First Post for 2009

Happy New Year to all. This past weekend the Farmhouse Bakery was in full swing. First off was to try the Easy Crusty Bread recipe from the December/January issue of Mother Earth News. This is a basic simple dough, flour, salt, yeast and water. After mixing it's put in the refrigerator to retard and used as needed by cutting off a piece and shaping into a boule. Made enough dough Friday for four loaves and baked two on Saturday. Took one to our neighbors that are our source for free range eggs. Not a bad exchange.


Also on Friday I refreshed the sourdough starter that had been languishing in the refrigerator for some weeks. Nancy Silverton's method is to feed three times in a day, so Saturday morning found me with a great renewed starter. Began two loaves of her sourdough bread. This has become my staple sourdough recipe, a great crust and chewy texture. This is a two day recipe where the loaves are shaped and placed in bannetons overnight in the refrigerator to retard and develop flavor. Sunday they were taken out of the refrigerator, allowed to finish rising and baked.



With an excess of starter I also baked a set of Orange/Cranberry muffins. See my post of August 17, 2008 for that recipe. It makes a wonderful fruit flavored muffin with oatmeal as an added benefit.





Finally I baked Peter Reinhart's Holiday Bread recipe. This is another of his test bakes for his new book. A rich egg and butter dough that I made into a stollen since I had some marzipan paste in the freezer. Used a 50:50 mix of raisins and cranberries as the fruit.

Too Much Starter?

This weekend found me with an excess of starter. So it was muffin time. Here is my recipe for my all time favorite muffins, moist, flavorful and with a useful amount of fiber.

Ultimate Cranberry Orange Muffins

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a muffin tin or line with paper cups for 12 muffins. I use large silicone muffin cups that make a 6 double size muffins.

Combine in a large bowl:

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup oatmeal

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 tspn baking soda

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1/2 cup candied orange peel cut into 1/4 in pieces

Combine in another bowl until well blended

1/2 cup orange juice

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 egg

1 cup sourdough starter

Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients gradually, stirring only enough to moisten and bring to an even consistency. Spoon evenly into the muffin tins. Batter should come almost to the top.

Bake 30 to 35 minutes, until done. Remove immediately from the tin and cool on a rack.