BBA Ciabatta

OK, guess I was due for a failure and this was it.  I made ciabatta bread yesterday and mine has NO holes in it.  I did some online research and I know what was wrong.  So I'll try again and hopefully the next time with be replete with holes!

So what I learned from online research is that I kneaded the ciabatta too long.  In Rinehart's book he says to mix on medium mixer speed for 5 - 7 minutes until the dough is smooth and the ingredients are evenly distributed.  Being an oldest child and always following the rules, I did exactly that - mixed for 5 minutes and changed to the dough hook for the last 2 minutes.

As a result my ciabatta developed too much gluten.  I have made ciabatta before from a different recipe (Bertinett's Dough)  and it had great holes.  Bertinett advises not using the mixer and I think I'll go that way the next time I try the Rinehart recipe.

Anyway my rather pitiful photos are below, including the unattractive, non-ciabatta looking slices where in addition to the lack of holes, you can also see the flour line created when I folded the dough "like a letter" as per the instructions.

Better luck next time and there will be a next time - I will NOT be defeated!




Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

BBA Challah

True confession:  I skipped Brioche - didn't have the right pan - and Casatiello, although I'll try to go for it next weekend after I buy some salami.  So I went to Challah last weekend.

It was fun to make and only took one day, but I'm not thrilled with my results.  It was a little dry and not as rich as some other Challah recipes I've used.  I'm tempted to cut it all up to make croutons, but instead I used one loaf to make a breakfast casserole of baked French toast with craisins and cinnamon and gave the other loaf to my daughter with encouragement to do the same.

Here's a slideshow of the process.  The braiding was a lot of fun as was sprinkling the sesame seeds:



Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

BBA Bagels

Several years ago I bought food grade lye with the plan of making homemade bagels.  I have been terrified to open the bottle - you apparently need to wear goggles, gloves, and be ready to throw away the jeans you wear.  I never went near the bagel recipe because I was deathly afraid of the lye.

But the BBA book has a bagel recipe in it that does not involve lye and still the bagels are AMAZING.  Everyone I gave them to absolutely fell out telling me how good they were.

Again, I did this on November 23 and was just late posting it.  The holidays always interfere with blogging for me both here and on my beekeeping blog.

Making bagels was incredibly time-consuming but at the same time, so much fun.  Every recipe in the book takes more time than any other bread recipe, but every time it is worth it.

The recipe uses malt which I have on hand for the communion bread recipe, so I was delighted to have another use for it.  

The bagels are ultimately shaped into 4 1/2 ounce pieces - I weighed each and every one.  They rest for a bit and then you make them into bagel shapes.  I didn't do a great job taking a photo of my own hand but here are the shaping photos:

The shaped bagels rest on a cookie sheet until they are ready to go into the refrigerator.  You determine this by a float test in which the ring is dropped into water.  If they float then it's time to put the cookie sheet into the refrigerator overnight.

The next day, you heat the oven to 500 - I'm so glad my Wolf oven can easily do that temperature.  The bagels are then boiled but instead of lye, you add baking soda!  While the boiled bagels are still wet, you season them.  This is where the recipe let me down. 

Left to my own devices (since there were no recommendations for amounts of seasonings), I salted mine too much, but not irreparably - everyone adored them but next time I'll go much easier on the salt.

I measured exactly 4 1/2 ounces per bagel but I ended up with 14 instead of 12 absolutely delicious bagels.  I'll make these again and again despite the long process.

Catch Up with BBA Posts: Artos Greek Celebration Bread

Actually I made this bread on November 16 and just never posted about it.  It was easy and fun and a delicious bread.

I used a poolish started since I already had it available, but he starts with a barm.  He does say you can use a poolish.

As a beekeeper, I loved it that this bread has honey as an ingredient because, of course, I used honey from my own bee hives.  The honey and all the spices give the dough an inviting warm color.

I follow all of his directions as precisely as I can (for a person for whom precision is a challenge, at best) so I use Pam Olive Oil spray since he calls for it in almost every recipe.  Here I used it to oil the bowl in which the dough would rise.

This bread baked up beautifully into pretty round loaves.

While the bread was baking, I made the glaze of sugar, water, honey and orange extract so I would be ready to paint it onto the loaves when they were done.

Every year when our office has a holiday party, we draw names.  I give some version of the same gift every year - a jar of my honey (or homemade apple butter, if there is no honey - like this year), some homemade breads - this year it was this Artos holiday bread - and a few other homemade goodies - like seasoned nuts, candied orange peel.  I think the receiver was glad to get this loaf.  

I certainly enjoyed the one I kept which I ate right away - hers I saved in the freezer until the party.

Anadama BBA Recipe

Yesterday I made the BBA Anadama bread.  The composition of the bread actually started the day before when I had to make a "soaker" of corn meal and water:

I used the same Great Smoky Mountain stone ground corn meal that I used in the Anadama bread on Friday.  In many breads with cornmeal, the cornmeal soaks in boiling water until it reaches room temperature, but this one started in lukewarm water and soaked all night.  I wondered if it would make the bread less "crunchy" than the Jones' recipe.

On Saturday the real Anadama work began.  Reinhart uses instant yeast, something that isn't a staple in my kitchen but will be in this year of BBA baking!  First you put the soaker in a mixing bowl with some of the flour and let the sponge sit for about an hour until it is bubbly. (I almost forgot to take the photo below so the rest of the flour is sitting on the right half of the sponge).

Then you add all the other dry ingredients along with the molasses (2 T less than in the Jones' recipe), the salt and the shortening and mix it all together.  I used and will continue to use my Kitchen Aid for this project.

Really difficult to mix this in - in most bread recipes, you add the flour 1/2 cup at a time.  I would have been happier to mix the rest of the ingredients in more gradually.

But it did all come together as described into a "tacky" dough.

Then the bread had an opportunity to rise until doubled:

I weighed the risen dough to put equal amounts into each pan.  Mine weighed 26 ounces per loaf instead of the 24 ounces that the recipe said.  I don't think I added flour, but I don't know what was different.

The bread was supposed to rise for an hour but in my warm kitchen, it was cresting above the pans at half an hour.  Reinhart would say that the bread would have a deeper flavor if I had a cooler place in which it had risen - I'll do that the next time.

I had preheated the oven so I brushed the tops of the loaves with water and sprinkled them with corn meal.  

They had good oven spring and looked lovely when they were done.  One side looked perfect:

But the other side looked like this.  I guess I didn't secure the seam very well when I rolled the loaves or they had too much oven spring in my convection oven.

The BBA Anadama sliced beautifully, had a nice crumb and was a much lighter loaf than the Anadama from the Book of Bread.  

Here are the two side by side.  The loaf on the right is from the Book of Bread.  The Anadama on the left is from BBA.  They have approximately the same amount of flour.  The bread on the right has 2 T more of molasses which makes it a darker, more colorful bread.  The BBA bread used instant (rapidrise) yeast and the bread on the right used active dry yeast.

In taste, the Anadama from BBA is much lighter and has a crunchier, crispy crust.  The Anadama from the Book of Bread is sweeter and denser than the BBA loaf.  Both are delicious.  I gave one of my daughters the second loaf from the Book of Bread and another daughter the second (prettier) loaf from BBA.  As for me, I had two soft boiled eggs for breakfast - one on one type of toast and the other on the other type of toast.  A truly luxurious treat.

This coming weekend, the challenge bread is a Greek bread and has a starter, so I got my sourdough out of the downstairs refrigerator and will be feeding it all week to get it up to the task!

Anadama Bread

A number of years ago the Internet was buzzing with the BBA Challenge - over 200 people participated in a challenge to bake every recipe in Peter Reinhart's book: The Bread Baker's Apprentice

I missed that challenge, although I owned the book at that time.  Most of Reinhart's recipes require several days to complete.  I just didn't have it in me to commit that much.

But this year I am up for trying something challenging in the bread baking arena of my life.  I typically bake bread every week - usually on Friday or Saturday.  So this year as of November 1, I am going to bake my way through Reinhart's book.  Unlike previous challenges, I plan frequently to make a different version of the bread in addition to the recipe in BBA.

For example, the first bread is Anadama Bread.  This weekend I made the recipe for Anadama Bread in Judith and Evan Jones' great bread book:  The Book of Bread (Reinhart even refers to the Evans book for a source for the Anadama story), and then today I made the Anadama Bread in BBA.  It was fun to do both versions and we'll see in my taste test in the morning if there is much difference between them.

The Jones' recipe took one afternoon.  I used great corn meal from a Smoky Mountain grist mill for both breads.  And I used a great molasses that I buy when I'm in Asheville at the Farmer's Market in Asheville (which is an amazing place).

Here are photos from making the one day recipe:

You can see that it came together well and made two lovely loaves.  I gave one to my daughter when she brought my grandson for babysitting, but kept the other one.  Yummmmm, is all I have to say!  It has a richness and a sweetness.  Will make delicious toast, I think.

The Anadama story is as per the Jones book, this type of bread was created by accident.  A Yankee fellow came home to his lazy wife.  She had not fixed dinner, but had left him with corn meal mush and a pitcher of molasses.  The angry husband threw the mush and molasses together and added yeast and flour.  He was so mad that he spent the entire time saying, "Anna, Damn her," and thus the bread became known as Anadama bread!

Finnish Farmer Rye Bread

I have not posted in a while. Both of my grandchildren have lost interest in baking bread. I do still bake every Friday but without their involvement, I've felt less motivated to keep up this blog.

Recently, though, I've been experimenting with rye breads and want to share the recipes I am trying.

Last Friday I made Finnish Farmer Rye Bread from The Sunset Cook Book of Breads, published in 1980. (Note my copy says on the front that my mother paid $3.95 for this book - it's available on Amazon today from $22.95 - $118.95!)

I loved this bread and its funny way of tearing into bread sticks!

The recipe calls for:
1 pkg active dry yeast
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 1/4 cups warm water
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp olive oil
2 T caraway seed (I was out so I used fennel seed)
1 1/2 cups rye flour
1 3/4 - 2 cups all purpose flour
2 - 3 T melted butter

First I stirred the yeast, sugar and water together and let them work for about 15 minutes.  Then I stirred in the salt, oil and fennel seed.  Next I added 1/2 cup rye flour and 1/2 cup all-purpose flour and beat the mixture.  Gradually I beat in the rest of the rye flour and finally added 1 cup of the remaining all-purpose flour.

I kneaded the dough with my mixer and by hand on the counter, adding just enough flour to keep it from being sticky.

I put the dough in a pottery bowl to rise until doubled (45 minutes).

Turning the dough out, I divided it into two halves and shaped each into a smooth ball.  Then I patted each ball into a circle of about 8 - 9 inches in diameter.  I placed each circle on a rimless baking sheet to rise and covered them each with plastic wrap.

The dough rose for about 50 minutes this time.  I floured the handle of a long-handled wooden spoon and pushed creases into the circle about one inch apart.  I had to keep re-flouring the spoon handle.



















When it was all done, the circle looked like this (I smashed the first "stick" by not understanding what I was supposed to do with the wooden spoon handle):



Both circles were then brushed with melted butter (about half of the amount)

 
In the oven the bread had some spring, making the individual curved parts rise up and smooth out a little.
 


When the bread came out of the oven, I brushed it with more melted butter.  It looked and smelled delicious.  I took one of these loaves to my daughter's house for dinner and we ate the whole loaf!

 
This is a rye that I will definitely make again!