Bread Blog

Whole wheat beet bread

Mon, 8 Jun 2009 06:06:46 -0700

While visiting the Lake Forest Farmer’s market we found beets. Lots and lots of fresh beets. This reminded me of a recipe I had read about earlier, whole wheat beet bread. The bake is ON!

This bread was fun to make. Learned how to roast beets. After roasting the beets are peeled. It’s a good idea to wear gloves, beet juice will stain just about anything including skin. After peeling the beets are pureed and stored in the fridge over night.

An overnight poolish is used as a preferment. It’s basic, approximately equal percentages of hydration and flour, with a quarter of the yeast used for the recipe or a quarter of a percent of the flour weight.

The following day remove the beets from the fridge a few hours before combining the remaining ingredients. What are the remaining ingredients? Bread and whole wheat flour, salt, yeast, thyme, rolled oats, and enough Mandarin oranges to sufficiently hydrate the dough. Yep Mandarin oranges.

The vibrant magenta reminds me of our trip to the tulip festival.

Made one preparation error which resulted in somewhat less oven spring. During the first rise I did my workout for the day and allow the dough to rise too long. The second rise was less significant. Fortunately beets are in season!

Hopefully Jennifer’s coworkers will like it!

Ciabatta

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 07:34:47 -0700

Ciabatta is one of the easier breads to make because forming the slipper shape is as simple as letter folding. It can be made with either a poolish or biga preferment. I chose the biga since I’ve not made one before. Fillings are easy to add during the dough mixing process or folding in while forming.

As you can see I made two ciabattas, a plain and a spicy cheese which I’ll affectionally call Head Crab Ciabatta since it reminds me of Half-Life’s Head Crab.

Dragon Bread, Experiment #2

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 16:51:37 -0700

Just a quick update...

Started experiment #2 March 19, 2009. The dough is based on Pane Siciliano. It contains Semolina flour and a mixture of high gluten and standard bread flour. The recipe begins with pâte fermentée which I let it ferment an extra day while I sourced the remaining ingredients.

Friday I picked up sixteen Jalapeños and six Habaneros all fresh and research roasting techniques. The best technique to roast peppers without fire is in the oven at 350-400° for approximately an hour. Once roasted cover to trap moisture and let cool. When cool remove skin. Don’t forget the latex gloves.

Early Saturday morning I roasted half the peppers while dechilling the pâte fermentée. An hour later I pureed the peppers with two table spoons extra virgin olive oil and combined with the remaining ingredients. This time I chose a combination of Swiss and Extra Sharp Cheddar cheese diced not grated. Let the dough rise for two hours, formed the loaves, and proofed for an hour. Just prior to baking the Dragon’s spine was added.

Pane Siciliano recipe utilizes the hearth baking technique. Preheat oven to 500° and placed steam pan on lower shelf, once preheated place dough inside and fill steam pan with 4-8 oz. water. After 30 seconds spray sides of oven with water, repeat two more times at 30 second intervals. After final spray reduce oven temperature to 450°. Bake for 15min, rotate 180°, bake until internal temperature registers 200-205°. This was followed for the first two loaves exactly, for third I reduced the temperature to 400°, performed the steam cycle, and finally reduced again to 350°.

The results look great! Check out that spine!

Tasting will come later tonight with stew and a salad. Can’t wait!

Oh yes. While making the pâte fermentée I also made a biga for Ciabatta. It’s currently chilling in the freezer for next weekend. Who am I going share all this bread with?

Dragon Bread, first experiment, and French Baguette

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 22:40:28 -0700

Last week I had the idea of making spicy cheese bread. A bread that brings Heaven & Hell to the senses. Today was the first experimental results of what will evolve into Dragon Bread.

What is Dragon Bread?

Dragon Bread is a flavorful bread, with a prickly crust similar to the spine of a Dragon, an inviting aroma somewhat pungent, and a crumb imbued with the fires of Prometheus.

How do you make Dragon Bread?

I’m not sure exactly, if I were then I wouldn’t be performing experiments. What I do know is it’s an enriched bread containing cheese and peppers. Dough is prepared with a sponge, a preferment containing all the yeast, some of the flour and most of the liquid. After forming and proofing, just before baking, food shears are used to create the spine. Today I formed simple loaves, the final form will be much more exciting.

For this first experiment I chose one Habanero, three fresh roasted Jalapeños, and extra sharp cheddar. I had trouble sourcing fresh Habaneros, instead I substituted jared. Despite the Habanero the result were akin to Sleeping Dragon Bread. Very nice flavor, aroma, but mild. The crust spine wasn’t as distinct as I’d like. The crumb was a bit too uniform as well.

Experiment two I plan to exchange butter for olive oil, pureeing the peppers, after roasting, with the oil. I may add sliced or diced bits in as well. To make the crumb less uniform I’ll use larger chucks of cheese instead of shredding. Making the spine more pronounced should only require a deeper snip with a slight flip curl afterward.

Friday Jennifer mentioned wanting French bread. By that she meant garlic French bread. Since I had enough pâte fermentée left over from baking Kaiser buns I decided to make a largish French Baguette in hopes that it would provided a sufficient basis.

With the exception of Pain à l'Ancienne my baguettes haven’t turned out well. Today was no exception.

Perhaps this is a good thing considering the goal. We’ll know more Sunday evening.

Pretzels, Steve Celebration Bread and Kaiser Buns.

Mon, 9 Mar 2009 21:36:45 -0700

Since my last entry I’ve baked quite a few breads, so forgive the less than in-depth post.

It seems turn of the month is my bread baking time. I’ll cover each bread in an orderly fashion by date. Unfortunately I only have pictures of “Steve Celebration Bread”. Aptly named to celebrate my father-in-law’s birthday.

Pretzels were a pseudo request late February. The great thing about pretzels is they’re a lot like bagels. Both use malt, are boiled in a alkaline bath, require unique forming technique and often topped. Where they differ is hydration and normal flour is used instead of high protein bread flour although I used some rye. Using rye was a mistake, live and learn. They were good but not great.

Late-late February happens to be my Steve’s birthday and I was pondering what would make a good birthday gift that can be shared in celebration. Why tasty bread of course! “Steve Celebration Bread” is a typical enriched bread taking roughly 4 hours to make. Enriched means it has ‘stuff’ other than flour, water, and yeast. Stuff like eggs, butter, sugar (although not much), milk, dried Bing cherries, dried cranberries, roasted pistachio, and lemon extract. Because Jennifer has had plenty of practice braiding she formed the loaf and did a marvelous job! The aroma of this loaf was simply amazing, so much so we had to deliver it a day early else it risked being eaten.

A couple days prior to his birthday Steve suggested I make buns for our BBQ. It wasn’t till I thought of Kaiser buns/rolls the idea appealed to me. Kaiser buns are low hydration, roughly 55%, and use a pâte fermentée - a fancy name for fermented dough. Because of this preparation time is two days. One day to prepare the pâte fermentée and another for proofing and baking. My favorite thing about Kaiser buns is forming them. Jennifer and I tried two techniques. The first was like folding paper into a flower only with dough. We failed to make this technique produce the hallmark Kaiser top. The second was like tying a knot. Indeed the knot technique is named “Knotted Roll”. We had fairly good results with the knot technique. These turned our pretty darn good.

March is here and soon spring. I’ll be making a spicy cheese bread for a party late this month. Assuming I don’t injure myself, rub face/eyes after handling Habaneros and Jalapeños, the excitement will be watching the beads of sweat from those who eat it. My goal is to make it just hot enough to not deter consumption; it’ll be tasty torture. Besides that I may try my hand at a herb and olive Focacia. That sounds like a good spring bread.

As always I’m open for recommendations.