The bottom of the dough.
200 gram flour
1 egg
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 tablespoon of fat (cold)
Pin 1 teaspoon salt
1 vanilla sugar
Baking powder ½
1 tablespoon sour cream

The sponge cake:
6 eggs
6 tablespoons powdered sugar
6evőkanál flour
2 tablespoons cocoa
Baking powder ½ Package

Spreading on the dough by 2 spoonful of jam.

Stuffing.
½ kg of sour cherry
4 medium apples
Optionally, sugar
3-4 tablespoons bread crumbs

The soft dough knead dough hozzávalóiból. If you are a bit stuck, a bit of flour to be.
Aside to rest.
Kimagozzuk Meanwhile, slice the apples and cherries. Not grated!
Put baking the dough, brush a very thin layer of jam. I had raspberry jam.

The pitted cherries and sliced ​​apples Sprinkle two tablespoons bread crumbs firstand then granulated sugar and mix. Sugar to taste.

The baking pastry brush spread with jam. It is very thin!
Alternating stripes we put cherries and apples.
I've also scattered tablespoon bread crumbs on top.

My last chocolate experiment was a bit (allright, a large bit) too sweet. This time, I eliminated the extra butter, brown sugar, and maple syrup, and went with 2 oz of bittersweet choc chips and 2 oz of milk choc chips. I added 5 oz of dried cherries and 4 oz of pecans. I also used 100% home-milled flour (mix of hard red and white wheat) and the sourdo.com Russian starter. After an initial 4 hour proof, I shaped and put in a pullman pan. Because my kitchen feels like a meat locker these days, I put the pullman pan in the microwave oven and put two cups boiling water in a sealed plastic container, then stuck it inside as well. It rose for 2 more hours, then I put the pullman pan into a cold oven, set it on 375 degrees F, and baked for 2 hours 15 minutes.

The sweetness is just about perfect for a breakfast/dessert bread. I think I'll add more cherries next time, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with it.

Okay, its not a good old fashioned American Cherry Pie, but its my version of it.

I just love cherries, swwet and juicy - no matter how hard you try, it always ends up all over the counter and your clothes.

Its a really easy recipe - I started in the morning, and it was ready by afternoon, quite pleased with the result too.

More photos and full recipe on my blog here

I’ve been experimenting with various types of yeast water for several weeks now.  I now have five separate jars percolating on the counter or in the refrigerator.  Since I’ve discovered that very little if any fruit flavor is discernable in baked breads made from these waters, it makes sense to me to keep only one.  It also makes sense to me to keep the one that is the most effective.  I have heard that raisin yeast water is the strongest and most active.  When I first started experimenting with these waters, I made a raisin/apricot yeast water, but the color and murkiness was not appealing, so I threw it away shortly after it was created.  Today I am making a new jar with just raisins and another with just apricots.  These will be tested against the winner of this trial.

To see which of my active yeast waters are the more effective, I created test waters containing 30g each of peach, blueberry, strawberry and cherry.

 To these amounts I added 90g fresh water and one sugar cube. These jars were left out overnight to activate the yeasts.  This morning I took 3 grams from each of the jars and 3 grams of AP flour. These were mixed together and placed in identical test-tube like glasses (tall and very narrow).

9:30am, roughly 3 hours since start time

 Now it is four hours into the test.  Gauging from my ongoing work on the blueberry yeast water, this first build will take approximately 7.5 hours to plateau.  Halfway through, it seems that the growth pattern of the testers matches too closely to the order in which the tests were prepared, lagging perhaps by no more than 5 minutes from the first (cherry) to the last (peach).  Also, both the strawberry and the peach were slightly more hydrated than either blueberry or cherry.

At 12:31pm, roughly 6 hours later, it appears that the cherry levain is far stronger than either the blueberry or the peach. The strawberry levain is only slightly behind the cherry in growth.

At 2:09pm, roughly 7.5 hours later, it is still cherry in the lead.  At this point I noticed that the glasses are not identical – some are deeper than others.  This accounted for, the cherry is still slightly more effective than the strawberry.  Also, approximately at this same time, cherry had reached its maximum height, approximately double the start level.   Strawberry went on to double at approximately 8 hours, as did peach.  Blueberry, interestingly enough, did not achieve more than a 50% growth over the entire period.

So there you have it. In terms of overall effectiveness for a first level build, cherry is the strongest of the test set.  The rest are not as effective for raising culture in a given period of time.

Next trial, Cherry against raisin and apricot.  Stay tuned.

Over the last couple of weeks I've been experimenting with the properties of fruit based yeast waters. Starting with a strawberry water, I've so far transformed Txfarmer's 36+ hr baguette  from a standard sourdough to one fed strawberry yeast water.  The result was as to be expected, crunchy crust, moist crumb, not a hint of sour, and interestingly, a surprisingly dark color despite the exclusive use of AP flour in the dough.

Strawberry Yeast Water Baguette, and one with Peach Yeast Water - Same recipe, same flour.
  

I have also created a number of boules using Ron Ray's Darling Clementine recipe.  I've used that same boule recipe to create a strawberry, cherry and blueberry boule.  From these loaves I have come to some conclusions.

Once out of the oven, these boules are virtually indistinguishable in terms of color, crust, and crumb. The only distinguishing feature was the strawberry loaf aroma while it was still baking. So, my conclusions are that it matters little exactly what kind of fruit one uses to cultivate yeast (except of course for those containing actinidain or actinidin), only that the yeast exist. Fruit based yeast from these types of waters will alter the color and consistency of the bread but will not impart any fruit essence upon baking.  The reddish/purplish fruits that I tested will significantly alter the color of the crust and crumb, and the relative amount of sugar present in the water will also affect the taste (the blueberry water, made from a quantity of dried blueberries was quite sweet to begin with).

 Strawberry, Cherry, Blueberry Boules: Beauty Shots, Profiles, and Crumbs

 I think after this experiment, I'll retire all but the strawberry water, as it is the most pleasing in terms of aroma, at least when it comes out of the oven.  So, in conclusion, choose your favorite fruited yeast water and keep only one type. Also, don't forget to feed your sourdough starter too because what is life without a little tang?

Happy Baking!

-Pamela

Hello everyone

I am new to the forum. Does anyone have a recipe for chocolate cherry bread. I discovered this artisan bread at Zingerman's bakery not long ago and would love to reproduce this at home. Has anyone figured it out ?

I baked some sourdough chocolate donuts and heart shaped muffins this weekend.  At last the fresh cherries are flowing so I chopped up a pound of fresh Bing Cherries to fold into the batter (and some chocolate chips too).  

The wild culture (sourdough starter) that I used in these donuts and "love loaves" was captured in Mexico City last year and is one of my favorite cultures for baking (especially for pairing with chocolate).  The sourdough keeps them moist and tender.  They are disappearing fast!

Hi everybody, a bit of a novice (and young/male!) baker here and I hade a few ideas that I was wondering if some of the experts here could help me out on. 
There is a few criteria for this though:

1: Has to be a viable breakfast food (just a pet peeve: I like to eat my sweeter breads for a second breakfast after morning swim practice, just pretending to be French I guess! :)

2: Has to be based off of http://store.secondnaturesnacks.com/xcart/product.php?productid=16133&cat=250&page=1 Second Nature's Wholefoods Snack Medley</a> (Just another unrealistic goal a teenage boy sets for himself!)

Okay so here is my idea if anybody wants to help:

I wanted to base this off a milk bread in order to incorporate some ingredients here.

<em>Nut Milk:</em>

Soak <strong>1/4 cup Almonds</strong> and <strong>1/8 cup Cashews</strong> and <strong> 1/8 cup peanuts> overnight

The next day blend the soaked nuts with <strong>4 cups of water</strong> and <strong>1 teaspoon of vanilla extract</strong>

Press the mix through a strainer and reserve the pulp for something else

<em>The Dough:</em> (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/9780/mark-sinclair039s-portuguese-sweet-bread-and-rolls#comment-50134)

Portuguese Sweet Bread and Rolls

White AP flour                  857g
Molasses                            262g
Eggs                                  2 eggs
Water, warm                    113g
Nut Milk, warm                  409g
Butter, softened                  97g
Brown Sugar                        30g
Yeast                                   15g
Salt                                      10g

1. Mix all of the ingredients together with a dough hook on speed 1 for three (3) minute, then speed 2 for three (3) more minutes. Dough should clean sides of bowl.

2. Set aside in a covered bowl for 90 minutes; fold at 45 minutes.

3. Roll out into a rectangle 8 x 15 inches and coat with an egg glaze (1 egg beaten with a tablespoon of the milk mixture) Press the Dark Chocolate Chunks, Cherries, and Cranberries into the dough. Roll the whole thing into a log, cut into nine pieces, flatten the rolls out and brush with some more egg glaze

4.  Allow to rise until puffy (I am thinking around 45 minutes) Bake at 350 [deg. F.] for 25 minutes . 

Hope you guys can help! Please criticize!

Sorry for the bad formatting all, but its getting late

I've always liked the walnut raisin pain au levain Dan Leader sells at Bread Alone Bakery near me, and I've been wanting to try something like this for awhile and finally got around to it this week, but with cherries and pecans.

Both Susan's yeasted version on her Wild Yeast blog and SteveB's version on his Bread Cetera blog gave me a craving for cherry pecan bread when I saw their photos....thanks for the ideas you two, your baked goods are so mouthwatering and professional looking...(I am unworthy of breadblogging in the same sphere as you two!)

I made this as a sourdough-only version and mixed about 30% whole wheat and 2.5% rye with AP flour. This mix gave a nice dark-colored but light-textured open crumb that tasted good with the fruit and nuts. You could obviously substitue rasins and walnuts, or anything else you can think of. I find it especially tastes great sliced, toasted, and served with cream cheese, and lasts a long time.

I soaked the cherries for a bit too long as they were a little too mushy and a some color washed out, but the bread tasted great, I'll be making this again a lot I think. It was very easy.

Here are the loaves just before slashing and loading into the oven, after their overnight cold retarding:

Here's the formula:

Pecan Cherry Pain au Levain

Makes 2 large 2.5 lb batards or oblong loaves.

Levain Build

Final Dough

1)  12 hours before making final dough, create the levain using some ripe starter that has been fed and doubled. Mix well and cover in bowl until levain has risen to over double but has not yet begun to collapse, aprox. 10-12 hours at 65-70F. Toast the pecans at 350F for 10-20 minutes and let cool, then coarsly chop and set aside. Soak dried sour cherries in water overnight and strain next morning before making final dough.

2)  When levain is ripe, create final dough by mixing warm water with levain to dissolve. Mix all flours and salt in large bowl until evenly distributed, then add watered levain to flour mix with dough whisk, spoon, or hands until well combined. Cover and let rest for 1 hour at @ 70F. Tip dough onto counter, knead in the cherries and pecans lightly, and french fold for approx. 10 minutes with short 1-2 minute rests as needed to scrape together dough or relax it, and tuck in the fruit/nuts. The cherries and pecans may fall out and it will be quite messy at first, but eventually the dough will come together into a neat lump after 5-6 minutes or so. At end of kneading, round out the dough so that fruit/nuts are tucked inside and good skin of dough is on outside. Place dough in lightly oiled container and cover to rest for 30 min. After 30 min., turn out dough onto lightly oiled counter to give it one good gentle stretch and letter fold, then place dough back into oiled covered container. Repeat one more stretch and fold after another 30 minutes, then let dough continue to rise until doubled at @ 70F (approx. 2 more hours).

3)  Shape dough into 2 batards, place batards in floured couche, cover well so loaves don't dry out, and let loaves cold proof overnight at 40-50F for approx. 8-10 hours. Next morning, place loaves in warmer area (65-70F) while oven preheats for 45 minutes to 450F. Bake loaves on oven stone with steam (I pour 1 cup hot water from tea kettle into pre-heated cast iron pan on oven floor) at 450F for 15 minutes, then turn heat down to 400F for another 30-35 minutes until center registers 200-205F with instant read thermometer and crust is well-browned.

On a slightly different note: my last few batches of bread have been coming out smelling and tasting better than ever, I think it may just be this new flour I was able to pick up in a 50lb bag from Bread Alone Bakery down the road from me. It is an All-purpose flour from Canada with 11.5% protein, not sure about ash content. Anyone ever used or heard of this Oak AP flour before?I like it a lot. It handles nicely in dough.

For the holiday table... cherry pecan bread:

http://www.breadcetera.com/?p=135

SteveB