Tag: bread

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.

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.

Baking Baguettes: Tips and Techniques

The last recipe of the first section of the King Arthur Baking School book is Baguettes. Initially I was intimidated by baguettes, but the dough turned out to be pretty straightforward, and the shaping was easier than I expected.

I gathered my mise en place:

This recipe introduces an interesting method for mixing the dough by using a dough scraper to scrape down the side of the bowl and up the middle, turning the bowl and repeating until the dough is fully mixed. I didn’t love this method as I felt there were some dry areas and wet areas in the dough despite my best efforts. But I’m glad I tried this new method anyway.

The dough bulk fermented for 3 hours with a fold (also done with the dough scraper) done every 30 minutes. I didn’t love the dough scraper for this job either, as I couldn’t grab the dough to pull it out from the main mass for each fold. I did, however, appreciate the suggestion for 20-25 strokes every half hour. It makes me wonder if I have been under-working my dough when I stretch-and-fold around the circle just once.

It was interesting to see how every time the dough rested it started to look more wet, but then when I completed the folds the dough immediately looked more dry. Also, I love the glossy sheen the dough developed around the 5th turn and that remained even after my 20 strokes.

First turn:

Second turn:

Third turn:

Fourth turn:

Fifth turn:

After 3 hours of bulk fermentation I turned the dough out onto the counter and divided it into 3 balls, which I pre-shaped before allowing them to rest for 15 minutes.

Then came the part that separates baguettes from other breads: shaping. The instructions in the book are pretty clear, but I also found this video to be helpful.

I started by patting the dough into an oval:

Then I folded the top third down and pressed the dough into itself with my fingertips. I turned the dough 180 degrees and folded the other third down into the center.

The next step was very similar: I folded the top almost down to the bottom, pressing to seal with the heel of my hand. I turned the dough 180 degrees and repeated, though this time the top of the dough was brought all the way down to the edge of the dough.

I placed the resulting seam against the counter and used both hands to roll the dough out to the longest length my oven can handle. I then placed the baguette on a heavily floured couche for the final rise.

While the dough rested I started preheating my oven. The dough didn’t expand a lot, but it did pass the poke test. I slashed the tops of my loaves and put them into the oven on a baking stone with a cup of boiling water to create a steamy environment.

I struggled to get these loaves off the couche and onto a pizza peel to transfer them into the oven. Thankfully, the dough stood up well to the extra handling at this stage. By the third baguette I remembered you’re supposed to use the couche to flip the dough onto the peel.

I experimented with the bake time since I had 3 baguettes. The palest loaf was in the oven for 20 minutes at the front of the oven. The middle loaf was in for 22, and the darkest loaf was in for 24 minutes at the back of the oven. Visually the middle bake is my favourite. I am working on allowing my breads to bake just a bit darker for better flavor, and seeing the difference in these 3 baguettes helps me get a better sense of when I will want to pull breads out of the oven in future.

So how is the bread? Delicious! I am so proud of the crumb on this one! It looks exactly how baguettes are supposed to look with a good balance of holes throughout without being too lacy. It tastes like good bread, very similar to other breads made with straight dough. It’s fantastic with butter and a sprinkle of salt.

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

Mastering Ciabatta: A Wet Dough Adventure

Ciabatta is a very wet dough. I have avoided doughs with very high hydration until now, but this was the next recipe in the King Arthur Baking School cookbook, and I am not one to back down from a challenge.

As in the last few recipes, I started the night before baking by mixing my preferment. This preferment is called a biga, and it has slightly more flour than water (by weight), so it was a little stiffer than the preferment for the French Bread, which had an equal weight of water and flour.

You can see how much it rose overnight (11 hours)!

I added all the remaining dough ingredients to the biga and mixed at the slowest speed on my KitchenAid mixer until everything was combined. Then I increased the speed to medium-low and kneaded the dough for 4 minutes as directed. I covered the dough and set it aside to rise.

I gave the dough a fold every 30 minutes for the next hour and a half, and then turned the dough out onto the counter.

The shaping was surprisingly simple: I divided the dough into thirds and shaped each one into a rectangle. I placed each loaf on parchment paper, covered them with a cloth, and left them to rise.

The recipe didn’t specify a final rising time, so I looked at a few ciabatta recipes online and guesstimated that an hour would be sufficient. During this time I preheated my oven and baking stone to 500 degrees Fahrenheit.

When the dough had risen and the oven was hot I used my pizza peel to load the bread into the oven. I poured boiling water into the steam tray, and let the bread bake. After 50 minutes I lowered the oven temperature to 450 degrees Fahreneheit. The loaves baked for 30 minutes total. I could have taken them out after 25 minutes, but I wanted a little more colour on the loaves.

I really enjoyed this ciabatta bread! The loaves are rather flat, which is correct for this style of bread. The bread has a mixture of larger and smaller holes, and has a nice taste and texture. We ate it with bolognese and fresh pasta.

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

Easy Pita Bread with Spelt Flour

I’ve made pita before, but until now I had never worked with spelt. This ancient grain brings a delicious, nutty flavor to the party. I’m glad I tried it.

For the preferment I combined the spelt flour, water, and yeast.

This was a very short preferment, so I mixed in the remaining ingredients after just 15 minutes.

This dough did not need to be kneaded, so I immediately set it aside for an hour to rise. I put my baking stone in the oven and started the oven preheating during this time.

After the bulk rise I divided the dough into 8 pieces and rolled each piece into a ball.

The balls rested for 15 minutes while the oven finished preheating, then I rolled them out into rounds. The spelt flour is very extensible, and I rolled the first two pita much too thin, but the last 6 were a reasonable size and thickness.

I baked two pita at a time on my baking stone. I flipped them after a minute or two, once they had puffed on the first side.

The finished pita were quite blonde. Since colour = flavor, I chose to cook the pita over my gas stove for a few seconds before serving. This helped both the flavor and texture of the pita.

When the pita were done I made some fillings and enjoyed a delicious dinner.

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

Embracing a Family Tradition: Pizza Night at Home

When I was a kid we had pizza every Friday night. My mom would spend all day making the dough, and then at dinner time she would make a big pizza and let us kids make our own little pizzas. It was fun to choose our own flavors and decorate them just so, and the pizza was always delicious. This pizza recipe is in a bit of a different style, but it still reminds me of being a kid.

I started by prefermenting a portion of both the flour and water in my recipe with just a pinch of yeast and letting it rise for 4 hours. This preferment could have gone longer, but I mixed it into the dough when it was convenient for me. Flat breads like pizza can be a little more forgiving about rising times than traditional breads where we’re trying to coax as much rise out of the dough as possible.

I mixed the preferment and the remaining dough ingredients together and into a very shaggy mass, then kneaded by hand until the ingredients were fully incorporated and the dough was smooth.

The dough rose for 2 hours before I divided it into two rounds and shaped it into pizzas. I started by patting each round into a circle, then I used my hands and gravity to stretch the dough into a large round, maybe 15” in diameter. I tried to get the dough thickness even, but it’s harder than it looks.

When the dough was shaped to my satisfaction I topped the pizza with sauce my husband made, then fresh mozzarella and provolone, and finally garden-fresh basil.

I floured my pizza peel and held my breath while I loaded the pizza onto it and then put it into a very hot oven. I followed the pizza baking recommendation from Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast: I used a pizza stone and heated my oven as high as it would go (550 degrees Fahrenheit). Once the oven was searing hot and I was tired of waiting for it to get hotter I changed the setting to Broil while I topped the pizza. I kept the broil setting on to bake the pizza.

The second pizza was done in much the same way, except I used Boar’s Head pepperoni, sliced thin, instead of basil.

Both pizzas turned out delicious! My husband said it was the best pizza he’s ever had.

My pizza shaping/stretching technique is not great (yet!). I definitely need to practice more, which is totally ok with me. I don’t mind more pizza.

I had trouble loading the second pizza onto the peel and into the oven because I didn’t re-flour my peel. I also didn’t give the oven long enough to come back up to temperature between the first and second pizzas, so the second pizza wasn’t as crispy as the first.

And finally, the amount of sauce and cheese was perfect for both pizzas, but both could have used more of their final toppings: at least twice as much basil and half again as much pepperoni.

Overall, I would call this recipe a rousing sucess, even though I still having some areas for improvement with shaping technique and topping. Practice will solve these.

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

Making Delicious Bagels at Home

The journey from pretzels to summits to bagels has been an interesting one. These cousins are all delicious, and it’s been so interesting to see how they are similar and different!

As usual, I started with the mise en place: a very simple list of ingredients this time.

I kneaded the dough in my KitchenAid mixer for 10 minutes, then set it aside to rise for half an hour.

Once the dough had risen I divided it into 8 pieces and shaped each piece into a little log.

I let the logs rest for 15 minutes before shaping them into bagels.

As suggested in the recipe, I gave my bagels a long rest. 6 hours later I took the bagels out of the fridge.

Toward the end of the rising time I prepared my water bath.

The bagels stuck to the parchment paper when I transferred them to the water bath, which I did not expect, so they got a little mangled in transport. Next time I would grease the parchment paper before resting the bagels. But I did manage to get all the bagels poached and back on their sheet pan.

Half of the bagels were topped with Asiago cheese and the other half were topped with Everything seasoning.

I baked the bagels for the full 25 minutes recommended in the recipe, and I could have probably gone another few minutes longer for the Asiago bagels. But I didn’t want to burn the Everything bagels, so I pulled them all out.

These bagels were delicious. Slightly chewy, but nothing like the grocery store bagels that you have to do jaw workouts to enjoy. The Everything bagels had too much topping on them (I didn’t even know that was possible), so in future I would use half or a third of the topping per bagel. The Asiago bagels were perfect other than possibly needing a slightly longer bake time for additional flavor.

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

Simit: The Sweet and Savory Turkish Bagel

I had never heard of simits before reading this recipe, but I was excited to try something new, and these turned out so delicious! As always, I started out with the mise en place:

I mixed and kneaded the flour, water, salt, and yeast together in my stand mixer for several minutes until the ingredients were well-incorporated and the dough was smooth.

Meanwhile, I had a lot of fun beating the butter with my rolling pin to soften it without warming it up too much.

I added the (still cold) butter to the dough bit by bit until it was all incorporated and then continued to knead the dough until it was silky smooth.

I covered the dough and let it rise. After 45 minutes I did a fold. The dough was super supple and extensible and was such a pleasure to handle!

I let the dough rest for another 45 minutes. Toward the end of this time I prepared the molasses bath and sesame seeds for the topping.

Shaping was surprisingly easy. I cut the dough into 24 pieces, then rolled each one out into a long rope. Then two ropes were twisted together by rolling up with one hand while rolling down with the other. Then the twist was wrapped around the hand and rolled together.

Before setting the simits aside to rise I dipped each one into a molasses bath and then into sesame seeds. I covered the trays and let them rise for half an hour while I preheated the oven.

My husband was preparing to fry some chicken while I was making the simits and he suggested frying a couple. Friends, this was a very good idea! They were wonderful fried, and a bit of cinnamon sugar on top made them even better!

With the fried simits consumed, it was time to bake the rest of the batch.

These simits turned out so well! They have the slightest hint of sweetness from the molasses bath, but the dough and sesame seeds are savory. We enjoyed them with breakfast until they were gone (and I was sad when they were gone). If you have never made (or tried) simits before, I would definitely recommend them.

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