cranberry

This baby is simply divine..

Although cranberries are sweet, they are offset by the maple syrup and it is not too sweet.

Yummy....

You need to start this the day before, but its still a easy recipe.

It tastes delicious, lovely toasted and even nicer with a lick of ricotta.

So lets get yeasty!!

I know you were thinking i had turned to the dark side of cakes and slices ....BUT NO!!

Ye of little faith!!

Mmmmmm, lovely crumb

So what will you need?

For the starter:

1/4 cup of maple syrup

1/2 cup of warm water

1 tsp of dried yeast

1/2 cup of Strong bakers Flour

Tasty with a pat of butter!!

For the dough:

2  cups of Strong bakers flour

1  cup of warm water

1/3 cup of olive oil

1 tbsp of maple syrup

2 tsp of dried yeast

1 cup of fine polenta

Pinch of Salt

1 cup of cranberries.

Cranberry dough

Step one:

The night before or the day before (12 -24 hours before), warm water and mix in maple syrup and the dried yeast.

Allow to become creamy and frothy and then add in the flour.

Mix well and then cover with glad wrap and leave in RT for the next 12-24 hours.

Cranberries...

Step 2:

When you are ready the next day, uncover the starter from the day before.

Warm the water and add in the yeast and the 2nd lot of maple syrup and allow to become frothy.

Mix this into the starter from the prior day along with the olive oil and combine well.

In a separate bowl, combine all the dry (flour, salt and polenta) ingredients and then mix in the wet mix.

Combine well, add a little more water if need be to make a smooth dough.

Knead for 5-8 minutes  until the dough is elastic.

Cover with glad wrap and allow to rise for 2 hours.

Roll the cranberries in the dough....

Remove dough and roll out slightly on a lightly floured board.

Sprinkle cranberries (as above) and then roll up so they don't fall out.

Give a small knead, integrating the cranberries.

Cut dough in half and form two baton shape loaves.

You could do round or plaited as well.

Place dough on baking tray with baking paper sprinkled with polenta.

Roll in polenta gently and cover with a tea towel.

Allow to rise for 70 minutes.

two lovely loaves

Preheat oven to 200 celsius.

Slash the top of the loaves and place in the oven.

Bake for 30-35 minutes until slightly colored.

Remove from oven and allow to cool.

This crust is quite firm but the crumb is very moist.

When you are ready, slice a piece or break off a piece and ENJOY, ENJOY, ENJOY!!

Ready to rise")

ready to bake!!

Slash them baby!!

all baked....

Have a piece...

Now you can with this recipe, take out the maple syrup and use black strap molasses for a different taste.

But only use half the amount of molasses.

It gives it a deeper color and the molasses off sets the cranberries as well.

http://greedybread.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/cranberry-maple-syrup-polenta-bread/

Hey All,

Haven't posted in a bit and wanted to share with you something I baked for the Yelp 2nd Annual Bake-Off on Saturday, 5/15/10 in NYC.  I was up against some stiff competion with a dizzying array of sweets and savory baked goods...  I figured that I wouldn't win against those, but I took comfort that everybody went back for 2nd and 3rd helpings of my bread...

Here's what was left the Cranberry Apple Cider Bread with Walnuts that I baked:

Sorry I don't have a shot of the whole loaf...  It had this cool leaf pattern slashing...  Anyways, here's the formula below:

90% AP

10% WW

37% Water

37% Hard Apple Cider (alcoholic)

2% Kosher Salt

30% Stiff levain (60% hydration)

15% Dried Granny Smith Apples

15% Dried Cranberries

15% Toasted Walnuts

1/4 tsp instant or active dry yeast per 500g of flour

Directions:

12:00pm - Peel and cut apples into 3/8" cubes, mix with a little lemon juice to prevent browning, place on parchment lined pan, dry in 250F oven for 1 hour.

3:45pm - Mix all ingredients in large mixing bowl with wooden spoon, hands, cover let rest for 30 minutes.

4:30pm - Knead in fruits and nuts (no more than 1 minute), cover let rest.

5:00pm - Turn dough, cover, let rest.

5:30pm - Turn dough, cover, let rest.

6:00pm - Turn dough, cover, let rest.

6:30pm - Turn dough, cover, let rest.

7:00pm - Turn dough, cover, let rest.

8:00pm - Divide, shape, proof.  Arrange stones in oven along with steam pan.  Preheat to 500F.

9:00pm - Turn loaves out onto lightly floured peel, slash as desired, place directly onto stone, add 1 cup water to steam pan, bake for 15 minutes at 450F, rotate and bake for 50 minutes at 420F, or until internal temp reaches 205F.  Cool completely before cutting.

**Notes:  I used 1270g flour for this recipe which gave me a dough yield of about 3250g.  I divided this into 2 equal pieces and formed boules.  Your baking time may be different if you make a smaller quantity.

Tim

When I was finishing off the last of the challah I made the week before I made this one, I was trying to figure out what to do with some leftover cranberry sauce and leftover pumpkin from other things I'd made, then the idea came to me, what about a challah made with two doughs? One with pumpkin puree providing much of the hydration, and one with cranberry sauce providing much of the hydration. I thought the colors and flavors would make a really interesting combination. And, while I was at it, why not make it with my levain? Having only made challah twice before, this may have been a bit ambitious, but why not! I decided to use the challah recipe in Bread Baker's Apprentice as a starting point, as I liked the loaf I'd made the week beforehand. I took a look at the hydration in the recipe and calculated out how much flour and hydration I wanted in the preferment, I had to estimate here as I didn't know what percentage of the pumpkin puree and cranberry sauce was water. The cranberry sauce definitely had a lower water content, and it also seemed to have somewhat of an inhibiting effect on the levain. I'm not sure why, but I have some ideas. It may have been the sugar and/or acidity levels of the sauce, or the lower availability of water because there was less water in the sauce. The more mundane reason, it could just be that I forgot to get the cranberry sauce to room temperature first (not to mention our house is colder than room temperature) so the cold starter and cold cranberry sauce may have just stayed cold much longer, as the cranberry dough did rise at the same speed as the pumpkin on the final rise.

Pumpkin Cranberry Challah Recipe

Makes: 1 large loaf or 2 small loaves

Time: 2 days. First day: Pumpkin and Cranberry starter. Second day: mix final dough, ferment, degas, shape, final rise, bake.

Ingredients: (baker's % are at the bottom of the post, or will be in a day or two for now they are here)

Directions:

1. Mix the starters: ‘Cream’ the levain with the water and cranberry sauce, and water and pumpkin puree. Then mix in the flour until the dough forms a loose ball. Let rest 5 minutes, and then knead for 3 minutes to ensure adequate mixing. Place each starter in a lightly oiled container or bowl.

   

2. Leave the starters to ferment: Leave the starters in a room temperature place to rise until nearly doubled, degas the starters and refrigerate unless you will be finishing the dough then. If refrigerating, remove from the fridge at least an hour before you start the final dough.

   

3. Pre-mix ingredients: Stir together the flour, sugar and salt (and spices for the pumpkin dough), and mix the starter with the oil, water, egg and egg yolk (making it wetter so it will more easily mix with the dry ingredients).
4. Mix everything into a dough: For both doughs: pour the liquid ingredients with starter into the dry ingredients and with a large spoon, dough whisk, or a stand mixer, mix until a ball forms, adding additional water or flour as needed.
5. Knead to develop gluten: Knead for about 5-8 minutes, or until the dough passes the windowpane test. Once again, do this for both doughs. Once kneaded, place each dough in a lightly oiled container or bowl with a cover.

   

6. Degas both doughs after they have nearly doubled: Gently remove them from their bowl or container, turn them out onto a lightly floured surface, and degas. After degassing, divide each dough piece in half, (or any other even numbered amount, or any other division you want, however you need equally sized pieces unless making a double braid) form into a rough boule and let sit a few minutes to relax.

   

7. Shape boules into strands: Roll the boules out into strands, spend a little bit on each one then move to the next so the first has a chance to relax, until you end up with strands an appropriate length for the braid you plan on doing.
8. Braid loaf as desired: I’m horrible at braiding so I’m not going to try to give advice on it! After braiding, place the loaf on parchment paper on a baking sheet and brush loaf with 1 egg white whipped until frothy, saving the remainder for after proofing.

   

9. Proof loaf: Place loaf on sheet in a food safe plastic bag, or spray some plastic wrap lightly with oil and cover the loaf with the wrap. Leave the loaf to proof at room temperature until about 1 and a half to twice its original size, about 1-2 hours depending on room temperature and your starter.
10. Preheat oven to 350°F: Just before placing the loaf in the oven, brush again with the egg wash and top with any seeds or other garnishes you like. Place the loaf in the oven on the middle rack and bake for 20 minutes before rotating the loaf 180°, continue baking for 20-40 minutes until the loaf is golden brown and measures about 190°F in the center. When done, remove from the oven to a cooling rack, and let cool for 1-2 hours before slicing.

    

This challah was really awesome, great flavors, and great colors! You may want to increase the amount of the spices some, it was just barely enough in my opinion. But you don't want it to overpower the other flavors. I made some french toast with this bread, while we normally only use cinnamon, I added ground cloves, nutmeg, allspice, and ginger to the mix this time. It was like pumpkin pie french toast, but with a bit of fruity overtone from the cranberry. Definitely a good bread for the fall holidays.

Note: As with my last bread, this one can be made as a straight dough, rather than sourdough. Just mix everything in one step, add about 2/3 tsp yeast and add .3 oz. flour and .2 oz. water to compensate for the lack of levain.

And my second recipe submission YeastSpotting . I really enjoyed this one and hope other people enjoy it, or are inspired to their own creation!

The Chocolate Cranberry loaf was my first 100% sourdough loaf. I won't say too much about it here, because I posted questions about it in another forum. Here is a link to that conversation.

This loaf was made using my yeasted starter. My wild starter still isn't ready yet, although today's observation (day 6) shows that it increased by about 50% - the most so far!

Today I'm trying Mike's 100% WW Sandwich Bread. It looked pretty basic, and I'd like a basic recipe to use every week to hone my skills on.

My dough is in its first rise right now. It's been sitting, oiled and covered, in a sunny window (cool kitchen) for 1 1/2 hrs. It still hasn't doubled yet. This is the same starter I used yesterday in the Chocolate loaf, and it has been fed twice since then, and I waited until it doubled before stirring it down and measuring it.

The recipe calls for finely milled WW. Here in Greenock, I think I only have 1 option for WW. I need to check at the store again. As of now, I'm using the store brand Strong 100% Stoneground WW. The bran flakes are huge - the same size as in the bag of wheat bran that I bought. I have been reading that the gluten in coarsely-ground flour is not 'available' resulting in shorter gluten strands. This might also account for the hard time I had in kneading. I ended up adding just over 1C of additional flour (oh - I doubled the recipe) and it was still quite sticky.

I'm defining sticky like this - wet enough to leave strings of dough attached to my hands, will clean the countertop, but if I leave it sit long enough to clean my hands off, I have to use a scraper to pick up the ball again.

So... if the gluten is shorter, the dough is stickier, wetter, heavier, harder to rise? Hmm... we'll have to see. With the Chocolate loaf, it didn't quite double on the first rising, bit it 'nearly' doubled on the second rise, and then I got very nice oven spring. The conditions were the same - sunny windowsill. But, the chocolate loaf was made with white flour (WW starter) and this bread is 100% WW - much heavier bread. I did get it to pass the windowpane test finally (it took almost 30 min. of kneading).

More comments will be posted as the day's baking progresses.

AFTER FIRST RISING:

After 2 hours, i decided that the dough had nearly doubled. I punched it down gently, turned it over, and reshaped the ball 'inside out'. The dough is somewhat stiffer after the 2 hour rest, and didn't stick to me - yea! As I stretched the dough (the side that was the bottom) the dough did not tear, but made very small (1/8-1/4") blisters on the surface. The dough is very smooth, other than that.

AFTER SECOND RISING:

The dough nearly doubled again - after about 1.25 hrs. I punched it down, divided it in half (double batch) and made 2 loafs. It was still too sticky to put on the counter without a dusting of flour. I spread the dough out - almost using Mike's 'teasing' technique, like for stretch and fold. I rolled the dough up, brushing flour off and pinching the seam as I went. I sealed the ends, turned them under, and placed them into 2 greaed and floured PC stoneware bread pans (I can't get Baker's Joy here) The pans are about 1/2 full of dough - I don't think they'll rise above the surface...

AFTER FINAL RISE:

I was right - they only filled the pans about 3/4 of the way.  I did get them to slash nicely - one long slash down the middle.  Baked for 45 min at 350, then upped the temp to 400 for the last 10 to get them brown(I had the pans too low in the oven).   Because I had greased AND floured my pans, they popped out nicely.  I took them out when the temp was at 205. 

The bread was, again, too moist.  But not as bad as last time.  They were completely risen inside - no thick spots, or pockets of dough.  The flavor is nice - just a bit sour. But that might be because of the extra moisture.  You can't taste the honey (I didn't really want to) so it's a nice any-time bread.  I will definately use this bread next time, and compare notes - using more flour until I'm happy with the texture.  Also, since a double batch wasn't enough for my 2 loaf pans, I think I will make a 3x batch next time.  That makes 1.5 batch in each pan.  I think that would just about do it.