Maple Oatmeal Bread - Part Two

Continuing the recipe:

1. Turn the bread out of the rising bowl and cut it into two pieces. A bench knife does a great job for this. You can make two round loaves or put the dough into two greased loaf pans (this is what I did).
   
2. Allow the bread to rise for about 45 more minutes. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 375.

• Bake at 375 for about 35 - 40 minutes.
  

The loaves turned out really pretty and smelled so good (wish I could convey that on a blog!)



I love this Hensperger cookbook. My copy is literally falling apart at the seams as you can see below, but I continue to use it over and over.



I made homemade pimento cheese and had a pimento cheese sandwich for supper on this delicious bread.



If you are interested, I use my mother's method to make pimento cheese -

• You grate a lot of cheese (this was about 3/4 pound). I used my food processor with the grating wheel to grate the cheese. I use good cheese: Cabot sharp cheddar which was on sale this week at Whole Foods
  
• I bought a jar of roasted peppers and chopped them into smaller pieces - you can see the jar in the back left of the picture.
• I poured the cut pimentos and the juice from their jar into the cheese.
• Then I grind pepper over the mix until it looks right (probably about 1/8 tsp).
• I shake a little salt,
• Worcestershire sauce - about 1/4 tsp, if that
  
• a few drops of Tabasco,
• a pinch of sugar and
• just enough mayonnaise to make it spreadable....
  

And there it is - done and delicious.

Maple Oatmeal Bread - Part One

Today I made Maple Oatmeal Bread from one of my favorite cookbooks by Beth Hensperger: Baking Bread: Old and New Traditions.

One of the keys to good bread is good ingredients. I used the ingredients above in this recipe. If you shop at Whole Foods, you'll recognize the brands and that most are organic.

The whole wheat flour in the upper right is some flour that I ground myself at a shop in Charleston, SC. It was so much fun - they had the wheat and I put it in the flour grinder and turned it into flour! I felt like the Little Red Hen!


I didn't have the wheat bran called for in the original recipe so I substituted ground flax seed. Here's what is in this bread:

• 2 T active dry yeast
• 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
• 1 1/2 cups warm water
• 1 cup warm milk
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup wheat bran (I used ground flax seed instead)
• 1/2 cup oat bran
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 1/2 cups rolled oats
• 4 1/2 - 5 cups unbleached bread flour

1. First you proof the yeast in 1/2 cup of the warm water mixed with 1 tsp of the maple syrup.
2. Then in the work bowl of the mixer, combine the rest of the water, the maple syrup, milk, oil, salt, brans, whole wheat flour, oats and 1 cup bread flour.
   
3. Add the yeast. Beat for about a minute.
   
4. Then add the remaining flour 1/2 cup at a time. The dough should still be moist when you are through so that the brans and the oatmeal can continue to absorb moisture as the dough rises.
5. Knead the bread and then put it in a greased bowl to rise for about 1 1/2 - 2 hours. (Continued in next post)

Bread Bowl Put to Good Use

So filled with lentil soup, the bread bowl made a perfect holder for my dinner. And, of course, the bowl itself was part of the meal!

Making Bread Bowls for Lentil Soup

My youngest daughter comes over for dinner on most Sunday nights. Tomorrow night we are having lentil soup and I got inspired to bake bread bowls in which to serve it.

I found a recipe in Dough: Simple Contemporary Bread by Richard Bertinet.

This recipe comes from his olive dough section.

Preheat the oven to 475.

• Put 3 3/4 cups bread flour plus 2 T semolina flour in the large mixing bowl.
• Using your hands, rub in the yeast (1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast).
• Turn the mixer onto slow speed and add 2 tsp of salt, 5 T olive oil and 12 fluid oz. of water.
• Mix for 2 minutes on the slowest speed.
• Then up the speed one notch and mix for 6 minutes with the dough hook.
• Remove the dough from the mixer and shape it into a ball.
• Put it into a lightly floured bowl to rest for 30 minutes. Cover the bowl with a lint-free cloth towel.
  

Take out 8 oven-proof soup bowls (about 5 inches in diameter). Grease the outside of the bowls with olive oil and turn upside down on a baking sheet. After the rest time for the dough, divide the dough into 8 parts, roll each part into a circle and fit it over the upturned soup bowl.



Bake for 25 minutes.



Cool on the baking sheet for about 10 minutes. Then use a thin-bladed knife to loosen the bread from the bowl.



Cool on the rack until completely cool.



I'll post a picture tomorrow of the soup-filled bread bowl.

Addendum: I discovered that the bowls do not stay round unless they are stored on their bottoms. I put several in a Ziploc on their sides and they became oval bowls for my next soup meal!

Making Rye Bread - Part Two

I decided to bake this bread in a basket that I have because I like the designs it makes on a round loaf. I bought the basket from King Arthur Flour years ago for this very reason. So although the recipe said to shape the bread into a round and let it rise on a cornmeal sprinkled cookie sheet, I let the bread rise in the basket. It needs to rise about 50 minutes to double in the pan.

Note: I looked all over the Internet for the kind of proofing basket I use and never found it. It's an old-fashioned kind that has to be kept dusted with flour when it is used. I did find many sources of bread proofing baskets such as this one, but most are plastic these days.

When the loaf had more than doubled, I turned it onto the cookie sheet and let it sit while the over preheated to 375.



The bread bakes for 35 - 40 minutes. It is a dense, lovely loaf, replete with the scent and taste of the caraway seeds.


The finished loaf. It was huge. I wished that I had divided the dough and made two loaves. The slices from this one can be cut in half to make a decent sized sandwich.

Making Rye Bread - Part One

Sometimes I am just in the mood for rye bread. My parents used to buy "cocktail rye" which was a small, longish round loaf and I would eat slice after slice. The caraway seeds have such a special taste.

This weekend, I was really in the mood for rye, so I made an "old World" recipe from one of my favorite old cookbooks: A World of Breads by Dolores Casella



The recipe has cocoa in it and makes a very dark bread. Here it is:

2 cups rye flour
1/4 cup cocoa (I used Ghirardelli cocoa
2 T yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
1/2 cup molasses
2 tsp salt
2 T caraway seed
2 T butter
2 1/2 cups bread flour or whole wheat flour

Combine the rye flour and cocoa. Stir with a whisk until mixed. Dissolve the yeast in 1/2 cup warm water. Mix molasses, 1 cup warm water, salt, and caraway seed in large mixing bowl. Add the rye/cocoa mix, the proofed yeast, the butter and 1 cup bread flour or whole wheat flour.



Beat until the dough is smooth. Change to a dough hook or pour onto flour covered counter and knead in the rest of the flour. (I used the last of a bag of whole wheat flour - about 1/2 cup - and the rest bread flour). Place in greased bowl and cover. Allow to rise until double (about 2 hours).

Here's my dough in the rising bowl before I covered it with plastic wrap.

Communion Bread - No Crumbs

Five or six years ago, I became the chair of the bread committee for Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. We do communion by intinction in which you break a piece of bread from the loaf and dip it in the cup. The charge from the worship committee was that they would like me to find a recipe that would not leave the church floor littered with crumbs and multitudes of crumbs floating in the communion cup.

I headed for the Internet and found two recipes that I combined for our communion bread with no crumbs. One was from a church in California: St. Jude the Apostle Episcopal Church and the second was from All Saints Episcopal School in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Here's the recipe we use:

1 pkg active dry yeast (about 1 scant T)
2 cups lukewarm water
pinch of sugar

2 T white sugar
3 cups white bread flour
2 tsp salt

1/2 cup hot water
3 T shortening (or 3/8 stick margarine)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp malt barley (can be found at Whole Foods) or you can use real vanilla

3 - 4 cups whole wheat flour

Soften yeast for about ten minutes in the warm water with a pinch of sugar in a large mixing bowl. When it begins to work (gets bubbly), add white sugar, white flour and salt. Beat smooth. Cover and set in a warm place until "spongy" - usually about 30 minutes or so.

Bring hot water almost to a boil. Add shortening, brown sugar, and malt barley. Cool to lukewarm and add to sponge

Add whole wheat flour. Mix as smooth as you can

Turn dough out onto floured board to rest for about 10 minutes

Knead. As you knead, add little flour since the dough will be gooey at first. Kneading is the process that develops the gluten in the bread so knead for at least 10 minutes. Well-developed gluten is one of the keys to NO CRUMBS. If you are kneading with your mixer, also knead on the counter to assure good gluten development.

Cover and let rise in lightly oiled bowl until doubled in volume. Punch down, kenad lightly for a minute or two and turn out on kneading board. Divide dough into three equal parts. Shape in oval loaves. Put onto greased cookie sheet or parchment paper lined cookie sheet about 3 inches apart. Cover.

Let rise about 30 minutes in a warm place. Bake in a pre-heated 375 degree oven for about 20 minutes until the crust sounds hollow. I often cut a cross into the top of each loaf with a serrated knife (about 1/4 inch deep) before baking.


My grandson was here and helped me make a double recipe of the communion bread. He loves to knead and was again in his role as "chief kneader."


Only a grandmother could fully appreciate his little handprint in the bread after his turn kneading.


He put the dough in the pan to rise.
Below are the six loaves (two recipes worth) bagged to take to church this morning.