Bread | MyKitchenInHalfCups

February 15, 2013
by MyKitchenInHalfCups 16 Comments

5th Anniversary BBB ~ Assyrian Spinach Pies (Syrian Sabanrhiyat)

On this our Fifth Anniversary, yes, really we’ve been Babes and Buddies for FIVE years, and I am here to tell you: “I no longer fear yeast.” There I’ve said it. In fact when I sat down to re-write this recipe in my own words, I have to think that to the novice in the kitchen who views yeast and baking with it the most frightful thing there is … I am an absolute hieratic. Truly I am not but I have become fast and best friends with yeast just as the Babes become friends. I have shared joy and tears with my yeast over the years just as I have shared joys and tears with my Bread Baking Babes for the last five years. We’ve all become friends and better friends. We’ve done it through repeated encounters, some really gloriously memorable … Royal Crown Tortano, our very first bread together, to name just one … and we shared loss and tears in real life … bread and friendship all around our virtual kitchen tables.

We really enjoy almost anything I’ve cooked or baked with spinach so this interested me because it uses lots of spinach but then it also introduced us to a new to me spice: Ground mahlab, made from the pits of sour black cherries, adds flavor to the dough. I found it fairly subtle and will use more of it next time.

Assyran Spinach Pies

Recipe adapted from Greg Patent: A Baker’s Odyssey: Celebrating Time-Honored Recipes From America’s Rich Immigrant Heritage

DOUGH
1 tablespoon active dry yeast, (2 1/4 teaspoons) = 1 package
2 cups warm water (105° to 115°)
1/2 teaspoon ground mahlab, I’ll use 3/4 to a full teaspoon next time
5 cups unbleached all-purpose flour plus more for kneading, use some white whole wheat next time

3 tablespoons ground flax (my signature addition so optional, you are free to leave it out)
1 tablespoons granulated sugar, I cut this back from 2 tablespoons
2 teaspoons salt
1/3 cup olive oil

FILLING
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil to sauté onion, 3 tablespoons to filling mix
1 large yellow onion, chopped
1 pound cleaned baby spinach, coarsely chopped
160 grams chopped walnuts, I increased this from 4 oz.
1 cup pomegranate seeds, increase these from 1/2 cup
2 cup crumbled feta cheese, increased from 1 cup
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Salt
1/2 – 1 cup lentils, optional but this was nice

Olive oil cooking spray
Plain yogurt for serving

Directions:

1. Whisk together the dry ingredients: yeast, flax, mahlab, flours, sugar, salt.
Mix together water (I usually “warm” it by microwaving it about 15 seconds, it’s just above room temp then) and olive oil.

2. Pour water, olive oil into dry ingredients and mix together until the dough gathers into a rough ball. Let rest 5 to 10 minutes letting the flour absorb some of the water.

Knead the dough on a lightly floured counter until the dough becomes smooth, elastic, soft and slightly sticky dough ball – mine took about 6 minutes.

3. WASH AND DRY THE BOWL – now aint that a kick in the pants, how many Babes are going to follow that directive. We know Elizabeth will. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! and rub it lightly with olive oil Elizabeth won’t do that part.

Place the dough ball into a rising container … I have a wonderful straight side clear 4 qt container with lid: I can easily see when the dough has doubled in volume. The lid means I don’t have to use plastic or even a shower cap.

Allow the dough to double in volume – mine took about 90 minutes: if you press a finger into the dough and relase it, a depression should remain and it’s ready for the next step.

4. If you follow the recipe directions and divide the dough into 24 pieces (about 2 oz each) you’ll get what I consider a reasonable portion size hand pie although we were all eating at least one and a half each. I actually weighted the balls and they ranged from 50 to 60 grams each. I might have enjoyed them more made slightly smaller say weighting closer to 40 grams … then I’d have had no quilt eating two and probably even three.

When the balls are formed, allow to rest so they will be easier to roll out.

If you’ve made the full recipe and don’t want to make them all at one go, my suggestion here would be to immediately cover however many you want to bake tomorrow or the next day and retard the balls in the fridge.

Allow the dough balls you plan on baking to rest for the 30 minutes before rolling them out.

5. Saute the onion in the olive oil, they should be nicely caramelized. Allow to cool.

6. Chop the spinach and mix with chopped walnuts, pomegranate seeds, feta, lemon juice – I used the lemon zest as well – and the olive oil. Mix all with the sautéed onions. I used a pinch of salt and some aleppo pepper.

Good ideas for alternatives and additions: pine nuts, dried cranberry, dried cherry, goat cheese, small cubes or large grating of any cheese you like, lentils I added one night to some of the filling was a real winner.

7. Pre-heat the oven to 375°.

My large cookie sheet held 6 of these at the most. I lined the cookie sheet with a Silpat but parchment paper would equally as well.

8. With a light to good dusting of flour on your counter, roll the dough ball into a thin 6-inch circle. I was generous with the dusting to prevent sticking. I tried to really fill these and used at least 1/2 to 3/4 cup of the filling for each one.
Check out this video for shaping or try the recipes directions: “Pile 1/2 cup of the filling, loosely measured, onto the center of the circle, leaving about 1 inch of dough exposed all around. Brush the exposed dough lightly with water. Imagining the circle to be a clock, lift up the edges of dough at the 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock positions to cover the top part of the filling and pinch firmly to seal, going all the way to 12 o’clock. Lift the 6 o’clock position of dough to meet in the center and pinch the two edges firmly to seal. The seams will look like an inverted Y. Set the pie on one of the prepared sheets. ”

9. Before putting into the oven, rush the pies with olive oil before baking. I brushed mine with a mix of half olive oil and half melted butter 😉

10. Recipe suggested 375° I found I like them best at 380° (convection) and the full 30 minutes.

11. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes at 375° to 380° depending on your oven.

12. My very favorite pizza dough is a recipe by Peter Reinhardt. That dough you mix up, shape it into balls, cover it and refrigerate it then for unto 5 days. The glory is it’s ready when you are.
For who knows what reasons – they might sound like excuses – I decided on the first night to treat this dough as if it were like that pizza dough. So if it’s any indication of just how much we enjoyed these, we had them 4 days in a row. One day I had them for breakfast lunch and then dinner. By the fourth day the dough was looser to work with but the pies and the crust was still wonderful.
I did some additions to the filling along the way – lentils one night, chopped up lamb chop meat one night – you get the drift.

This is a terrific, easy and very versatile hand pie dough. I do think the filling with the spinach is terrific even though I believe it’s better with a little more cheese and spices. I guess I tend to favor excess flavor.

Notes:

Serve with: Everyone enjoyed these with plain Greek yogurt but we enjoyed them with the greek yogurt mixed with avocado, green salsa, red salsa … I’m sure there would be a delightful fruit salsa that would be excellent as well. We really enjoyed these tremendously the night I added lentils to the filling and I just knew in my heart that some ground lamb would be a wonder in these and it was.

Storing
Leftover pies can be frozen. When cool, arrange them on a baking sheet and freeze until solid. Transfer them to heavy-duty resealable plastic bags and freeze for up to 1 month. To reheat, thaw the pies in their wrapping, then set them on a baking sheet and pop into a preheated 350°F oven for 10 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Want to bake these and join the Bread Baking Buddies:

1.Bake the Spinach Pies, snap a pic & share your thoughts about how you liked it (or not liked it).

2.Send an email to Kitchen of the Month (that would be me this month). Please note in the subject line that this is for the BBB Buddy Bread.

3. I’ll have the Bread Baking Buddy Round up on the 29 and you’ll be in it IF you send me the above info by the 28th.

Now my question to you, especially if you are coming along as a Buddy: The spice/flavor/filling things: sumac, mahlab, spinach, pine nut, my feeling/taste tells me these are sort of mid-eastern and share a little astringent effect on the tongue. Anybody else have that thought/feeling/taste?

My Toast to All Babes and Buddies: Here’s to another great year in our virtual kitchens, the fully stocked back bench, classy panties and the wonder of bread and friendship rising.

Don’t forget to visit my fellow Bread Baking Babes to see how they baked

The Bread Baking Babes
Bake My Day – Karen
Bitchin’ Bread Baking Babe Bibliothécaire – Katie
blog from OUR kitchen – Elizabeth
Feeding my enthusiasms – Pat
GirlChef – Heather
Life’s A Feast – Jamie
Living in the Kitchen with Puppies – Natashya
Lucullian Delights – Ilva
Notitie Van Lien – Lien
Paulchens Foodblog – Astrid
Provecho Peru – Gretchen

and also… visit our Katie! She is the BBBBB (Bitchin’ Bread Baking Babe Bibliothécaire) who writes up such lovely round ups of all the BBB Breads every month!

This month we welcome a new Babe and believe me she is a BABE. Heather from GirlChef
Next bread for the BBB’s will post on the 16th of the month.

January 16, 2013
by MyKitchenInHalfCups 16 Comments

BBB – Fan Tan Rolls

Our lovely Babe and Kitchen of the Month Elle from Feeding My Enthusiasms selected our bread, following our recent themes of shaping’s. Then she called this shaping technique “silly”. I would have to disagree with her calling this “silly”. Now, I ask you “Have you ever looked up the word silly?” Let me tell you it’s an education. For your edification:

silly |ˈsilē| adjective ( sillier , silliest ) having or showing a lack of common sense or judgment; absurd and foolish: another of his silly jokes | “Don’t be silly!” she said. • ridiculously trivial or frivolous: he would brood about silly things. • [ as complement ] used to convey that an activity or process has been engaged in to such a degree that someone is no longer capable of thinking or acting sensibly: he often drank himself silly | his mother worried herself silly over him. • archaic (esp. of a woman, child, or animal) helpless; defenseless. noun ( pl. sillies ) informal a foolish person (often used as a form of address): Come on, silly. PHRASES the silly season high summer, regarded as the season when newspapers often publish trivial material because of a lack of important news. DERIVATIVES sillily |ˈsiləlē|adverb, silliness noun ORIGIN late Middle English (in the sense ‘deserving of pity or sympathy’): alteration of dialect seely ‘happy,’ later ‘innocent, feeble,’ from a West Germanic base meaning ‘luck, happiness.’ The sense ‘foolish’ developed via the stages ‘feeble’ and ‘unsophisticated, ignorant.’ from my on line dictionary

I do not think it is silly, trivial or frivolous to shape bread into shapes that appeal to the eye and make the bread easier and more interesting to eat. So, I found the FanTan Rolls delightful. Layering the dough with flavor creates a pull-apart bread infused with fabulous flavor … I’m assuming you used something you love to eat. A pull-apart bread is wonderful finger food. Sweet or savory, these are a delight with morning coffee, with soup for lunch and again as rolls with dinner. Doubling the versatility of a recipe like this is super easy using two different fillings: make 6 rolls sweet and the other 6 savory, make them all savory but two different savories, heck, I think these would be very lovely just plain, let flavor guide you. Sweet Orange Marmalade Fan-tan Rolls Recipe By: Pat “Feeding My Enthusiasms”

We have been doing some serious bread shaping these last months Babes so I thought I’d keep it going with a somewhat silly shaping method for rolls. It’s called making fantans and they are baked in muffin tins and look a bit like fans. Dough is rolled out, cut in strips and stacked, then the stacks are cut to make the contents of each tin, with the cut ends up above the muffin tin, fanned out a bit. Once they rise and bake they look less like fans but when you take them from the muffin tin they look more fan-like. You can certainly make savoury fantans and I will be just fine with any changes you want to make, including using something other than marmalade for the filling. Butter and cinnamon sugar would be easy, Nutella would be lovely, jam of any flavor would be delicious. If you eliminate the nutmeg, maple syrup, and vanilla from the dough then doing butter and herb, a tomato paste, or any other savoury filling that suits you would work fine. The shape is the thing. The rolls are fine without any embellishments, but look really pretty with a drizzle of icing. You could sprinkle on some sliced almonds, too.

FanTan Rolls

3-4 cups all-purpose flour, divided

1 cup whole wheat bread flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

1 cup whole wheat sourdough starter OR 1 package of RapidRise yeast mixed with ¼ cup warm water

1 cup non fat evaporated milk

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter

1/4 cup pure maple syrup(I used slightly less and honey)

1/4 cup egg substitute OR 1 egg, lightly beaten

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

6 tablespoons + 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, divided

Flavor Direction ~ open to interpretation and preference

2/3 cup marmalade (about), warmed

And yes, I made savory and I still used the honey sweetener and the vanilla. Recently I used some vanilla been in a savory bean dish and it lent a haunting background note that was lovely.

Directions:

1. Sift 1 cup of the all-purpose flour, the 1 cup of whole wheat bread flour, salt, and nutmeg into a large mixing bowl. Stir until well blended. Set aside.

2. Place evaporated milk, butter and maple syrup into a saucepan and heat until butter is nearly melted. Remove from heat. Stir a few minutes to help mixture cool. Let cool to 110 degrees F. 2. a. Oh dear, I fear I stepped off the path here. I’m really not a lover of evaporated milk and I used half and half. And of course as I’ve said I used honey instead of maple syrup.

3. Add starter or yeast and water to the milk mixture. 3. a. I had just recently worked up a new starter and used it. I think my starter was not quite ready and my aim was to bake these again using the yeast but I could not manage it.

4. Add milk mixture to flour mixture; beat well. Add egg and vanilla; stir until blended. Add 1 cup all-purpose flour, stir until thoroughly incorporated. Gradually add enough of the remaining flour to make soft dough that is rather sticky. 4. a. I still had most of a cup of flour left out.

5. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead 3 minutes or until dough is smooth and silky. (Add additional flour if needed while kneading, but only enough to keep it from sticking a lot.) Place in oiled (or clean if you are Elizabeth) bowl, turn dough to lightly coat with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and set in a warm place to rise for 1 ½ to 2 hours. 5. a. Mine took 3 hours and had very little rise.

6. Dust your work surface with flour. Punch down the dough, then halve it. Wrap one half in the plastic wrap and set aside. Roll the other half into a 12×12-inch (30.5×30.5 cm) square. You may have to roll slightly larger, and then trim the ends to even out the square. Brush dough with half the melted butter. 6. a. Shame again, I didn’t square everything up.

7. Spread the surface of the dough with about 1/2 your desired filling/spread/flavor, leaving 1/6 strip plain. This will allow you to have a plain side of dough on each side of the roll touching the muffin cup. Cut into 6 equal strips, then stack the strips on top of each other with the plain strip on top. Cut through the layers into 6 equal pieces, 7. a. Leaving one strip plain allows for the two outside ends to be clean of any potentially messy fillings, keeps fingers cleaner. I just put the filling on, I am a firm believer in excess. Remember, it’s the filling of your choice.

8. then place each into a buttered muffin cup, standing up so the layers are visible. Gently fan them open. Each will have six dough pieces with marmalade or other filling in between. Repeat with the remaining dough and the rest of the marmalade for the other six cups of the muffin tin.

9. Cover with a tea towel and let the rolls rise in a draft free spot at warm room temperature until the dough doubles, about 1 to 1-1/2 hours. (Optional – I put a piece of plastic wrap between the rolls and the towel because of the sticky marmalade.) 9. a. I allowed my rolls to rise 2 full hours. I have a large plastic rectangular box that fits over my muffin pan, two loaves of bread or similar sizes and that’s what I use.

10. Place the rack in the middle and preheat the oven to 375° F/190° C. 10. a. I did my cinnamon sugar rolls at 360°F in a convection oven for the 25 minutes below.

This is my latest coffee trick and absolutely healthy chocolate. With my microplane grater, I grated very finely a large chunk of dark unsweetened chocolate. Every morning I put about a 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of the chocolate in the bottom of my coffee mug, pour hot milk on it, stir, pour hot espresso into that and finally

… top it all off with the skim milk froth … yes it is heavenly and most especially with a cheese topped Fan Tan Roll. I defy anybody to sit in front of a warm fire with that in front of you and feel sorry for yourself no matter what your troubles of the moment are.

11. Remove the towel and bake the rolls until they are golden brown, about 20 to 25 minutes. Cool in the pan ten minutes, then transfer to a rack and allow to cool for about another 20 minutes before serving. If desired, drizzle a glaze of 1 teaspoon milk whisked together with enough confectioners’ sugar (icing sugar) to make a drizzle that will not spread too much. Use the tines of a fork to drizzle it on. Let dry before serving the rolls. 11. a. I used no glaze on my sweet ones but I did rewarm my savory tomato pesto six with (sigh) cheese. Remember what I said about excess.

When we did the Russian Rose Bread, I did some e-mail exchanging with BreadSong from the Fresh Loaf web site. She did bake the Rose and you can find it here. She also talked about a wonderful recipe for a sundried tomato pesto. When we got January’s recipe for Fan Tan Rolls, I very quickly went for BreadSong’s recipe. I used more garlic than she did and it is really very wonderful. Of course it’s hard for me to leave things alone and next time I might use either some Aleppo pepper or maybe even an Anaheim pepper.

Don’t forget to visit my fellow Bread Baking Babes to see how they baked and also… visit our Katie! She is the BBBBB (Bitchin’ Bread Baking Babe Bibliothécaire) who writes up such lovely round ups of all the BBB Breads every month!

This Bread and all it’s iterations goes to Susan for YeastSpotting!

Trot on over to Feeding My Enthusiasms and all the other Babes blogs to see how they worked this recipe and made it their own. And Thank You so very much for another wonderful recipe Elle.

Then be a Bread Baking Buddy with us and bake your own Fan Tan Rolls.

Here’s how:

1.Bake the Fan Tan Rolls, snap a pic & share your thoughts about how you liked it (or not liked it).

2.Send an email to Kitchen of the Month (find that info here). Please note in the subject line that this is for the BBB Buddy Bread.

Time for me to bake again.

This month we welcome a new Babe and believe me she is a BABE. Jamie from Life’s a Feast.

Next bread for the BBB’s will post on the 16th of next month. Just think next month it’s five years of Babes!

December 16, 2012
by MyKitchenInHalfCups 14 Comments

BBB – Holiday Apple Kuchen

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year

When Gretchen, our most gracious Kitchen of the Month, put up the bread for December, I thought everything in the universe has lined up perfectly. Not only did I have six pounds of Granny Smith baking apples on my counter, I had also just mixed up a fresh batch of Speculaas Dutch Spice Mix and I was still deeply interested in all things apple even though I had just baked three different recipes for Deep Dish Apple Pie.

What you ask is Speculass/Speculoss? If you know or read much about the Netherlands or Dutch, you realize how deeply seeped in spices their history and hence their cooking/baking has become.

There are several interpretations for the origins of the name Speculoos. It may derive from Latin speculum, which means mirror, and refer to the fact that the images are cut as a mirrored bas-relief into a wooden stamp which is then used to decorate the Speculoos. Another explanation of the name refers to the Latin word speculator which, among other meanings, could also refer to a bishop or St Nicholas’ epithet “he who sees everything”. Specerij the Dutch word for spice is another possible origin.

In the United States, New Zealand and Australia, speculoos are often sold as Dutch Windmill cookies or Biscoff cookies. from Wikipedia.

This is the recipe I used for my Speculoos:

Speculaaskruiden (Dutch Spice Mix) adapted from About.com Dutch Food

Mix together:
4 tsp [20 ml] ground cinnamon
1 tsp [5 ml] ground cloves
1 tsp [5 ml] ground mace
½ tsp [2.5 ml] ground ginger
¼ tsp [1.25 ml] white pepper
¼ tsp [1.25 ml] ground cardamom
¼ tsp [1.25 ml] ground coriander seeds
¼ tsp [1.25 ml] ground anise seeds
¼ tsp [1.25 ml] grated nutmeg

Gretchen raised the question of what is a Kuchen and her call on this recipe was it was closest to a Pie Kuchen having a thick cake like crust with apple pie filling and a sweet white icing. I found that to be an excellent description of how this bakes. I would also say that if you love pie but the crust is a difficulty for you, this “bread” could be the best pie recipe you’ve ever come across. I could say that I have a hard time calling this bread because of that but then I do subscribe to the idea that “bread” is about yeast and this uses yeast. Is it cake? or bread or pie? I say it is all of those and goes beautifully with a rich cup of coffee for breakfast, tea in the afternoon and dessert for dinner. Call it cake, bread, pie or all of those, whatever you call it, it’s just lovely and lovely enough for any holiday event.

What follows is Gretchen’s recipe with my modifications.

Holiday Apple Kuchen

Recipe found by Gretchen in Better Homes & Gardens Holiday Baking 2009 Magazine
Servings: 12

Dough

Bread Dough:

2 1/4 cups flour, divided + 4 tablespoons ground flax seeds
1 package active dry yeast
150 ml butter milk
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs

Apple Filling:
9 cups apple slices (about 4 medium baking apples)
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon quick cooking tapioca
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 teaspoon speculoss

Crumb Topping (Make this first)
1/2 cup flour + 1/4 c oat bran
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons butter

Cream Cheese Topper
1 (8oz) package cream cheese, softened
2/3 whipping cream
2/3 cup powdered sugar

Directions:

1. 1. Grease a 13x9x2 baking pan; set aside. In a large bowl, combine 1 cup of the flour and the yeast; set aside.

2. In a small saucepan, heat and stir milk, granulated sugar, butter and salt just until mixture is warm (120F-130F) and butter almost melts. Add milk mixture and eggs to flour mixture. Beat with an electric mixer on low to medium speed for 30 seconds, scraping sides of the bowl constantly. Beat on high speed for 2 minutes or until smooth. Beat in as much of the remaining flour as you can without the mixer. Stir in any remaining flour to make a stiff batter.

Ready for Apples

3. Spread batter into the prepared baking pan. In another large bowl, combine apples, brown sugar, tapioca, lemon juice and apple pie spice. Place apple mixture on top of the batter. Sprinkle with Crumb Topping. Cover and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour.

4. Bake in a preheated 375F oven for 30 minutes or until top is browned and apples are tender. Cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes. Cut into 12 pieces and serve warm or at room temperature with a dollop of Cream Cheese Topper on each piece.

Apples

5. Crumb Topping: 1/2 cup flour 1/2 cup brown sugar 3 tablespoons butter

6. 1. In a medium bowl, combine flour and brown sugar. Using a pastry blender, cut in butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs – I just used my fingers. Set aside. (I may have added extra brown sugar, I may have used 4 tablespoons butter … now why would I do that … hehehe)

: Shower cap covering dough & apples

Shower cap

I always used to wonder who ever uses a shower cap, I always wash my hair in the shower. Then one day I had the idea that a shower cap is a plastic film just right for covering rising dough in a bowl, a loaf pan or a baking dish.

Shower cap covering dough & apples

Now that my dear reader is what I call brilliant.

7. Cream Cheese Topper: 1 (8oz) package cream cheese, softened 2/3 whipping cream 2/3 cup powdered sugar, oh and I think there was a splash of Calvados (Apple brandy. Why? You can ask why? Because it was sitting on the counter. Why? You sound like a four year old. Because I put it there! Because it needed to be used. Now no more questions please.)

8. 1. In a small bowl, beat cream cheese with an electric mixer until smooth. Beat in whipping cream and powdered sugar. Really I just whipped it because I set it all out when I started and it was nice and soft.

Oo la la! I added almond slivers!!

I think you will find the perfect time and place to share this with friends, family or just all by yourself in a quiet moment. Enjoy.

Can’t believe I forgot to put a few cranberries in with the apples, next time. At least I did think to pretty it up with some pomegranate seeds … just forgot to snap a photo of that. Very nice.

You’d like to be a Buddy with us this month! Oh, we’d be so delighted (and you will be when this comes out of the oven). Here’s how:

1.Bake the Apple Kuchen, snap a pic & share your thoughts about how you liked it (or not liked it).

2.Send an email to Kitchen of the Month. Please note in the subject line that this is for the BBB Buddy Bread.

Gretchen, Kitchen of the Month

This Bread and all it’s iterations goes to Susan for YeastSpotting!

Next bread for the BBB’s will post on the 16th of next month.

October 30, 2012
by MyKitchenInHalfCups 6 Comments

All my Roses …

If you’ve ever been to one of those fabulous botanical gardens devoted exclusively to roses then you’ll understand what joy it is to gather all my Buddy Roses in one place. Just as the perfume in a rose garden is heady, so are the Russian Rose Braids heady in my kitchen.

Thank you each for baking with us and producing such gorgeous breads and the matching perfume!

Sandie blogging at Crumbs of Love

Connie’s Russian Rose blogging at MyDiscoveryOfBread

Ayalon blogging at giladayalonvegan It’s vegan! but know it needs translation.

Kelly @ A Messy Kitchen

Kathy @ BreadExperienc

Jamie blogging at Life’s A Feast

Karen blogging at Kitchen Stories

Judy blogging at Judy’s Gross Eats

Claires blogging at ClairesBaking

Carola blogging at Sweet & That’s It

Aparna Blogging at MyDiverseKitchen

Barbara blogging at Barbara Bakes

I can’t seem to get a download of the loaf but follow the link below for a very rare rose

Soep Kipje

I really have tried but please if I missed any Buddy, let me know and I’ll add you in to this round-up.

If you fear this bread because it’s beauty looks intimidating, I suggest you consider how much everyone who baked this loves the shape. Several of us have baked sweet and savory versions and have plans for many more. Lastly, consider how similar these loaves appear. Usually our loaves can vary wildly in appearance as well as taste. This shaping technique is remarkable in it’s ease of execution and the consistency of results.

Enjoy!

August 15, 2012
by MyKitchenInHalfCups 17 Comments

Oh Julia … Hysterical Nonchalance … Happy Birthday!

Many weeks ago, our Bread Babe Susan of Wild Yeast and Kitchen of the Month came to us with the suggestion that we all post a day early, hence the 15th this month, AND that we invite the Buddies to Bake and Post with us … well I think Julia would have loved that idea for Celebrating her Centennial … and so did all the other Babes and so here we are with Babes & Buddies posting together. Our Bread Babe Pat of Feeding My Enthusiasms put together a wonderful invite for the event.

I am elegant.
I am French.

Wouldn’t you know it, our fabulous Babe of the Badge Making Talent Lien of Lien’s Notes put together a wonderful Babes & Buddy Badge.

Babes & Buddies Bake Together!

Do you/ would you quake in your kitchen boots, faced with a 20 page recipe? I can tell you there are plenty of infinitely shorter recipes that have brought me to my knees. With a bread recipe, most often the most upsetting thing I find myself yelling: What does it feel like at this point? If the recipe in question is for French Bread in vol 2 of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and written by Julia Child, then I would suggest you relax with confidence, make yourself comfortable and enjoy the intoxicating experience of silky soft dough in your hands. All from just the reading of her recipe. I’ve often said and heard others say: the best way to learn to bake bread is at the side of an experienced bread baker. I found an amazing video of Julia baking this recipe on her The French Chef – Julia Child – Bakes French Bread

Keep it cool and you can prolong the rise even when it’s 103° outside!
A little ice in the bowl kept it cool enough to provide a 4 hour first rise.

Most of the time you’ll find a video does a much better job of communicating a recipe than the written word does. Well, if you read Julia’s recipe first, I think you’ll find that all the video adds is the wonderfully odd sound of her voice and her fabulous enthusiasm/love for life and cooking. I say ‘all’ it adds is the voice and the enthusiasm/love because what it doesn’t really add much to is the recipe because it’s all written there. Let me try that another way, if you actually read the recipe you will find yourself able to picture clearly the entire process including the feel of the dough and how it changes in your hands – all just in the reading. So 20 pages of reading this recipe is really like Julia standing next to you while you make this in your own kitchen.

Used my French Bread Form and got well shaped and just the right length loaves. Tasted great.

One other thing you may get from the video is how unrehearsed Julia and the show appear, especially if you compare it to todays cooking shows. I do not feel there is anything really dated about Julia or the shows. There’s a line in Bob Spritz’s bio of Julia titled Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child, that describes her as always with “a soupçon of hysterical nonchalance.” She flips bench scrapers and nasal sprayers all over as well as throwing flour on the floor.

Nice crumb … all three loaves gone in 36 hours … we need another baking of these.

When I read that line about “always a soupçon of hysterical nonchalance”, I feel connection with this Julia Child. I think it was and is exactly this ‘soupçon of hysterical nonchalance’ that appeals and attracts so many of us to Julia. She never polished her enthusiasm to be sophisticated and toned down; she continues to make us feel real and possible in the kitchen. For Julia, there were no mistakes, only lessons and good times.

OK, let’s do it again and go free form …

I first baked this bread as a Daring Baker Challenge from none other than our own BBB Mary (aka BreadChick from theSourDough) and Sara (from ILikeToCook) way back in February 2008. Yes, once upon a time I was a daring baker. (If you don’t know who the DBs are, I’d love to meet you because you must be from Mars!)

The 2nd Bake: Oh the crust was gorgeous, the crumb excellent … the shapes were tortured ugly … the taste transported you back to Paris.

Twenty pages of recipe reading is daunting but you can only do one step at a time. One step at a time with a lot of time in between each step delivers France and the streets of Paris. Hey, I’m there.

Tortured, really they were.

It’s bread: you mix up water, yeast, flour and salt. That’s it. One thing this recipe has you doing is giving the dough short (2 to 5 minutes) resting times between several of the steps. One of the most fascinating things to me about this dough was how much it changed from the first kneading – gluey, sticky, stringy – give it a 3 minute rest, then knead it for a minute before putting it in for the first rise. In that 3 minute rest, it went from that gluey, sticky, stringy state to almost smooth and barely sticky!

Breakfast, lunch and dinner appetizers … oh they were glorious.

The recipe describes the dough after the first rise as “humped into a slight dome…light and spongy when pressed…some big bubbly blister on the surface…” This is a recipe that uses words to tell you where you’re headed. Words that tell me what I’m looking for are the sign of a good recipe to me.

Tortured still tastes heavenly, proving once again beauty that counts is more than skin deep.

You’d think that in all the times baking I’d have gotten fancy but this bread does the fancy on your taste buds.

Breakfast this morning? Coffee, a simple basil bruschetta on Julia’s French Bread!

I’m sure you can find the recipe on Susan’s site but I’d really encourage you to own a book. Heck, this is two (volume 1 & 2) that I have both a hard copy AND an iBook copy of. Trust me, really you want to bake this bread and honor Julia Child and all the possibility her legacy continues to open for all who step into the kitchen.

Thanks to all the Babes and Buddies who joined with us this month to wish a very very Happy 100th Birthday Julia, it’s been a blast.

This Bread and all it’s iterations is going to Susan for YeastSpotting!

Check out a TON of Julia tributes here

July 16, 2012
by MyKitchenInHalfCups 20 Comments

BBB Oats, Oatmeal, Oh…Sara’s Easy Little Oatmeal Bread

There are times when you know exactly where things started to go off course, where things went wrong. Then there are other times when you’re really following the recipe, everything clicked along just perfectly and you have to look back and question every step and still can’t find where it went off. Easy is just not to be trusted. Fast is one thing … Easy is something else. Some of us can make easy really hard.

This month’s Kitchen of the Month is hosted by Sara of I Like to Cook and she has a blog to prove it too! The bread she brought us this month is really very healthy; filled with whole grains – wheat and oats – low sugar – only a tablespoon of honey and no added fat … well none in the loaf, you do brush it with melted butter 😉

Now, Sara must have found this an easy bread because that’s what she called it and she baked it more than once and she has a little one to keep her busy. I found the rising part a little not easy. I will admit that I just about never bloom my yeast before using it. Since I baked with this yeast before and after this loaf and they both rose with great vigor, I don’t think the problem was with the yeast. The kitchen was warm, 79°F so you can’t blame it on a cold kitchen. It did rise but even with doubling the time it didn’t reach the rim of the pan and had no oven spring.

What’s special about this bread: No Kneading, good grains, low sugar, low fat, baby it’s fast!

Sara’s Easy Little Bread

Recipe By: Sara: Adapted from Gran’s Kitchen: Recipes from the Notebooks of Dulcie May Booker via 101 Cookbooks
Yield: 1 loaf

1 1/4 cups / 300 ml warm water (105-115F)
2 teaspoons active dry yeast (one packet)
1 tablespoon runny honey
1 cup / 4.5 oz / 125 g unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup / 5 oz / 140 g whole wheat flour
1 cup / 3.5 oz / 100 g rolled oats (not instant oats)
1 1/2 teaspoons fine grain sea salt
2 tablespoons butter, melted, for brushing

50 minutes into rising…

Here’s the way I did it:

Mix the flours, oats, yeast and salt in a large bowl.

Add the honey & water mixture to the dry and stir very well.

Mix together the wet and the dry to blend evenly.

Brush a 8-cup loaf pan generously with some of the melted butter.

Turn the dough into the tin, cover with a clean, slightly damp cloth, and set in a warm place for 30 minutes, to rise. I left mine an hour to rise.

Preheat the oven to 350F / 180C, with a rack in the middle.

When ready, bake the bread for 35-40 minutes (mine was ready = pulling away from the side of the pan and registered 198°F) @35 minutes, until golden and pulling away from the sides of the pan. Sara finishes things up by leaving the bread under the broiler for just a heartbeat – to give the top a bit deeper color. I did this and gave it an extra heart beat too much and it was a little dark but still fine; so just be advised and watch it.

It’s the bottom.

Remove from oven, and turn the bread out of the pan quickly. Let it cool on a rack so it doesn’t steam in the pan. Serve warm, slathered with butter. I let mine cool thinking of all the whole grains in it.

The crumb … and buttered!

Breakfast

It made fine toast and a very nice breakfast.

And then … And then … And then … it was Friday and I was reading YeastSpotting and found a rather interesting post by a new to me blog: TreatNTrick.

Well, it was sort of like a delayed 4th of July. It really did send off all kinds of fireworks. It was like the light bulb went off in my head, the light bulb that was 1000 watts. This went from an interesting learning experience nice home made loaf into the realm of the “you will bake this one again” and more than once because this is the extraordinary bread that meets the need for good tasting utility bread. I’m sorry, I can see your eyes have glazed over and you’re not getting it; utility sounds like a dirty word to you.

Alright, let’s do this pancake shall we and have breakfast together. Coffee ready. I can wait or let me show you this will it brews.

So, I’m YeastSpotting at midnight and it was all I could do to keep myself in bed and not go straight into the kitchen to try this out.

You need bread cubes, corn stripped off the cob and it’s juices, garlic clove minced, pepper (I chopped a Poblano pepper but pick your favorite), tomato, salt to taste and some seasonings (I used some fresh chopped rosemary left over from the night before, cumin and a good pinch of Aleppo pepper; pick your favorites). Then you need some liquid and a little binder. I used 2 eggs, buttermilk and I think about 7 tablespoons of corn flour and 2 tablespoons of oat bran, no sugar in sight. You do see that we’re staying within the a very healthy place right? If you check out TreatNTrick you’ll see how to do it without eggs or milk.

I’ve always disliked pancakes, let me qualify that. I dislike flipping pancakes, I just suck at it … always. These were no exception. The first one I made too thick and too big. It came unglued. Next I tried doing it in a waffle maker. MUCH better. The last couple I did on my griddle and they were perfect; I can flip on a griddle not in a skillet. The best thing about the waffle was you got several crunchy bread cubes in each waffle. Somehow that didn’t happen with the pancakes. My favorites were the smaller griddle cakes. These are really special. Great for company.

So, my thought is this is a utility bread. It’s good healthy home made bread that can be baked quickly and then turned into something really spectacular with these Savory Bread Pancakes. The bread cubes can be frozen even for later use.

While the pancakes I think are brilliant, my next thought really rocked … at least I think it does. I love making and eating Thanksgiving dressing. I’m always wanting to make it with healthy really good homemade bread. My intentions are good. But when it comes down to the wire, I really don’t like to use terrific bread that I put so much into to make dressing. This bread however made with wonderful healthy ingredients takes a very small investment of time and seems just perfect to the task. Easy enough to load it up with herbs when it’s mixed. Now you see the “utility” of this bread and utility doesn’t seem like such a dirty word does it?

I do hope you’ll want to be a Buddy with us on this one. 1.Bake the featured bread, snap a pic & share your thoughts about how you liked it (or not liked it) 2.Send an email to Kitchen of the Month. Sara of I Like to Cook to notify her and make it easier to write the round up.

This Bread and all it’s iterations is going to Susan for YeastSpotting!

And now as they say for something completely different:

The Babes will bake and post on August 15th in honor of Julia Child’s 100th birthday, and we would love for the Buddies (that is, anyone who would like to play), to join us in posting on that day. Big thanks to Elle for creating the invitation. For the recipe we will be baking, please email Susan: susan at wildyeastblog dot com (NB: This is an invitation for NEXT month, August. THIS month (July), Buddies are still invited to make the Easy Little Bread.)

Savory bread pancake from http://treatntrick.blogspot.sg/2012/07/savory-bread-pancake.html

June 16, 2012
by MyKitchenInHalfCups 20 Comments

Mystery of the Twisting Oatmeal

The best mysteries have twists and double crosses … bread can too.

Oatmeal Twists with rainbow

In my world there are two kinds of bread bakers: there are those of us who sweat blood over the details, follow the recipe to the fourth even fifth decimal point, take the temperature of the dough, obsess over the exact ingredients. And then there are … well, the rest of us. We can’t read and when we do, we often decide to not read a detail with “I think I didn’t see that.” Technically speaking then their’s a continum between both those extremes. If I were to peg myself, I say I’m a “slider”. There have/are times when I actually follow the recipe. Then there are other times when I follow a recipe … except I play with ingredients. Other times I start the recipe and everything under the sun seems to conspire to go change things around.

Oatmeal Twists with rainbow

First Mystery: Who’s Kitchen of the Month?

Kitchen of the Month is Elle from Feeding My Enthusiasms.

Now, this kitchen table is a very wild place where there are Babes without rules there’s bound to be wildness. There was some twisting, I’m not sure there may have been some hoola hoops involved but I’m sure there was and is and always will be wonderful bread where ever the Babes gather. Elle has us twisting a very happy twist!

Second Mystery: Where’d she find the recipe?

Farine (that’s the name of her blog too)

Farine called these Morning Cuddles. They do have lots of lovely oatmeal in them so I can see why you can enjoy them for breakfast! I enjoyed them for breakfast lunch and dinner. Thank you Farine!

I baked this one twice. First baking … was gone in two days, I shared only 6 with a neighbor – this recipe makes a lot. Second baking … thanks to a freezer, I’m sharing them with my sister and Dad visiting. The second time I baked these I used the refrigerator to retard the dough overnight and baked them in the morning and enjoyed them with a great salad for lunch.

One of my favorite things about these was the walnut dust used for topping. Don’t think that you have to use any one nut. I think just about any nut you enjoy will be wonderful with these, I’m thinking peanuts, then I’m thinking hazelnuts. Babes used savory to sweet on these. I really enjoyed the walnut and salty dust. Still I realize that the options are endless and I don’t just mean the nut ingredient and I really need to give these a big ingredient twist next time I’m baking.

One ingredient I won’t twist is the oatmeal and the coarse grinding. It gave the dough a wonderful nobby texture on my hands that I enjoyed; some might not enjoy such but I found it fun and different.

Oatmeal Twists

Recipe By: Pat: based on Farine’s Morning Cuddles
Yield: 8 to 18. Make smaller sizes for snacks or appetizers. Make them bigger for a sandwich bun.

Farine of the blog Farine made the cutest breads and called them Morning Cuddles. Elle twisted Farine’s recipe and added buttermilk and some butter. I think Farine’s original idea with these for breakfast comes from all the wonderful oatmeal in them and indeed they are a really nice breakfast roll.

Starter/Poolish

700 g sourdough starter
OR Poolish, just not both
350 g all-purpose flour
350 g water
2 teaspoons yeast
Dough
320 g all-purpose flour
230 g whole wheat flour, used organic
1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast
115 g rolled oats, coarsely ground in a food processor
15 g salt
1 1/4 cup water – I used potato water, 300 grams
1/4 cup buttermilk, 64 grams
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled – 56 grams
100 g pecans – I used walnuts, chopped – 1 cup

1. If mixing and using Poolish – without sourdough starter – Sit 3 hours on counter, stir down, cover and put in fridge overnight.

First Rise

Rising

Rising Finished – pop the top

2. After overnight in the fridge: Mix the flours together with the yeast, oats and salt. Stir the water, buttermilk and butter into the starter. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the starter mixture until a soft dough forms. Let sit 10 minutes. Turn out onto a lightly floured board and knead in additional flour if needed until dough is tacky but not sticky.

3. Knead in the walnuts. Here’s my caution on the nuts: If you leave them too big, they tear the dough when you roll it into the snakes to twist. Just pinch it back together and/or chop your nuts a little finer. Shape into a ball and put dough ball into oiled rising bowl or container, turning dough to coat with the oil. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk. This might take 2 hours or 6. (Also fine to cover and let sit overnight in the fridge, then let rise until doubled on the counter the next day.) I did it both ways.

4. When dough has doubled, turn out onto lightly floured board. Shape into a log and cut into two pieces. Return one piece of the dough to the rising bowl and cover.

5. Shape the second piece of dough on the board into a log and cut into 8 pieces, each about 100 g. Cut each piece in half and shape each piece into a snake and twist two pieces together a a time or two, then place twist on a parchment or silicone mat lined baking sheet.

Twisted and rising

6. Repeat with remaining 7 (100 g) pieces. You will have eight twists. Take the remaining large (about 800 g) piece of dough and repeat the shaping into a log, cutting into 8 pieces, cutting those in half and shaping into twists. You will finish with 16 twists set out on parchment or silicon mat covered baking sheets. Cover twists and let rise until doubled in bulk. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F when twists are almost doubled.

7. Uncover, glaze with buttermilk with clean pastry brush. If desired sprinkle with finely chopped pecans, or preferred seeds or with sea salt. I tried one without glazing with the buttermilk – seemed infinitely better with the buttermilk glaze.

8. Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes. If browning too rapidly, turn down the oven temperature. Turn the pans back to front and bake another 10 – 15 minutes or until breads are 180 degrees inside. Cool on a rack then serve.

9. Variations: When you knead in the pecans you can knead in dried fruit like dried cranberries or diced prunes, apricots or dates to make a breakfast twist. If you prefer savory you can knead in herbs and/or Parmesan cheese and/or seeds. This bread loves to have you make your own combinations, so other nuts can also be used in place of the pecans or with them. I made my second batch without any nuts, seeds, fruit or herbs and they were yummy, too.

BBB logo June 2012

So I’d call myself a “slider”. What kind of a baker are you? Bake this bread with us and become a Bread Baking Buddy and tell us. Bake the bread, take some photos, blog (or not), send your link and photos to Kitchen of the Month – Elle of Feeding My Enthusiasms – and if you can do that by the 29th, Elle will have you in the round up!

YeastSpotting! What is it? Find out here.

May 16, 2012
by MyKitchenInHalfCups 11 Comments

BBB ~ the Shepherd’s in the Pot

I imagine the globe’s first baker was an insomniac. You don’t agree or you don’t follow that? I seem to have no trouble going to sleep, staying asleep is an all together different thing. I’m most often routinely awake at 3 or 3:30 in the morning. Many nights when I wake up like that, I’ll read. On one particular night recently when I woke like that, it seemed the very perfect time to … Bake the BBB bread for this month.

Our Kitchen of the Month is Karen of BakeMyDay! If you’re aiming to bake this ~ you really should you know ~ and be a Buddy by baking, post by the 28th of this month, send a photo, a short comment and a link to your blog (link not necessary if you don’t have a blog), and e-mail the Kitchen Of the Month: Karen (Bake My Day) this month. You’ll be included in the Buddy Round Up and receive a sharp looking Buddy Badge.

The next part is some of my bit about bread. I find dough, flour and bread endlessly fascinating and mysterious. I mean on some level flour, water and especially that library paste white stuff is nothing but BORING … really boring. But … there is a world of flour out there besides white all purpose flour. Add yeast to some high quality flours, get even mildly creative with some shaping and then play around with how you can change up the baking of a dough and you have an endless and never ending interesting loaf of bread filling your home with gorgeous aromas, gracing your table with glory and filling all at your table with wonder. Yes, I love the kneading, the baking, the sharing and the mystery of bread. I have never baked a boring bread.

I think this Shepherd’s Bread is suppose to be just a very simple, common even if you will, loaf. Baking this in a pot, be it clay or cast iron or whatever you have, totally changes everything. This is really an excellent bread and a very thrilling experience.

Shepherd’s Bread

Karen (BakeMyDay) found this recipe in {Bread for All Seasons by Beth Hensperger}

Yield: 1 loaf … celestially HUGE one loaf … or two “just right” sized loaves if you divide the dough and have two large pots with lids to bake them in … and you probably need two ovens to bake those two pots in.

Sponge (takes 2 hours) – (or Refrigerate overnight like I did)
2 teaspoons active dry yeast or 3/4 oz fresh yeast
2 cups tepid water (460 ml)
2 cups unbleached bread flour, 280 grams total -used all white bread flour
[I saw Karen’s suggestion for 140 white+140 rye long after mine was mixed, will try that next]
1/2 cup sugar (90 gr), I only used 50 grams

Dough (first rise 2.5 hours, second only 15 minutes!)
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
70 grams flax seed meal
1 cup warm water
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 cup olive oil, 90 milliliters/grams
5.1/2 to 6 cups unbleached AP flour or bread flour (770gr + 1/2 cup + 1/4 cup), used 2.5 cups sprouted wheat, remaining bread flour
1/4 cup unbleached AP flour or bread flour

Directions:

1. Prepare the sponge: In a large bowl mix yeast plus 1 cup of the flour and the sugar using a large whisk. Add remaining cup of flour and beat hard until very smooth, 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let stand at room temp until soft, spongy and pleasantly fermented, 2 hours.
Or refrigerated several hours/overnight.

I mixed the sponge just befor dinner and refrigerated it. I would have left it till morning but the insomniac bird awakened the baker in me at 3 AM … so I started the bread in true baker style.

2. Prepare the dough: Using a wooden spoon, beat down the sponge. Alternatively, beat down the sponge in the work bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. In a measuring cup, stir the yeast into the warm water to dissolve. Whisk yeast and salt into 1 cup of flour. Add the warm water and olive oil to the sponge and beat well. Add the yeasted, salted flour, 1/2 cup at a time, beating vigorously until a soft dough is formed that just clears the sides of the bowl.

3. Turn out the dough onto a floured work surface and knead about 5 minutes until a smooth dough is formed. Will be firm yet springy and resilient.
I dipped my open hand into flour to add very small amounts to prevent really sticky dough. This is a well hydrated dough so don’t be tempted to add in too much extra flour. I used slightly less than 5 and a half cups.
Place the dough in a floured deep container, dust the top with flour, and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise at cool room temp until tripled in bulk, 2.1/2 – 3 hours.

When I put this dough in my usual 4 quart rising bucket, it was already at the half way mark. I wasn’t comfortable with that so I cleaned out the 6 quart rising bucket. Since this dough tripled in bulk, I think that was the right choice.

4. Shaping:
Again turn out the dough on a clean surface. It will be slightly sticky from the long rise. My dough had huge bubbles in it and was very light and airy. Knead in about 1/4 cup more flour to make a firmer dough – I only added about half of the quarter cup flour, about 1 minute – dough is sticky (more than post-it note sticky) I divided the dough into two equal sized balls. Pull the ends tightly to the center of the loaf to form a smooth bottom and sides. Mist the surface with water. Using about 2 tbs of flour, heavily coat the top surface. Using a serrated knife, slash the top surface decoratively, no more than 1/4 inch deep to allow steam to escape and to allow room for the dough to expand.

Karen has used a photo of this bread many times on her blog; it is picture perfect gorgeous. Mine wasn’t absolutely perfect but close enough for me.

5. Karen offered to send the directions for baking the bread in a charcoal ash pit … since I have the book, I read them, fun to read, don’t think I’ll be baking the bread that way.

6. Cloche instructions: Sprinkle the dish with flour and place the dough ball in the center of the dish. Move the dough around to cover the bottom and up the sides a bit with flour. Cover with the cloche dome/bell and let rest at room temp 15 minutes. The dough rose only slightly in that 15 minutes. Before placing in the oven, rinse the inside of the cloche bell with water, draining off excess drips. Since I was baking mine in a cast iron pot with same lid, I skipped this rinse step. Place cover over the bread and place in the preheated 425F oven.
Bake 10 minutes.
Lower thermostat to 400F and bake a further 25-35 minutes.
Remove the bell after 30 minutes of baking to allow the loaf to brown thoroughly.

7. Remove and cool at least 15 minutes before serving.

*** If you’d like to use your bread baking stone or tiles; let rise a second time for 35 minutes then use same oven setting but don’t lower the temp. and bake until the bread is golden brown, crisp and sounds hollow when tapped.

This dough tripled in the oven. This is a very large amount of dough! If I hadn’t divided it in half, I think it would have been way too much for the le Creuset Dufou pan (7 quart) I used to bake one loaf. Without the pot creating steam, my free form loaf suffered and physics took over. Without the steam, the hot oven formed a tight solid skin on the bread preventing it from rising. My two loaves from the same dough, remember I divided this dough in half, looked like distant cousins when I took them out of the oven. Next time I’ll either have another pot with a lid to bake the second loaf in or perhaps try a loaf pan.

My it’s such good bread … and you really should bake it.

What IS this Buddy thing?

The Bread Baking Babes are a closed group but we thought it would be fun to reward people who take the effort of baking our breads with us and give them a nice Buddy Badge and mention in a round up post every month. Just to say thank you for baking along and sharing your thoughts with us.

Since we are Babes and do no obey to rules, there are nearly no rules for Buddies, except these two:

1.Bake the featured bread, snap a pic & share your thoughts about how you liked it (or not liked it)

2.Send an email to Kitchen of the Month. Karen at bakemyday at gmail dot com to notify me and make it easier to write the round up.

This Bread is going to Susan for YeastSpotting!

April 16, 2012
by MyKitchenInHalfCups 23 Comments

BBB ~ Granville Island Beer Bread

Audacious has a edge of the negative. Bodacious is brazen, blatant but remarkable in a more positive way. This month’s bread … is out of sight boldacious! I mean it’s remarkably brazenly audaciously bodacious, oh, and is delicious as well. And oh the places you can go with it.

Bodacious Kitchen of the Month: Natashya (Living in the Kitchen with Puppies) Thanks for taking us into and around your Canadian kitchen table.

Bodacious Recipe Source: Chuck (The Knead for Bread) Thank you tremendously for a gorgeous loaf.

To thine own self be true:

I added my signature flax seed to this bread. I used brown sugar to replace the white and cut it back just a bit. Initially I started doing the flax and brown sugar things because it seemed healthy. If it is, I’m happy. If it isn’t, I just like it.

The original recipe uses all unbleached white bread flour. I replaced two cups of that with one cup ArrowHead Mills sprouted wheat flour and one cup KAF white whole wheat. The more whole grains I can work into our foods, the better I feel about it. The addition of the whole grains probably added five minutes to the baking time but I don’t think it resulted in a loss of rise or a dense loaf.

I can’t remember the last time I’ve used dried diced onion. I didn’t have any in my kitchen, all the usual neighbors I borrow from were gone so I used the Pensy’s freeze dried shallots I found and added an extra two tablespoons thinking dried onion would have been more potent than the shallots.

I’m rather embarrassed to admit that we use a tremendous amount of cheese here – not necessarily the most healthy thing. Our favorite and the cheese I buy in huge block is Pepper Jack Cheese and that’s what we had and I used for this bread.

Our favorite sausage is from Whole Foods: Hot Italian Chicken Sausage. That’s what went into this bread at our house.

Amber Ale

I get no extra points for using Canadian Beer, I just couldn’t find it on the shelf and Gorn came up from the cellar with

and that’s what I used.

Here’s what the recipe looked like after I worked it over with all my tweaks:

Granville Island Beer Bread

Night before:

177 grams bread flour, 1 1/4 cup

172 grams tepid water, 3/4 cup

1/4 teaspoon instant yeast

Day of:

12 ounces bottle ale (room temperature)

1/4 cup olive oil

3 tablespoons freeze-dried shallots

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

4 teaspoon instant yeast

1/2 teaspoon ground pepper

28 grams brown sugar, slightly less than called for in the recipe

3 tablespoons flax seed meal

154 grams bread flour

110 grams sprouted wheat flour

132 grams white whole wheat flour

154 grams bread flour

1 1/2 cups Hot Italian Chicken sausage

2 cups grated Pepper Jack cheese

The next morning pour the mixture into a large bowl. Add in the room temp. bottle of beer, olive oil, dried freeze-dried shallots, 1 cup of bread flour, instant yeast, salt, pepper and sugar, and with a wooden spoon mix all these ingredients together till well blended.
Mix in another 1½ cups of flour. Kneading in this flour made me think I was working a really beautiful pillowy soft dough.
Sprinkle some more of the flour onto a counter. Pour out the wet dough onto the floured surface, place a little more flour on top. Start to knead the dough and continue to add a little flour till the dough becomes smooth (a little on the tacky side). Knead the dough for about 8 minutes, then place into a lightly oiled bowl, being sure all sides of the dough are lightly coated with the oil. (the light oil coating at this stage prevents the outer dough drying out and forming a skin that would prevent rising.)
Cover with plastic and let rise for 1 hour or till it has doubled in size.
Sprinkle a little flour onto the counter and pour out the dough. Add the sausage of your choosing. Add most of the cheese (reserve enough cheese to put on top of the two loaves) and knead till all incorporated. This is likely to seem like incorporation is never going to happen.
Needs Kneading

When it seems better but not quite there: Cover dough with plastic wrap and allow to rest for another 15 minutes.
After that 15 minute rest, the sausage and cheese seem in much better harmony with the dough.
Cut dough in half, shape into loaves. I put the dough into regular loaf pans. The original recipe placed the loaves onto a cornmeal parchment lined cookie sheet. I think these loaves would do wonderfully well in a basket.
Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rest for 1 hour.
Using a sharp knife score the dough about a inch deep. Sprinkle the rest of the grated cheese on top of the loaves. Bake in a preheated 350F oven for 30-35 minutes or till a thermometer places into middle of loaf reads 180F-190F. My loaves took 40 minutes to reach 190°.
Remove from oven and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Changing so much and not using Canadian beer, I don’t know that I can claim to have made it to Canada with this bread.

However, I can claim to have gotten pretty close to heaven with this as just plain toast.

Tomorrow for breakfast I’m going to try to get even closer to heaven when I use this bread in this KAF recipe.

I ate Texas!

Now you may laugh but I also ate the whole, entire state of Texas with this bread.

Be a Bodacious Buddy by baking, posting by the 28th of this month, send a photo, a short comment and a link to your blog (link not necessary if you don’t have a blog), and e-mail the Kitchen Of the Month: Natashya (Living in the Kitchen with Puppies) this month. You’ll be included in the Buddy Round Up and receive a sharp looking Buddy Badge.

Find all the bodacious Bread Baking Babes on the side bar to the right and check out their beer breads.

MyKitchenInHalfCups

Once Upon a time: Cooking … Baking … Traveling … Laughing …

Tag Archives: Bread

5th Anniversary BBB ~ Assyrian Spinach Pies (Syrian Sabanrhiyat)

BBB – Fan Tan Rolls

BBB – Holiday Apple Kuchen

All my Roses …

Oh Julia … Hysterical Nonchalance … Happy Birthday!

BBB Oats, Oatmeal, Oh…Sara’s Easy Little Oatmeal Bread

Mystery of the Twisting Oatmeal

BBB ~ the Shepherd’s in the Pot

BBB ~ Granville Island Beer Bread

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