Isand66's blog

I promised a couple of my friends that I would bring them some bread when we met up for lunch this week.  I had a few purple sweet potatoes in the pantry and wanted to use them in this bake.  The last time I used them the color did not come through very well, so I upped the amount of potato to 35% and the color really came out perfect.  The purple sweet potato is not as high in water content as the orange style and not as sweet, but it does add a wonderful texture to the bread that is worth trying.

I wanted to make some nice soft rolls/buns that would be perfect for burgers and sandwiches.  I had some leftover wild rice pilaf I made the other day and this along with the ricotta cheese made for a tasty bread.

I used a little bit of freshly ground Kamut, rye and whole wheat flours combined with bread flour.  I have to say it turned out super soft and moist and tastes fantastic.  I highly recommend you try this one as you will not be disappointed.

I opened up a bottle of Rose wine from a local Long Island winery that I really enjoyed, so figured why not use it in my next bake.  I usually use a stronger full bodied red wine which also tends to add more color to the dough, but the lighter flavored Rose was a nice change of pace.

Cherries are nice and sweet from the market now, so instead of using dried cherries I pitted some fresh ones for this bake and cut them up into pieces to add to the dough.  The sour cream really help make this bread nice and moist.

I have not made pretzel rolls in a while and wanted to try a new version.  I added some fresh milled purple corn flour, and rye flour along with some maple syrup to add a little sweetness.  Beer certainly goes well with pretzels so adding it to the dough was a no-brainer.

I needed to make some rolls for burgers and sandwiches and if you know me by now, adding cheese was a must :).  The main flour was Kamut with some KAF bread flour thrown in for good measure.  The eggs really added some nice moisture and flavor and the smoked Gouda cheese I used put them over the top.  Of course if you don't like smoked cheese (like my wife who hates it), use a more mild cheese.

This is a 66% rye bread made with fresh milled rye sifted so it's close to a medium grind rye flour.  I added some fresh milled spelt as well which really compliments the rye.  I had some left-over cheese grits from my wife's breakfast the other day so into the mix it went along with some mashed potatoes which were roughly mashed.

   I had not made a porridge bread in a little while, and I've been loving adding freshly ground barley to my bakes, so here we are.  I thought freshly ground Kamut would make a nice combination with the barley and I was not mistaken.

I added some polenta I ground from the purple corn I recently purchased with some rolled oats to make a porridge and added some caramelized onions I had leftover in the main dough for good measure.

I was very happy with the flavor profile on this one and the nice moist and tasty crumb as well.

Both of these bakes were pretty simple for me and I had to restrain myself from adding some cheese or other ingredient :).  Sometimes simple is best and I have to admit the Spelt Barley loaf tastes awesome.  It has a nice chewy crust with deep nutty flavors from the spelt and barley flours.  It made an excellent pastrami sandwich for lunch the other day with some melted cheese and Thousand Island dressing.

I've been wanting to try milling some dried corn into flour for some time and finally found some on Amazon a little while ago.  For this bake I used around 17% fresh corn flour so it didn't really add much purple color as I had hoped, but it smelled amazing after milling and did add a nice subtle corn flavor to the bake.

I had some leftover rice so I added some into the mix along with some ricotta cheese to make a nice soft and flavorful dough.  This one smelled like you could eat it before even baking it!

I've made a similar bread in the past with cranberries instead of cherries but I also changed the flour up a bit and added some fresh milled rye.

I thought the crumb would be more red, but you definitely could taste the wine and of course cherries make the perfect compliment.  Adding some chocolate would make this a great bread to have with some cheese for dessert.