dill

Today, I had some cheese curds leftover from making a gouda cheese, along with some recently dried dill weed.  It was time to make cottage cheese onion dill bread from The Tassajara Recipe Book.  The recipe makes two light and airy loaves.  We enjoy a slice toasted and buttered at breakfast along with some scrambled eggs.

Greetings all.  After returning from a few weeks traveling (pleasure and business), I have been waking up my starter from a prolonged hybernation.  I was looking through some very old recipes for a straight dough bread to make in the meantime, and I found this recipe in an ancient archive.  In fact, I'm guessing it is one of the first (if not the first) yeasted bread I ever made oh so many years ago.  It is Cottage Cheese Onion Dill, and is very tasty and makes a nice sandwich loaf with its tight crumb.  It uses very little water with cottage cheese and an egg supplying most of the liquid.  Sometimes it is nice to have bread in only 3 hours. The recipe follows the photos.  Hope you enjoy it!

-Brad

Well I was goofing around in the kitchen again.  The above picture is the same bread just formed differently and the one on the right has been egg washed.  After the post a while back about how to slash a loaf to get a specific look I gave it a try on this loaf (on the left).  I altered the recipe and raised the hydration to about 67% so the loaf flattened out a bit,  then the long slash did not help the sprawling of the loaf.  None the less it is still such a tasty loaf.   With some tweaking I think it could become more visually appealing.

This is the original recipe (lazy way out of typing) it also has items of interpretation.  Large pinch of saffron?   One onion, how big how much?  I hope you can read this if you want some clarity let me know.

The dough is quite beautiful.

More pictures then words today.  This is such a tasty bread I thought I would share. It is something you can adjust to fit your preferences.  Enjoy

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 modified James Beard's Sour Cream Bread from Beard on Bread, and it came out beautifully. This smelled so good, it was hard to keep from cutting it while it was hot.

Sour Cream Bread (with my mods and comments in italics)

1 pkg. active dry yeast

3 tablespoons sugar

1/4 cup warm water (100F-115F)

2 cups sour cream, at room temperature

~ 1/3 cup minced onion

~ 3 tablespoons minced fresh dill

1 tablespoon salt (too much. Try a scant 2 t.)

1/4 tsp. baking soda

4 1/2 to 5 cups all-purpose flour (I substituted whole wheat for one of the cups)

Combine yeast, water, and sugar. Let sit till foamy. Put sour cream, salt, and soda in a large bowl. Add yeast mixture, onion, and dill. Gradually mix in 4 cups of flour to make a wet, sticky dough. Dump the dough onto a moderately floured surface and continue mixing/kneading (use a dough scraper) for at least 10 minutes, adding flour as necessary, to make a workable, less sticky dough. (My hands ended up pretty coated with dough. I used about 2/3 cup above the initial 4 cups). Shape into a ball, and place in an oiled bowl. Cover and let rise in a warm spot till doubled. (I set it at room temperature for one hour, then used my proofing cycle at 85F for another hour).

Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide into 2 loaves. (I rounded each piece and let them rest about 15 minutes before shaping). Shape into loaves and put into greased loaf pans. (The book calls for 9x5 pans; mine were 8.5x4.5, which may account the the tops exploding.) Cover and let rise again. (I used the proofing cycle for about one hour, at which time the dough crested over the edges of the pans).

Heat oven to 375F. Bake for 30-35 minutes. (I rotated the pans after 15 minutes, and baked for another 15. The internal temp. was at least 200F.) Remove from pans immediately to cool on racks.

Yum! The bread is soft and flavorful, but just a bit salty. I found that to be true of most of the recipes in this book, but I just forgot to adjust this time. I also think I'd replace more of the AP flour with whole wheat, just to firm up the loaf a bit.

This dough would make great rolls too.

Sue

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 and roughly 4 packed tablespoons of chopped fresh baby dill.  The flavor was outstanding.  My husband loved them!

I really love the way these taste not only because of the potato and potato water, which also helps them keep longer, but just the richness of the dough and texture when you bite into it.  It has a kind of chewiness to the crust but still moist and the crumb is great for juicy hamburgers.  We did have grilled ground sirloin burgers with fresh chopped garlic mixed into the meat and grilled sliced Vidalia onions.  It made a fabulous hamburger. 

Besides adding quite a bit of extra pepper and substituting fresh dill instead of rosemary and sage I didn't make any other change to Floyd's recipe.  I did brush the top of the buns with unsalted butter when they were hot from the oven. 

Inspired by Floyd's, Potato Rosemary Rolls:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/potatorosemaryrolls

And Tingull's, Country Dill Bread:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/3298/country-dill