Here goes another pasta experiment. This time, I went with 100% durum wheat (other than a little KA that I used to flour the board and the pasta as it went through the machine). To make the dough, I combined 3 egg yolks (yolks only, trying for a very yellow noodle), the zest of 6 lemons, 1T each dill and basil, and 1.5t kosher salt in a blender, then mixed it into two cups of fresh-ground durum wheat (no sifting, 100% WW).

The dough sat for around four hours, then half was cut into fettucini. The other half is sitting in my fridge, and will be used tomorrow probably...

For the final dish, roast 2/3 cup of pine nuts and reserve. The chicken breasts had been coated in olive oil and kosher salt that morning, then stuck in the fridge in a plastic bag that I flipped every couple of hours during the day.  Rough chop 2 small onions, 8 oz mushrooms, and 5 cloves of garlic. I browned the chicken in a mix of butter and olive oil, then dumped the onion mixture on top and hit with some kosher salt. After most of the water cooked out of the veg mix, I added chicken stock to a 1/4" depth in the pan, put in a bunch of lemon slices, covered and simmered for 15-20 minutes. The pasta cooked for 4 minutes. I added a few tablespoons of half and half to the pan, combined for a minute, then added the noodles and cooked for another 90 seconds or so. Yum. The noodles weren't quite the bright yellow I was hoping for, maybe I'll add a few drops of food coloring next time :)

ingredients:

600gm unbleached bread flour

150gm dark rye flour

2.25 (14gm) teaspoon salt

2.25 (8gm) teaspoon active dry yeast (SAF brand)

1.5 tablespoon each of brown sugar(19gm), dill seed(8gm), and dehydrated onion flakes(11gm)

500 gm very warm water (just cool enough to put a finger in and not whimper or yank it out)

NOTE: increased quantities by 50% and switched from dill weed to dill seed.

procedure:

Mixed dry flours,salt and yeast in kitchenaid mixer, added boiling water to sugar+dill+onion in separate bowl and let soak and cool, mixed on low until dough cleaned the sides of bowl, turned out on countertop, kneaded briefly, formed into ball, and plopped it into a floured(rye flour this time), linen-lined brotform bowl to rise and covered with tea towel.  Let it rise 3  hours.  Preheated oven with pizza stone to 450F.  Turned loaf out of brotform bowl onto parchment paper on inverted cookie sheet (in lieu of a peel). Slashed loaf, spritzed with water, and slid it onto the preheated pizza stone, parchment and all.  Covered with stainless bowl in lieu of playing "steam-the-oven".  Set timer for 15 minutes and removed the stainless bowl when it went off.  Set timer for 15 minutes again and checked browning when it went off.  Browned it a bit more and removed from oven.  Painted hot loaf top and bottom with cornstarch glaze (1.5 tablespoons cornstarch mixed in 1 cup cold water, nuked in microwave until it just boiled) and set on wire rack to cool.

Result:  Dough rose to fill the 10-inch brotform bowl.  Got some decent oven spring.  The glaze dried nice and shiny; using rye flour in the brotform and shaking out the excess prevented recurrance of the caked-white-flour problem.  I like the dill/onion flavor balance in this loaf better   The loaf is still not as tall/spherical as I wish, and this larger loaf lost a bit of crust when it stuck to my cover bowl, but it's great with corned beef.

Now let's see if I can upload some pictures.

^raw dough in brotform

risen dough in brotform^

slashed loaf on parchment^

raw loaf on pizza stone^

cover on pizza stone^

cover removed after 15 minutes^

loaf cooled and glazed^

time for corned beef^

Actually, I liked it with corned beef with or without mustard!  Had three sandwiches!

ingredients:

400gm unbleached bread flour

100gm dark rye flour

1.5 teaspoon salt

1.5 teaspoon active dry yeast (SAF brand)

1 tablespoon each of brown sugar, dill weed, and dehydrated onion flakes

333 gm very warm water (just cool enough to put a finger in and not whimper or yank it out)

procedure:

Mixed dry ingredients in kitchenaid mixer, added the very warm water, mixed on low until dough cleaned the sides of bowl, turned out on countertop, kneaded briefly, formed into ball, and plopped it into a floured, linen-lined brotform bowl to rise covered with tea towel.  Worked on income tax return for 3 or 4  hours.  Preheated oven with pizza stone to 450F.  Turned loaf out of brotform bowl onto parchment paper on inverted cookie sheet (in lieu of a peel). Slashed loaf, spritzed with water, and slid it onto the preheated pizza stone, parchment and all.  Covered with stainless bowl in lieu of playing "steam-the-oven".  Set timer for 15 minutes and removed the stainless bowl when it went off.  Set timer for 10 minutes and checked browning when it went off.  Decided to brown 5 more minutes and set timer again.  Whipped up cornstarch glaze (1.5 tablespoons cornstarch mixed in ~1/4 cup cold water, added hot water fill coffeecup, nuked in microwave until it just boiled).  Pulled loaf out of oven at about the 30-minute mark and glazed the top of the hot loaf with the thickened cornstarch soup using a basting brush.

Result:  Got some decent oven spring using the bowl-on-a-pizza-stone trick (at least it didn't shrink!).  The glaze dried nice and shiny on top but the bottom is caked with un-appetizing white flour from the brotform.  Bottom crust seems thicker than top, presumably from direct contact with preheated pizza stone.  I think I need a smaller brotform bowl to try to get a taller, more spherical loaf (any excuse to buy more toys). This loaf is pretty (on top, at least), a bit dense, and tastes pretty good although the onion dominates and masks the nuttiness of the rye.

I took pictures and will try to post them later.  Never played with this blogging interface before.

Dill, bacon, olive oil, roasted garlic sourdough bread.

The fam's favorite bread so far.  All gone already.

We subscribe to a local CSA group (community supported agriculture), so we get a box of veggies, fruit, and herbs every two weeks. We got some dill last time, so I thought of dill bread...something with cream cheese or sour cream, or even cottage cheese in it. I wanted a break from making lean artisan(al) breads. Gotta go back to the roots every now and then.

I wanted to make dill bread so used Floyd’s wonderful recipe for Potato Rosemary Rolls yesterday but replaced the rosemary and sage for a huge pile of fresh baby dill.  Then I added another huge pile of freshly ground black Tellicherry pepper.  We really like things spicy but I was afraid the amount of pepper I used would overpower the dill.  Not having made dill bread before (Tingull's looks so good) I also wanted to try using fresh dill to get a feel for the amount desired.  I ended up using 2 1/2 teaspoons of freshly ground pepper a