Hello to all the bakers and Loafers!  I'd posted about 5 months ago about my upcoming camping journey around the Mediterranean, and received so much wonderful advice...  I can't thank everybody enough for their kind, helpful ideas, or begin to tell all the traveling tales.  

Apart from a broken camp stove (aaah!) I did discover a number of fantastic, unique local breads, but I will have to wait to post some pictures and descriptions of those (though I promise I will!)...

But as I'm sure so many of you can imagine, now that my husband and I have returned to our home in Hungary, I'm enthralled just to have an oven again!  Every day has featured me dancing around a new bread, and it's been a blast - but it's high time I share a bit!

Though my husband, David, disagrees, I think this recipe has been my favorite new bread thus far...

Greek Fennel, Yogurt, and Honey Bread

I unearthed this recipe in The Bread Book, by Sara Lewis, which my little brother's girlfriend gave to me last December.  I'd never heard of it, but I very much enjoy the breads it's offered.  Both my husband and I try to eat as healthily as we can, so I admit this recipe has been somewhat modified, and though sometimes this leads to problems I was entirely satisfied, and if fact declared it my best ever!  Multiple times! 

On our camping trip, we spent a month in Greece, between beaches and ancient ruins, and found a lot of fabulous flavors - yogurt featured prominently, as did spices like fennel, anise, and sesame.  This evoked it for me...  It's very sweet, with a dense but extremely soft crumb, and a soft, pliable crust, and filled with the flavor of the fennel seeds and a tad of citrus.  

These ingredients, by the way, are scaled down to an individual loaf, for me, because my husband doesn't like sweet breads, but it's easy to multiply as desired. 

Ingredients:

165 grams flour

3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast

1-3 teaspoons honey (all depending on your personal taste for sweetness)

(dough enhancers I utilized):

2 teaspoons vital wheat gluten

pinch of ginger 

1 teaspoon lemon juice

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons fennel seeds

2 oz. + 2 teaspoons yogurt (warmed to room temperature)

2 oz. warm water

Extra honey, milk, and fennel seeds (to glaze)

Instructions:

Whisk a little bit of the flour, yeast, honey, lemon juice, and water in a large bowl to autolyze for 3-5 minutes.  

Add the fennel seeds and yogurt and blend well to distribute the seeds.

Add the salt and the rest of the flour and knead with floured hands on a well-floured board.  With the large proportion of honey, the dough will be extremely sticky at first, but after ten minutes of kneading it tends to become smooth.  Knead for 15 minutes, or until the dough is elastic and does not break if stretched.  

Allow dough to rise in a covered bowl until doubled, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.  

Remove dough from bowl and give it several soft kneadings and envelope turns.  On a lightly greased baking sheet, shape into a spiraled loaf, like a cinnamon bun.  

Allow loaf to rise for 45 minutes or so, while preheating the oven to 210 degrees Celsius.  

Lightly glaze loaf with milk, sprinkle with extra fennel seeds, and drizzle with honey, especially in the creases of the spiral (yum!).

After rising time, bake for 15 - 20 minutes or until shiny and golden brown, with an inner temperature of 205 degrees Fahrenheit.  

Allow to rest and cool - and enjoy!

p.s. if anybody would care to look at some travelogue accounts and photographs of our Mediterranean trip, as well as here in Hungary (currently how we are making our own wine), my blog address is http://erzsebetgilbert.blogspot.com...

Hi,
I usually bake a yummy buckwheat rye honeycake, but I would like to try a sourdough version. Does anyone have any tips or recipes for sourdough cake in general? Or specifically, honey? If it needs fat, I would prefer to use oil rather than butter or margarine.
Thanks,
CR

A few weeks ago I saw a post with a reference to a Honey Lemon Whole Wheat loaf. As I recall a couple posters had commented that this bread was high on the best breads list for them. A fellow I have high regard for (PMcCool), suggested I would like it, so I decided to give it a spin.

The original recipe is from Bernard Clayton. One of the things Clayton does in this and other recipes I have made is to use very warm water for the mix along with a short primary ferment time and then an overnight chilled proof. Since the dough starts off life warm, it does rise fully while in the refrigerator. I suspect this also helps develop a better flavor. Another component of the flavor being the grated lemon rind, I suspect is enhanced by the warm water helping release the oils of the fruit.

The crumb is about what you would expect from a 40% Whole Wheat mix. The dough and later the bread has a very unusual and surprising aroma with the Lemon. This is an aromatic bread of the highest order. Paul said he liked the way the lemon plays off the WW and I think that's a good description of what I sence. So grab a copy of Claytons book and give this a try.

Eric

I tried out this recipe:

http://www.breadtopia.com/spelt-bread-recipe/

And it was great!

I especially loved the honey, which was added to aid in fermentation, but left a nice residual sweetness behind as well.  I think I might have had a bit extra honey in there when I made it.

The ingredients were thus:

530 grams (about 5 cups well fluffed up) whole spelt flour
350 grams (~1+1/2 cups) water
10 grams (1+1/2 tsp) salt
3 Tbs honey or sugar or 2 Tbs agave
1/4 cup sourdough starter

The video goes into details which I've summarized below:

You basically combine the ingredients and let sit for 3 hourr at room temperature, doing a single stretch-and-fold at one hour intervals.  You then let it bulk ferment overnight, pinch the top to make a tight skin and seal, let sit in a proofing basket for an hour and a half and bake until 200F on the inside.

Has anyone else tried this recipe?  I think this is the best wheat bread I've tasted in my (short baking) life.

Hi,

Just a comment, I followed the recipe in The Bread Baker's Apprentice for Sicilian Bread. It calls for 1 TBSP of honey. I had on hand a small bottle of imported italian lime honey (that is, honey made from lime blossoms of course). This is a very strongly flavored honey, maybe too strong to be enjoyed directly. But added to the Sicilian bread the outcome was extraordinarily flavorful, in a way that I thought blended with the bread and leaven flavor perfectly.  I find myself going back to the kitchen again and again just to smell the loaf.  I bought this honey at a local coop called the Wedge, in Minneapolis, The honey is Asiago brand, I don't know how widely available it may be. But if you are making bread that calls for honey I can highly recommend lime honey.

This is my first post, as I have had no luck in finding a recipe for this.  I was lucky to have an Armenian bakery close to my college years ago, and besides having some of the best breads, they had some small, pita-like sweet breads, which if i remember correctly were called "amour".   They were about 8 inches in diameter and maybe 1/3 of an inch thick, very soft, and were marbled with cinnamon.  I've looked everywhere, but can't seem to find anything resembling them.  I would appreciate any help.

Hi all,

I'm a long-time lurker, long-time bread baker.  I live in Ottawa Canada and really enjoy reading/devouring all the posts.  I guess you could say I am passionate/obsessed with bread and bake frequently, at least 2-3 times a week.  Mostly straight doughs, but do indulge in the occasional sourdough - only problem is my family doesn't like sourdough so I end up eating it all (not a good thing for the waist).

 So, my question, out of all the Challah recipes I've tried, including Glezer's and Berenbaum's, I like Hamelman's the best.  But the problem is that he uses sugar and I really like the traditional honey taste better.  So, how do I substitute honey for the sugar.  In case this helps, the recipe calls for 1.8 oz (5.5%) sugar and 10.2 oz (32%) water.  There is additional liquid in the eggs, but I don't see how I could swap that out.

 Thanks!!!!

Janice

I just thought I would share the recipe I came up with for the quinoa flour. I incorporated it into one of my other recipes I created a while back. It isn't a high percent of quinoa, but it sure does come through in the bread. This is not a gluten free recipe.

Honey Grain Bread

2 3/4 cups water (1/4 c. used to proof yeast)
1 T. Salt
5 T. Butter or Olive Oil
5 T. Honey (use 1 T. in proofing yeast)
3 cups Bread Flour
1 cup Quinoa Flour
1 cup Flax Flour
2 1/2 cups White Whole Wheat Flour
1 1/3 cups Quick Cook Oats
5 t. yeast
2 T. vital gluten

Set to ferment over night or longer
2 1/2 c. water
2 1/2 c. white whole wheat flour
2 c. bread flour

I proofed my yeast in 1/4 c. warm water, 1 T. honey, 5 t. yeast.

I proof the yeast while I am adding the other ingredients to my mixer bowl that has the fermented flour in it. Sometimes depending on the amount of moisture in the air I have had to add an extra 1/4 c. of flour.

I set my mixer to mix for 12 minutes, but keep an eye on it. I have noticed that when I have let my fermented flours go for longer then 12 hours or so then it takes a lot less mixing to work the gluten up.

Once the dough has been mixed and is looking smooth and stretchy I like to scrape it out of the mixer bowl and kneed if for a little bit to see how it feels. Even though I enjoy my mixer I still like to kneed the dough. It is a great way to releave stress. Anyways, I set it aside now in a greased bowl and cover and let rise for 2.5 to 3 hours, until it doubles in size. I have been told I should let it rise twice before shaping it and placing on a baking pan or in a bread pan, but so far I have only done a single rise before placing in the pans. Then I slit the tops with a razor blade and let rise covered for 1 hr. (Next time I am going to try a little longer rise in the pans and also try a double rise before shaping.

I had put them in a cold oven and turned the oven to 400 degrees for 10 minutes, turned it down to 350 degrees after that and let bake an additional 25 minutes. They did not get a spring in the oven at all so I think I will put them in a warmed oven next time because that is how I normal do it, but wanted to try something different this time.

The bread was not heavy at all and has a delightful nutty flavor and when toasted it melts in the mouth and has a great crunch to it. We have not been able to keep the bread very long as it is gobbled up long before I usually make my next batch of bread. I might double this recipe for 4 loaves instead, but I do enjoy baking.

A few things I want to try with this next time as well is getting a stone for the oven and doing artisan loaves with it again. This might sound strange, but the artisan loaves had much more flavor then the loaves in the pan.

I just bought a stollen today, since I've never had one, and would like an idea of what it should taste like if I were to try and make it myself. It got me in the mood to try and make other enriched, holiday-esque breads, and this image of a honey-rich bread popped into my mind. Something soft and buttery, with a significant honey aroma and taste that wasn't too overpowering. Maybe lightly spiced. Maybe good with a cup of tea.