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The 2nd time's a charm!

Partially Proofed Rolls - they started out 1/2 inch apart.

A few extras. These are baked in a 6 1/2" x 10 1/4" sheet.

Interior Crumb

Much nicer results this time – I used a higher percentage of WW pastry flour, less potato & may have developed the dough better. I had a nice windowpane with this one, I don’t remember if I did the last time. The dough seemed too sticky at start of bulk rise, but was very nice to work with when I shaped. Shaping this dough was like night and day compared to my first attempt - the dough was that different. I had planned to make half the dough into a sandwich loaf, but it was so nice to work with I just continued shaping rolls. Now I have 8 in the freezer to pull out and bake.

I used a heating pad set on low for the final proof. It took quite awhile - about 3 hours I think. Maybe next time I'll see if I can preheat an oven to about 95F, which is the recommended temp for rising rolls. I tried to follow Laurel's insruction to let them just barely overproof, i.e. just start to sag a bit. But I was too impatient. They hadn't quite reached that stage, though I think they were close.

For Thanksgiving weekend, we've got guests for the first time in years. When we lived in Boston, Aurora and I decided after a couple of years traveling to Atlanta for Thanksgiving that it's just too much to hop on a plane. Flying on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving sucks rocks, and both of us always have to work that day, so we had to rush to the airport in the evening holiday traffic. Then we spend just a few short days before rushing back home on Sunday, hoping our flights don't get canceled or delayed, leaving us marooned in some strange city and missing a day of work.

But now that we're in Oregon, family is (relatively) close by, and so her father, his wife and Aurora's grandmother all came up from Southern Oregon to spend the weekend.

Aurora's grandmother grew up in Oregon, but shortly after she graduated high school (in the 30s), she headed east to NYC to pursue a career as an actor. There, she fell in love with what her local bakery called "Sour Corn Rye." It was dense, had caraway, and clearly contained a high percentage of sourdough rye.

I've played around with rye, but didn't feel entirely comfortable making a rye with more than 50% rye flour for the meal. So, instead, I made a 40% caraway rye that mostly followed the recipe in Hammelman's Bread, which has got to be the most useful and comprehensive bread baking book I've ever seen. And that's coming from a guy who bakes 90% of his breads from 100% whole grains. Hammelman never exceeds more than 50% whole grains unless it's a rye (and the rye section is especially good -- Hammelman has a particular passion for German ryes), but the techniques are applicable to just about any bread.

Anyway, about the rye. The first loaf I made a couple of days ago was at 68% hydration, and, though it was delicious, it wasn't as open a crumb as I'd have liked. So for the holiday bread, I increased the water to 75%. I also keep my rye sourdough at 100% hydration, rather than the eighty-something that Hammelman uses, simply because it's easier for me. I did follow Hammelman and add instant yeast, however, since the oven would otherwise be occupied with a massive turkey in the afternoon -- I needed to bake in the morning. Recipe and percentages are below:



Formula

• Strong white flour: 60%
• Whole rye flour: 40%
• Water: 75%
• Salt: 1.8%
• Caraway seed: 1.8%
• Instant yeast: No idea -- I used 1/2 tsp per loaf. Maybe 0.33%?
• All of the rye flour is pre-fermented as a sourdough at 100% hydration

Ingredients for one loaf

• Strong white flour (I used KAF Bread flour, which is 12.5% protein): 300 grams
• Rye sourdough at 100% hydration: 400 grams
• Water: 175 grams
• Salt: 9 grams
• Caraway seed: 9 grams
• Instant yeast: 1/2 tsp or 1 gram (about)

Again, I was in a bit of a hurry, so after mixing all the ingredients together, I kneaded it for 5-10 minutes until it would windowpane. This was a pretty sticky business, and it wasn't the most pleasant kneading, but with a dough scraper nearby and damp hands, it was tolerable. I then shaped it into a ball and put the dough bucket in my picnic cooler on an upturned bowl. After throwing a cup of boiling water in the bottom, I closed it and didn't open it back up for about 90 minutes. It generally stays about 80-85 degrees in the cooler. I then preshaped the dough, let it rest 15 minutes and shaped it into a batard.

After shaping, I wrapped it in baker's linen that I'd dusted with rice flour (the best stuff in the world for dusting surfaces that will hold sticky doughs) and put it back into my makeshift proof box for anotherr 90 minutes. Then, 45 minutes on a hot stone with steam at 450 degrees F and an hour's cooling.

Great with leftover roast turkey, strong mustard and whatever other fixings you can dig up.

I've just put another loaf in the oven, this time a long-fermentation 60-40 whole wheat-white wheat batard, and it's a cold oven bake. I'll post it later tonight or tomorrow. Hope it goes well with tonight's turkey soup ....

i made the sourdough starter from pineapple at day7 i made a stupid thing i had it in the oven and without thinking turned it on it was partially baked liquid in the center it looks alive should i try too save it ...............thanks bill

Whole Wheat Rolls

I am a magazine junkie.  The checkout stand is my downfall.  I love in particular cooking magazines, craft magazines and just anything creative.   

A couple of weeks ago I bought the Better Homes and Gardens Holiday Baking magazine. The pumpkin praline pie on the cover won me over instantly, but inside I found another treasure....some recipes from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking.  Six different recipes with wonderful mouth watering photos of the end products.  I was determined to try them.

Right away I made the Cheddar Onion Fantan Rolls....I didn't care for them.  Personally I don't like onions in bread so I am not sure why I thought I would like these, LOL.   Sorry, no picture of those but I did try the wheat rolls today. 

I made a double recipe, let them rise, made the rolls and then let them sit in the fridge overnight. This morning I took them out and let them rise.  The end result, they were pretty good but I know I can do better.  Usually I make cloverleaf dinner rolls but I didn't have the time or the energy last night to do that so I tried to just roll them into balls and set them next to each in the pan (not touching).  Most turned out ok but I think they would have looked much nicer as cloverleaf rolls.  The double recipe made 31 rolls. 

We took them to our Church Thanksgiving Feast today (along with a huge amount of sweet potato casserole).  I had expected a lot of people but there was less than 30 of us.  I think everyone was just as surprised as I was as there were 4 very large turkeys and a ton of other food.  Even after dinner, 2nd's, 3rd's and taking home leftovers I have a little bit left of everything.  (which was fine with me, LOL)  Speaking of the sweet potato casserole, it had rave reviews and they loved it.  I will def. make it every year from now on.

 Happy Thanksgiving to all those who celebrated it today. : )

Amy

As soon as I saw Susan's (Wild Yeast) post entitled "Semolina Bread with Currants, Fennel, Pine Nuts", I knew I HAD to make it. (Make sure to take a look at Susan's bread.)

I can't decide what I like more about this bread.
The aroma of it baking?

• Fennel!

The flavour?

• The currants! The fennel! The slight hint of sourdough flavour from the wild yeast!

Sliced warm with roccolo cheese? Toasted with butter?

• It's impossible to pin it down. All I know is that we both love it.

We buy our semolina in Indiatown - semolina is called "suji". Even after about 10 minutes of kneading, I decided that the bread dough would probably always be a bit grainy feeling. I added the currants and pinenuts and amazingly, as I was working the dough to distribute the currants evenly, the dough suddenly became smooth and silky!

I really couldn't be more thrilled about the bread. I have only one complaint. It takes no time for a loaf to disappear!

Thank you once again, Susan!

• Susan's recipe for Semolina Bread with Currants, Fennel, Pine Nuts
• my take on the recipe for semolina fennel seed bread with currants & pinenuts

Yet another miche I baked last night...

The sad thing is I'm just going to chop this up and let it dry out to make stuffing out of it. Yes, it is cheaper and easier for me to do this than go buy a bag of bread crumbs at the store. Besides, this will taste considerable better I am sure.

Cheese Snails

cheese snails 2

Cheese Snails 3

These are the marvelous cream cheese snails that have been made and posted many times here. I thought they looked delicious and decided to give them a try. I really like cream cheese so decided not to make the ones with raisins/cinnamon and did the entire batch this way. At first I thought they were too small but they did rise enough that they were just the perfect size for me.

I mentioned before that I am still fairly new to bread making but I think making the same exact recipe (my mother-in-law's dinner rolls and cinnamon rolls, yes, it's the same basic dough) over and over for the last year has helped a lot. I will always be greatful to her for teaching me. I wish she lived closer as we would have a great time in the kitchen together. All of our family is in Oklahoma and we are in Alaska though, so we don't get to see them very often.

The other thing I am greatful for is patience. And I have been reminded that bread making takes lots of that as well. It's great meditative work for me (as is snow shoveling but I don't enjoy a clear driveway near as much as I do the end results from baking). But I need to keep shoveling to work off the REAR end results from baking, LOL.

Hope you all have a great weekend! I will be making a batch of cinnamon rolls for the church potluck on Sunday and will be sure to post a photo. If I get really ambitious I might try to make chocolate sticky buns as well.

Amy

As you may have noticed, in the past couple of days I've replaced a few of the ads on this site with ads for Food Buzz.

The folks at Food Buzz approached me a month or so ago to talk about sponsoring the site. After chatting with them I agreed because it seemed like a mutually beneficial relationship. Food Buzz will include The Fresh Loaf as one of their Featured Publishers, thus increasing the exposure of this site. Presumably that'll increase traffic here and expose more people to the great content we're creating here.

For us it establishes a relationship with a vibrant, growing food portal. Their site is structured more like a social networking site and includes a lot of features I'll be unlikely to add here, thinks like geographically tagged restaurant reviews and photos. It seems like a good place for some of us who have other food-related passions than just bread to go find other like-minded folks to share our enthusiasm with.

This relationship should also improve the finances of TFL. I'm afraid I'm not able to quit my day job to devote myself full-time to The Fresh Loaf or anything like that yet, but I should be able to do things like migrate the site to a faster server or pay for a backup service in the next few months without going into the red. I have a few other projects I've been meaning to work on here too, and this increases my incentive to get on it as soon as I can. So it seems like a good thing all around.

HI,

 This is my first post, and I really hope somebody can help me out.  My mom's recipe for holiday buttery egg bread is lost.  Consists of flour, eggs, yeast (little sugar for the bugs to eat), butter and milk.  Makes a batter-like dough, which rises in the fridge, punched down and left overnight.  Next day, dropped by spoonfuls, spongy into loaf pans coated with melted butter.  Forms a crunchy crust.  I need proportions and timings, etc.

 Sound familiar to anybody?  Thanks in advance.