Experiment gone very well !!
Good day folks, today started as any other bread days. I started with the only intentions of making a couple french boulles, and a couple ciabatta's with a poolish I started yesterday. What I ended up with was my origional intentions, but I still had extra poolish, and no idea as to what to do with it. Then I eyed something on my counter. The coffee machine with a half pot of coffee still on it. I thought what if I tried creating a new recipe from stratch. A coffee bread of my own. So I did. Following is some photos of my experiment. Not only was my recipe awesome, if I do say so myself. I thought, what do people normally dip their bread in, I figured coffee or hot cocoa. Since I already had the coffee bread, I decided to try and make a chocolate butter to put on it. Wow, I am so happy with my outcomes, its one of the best feelings I have had while baking since I made my first cookie from scratch. My Ciabatta's came out good, but this was great.
The coffee color, and flavor is there, but not to overpowering. With the chocolate butter on top, its almost like a mocha taste when you bite into the bread. The best part, it was very easy to make. My wife and kids told me its a definate keeper.
Well off to get my boulles out of the oven. Till later.........
TT
Hey Tattman
Those breads look delish. Being a coffee nut of the highest order I am going to give this one a whirl. I think I read somewhere and i'm not sure if it was this site or not about this guy that always subbed a cup of water for a cup of coffee in all his breads? I'm curious, does it really taste like coffee or does it have a new sort of indefinable flavor? How much coffee did you use and what hydration overall if you don,t mind sharing. Now I am now looking around the kitchen for cool things to use in place of water. I don't think Mt. Dew or the wifes coffeemate will work though. Thanks.
Da Caffinated Crumb Bum
No Crumb Bum, its definately got a coffee flavor. It is not super strong, but there is no mistaking it. The recipe I came up with is just what made sense to me, feel free to experiment if you wish. But it really tasted good this way. Recipe follows.
6 Cups Flour (I used Premium Spring Wheat Flour, Unbleached, Unbromated)
2 1/3 Cups Poolish (what I had left from my ciabatta's, poolish recipe came from BBA)
3 Teaspoons Kosher Salt (since there was no salt in the poolish)
2 Teaspoons Instant Yeast
2 Cups Strong Black Coffee
I mixed the flour with the yeast, then mixed in the salt.
I added into this the poolish, mixing till it was all incorperated.
I then dumped in onto a floured work space, and hand kneaded for 12 minutes. Doing more folding really ( the poolish kept the whole thing kind of soft and springy already).
I then placed back into a lightly spray oiled pan and covered for 90 minutes.
After 90 minutes I dumped out, degassed, and folded about 5 or 6 times. Then back in the bowl for another 90 minutes.
After this time was up I dumped back out and lightly degassed ( I didnt beat it up), and cut into 3 equally weighted portions. I shaped them and layed them out on a parchment papered half sheet pan (that was lightly oiled with olive oil). I then covered with a floured couche, and let set on the stove top while I brought the oven to 375'.
15 minutes after I placed them onto the top of the stove top, I scored the tops of the loaves lightly and placed them in the oven for 45 minutes.
I pulled them out and there they were.
Now the butter I made up was
5 Tablespoons salted butter ( what I had left in a partial stick)
1 Tablespoon Baking Cocoa
1 Tablespoon Confectioners Sugar
Mixed it all in a bowl with a fork until creamy.
I feel the coffee taste is strongest in the crust, but it is tasted throughout the crumb as well. And I love the color. No misting my oven, no nothin, just what I stated above.
Good luck.
TT
Hey Tatt
Thanks for the great write up. I am going to make this next weekend. I was looking at your baking evolution on the blog section and came to the conclusion that you are evolving at a much higher rate than I am. Those bagels would last about 2 seconds at my house. I also screwed up trying to give your artical a 5 star rating. I seen to be having a problem getting the mouse to click on anything higher than 2 stars. Sorry. Once again I give it a 5 stars rating.
Da Crumb Bum
After looking at some other folks Blogs, I decided to start one of my own. To sort of document my progression as a bread baker. With the intent that years later I will hopefully be able to look back and see some sort of improvements..ha ha...
Thank you very much for the kind words. I have been very lucky so far with my breads, and bagels. I used BBA's recipe the bagels. Bread recipes from here, and books. I also attribute some of my luck to having good quality ingredients.
I know quite a bit about coffee, since I work around it all day long, and will probably incorperate coffee or espresso into a bunch of my future baking as well. I'll keep you posted with any future attempts.
TT