BBA Cinnamon Buns and Sticky Buns

These cinnamon buns sounded really good - not too sweet and gooey - so I was excited to try them.   I decided to make the cinnamon buns rather than the sticky buns and mixed up the dough.  I liked it that they had the zest of a lemon in them.  He said 1 tsp but I didn't measure - just grated the lemon zest and put it into the dough.
 

The dough was a little soft so I had to add a little flour - just a smidgeon, but it came together better after I had done that.  

I have real Ceylon cinnamon that I buy from My Spice Sage.  I put it in my adult children's stockings every Christmas and also get some for me.  It's so much better than what we buy in the grocery store!

The recipe didn't make a ton of rolls - just a dozen.  They rose on the cookie sheet on which they would be baked.

This is how they looked coming out of the oven.  And then I glazed them - I made the recipe's suggested amount of glaze.  Next time I will cut it in half.  I have about 3/4 of a cup in my refrigerator right this minute.

They were really delicious and everyone I gave them to, loved them.

BBA Casatiello

We are very lucky in Atlanta to have the Spotted Trotter.  I buy tasso ham there for New Year's Day's hoppin' John.  I love their bacon.  Every time I go, I let myself buy something unusual that I have no idea how to use.  The last time I was there, I bought a lamb and feta crepinette.  It was delicious, but I digress.

To make the BBA casatiello, one of the ingredients is dry cured Italian salami.  This is what took me to the Spotted Trotter.  I bought a delicious salami and this made the bread INCREDIBLE.

After cooking it in the iron skillet, the salami is incorporated into the bread.  The most challenging part of this recipe is incorporating the butter.  I weighed it, like Reinhart advocates.

This was a delicious bread - one of my favorites so far.  I toasted it for breakfast and it made a meal  -  just one slice of toast.  My son-in-law loved it.  I don't think it was that special but the salami from Spotted Trotter made it special.

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!