LeadDog's blog

We have a persimmon tree and this year I thought I would make Persimmon bread from the fruit.  First I had to find a recipe that I liked and do a trial run to see how the bread tastes.  I found a recipe at this website that I used to make my bread.  http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2007/11/persimmon-bread.html The first one turned out very tasty but I thought that I should double the recipe and bake the bread in my panettone mold.

Recipe:

 

2 1/2 cups persimmon, mashed pulp.  I put mine in a blender and made a smoothie out of them.  There was a little extra that went into the bread also.

2 tablespoon lemon juice

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup plus 4 tbsp. sugar and 4 tbsp. water

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 cups bread wheat flour

2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ginger

1 teaspoon nutmeg 

1/2 teaspoon cloves

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup golden raisins

1/2 cup roasted almond pieces

 

Mix the persimmon lemon juice, olive oil, sugar, water, and vanilla extract together.  Then add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves.  Then mix until all the flour is moistened.  Add the almonds and raisins and mix them in.

 

Pour into what ever baking pan you are going to use and smooth the top out so it looks nice.

 

Preheat oven to 325°F then cook for 1 1/2 hours.  Let the bread cool completely before cutting.  The glaze was made by melting a thick slice of butter.  Then added a half tablespoon of fruit flavored brandy, an eighth of a teaspoon of Vanilla and Almond extract each.  The glaze is then thickened up by adding powdered sugar until I got the thickness that I wanted.  This glaze is just very wonderful all on its own.  I then placed some sliced Almonds on top of the glaze.  I love the wonderful flavor that the persimmons give to this bread.

 

 

It is Christmas time and it seems lots of people are making Stollen so here is my addition to the mix. 

I heard about Stollen recently and how good it is so I decided that I wanted to make some.  The only problem is I have never eaten or seen Stollen.  I looked in my books and on the internet for recipes for sourdough Stollen and decided to improvise and make my own.  The paragraph from Peter Reinharts's "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" is very nice and I think worthy of quoting here.

Dresden is considered the spiritual home of this traditional Christmas bread.  The bread symbolizes the blanket of the baby Jesus, and the colored fruits represent the gifts of the Magi.  As in nearly every festival bread, the story aspect of this loaf is culturally important, for it is a way parents teach their children about their heritage.

This is a bread that is soft with lots of different flavors bursting onto your taste buds with every bite.  There are exotic spices, dried fruit, nuts, and a little bit of Brandy in the bread.  The outside of the bread is painted with melted butter then covered with powdered sugar.  This really is a special bread for a festival.

Crumb 

The way I made it here on my website.  

 

This is an adaptation of my Sourdough Sticks formula.  We have an employee at our family store who's Birthday is today.  The other day as she was eating the Sourdough Sticks she said that is what she wanted for her Birthday.  For some reason I had already came up with this crazy idea of making Twisters.  These ideas just seem to come out of thin air so I don't know where I get them from.  This is another really easy fun bread to make and it was a smashing hit with everyone here at our store.  This is so good I'm making it for Thanksgiving.

Right as the twister come out of the oven I brushed them with melted butter.  Then I sprinkled them with a sugar and cinnamon mixture.  Eat them while they are warm.  The sugar cinnamon mixture was 1/4 cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of cinnamon.  The twisters are slightly sweet with a thin crisp crust and a crumb that is light and airy.  You can read about the rest of it on my site here.

I call them sourdough sticks because I they are bigger than the bread sticks I have eaten.  They turned out great and I'm thinking about making them again for Thanksgiving.  Making them was a lot easier than I thought it would be.  I took a bunch of them to work and my coworkers gobbled them down.  The lumps and bumps gives them a nice rustic look.  They are really simple to make with just flour, water, and salt.  The crust was nice and crispy with a soft and chewy crumb.  There was a bunch of nice big irregular holes in the crumb for getting filled with what ever you ate with them.  You can read about what I did to make them here.

I saw a post here on The Fresh Loaf  by someone looking for a formula for a Lemon Rosemary bread.  This combination sounded really good to me so I decided to give it a try.  First I had to decided how much Lemon Zest and Rosemary to put into the bread and I decided to try for about 2% for each of them.  Then I decided that I would use up the last of my bread flour and use some fresh milled whole wheat and rye.  I figured on a hydration of 70% and that the percentage of the sourdough preferment would be 20%.  It is summer time here and the temperatures have been hot so I figured less preferment would slow things down a little bit.  I now had a plan on how I was going to make this bread now I'll tell you how it went.

 The first night I made my first build of the preferment.

1st Build	Grams	Percent
Starter	7	50%
Flour	14	100%
Water	7	50%
Total	28	200%

 The next morning I add more flour and water to the preferment for the 2nd build.

2nd Build	Grams	Percent
1st build	28	54%
Flour	51	100%
Water	36	70%
Total	114	224%

When I got home from work the afternoon I mixed the dough up as follows.  

Dough Formula	Grams	Percent
Flour*	571	100%
Water	400	70.05%
Salt	10	1.75%
Preferment	114	19.96%
Rosemary	11	1.93
Lemon Zest	12	2.10%
Olive Oil	11	1.93%
Total	1129	197.72%

*Flours	Grams	Percent
Bread Flour	445	77.93%
Whole Wheat	69	12.08%
Rye	57	9.98%

  First I dissolved the preferment into the water and then  mixed in the bread flour.  I let this sit while I went and milled my wheat and rye flours.  Next the wheat and rye flours were mixed in and the dough was let sit for 30 minutes.  We have Rosemary growing in the yard so I went and picked enough for 11 grams and then chopped it up into small bits.  I used a small grater to make Lemon Zest from one lemon and ended up with 12 grams.  I added the Lemon Zest, Rosemary, Salt and the Lemon Pepper infused Olive Oil all at the same time.  The rosemary went in first and my first reaction was it was going to just over power the bread.  The Lemon Zest went in last and after that all I could smell was lemon.  This seemed like it was going to be one powerful bread.  I mixed the dough until the gluten developed.  Then the dough was turned out into an oiled bowl and placed in the wine cellar for a cool ferment.  Four hours later I placed the bowl in the refrigerator so I could cook it when I got home from work the next day.  I checked the dough in the morning before I went to work and it had raised up to touch the plate that I place on top of the bowl.  When I got home that day the dough was lifting the plate off of the bowl.  I set the bowl out and let the dough warm up for two hours.  Then I turned out the dough on to a floured work surface and folded the dough over on itself to get some flour on all the surfaces of the dough.  When I looked at the dough after I did this the dough looked so nice I just want to bake it like that without shaping it any more.  I figured that if I rolled it over onto some parchment paper that it just might work.  Then I put the dough into a counche and turned the oven on to 460°F to preheat it.  I used a cast iron roasting pan to bake this bread in so it is oiled and preheated in the oven too.  When the oven gets up to temperature I place the dough in the pan and cook it with the lid on for 25 minutes and then the last 15 minutes without the lid.  The bread had great oven spring and just looked wonderful to me when I pulled it out.  The aroma of the bread just filled the house but now I had to get some sleep.  Cutting the bread would have to wait for the next day at work were my coworkers are my bread testers.   My testers really liked the bread.  They were eating great big slabs of the bread all day long.  I told my boss what kind of bread that I had made and she said she didn't like Lemon Rosemary.  Later a coworker tells my boss how great it tastes and talks her into trying a slice of it.  My boss then emails me telling me how great the bread is.  There were many great compliments on this bread, it was just incredible.