Tag: baking

Sourdough Sandwich Bread: Better Than Expected

The King Arthur Baking School takes us into the world of Sourdough baking gently. The next recipe is for Sourdough sandwich bread, but while it does incorporate sourdough starter, it is mainly leavened with baker’s yeast. This gives us some advantages of both worlds: the bread has better flavor and keeping qualities because of the sourdough, but it rises more quickly and isn’t as sour as true sourdough bread.

I prepped my starter the night before baking. I used to feed my starter exclusively with whole-wheat flour, but I recently learned (through following the directions in the Baking School book) that starters are able to rise much higher when using an all-purpose flour than when using whole wheat. Who knew?

With my starter risen I gathered my mise en place.

I mixed all the ingredients into a shaggy dough. My kitchen was cold, so the butter didn’t incorporate well. I probably should have let the butter soften for longer before mixing my dough, but that’s how we learn.

After mixing I kneaded the dough by hand for 5 minutes, adding flour only once the butter started to melt out of the dough and stick to the counter.

I set the dough aside to rise for 2 1/2 hours rather than the 2 hours directed in the book (it is winter, and my kitchen is cold).

I divided the dough into two and shaped each half into a loaf, then put the loaves into loaf pans to rise. The book instructs to allow the dough to rise for 2 more hours, but I was coming up against a hard stop and needed to speed the last rise up. I put the loaf pans into the oven with the proofing setting on (80 degrees Fahrenheit) for 1 hour, then increased the tempterature to 95 degrees for half an hour for a total rise time of 1 1/2 hours.

I could have probably let the dough rise for another 20-30 minutes, but I was out of time, so I preheated the oven and baked the bread.

The finished bread smells like sourdough, but tastes sweet, almost like a dinner roll. It has a tight crumb and chewy texture. It would stand up to a sandwich without crumbling, which is better than I can say for most homemade sandwich breads. The bread toasts well and would be good in BLTs. This may be my new go-to sandwich bread.

We made excellent French Toast using this bread. The hint of sourness sets off the sweet sugar and syrup beautifully.

Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out.

Why Store-Bought English Muffins Can’t Compete

As a kid I never really liked English Muffins. It turns out there’s a good reason for that: store-bought English Muffins are dry and don’t have much flavor (this is true of most commercially-available bread). It also turns out that homemade English Muffins are moist, tender, and full of flavor. The flavor is even better when sourdough starter is incorporated. Also, did you know that incorporating sourdough into your dough helps the finished bread keep longer on the counter without staling or molding?

As with most Sourdough recipes, I started by feeding my starter the night before (I used my Alaska Frontier starter for this bake). In the morning the level of the starter had doubled.

I gathered my mise en place:

The mixing was very easy as I just combined all the ingredients and mixed by hand until everything was thoroughly incorporated.

I let the dough rise for 1 hour.

This next step is the part that separates English Muffins from a sandwich loaf. I greased 9 English Muffin rings and sprinkled cornmeal on a baking sheet.

Then I turned the dough out onto a floured counter and divided it into 9 pieces.

I rolled each piece into a flattened round, placed each piece into a ring, sprinkled them all with cornmeal, and let them rise for another hour. After an hour they had expanded significantly, but weren’t fully filling the rings.

The King Arthur Baking School book instructs one to cook the English Muffins on a griddle. I don’t have a griddle, so I used a cast iron pan at the lowest heat on my stove. The dough expanded significantly and filled the rings after being placed in the hot pan.

They turned out tender and full of flavor and with the lovely interior holes that are so indicative of a good English Muffin.

I’m not very practiced at baking bread in a pan, so some of my muffins got a little charred. I think next time I make these I will bake them on the baking stone in the oven for a more even bake.

You’re supposed to let these cool briefly before eating, but we couldn’t help eating them straight out of the pan. These English Muffins make a next-level Bacon, Egg, and Cheese breakfast sandwich. They’re also fantastic with butter and jam.

Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out.

Transform Your Sourdough Discard into Waffles

For these waffles I used a new (to me) starter that I bought in Seattle. The starter is from Alaska, and I like to imagine a gold-miner carefully tending to his starter while hoping to strike it rich in the Yukon. Although, I doubt he used his starter to make waffles. As usual, the recipe is from the King Arthur Baking School book.

I gathered my mise en place. The recipe calls for all the flour in the recipe to be whole wheat, but relies on a starter fed with all purpose flour. I prefer to feed my starter with whole wheat flour, so to keep the ratio of flour types consistent I replaced 50g of the whole wheat flour in the recipe with all purpose flour.

I combined the dry ingredients, whisked together the wet ingredients (including the starter), and then mixed them all together.

I heated up my waffle iron and started cooking waffles. As an aside, are waffles baked or fried?

These waffles have a fantastic texture! They are quite crispy on the outside while still having a tender chew. There is a hint of sour flavor, but the tanginess is not overwhelming. I recommend brushing the waffles with butter, drizzling with maple syrup, and sprinkling with salt before devouring them. They are delicious.

Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out.

From Starter to Snack: Easy Sourdough Crackers

The second section of the King Arthur Baking School book is all about Sourdough baking, and I am so here for it! I have been baking with sourdough for quite a few years, so I have some OPINIONS on how things should be done, but I am trying to keep an open mind – who knows, I might just learn something new!

I started my sourdough culture back in the summer of 2019. I had bought Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson, and I was bought in to the idea of a sourdough lifestyle. My starter took close to a month to be fully established, rather than the 1-2 weeks you see in most books and online resources, and once she was established she was not very robust. I named her Constance in hopes that she would mimic her name. Later that year my husband and I went on a road trip across the country to visit family in Arizona and California, and I decided to bring Constance along. I set her out in a rainstorm to get some Arizona rainwater, and baked with her in California to get some California flour into her. When I brought her home, she was true to her name. She’s been strong and resilient since that trip. I adore baking with her.

The first recipe in this section is sourdough crackers. I gathered my mise en place:

First I combined the flour and salt,

then I added the butter and beat it all until sandy,

and finally I added the starter and mixed until the dough was fully hydrated and smooth.

I let the dough rest for 15 minutes, then divided it in half.

I rolled each half of the dough very thin. If you are making these crackers, you should transfer the rolled out dough to your baking sheet now. I learned this the hard way.

I sprinkled the dough with toppings (I used flaky salt for the first batch and sesame seeds for the second) and rolled those in, then docked the dough with a fork. Finally, I cut the dough into cracker shapes.

I baked the crackers until they seemed done. You can see that the crackers with salt are baked quite dark. This gave them a very nutty flavor and a bit of a crumbly texture. I didn’t bake the sesame crackers as long because I was afraid the sesame seeds would burn.

I loved how these crackers turned out! I ate almost all of them within a week. They are intensely snackable, but they still feel healthy because of the sourdough and the whole grains. Rolling out the dough is a bit annoying, but these crackers are worth the effort.

Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out.

Delicious Hawaiian Bread: Mastering the Recipe

This recipe comes from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. In the recipe notes I learned that what we know as Hawaiian bread is actually Portuguese, as the Hawaiians got the bread from the Portuguese.

The bread starts with a preferment that is allowed to ripen for 90 minutes.

While the preferment ripened, I gathered my mise en place. I have tried to avoid substitutions in most of the recipes I’ve written about, but I made 3 in this bread: I substituted coconut oil for vegetable shortening, and I substituted lemon and orange essential oils for their respective extracts. I used 5-6 drops of each of the essential oils rather than the teaspoon of each extract called for in the recipe, and the flavors were perfect.

I combined the dry ingredients with the fats and beat the mixture in my KitchenAid mixer until it was sandy in texture.

I mixed in the wet ingredients, then added a bit more flour since the dough seemed quite soft. I realized at this point that I had missed the instruction to not add in all the water at once. Oops.

I intended to knead the dough in my stand mixer, but I ended up kneading it by hand as that allowed me to better gauge the dough’s texture and incorporate additional flour to get to the right texture.

I let the dough rise for 2 hours.

I divided the dough in two, then shaped half to fit in a loaf tin and half as a round, since this is the traditional shape for this bread. The shaped dough rose for 3 hours, until they filled the pans.

I brushed the top of each dough with egg wash, then baked the loaves. I was shocked at how dark these breads baked up! I was glad the recipe warned me about the browning, since I might have pulled them out of the oven too soon if I hadn’t been prepared.

The bread is delicious and beautiful. The crust is very brown, but thin and soft, and the bread inside is a beautiful creamy colour. The texture is of the bread is fine-grained and soft, but dryer than many home-baked bread recipes. Because of this the bread toasts up beautifully.

I used this bread to make cucmber sandwiches for my birthday tea party. The sweet bread was a perfect compliment for the delicate flavor of the cucumber and the tanginess of the cream cheese.

Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out.

An Imperfect Pairing: Egg Salad and Pumpernickel Bread

One of the sandwiches I made for my birthday tea party was egg salad on pumpernickel bread. In hindsight, the rye flavor was too strong for the egg salad, but the bread was very good. I used the King Arthur Pumpernickel Boule recipe.

I gathered the mise en place: (I love that pumpernickel bread has cocoa powder in it)

I combined the dry ingredients, then added the water, and kneaded in the stand mixer until it looked right.

The dough rose for an hour…

before I divided it into two and shaped each half into a loaf.

The loaves rose for 1 1/2 hours in the bread pans. I had a little trouble scoring them, since the dough was rather wet, then I put them into the oven to bake. When I took the bread out of the oven I noticed that the loaves had hardly any oven spring at all. I have baked this bread before and noticed the same thing. I contribue the lack of oven spring to the rye.

The loaves were pretty short, so I made long and thin sandwiches with all the crusts cut off.

These sandwiches were paired with classic cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches on Hawaiian bread and cheddar, apple, and chutney sandwiches on whole wheat bread.

Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out.

Celebrate Yourself: The Joy of Baking Your Own Birthday Cake

When I was a kid my mom would always make me a birthday cake. I got to choose the cake flavor, and her doing that for me always made me feel really special and loved. When I went to college my brother and my friends bought me cakes, but they were never as special as the ones my mom made for me. Over the years I started baking birthday cakes for my husband, my sister, and friends, but there was still no one to bake a cake for me, and that made me sad. Several years ago I decided to stop feeling sad and show myself the love I showed others by baking a cake for myself. Making my cake is now one of my treasured birthday traditions. This year the recipe for my birthday cake came from the King Arthur Baking School book.

I started with the mise en place:

I mixed dry ingredients,

then the wet ingredients,

then combined the wet and dry mixtures. That’s all you do for this batter. It’s so easy.

I divided the batter into 2 cake pans and baked them, then let them cool completely at room temperature.

While the cake cooled I made the frosting.

I creamed the butter, salt, and vanilla together,

added the cocoa powder,

mixed in the heavy cream,

and then added the powdered sugar.

Once the cakes were cool trimmed the tops to be level, then I assembled the cake on my new cake turntable (it was a birthday gift). I frosted the first layer, then laid the second layer on and frosted the top and sides.

The last step is always the most fun: decoration. I transferred the cake to my cake plate, then I used a star tip to pipe a row of stars around the base of the cake as well as the top edge of the cake. I finished with a star in the center of the cake and some pearl sugar.

I forgot. The best part of making a cake is eating it. This cake is so moist and really delicious! The cake together and the frosting are such a good pairing. The cake has a more bitter chocolate flavor compared to the frosting, and the frosting is sweeter. It’s amazing that such an easy cake tastes so good!

Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out.

Mastering Macarons: Tips for Perfect French Cookies

Making macarons always makes me feel like a member of the in-group. They aren’t technically that difficult to make, but you can’t be in a rush when making them, and you can’t cut corners. I’ve used the same pair of recipes to inform my macaron baking for a few years now. I like how this recipe has a lower amount of sugar, and I like the flavor suggestions for the fillings from this recipe. Both have good instructions.

As always, I started by gathering my mise en place.

I combined the almond flour and powdered sugar in a sieve over a bowl and sifted them together. Almond flour is quite a bit more course than most wheat flour, so this process takes some time and effort. It’s important to work as much of the almond flour through the sieve as possible so the ratios of the recipe don’t become skewed.

In a separate bowl I whisked the egg whites , salt, and cream of tartar until they were frothy, then turned on the speed on my KitchenAid mixer and slowly poured the granulated sugar in. I continued whipping until the eggs were at stiff peaks.

I gently folded the almond flour mixture into the egg whites in two parts, then continued folding until the batter could slowly run off my spatula to form an unbroken figure-8. This is the macaronage, and it is another part of the process that requires patience and attention to detail.

I divided the batter in half and added a few drops of food coloring, then folded the color in until the batter was evenly tinted. I also double-checked the macaronage at this point.

I poured both batters into untipped pastry bags, cut the ends of the bags, and piped the macarons.

Normally I like to wait for a dry day in the Spring or Autumn to make macarons because the air is dryer, which helps the macaron shells dry more quickly and bake dryer. The day I had set aside for baking these macarons turned out to be a rainy day, so the macarons needed to rest for an hour before the top of each cookie was sufficiently dry to be baked.

I baked the macarons for 14 minutes, rotating the baking sheet about 2/3 through each bake.

The macarons developed a lovely foot (the crinkly edge on the cookie) and the bake was gentle enough to not add any colour to the shells, but either they were ever so slightly underbaked, or the wet weather made them seem so. Either way, several shells didn’t pass quality assurance and were disposed of as test runs for my fillings. You know, in the name of science.

I baked the macaron shells 6 days before my tea party. I put the shells in a container and the container in a plastic bag and froze them until a day or two before the party. On the day of the party I filled them. The green shells got a ring of chocolate buttercream (leftover from decorating my cake) and a dollop of pistachio cream. The pink shells got a ring of chocolate buttercream and a bit of sour cherry jam.

These macarons always turn out so delicious. I’m so glad I included them in my tea party menu. I wish I had included a little more pistachio cream in the green macarons since the chocolate buttercream was much stronger in flavor than the pistachio. The tartness of the chocolate-cherry macarons was delightful, especially against the backdrop of chocolate cake.

Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out.

Currant Scones with Clotted Cream

One cannot host a tea party without serving scones, and currant scones are such a classic. Scones are especially delightful because of how quick they are to make.

I gathered the mise en place:

First, I combined the dry ingredients.

I added in the currants and made sure any clumps of fruit were broken up.

Lastly, I added the cream and stirred until the flour was all incorporated and I had a shaggy dough.

At this point I departed from the recipe. Instead of shaping the dough into one large round and cutting it into 8 wedges, I cut out 9 rounds.

I brushed the tops of the scones with heavy cream, and baked them until the tops were beginning to become golden. This took 26 minutes for me, instead of the recommended 15-20 minutes.

Scones are traditionally served with clotted cream and jam. Clotted cream is rather difficult to find, so I decided to make my own. The making of clotted cream does take a good 24 hours, so I started this a few days before I baked the scones.

I used this recipe. I was able to find pasteurized (but not ultra-pasteurized) heavy cream at my grocery store as recommended in the recipe. I poured the whole quart of cream into a baking dish, and baked it at the lowest temperature my oven would allow. I set the oven to 180 degrees Fahrenheit, but it was closer to 225 degrees Fahrenheit for most of the bake. After 9 hours the top of the cream was golden brown, and you could see a separation of the cream from the whey.

I allowed the cream to cool overnight, then poured off the whey. The golden bits on the top were rather crunchy, and that wasn’t the texture I was going for, so I strained the remaining cream through a sieve before serving.

The scones were lovely, and the combination of scones, cream, and jam was so wonderful. My neighbor, who is from Scotland, said these are the best scones he’s had in a very long time (he also approved the clotted cream).

Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out.

The Trials of Baking a Lemon Bundt Cake

I love lemonade and lemon-flavored treats, so I bought a bag of lemons not fully realizing just how many lemons I had just acquired. In an effort to use some of the lemons I decided to make a lemon cake. I leafed through the King Arthur Baking School cookbook and found this lemon bundt cake. Perfection.

I gathered my mise en place:

I started by creaming together the butter, sugar, and lemon zest.

Then I added the eggs one at a time, beating each one in before adding the next.

Next, I alternated stirring in the flour and the milk.

With my batter ready to bake, I prepared my bundt pan. Normally I would prepare the pan before mixing my batter. I typically use the classic method of generously buttering the pan with a pastry brush and then flouring the pan, but the book suggested that I could merely spray the pan with oil liberally just before scooping the batter in and all would be well. I was skeptical, but I’ll try anything once.

I put my cake into the oven and watched as it baked. It all looked good for the first 20 minutes, but then the center of the cake began to dome upwards. I watched helplessly. There was nothing I could do but wait for the cake to be finished baking.

The recipe said the cake should take 40 minutes to bake, but mine was in the oven for over an hour before the cake tester came out clean.

I let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes as recommended, then attempted to get it out of the bundt pan. Friends,it was stuck in there. With the cake still warm I couldn’t get it out of the pan without completely mauling it, so I took a page out of the angel food cake recipe and flipped the cake-in-the-pan over on a cooling rack to cool with the hope that gravity would assist me. Unfortunately, this did nothing. I ended up using my least rigid spatula to pry the cake away from the pan once it was fully cooled. It was not my best moment, but the cake still looked alright, so I whipped up the glaze.

Before plating the cake I cut off the domed portion to help it sit flat on the plate. I drizzled the glaze over the cake, then wrapped the whole thing up to take to a meetup with some friends.

My friends declared the cake to be delicious. They had no idea of the fight I had just had with it. I agree it was a good cake. Lemony, but not overwhelmingly so. Sweet, but not too sweet. Very tender, and not dry in the least. I would absolutely make this cake again, but I would go back to the tried-and-true method of buttering and flouring the cake pan, and I would lower the oven temperature in an attempt to avoid the doming I got with this cake.

Lastly, this cake makes excellent strawberry “shortcake”. This was a great way to use up the leftover cake trimmings.

Until the next time: may your yeast always rise and your flour never run out