moon filter, which helped tone down the incredible brightness funneled through the telescope into our eyes.

After a few minutes of moon gazing, we packed up the equipment and returned it to the great room. We said our good nights and I’m grateful to be off my feet finally. My knees have had enough today.

Sunday will be easier since I only need to make one more loaf (possibly two) and then figure out how to transport six loaves to work via the vanpool without smushing any of them.

Friday Night at the Empty Nest

I stopped by Dillons on the way home for some fresh rosemary and pizza fixings. I found the latter, but not the former, so had to buy rosemay in a spice jar. Sigh. I still made it home by 5:30 or so.

Terry started working on a pizza and I started working on bread production. I set the sourdough starter out to warm up to room temperature. Then I reviewed my White Sandwich Bread recipe, setting out a stick of butter to also warm up to room temperature. I got all the ingredients into the bread machine (dough cycle) before six o’clock. Since it takes about three hours from start to finish, I could be done by nine o’clock.

The pizza turned out wonderful and we decided to watch a couple of new episodes of Mythbusters – ‘Hair of the Dog’ and featuring the Stormchasers and surviving tornado-like winds in a vehicle or, if you’re Jamie Hyneman, an aerodynamic tent he engineered, constructed and tested in winds up to 180 mph. I should check the Patent Office to see if he filed an application on that idea.

During the second episode of Mythbusters, I setup the telescope with the camera attached because the early evening was perfect for viewing the moon – clear and no wind. I took several photos of the moon using various settings on the camera but I’m not sure the results were noticably different. Click here to see for yourself.

I removed the camera from the telescpe and tried nearly all the eyepiece lenses in my case, down to a 4 mm one focused on the terminus on the moon. Outstanding clarity and magnification. On Jupiter, I got down to a 9 mm, but without putting the telescope in sidereal tracking mode, the image of Jupiter only stayed ‘on screen’ for a couple of seconds.

I completely forgot about my rising bread loaf so I got behind schedule by about 30-45 minutes; even so, the bread came out of the over looking and smelling wonderful. I brought the telescope back in for the night and headed up to bed.

I woke back up at eleven o’clock because I’d forgotten to start a process at work that I wanted to run over the weekend. I got that going and then cracked open a newly released book I pre-ordered from Barnes & Noble in late September: Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold (a long awaited installment in the Vorkosigan Saga). I got to page seven before I fell asleep. It’s very good, but I was very tired.

Donating Bread for United Way Auction

Yes, it’s that time of year again. The United Way fund raising campaign is in full swing where I work. Last year, one of the events that had good participation, was an auction. I baked and donated three loaves of bread. I received ‘the call’ earlier this week, from one of the auction coordinators, asking if I’d repeat my bread baking performance again this year.

So, starting this evening (since the auction is next Tuesday, only four days away), I’ll be baking bread almost non stop over the weekend. A couple of these loaves I’ll make extras for my dad and husband (otherwise, I’ll get the usual grief).

First up, the basic melt-in-your-mouth white bread recipe I make for my dad, based on King Arthur Flour‘s ‘guaranteed’ White Sandwich Bread recipe. When I take it out of the over to cool on a rack, I take a stick of butter and rub/melt it to soften the crust. I might be able to get two of these made tonight, one batch of dough in the bread machine and another in the KitchenAid stand mixer.

Saturday morning, I’ll take out from the fridge my crock of sourdough starter (also originating from King Arthur) and feed it. After a couple of hours, I’ll be able to use the fed starter to make a couple of specialty bread recipes: Rustic Sourdough and Rosemary Sourdough (that reminds me … need to pick up organic rosemary at Dillons tonight).

Since Sourdough takes longer than ‘normal’ breads, I’ll concurrently make up a batch of Honey Wheat Black Bread, which is fun to make (lots of honey in this recipe) because I get to braid the dough.

The final installment will be baked on Sunday. My all-time favorite bread recipe and (so far) fool proof: Honey Wheat Toasting Oat (with Craisins). This bread makes fantastic toast.

Perhaps I should make it an even half dozen loaves and bake one more on Sunday? I could round out the suite of breads with my old standby honey wheat bread recipe, which we lovingly refer to as my ‘trashy’ wheat bread because it’s not 100% whole wheat (so it’s not like a brick or crumbly and dry) and it’s delicious.

So if you’re a fellow co-worker and you love home-made bread from great ingredients, be sure to stop by the auction on Tuesday and place your bid.

Photos of some of my braided bread: