BBA Lavash Crackers

This is my version of Lavash crackers, using the formula from Peter Reinhart's book.  I adapted it by using 100% white whole wheat, and adding a little extra liquid to get the right consistency.  Here is the dough, ready to put into the fridge overnight to give it more flavor. 

I pulled the dough from the fridge this morning, and put it into my dehydrator at 80* F temperature setting. Allowing it to warm for 90 minutes, before stretching it out and sprinkling flour on top preparing it to be rolled with a rolling pin.

If I make these again, I will split the dough in half and roll it even thinner than I did this time.  The edges were a lot thinner than the middle and when I baked this the edges were thin crispy and crunchy.  I liked them a lot better than the slightly thicker portions in the center.

I sprayed the dough with water, then added rosemary, garlic, and Kosher salt.  Then I used a pizza cutter to cut them into smallish squares.  I wanted crackers you could spread a little bit of cream cheese spread on, and take a couple bites of.  Then I gave it time to rise a little bit, about 1/2 an hour while the oven warmed to 350* F.

This is how thin the outer edges were, which was just about right for this cracker.

Here they are all baked and cracked apart into individual crackers.  The thicker ones are crunchy, and not hard, but still I think would have been better about half as thick.

This shows you how thick the center ones were.

Links to my fellow baker's in the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge, 2011!  Here are links to their versions of this cracker.  They are all very talented baker's, who have gotten together to share their results from baking the Bread's in Peter Reinhart's book Bread Baker's Apprentice.


Our host Chris at A Ku Indeed
Jim at OvenMinded
Coz at Scratchbaker

Hamelman's Pissaladière Page 275

I was actually quite skeptical about this one. First I have never had pizza without sauce on it, and second putting fish on my favorite food, well it just sounded rather bad. I decided though that I would give it a try, and I am actually rather surprised that I thought it was pretty good. Anchovies are not my favorite topping, and I will not be in a rush to put this on any of my regular pizza's, but I would definitely eat a pizza that already had them on it.

Here I sliced my onions, soaked my thyme in extra virgin olive oil, and have my can of anchovies ready to slice into thin pieces.

I adapted this recipe to use 100% whole wheat white flour, which means the dough will have lots of flavor and probably won't rise very high.  I prefer the White Winter Wheat berries for this type of recipe, so that it gives me flavor but  doesn't overwhelm the other flavors of topping etc.

I saved half the dough for hamburger buns, and used a 1 lb chunk for this recipe.  While the dough was doing it's 2 hour first rise, I sauteed the onions and sliced the anchovies.  Sauteed onions are one of my favorite foods, although normally I just chop some sweet onions and put them on top of my pizza to bake while it bakes.  I chose not to use garlic in this recipe, although I do love fresh garlic most of the time.

I stretched the dough out to approximately 12" x 6" rectangle, since I think it helps the dough's crumb to not use a rolling pin.  I actually didn't have to flour the surface of this wonderful cooking mat, and didn't use any oil on it either. 

Next I moved the dough onto a sheet of parchment paper, which I believe is one of the most awesome inventions of all time. I then placed the onions on the dough, you can see the olive oil and thyme coated the top.  I then chose to put both black olives and green olives onto the top. Just so you know, green olives are really good on pizza.  I have never thought of trying this, until I was reading how Lutz on Mellow baker's did hers. 

This is the dough after it has done it's last proof, which I actually chose to do a full hour rather than the 20 minutes that was suggested in the book.  I actually needed to give my baking stone a chance to heat for 45 minutes, or it wouldn't have worked well for that initial rise and crisp crust.

I love how thick and poofy the dough looks here, and this is where I figured out that this not only doesn't have sauce, but it doesn't have cheese on it either!  This is also the point I almost stopped, disregarded all instructions and put the cheese on.  I had a mental debate, inside my head, something like this:  Pizza has cheese. You should be willing to try new things. But pizza has cheese, and sauce. You can't decide you don't like something without trying it.  Bbbbbbbbut... !!!!!!

From HamelmansPissaladiere

If you look at the picture you will notice, it does NOT have cheese.  My DH and I each had two small pieces, and actually enjoyed them!!!  I then however, could not stop myself and put a mix of parmesan, mozzarella, monterey jack, and cheddar on the top and guess what!  We actually enjoyed our pizza.  I will say it is not our favorite, and we would both choose pepperoni over anchovies, but it was actually ok.

I am working with a group of baker's which call themselves Mellow Baker's and we are baking from a book called, Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman.  Come check the forum out, it's a pretty laid back group who bakes what they can when they can with no time pressure's on them.  There are a few recipes that are suggested for each month, and we simply bake the ones that we want to. 

BBA Light Whole Wheat Baguettes

I know this was supposed to be a loaf bread, but I have a couple meetings this week and I promised to bring whole wheat baguettes too.  I thought I would kill two birds with one stone and just make these into nice long shapely baguettes!  If I hadn't been in a hurry, and wanted to get this done in a single day, I would have been disappointed that none of the dough aged before baking.  As it was though, this worked really well for my schedule and that made it a nice bread for my really busy life right now. Here's a couple pictures of them:

I received a lame from Breadtopia for mother's day.  Really can't say enough about how wonderful this tool is!  It improved my slashing by a zillion percent!  Every slash I have done since receiving this has turned out wonderfully!

The crumb turned out nice for sandwich type bread.  Only complaint I have with this bread is that it was to sweet, which is probably because I am so used to lean breads that I am simply not used to sugar in them!

I had to slip these in, basically these are loaves of BBA Casatiello that I made into a baguette shape.  I wanted the slices to be more like a snack for my meetings this week.  Hope this works out ok!  I just used a different shape, but the same recipe.

First I took everything I needed out, measured it all out, and then added it to the bowl.  I mixed it, followed by kneading the dough for 6 minutes.  Seemed a little bit stiff to me, but it was supposed to be a sandwich type loaf so this should be fine.  It rose very high in my dough bucket, and the lid left an indent in the top of the dough.  Looks rather funny!

After the 2 hour rise, I shaped it into baguettes and allowed them to proof for an hour.  I then slashed them with my lame, and baked them like I would a baguette.  They turned out really nice, if a little bit to sweet for me. 

Links to my fellow baker's in the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge, 2011!  Here are links to their versions of this bread.  They are all very talented baker's, who have gotten together to share their results from baking the Bread's in Peter Reinhart's book Bread Baker's Apprentice.


Our host Chris at A Ku Indeed
Jim at OvenMinded
Adam at Within Reason

Hamelman's 5 Grain page 129

This bread turned out really well.  I used fresh ground Hard Winter White Wheat, Flax Seeds, an 8 grain cereal mix, Oat Groats, Sunflower seeds, but had to leave out the rye chops which were not available here.  I got a lame for Mothers day from Breadtopia, which is making a huge difference in my slashes.  It just looks so much better!

The crumb came out light, with nice size holes evenly spread throught.  Overall, it looks pretty with all the little seeds showing. 

Everything in it's place, which always helps me not forget things like salt!

Here are all the grains together in the bowl of water.  Just looked pretty!

Mixed all together ready to autolyse for 1/2 an hour.

Kneaded the dough for 4 minutes, and it was one of those days that the bread just came together really well.

This is where I realized I forgot the salt.  I went ahead and kneaded the dough for a couple minutes, then allowed it to rise for another hour.

I shaped the dough and put it into my clay baker.  This is a really awesome tool for making artisan breads.  I put it into the oven while the oven and it are cold, then turn the oven on to 425* and bake for 40 minutes.  Take the lid off and bake 5 minutes if it's not brown enough. 

Aren't all those nuts and seeds pretty looking?  We really enjoyed this loaf, can't decide though if it will be one my make again list.  I think I should have used some rye flour in place of the regular flour.  I didn't use any bread flour, or ap flour though.  It was 100% fresh ground whole wheat.

I am working with a group of baker's which call themselves Mellow Baker's and we are baking from a book called, Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman.  Come check the forum out, it's a pretty laid back group who bakes what they can when they can with no time pressure's on them.  There are a few recipes that are suggested for each month, and we simply bake the ones that we want to.

BBA Kaiser like rolls....

I spent the morning finishing up my Kaiser Rolls for the Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge.  The Italian Baguettes were skipped, but I plan on trying to do them soon.  It's hard to get similar results when using 100% Whole Wheat flour, so this time I tried something different and I think it worked quite well.  I was able to follow the baker's percentages in the recipe, and didn't have to change anything!  Here is what I did....

Starters for Pain au Levain with mixed starters

While making this bread, I realized that temperature might matter a lot more with my sourdough's than I thought before. I have always simply waited for my starter, Arnold, to raise the dough in his own time. This does create problems though, and unpredictability. Mr. Hamelman has a section in his book Bread about this.  He goes quite in depth about why you should be concerned about temperature, and exactly how to give your dough the exact temperature you need.  He has at least converted my thinking to the possibility that it would be nice to have the sour dough ready to bake when I planned to!

Now I am not as sold on having the exact temp correct, but I have been thinking of using my Excalibur dehydrator which has a dough setting on it.  We can be rather cold here during the winter, and even though it's April we had snow just yesterday.  This might help me to have consistent proofing temps for those times it is cold.

The trouble is that it is rather large, in my small kitchen.  I do use it for other things though, and so last night I pulled it in from storage (translation Andy lugged it in for me, he is so awesome!) and cleaned it up.  I did notice that it has heat settings from 85* F to 145* F.  It is equipped with a fan, and the directions say to use the 110* setting with a bowl of water for moisture inside the unit.  This seems to high to me, so I will have to research that a little bit more.  Thinking the 85*F setting would make more sense.

This is a slideshow of my second attempt at this bread, from Hamelman's book...  Click the link to continue reading!

April showers... wait SNOW?? Again?

OK, it really isn't a lot of snow, just what the old timers call a skiff, but geez it is almost May!  That grass should be green, not white!  Ritter agrees and was real excited about going into the barn to get out of the muddy cold.  Well, technically Ritter is excited whenever we talk to him, but especially when he gets to go see the goats, chickens, and barn kitties (ok, there IS a barn kitty behind that door).  Nothing makes him happier then seeing a barn kitty in the middle of the field that he can chase, even if he does get into trouble for it.  Most times the kitties simply rub up against him and give him lots of love though. 

Managed to take a picture of one of the wildflowers growing on the hillside...  Click link to read more!

Hamelman's Pain au Levain with mixed starters

I was introduced to rye breads when I was very young, not sure if it was due to my Norwegian heritage or simply that my family just loves rye bread.  I love the taste of caraway seeds in my rye bread, and was a little bit disappointed when I noticed this bread didn't have them in it.  I fixed this pretty quickly though, by simply adding them to the dough!  I know it wasn't in the recipe, but I do have to eat it.  The other reason I did this was because I had just threw together a loaf of my sourdough bread, made with 75% Winter White Wheat and 25% rye flour.  This sourdough loaf did a bulk rise of 4 1/2 hours, and the same time to proof.  My husband and I both enjoyed it very much and hoped that this recipe would come out with such great flavor too.  Here's a picture of my version of sourdough rye...

I started Hamelman's recipe, from "Bread".  Pain au Levain with mixed starters the day I made the loave above.

First I will share with you my starters...

Feeding sourdough

If you position your mouse pointer over the bottom of the picture you can control the slide show and move through it a little bit slower. You can also click on the center of the slideshow and it will take you to picasa web albums where you can cycle through them one at a time.

View all

Get your own

Hamelman's Pain au Levain

I think that spring has finally started to peak out from behind the clouds, rain, and snow.  The bare trees are starting to have a tinge of green, from buds popping out of barren limbs.  There are even tulip leaves emerging from the ground and the Glory of the Snow blooms are dying back.  (who names these flowers anyway?)  The grass is growing, and hillsides are looking more green than brown.  It's still really muddy, windy, and cold, but it's not the biting cold of winter and I'm excited at the thought of putting away the snow boots and heavy coats.  My tulips have pushed up through the ground and have no flower stalks yet, and the Lilac bush is sprouting buds.  Couldn't resist a couple photos today!

We drove to the big city the other day, although most would call it a small town.  It's a 3 hour drive through the mountains, high plains, and crossing many streams.  The tamarack's have a faint yellow tinge to them as their needles start to emerge, from what appears to be dead evergreen's.  Yes, I believe spring is here.  The horses with their foals, the cows with their calves, and the goats with their kids, were everywhere we looked.  The birds are singing, the frogs are everywhere, and we have quite a chorus at night!

You wonder why I am talking about spring, when my post is called Hamelman's Pain au Levain?  First off, for those who don't know, Pain means bread in French.  Levain refers to a natural yeast starter, most people call this sourdough bread, at least in the USA.  You might be surprised to know that sourdough doesn't always have to actually taste sour.  Many sourdough breads are actually sweet tasting, but they do have a depth of flavor to them that standard breads don't.  In fact, any bread that has a preferment (a dough portion that has aged) will develop flavor from the wheat, but sourdough adds another element due to different chemical activities that take place.  No science lesson today on exactly what happens inside the dough as it rises and ages.  Let's just note that the French really had it right when they called it a "pain"!  Not ALL the time, but occasionally it can be.  Here is a picture of some french bread I made today.  It really looks nice, as do the baguettes that are on the right.

Hmmm, I changed the subject again didn't I?  It is just not as fun to talk about a bread that turned out like this:

Now I could go through what went wrong with this loaf, but lets just leave this one to it is really messed up and go feed it to the chickens, goats, and dog.  Whoever doesn't turn their nose up and walk away can have some, cuz it's rubbery and just plain bad.  This is not the fault of the recipe, rather it was the baker who tried to do to much and just didn't have time to finish it properly.

Hmmm, the chickens, goats, and dog seemed to think it was pretty awesome!  Did you see the happy faces in the pictures above?  That was in the middle of feeding them.  Glad the dog didn't go and bury his!

Blueberry Cheesecake Braids & French bread

 

Just a peak at what I made yesterday and today!  Yummy....

BBA French Bread 2

This one turned out so much better than the last loaf.  I let the pate fermente dough age in the fridge for 3 days, and the flavor was so much better.  I am making this one for a meeting Tuesday, for making into sandwiches.  I will definitely make it again, and allow it to age a few days rather than just overnight.

BBA French Bread and Life!

Well, they turned out ok, but there were many things I did wrong with these.  It's surprising they turned out as good as they did.  Crust & Crumb is ok, but not like what it could have been if only..... 

Ok, you are wondering about the CH47 Chinook Helicopter flying through in the middle of my bread post.  That comes later, I will just say it was taken from my front porch.

BBA Focaccia bread

I literally could end this blog right here, with pictures of this truly awesome bread/pizza. The crust was flaky, almost like a pastry, and the inside was soft, tender, filled with holes, and so very good. It wrapped itself around my inner yum, and I found myself eating two pieces. I just couldn't help it. It was that good. My son told me it's now one of the things he will ask me to make when he comes home from college to visit.  A new favorite for him, impressive!



 Then there was Andy, who drooled over it and finally took a single bite. Bread flour is something he cannot eat without getting REALLY sick. This bread is so filled with olive oil, it is NOT a diet food that is for sure! Normally I do not like things that are dripping with oil, but this was different. I couldn't eat it all the time, but it is definitely something I will make again in the future.

Here's a slideshow of how I made this bread, and if you click in the middle of the picture it will take you to my picasa album for this bread.



Just a couple notes on how to make this. I made the poolish two days ago and used unbleached AP flour, to develop the flavor of the wheat. I knew that the bread flour from costco was a bleached flour, so the chances of it developing any flavor were nil. When I bought it I thought is was unbleached, guess I really need to read labels better!

I got busy and left the poolish out long enough to bubble up, then put it into the fridge and only had time to pull it out today to make the focaccia. I did not do an overnight aging of the entire dough, because I knew that it wouldn't increase the flavor of bleached flour so it really made no sense.

Besides, my fridge is full of extra stuff for my son's visit home. Yes, he is spoiled, but I love him and want to give him some meals he loved growing up. Mom's do that sort of thing for their favorite boy child! They do it also for their favorite girl child, just she doesn't come home as often. I love to watch them grow to be such awesome people, but it means that they sometimes are so very far away. I really miss them when they are gone.

I mixed the dough in the mixer, after doing a hand stir of it for a couple minutes. My mixer does not like small amounts of dough, so I have to help it and watch it carefully. It kneaded the dough for 7 minutes, and developed a nice feel to it. I had to use my plastic dough tool to scoop it from the bowl, along with a silicone spatula. This helped get the dough onto my dough mat into the flour I had spread out. I followed the 4 stretch and folds, and put the oil onto the pan and then dimpled the dough and poured more herb oil on top. I thought I had messed up, to much oil, and to many herbs on top.

After this I waited half an hour, redimpled the dough, and put the toppings on it. I used about a cup of cheese, and some pepperoni, because my son loves pepperoni pizza. He usually piles his pizza with a TON of cheese, but I only put a light coating on top and he seemed happy with it when it was done. The herbs I used in the olive oil were oregano, basil, parsley, kosher salt, pepper. Gave it really nice flavor, even if they were dried rather than fresh. I then preheated the oven to 500* and turned it down to 450* when I put the pizza pan into the oven. I baked it for 20 minutes, and then allowed it to cool for about 10 minutes before using a pizza cutter to cut it, figuring my son would simply eat it like pizza. I can't believe the crumb came out so good, when I cut it with a Pizza cutter! Well, time to put crab stuffed mushroom caps into the oven for my husband's snack!

BBA Focaccia

Links to my fellow baker's in the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge, 2011!  Here are links to their versions of this bread.  They are all very talented baker's, who have gotten together to share their results from baking the Bread's in Peter Reinhart's book Bread Baker's Apprentice.


Our host Chris at A Ku Indeed! 
Coz at ScratchBaker 
Jim at OvenMinded
NancyB at Bread&Cake&More 
I will post others as they finish theirs!

Hamelman's WW Multgrain Soaker pg 169

I must tell you that I wasn't really excited about this bread, mostly because I really like a multigrain bread that I make already.  It has all the things I really like in it, including some raisins and sunflower seeds.  Just a touch of sweet fruit really gives me a wonderful toast for the morning.  The recipe is one that I simply tweaked till I got it the way I liked it.  It's 100% fresh ground hard red wheat, and contains a cereal blend from Bob's Red Mill.  Here's a link to my blog about this bread!

Really, I am trying to stretch myself to make other breads, so that I have experience with all sorts rather than a few I really like.  Between BBA and this challenge I have made breads that I probably NEVER would have made (loved Casatiello), and might never make again (Rich Mans Brioche). 

Back to the subject at hand, I am working with another group of baker's which call themselves Mellow Baker's and we are baking from a book called, Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman. They are already through about half of the book, so I am starting midway. Here's a picture of my 50% Whole Wheat Multigrain Levain bread:

From HamelmansMultSoaker

And the crumb shot....

From HamelmansMultSoaker

I posted the rest of the pictures on Picasa, with explanations on what I did to make the bread. Link to

100% Whole Wheat Flax Seed bread

From WWFlax

I have been experimenting with soaking the fresh ground flour in kefir/buttermilk overnight before making it into a loaf of bread. This is supposed to make the bread easier for your body to digest. What I am finding however is that it makes the entire loaf of bread easier to make, and gives me a lot more consistent results in the end. I have decided though that I will hold back about 100 grams of the flour in order to make it easier to add the yeast and salt the next morning. My loaves seem to rise better and their texture and crumb seem better too.  It's all just an experiment right now, but it seems to be working quite well.

Here is the formula I used for this loaf and the rolls. I used an egg wash on them, and the crust color difference is simply baking at different temperatures.  The rolls were baked directly on a pizza stone, at a lower temperature.  I simply mixed the soaker ingredients together the night before, then added the 20 grams water, 9 grams salt, and 10 grams yeast in the morning.  I held the salt back for the first two minutes of kneading till the yeast and water were mixed in well.  Next time I will also hold back 100 grams of flour from the initial soak, just for easier mixing of yeast and water, but I will probably allow it to autolyse for 30 minutes before adding the salt to the mix just to make sure that it doesn't end up to dry.

Note: Due to egg being in the soaker I refrigerated it overnight rather than leaving it on the counter.