New Equipment

Coming home on Friday I stopper at Pickers, a local indoor flea market. Wandering around I found a Zojirushi BBCC-X20 2lb bread machine. I have lusted over one of these for a long time but at over $200 I've balked.

So imagine my surprise on asking the price to be quoted $25.00. Whipped out my wallet and paid cash before they could change their mind. Machine is super clean and does not look like it has had much use at all.

So today took it for a test run with Max's flax seed artisan bread. Think I got the dough just a little wet but the end result looks inviting.

Certainly find this machine quieter than my West Bend machine. Remains to be seen which one is the best, but since I use my machines a lot, will probably alternate for a while. Will make baking challah easier as I usually bake four loaves at a time, but can only get two loaves from one machine. So now I can make two batches of dough simultaneously.

Special Challah

You know from previous posts that I bake challah for Temple B'nai Sholem in New Bern. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur come up at the end of September and early October.

Tradition for High Holy Days is for the challah to be round, symbolizing the cycle of life. I was able to find a wonderful example of how to weave a round challah at http://www.ou.org/shabbat_shalom/article/woven_round_challah/. This was the result - a wonderful intricate round loaf.

Apart from this I have a new recipe that I have been experimenting with. It's Clay's Multi-grain Sourdough Sandwich Bread from King Arthur Flour. In place of sourdough I have substituted the Italian Winter Biga that I mentioned in the last post. The mix requires more water than the recipe calls for 1/4 cup in place of 2/3 cup. The grains are Bob's Red Mill 5 grain cereal. Creates a great, long lasting sandwich bread.

TIME FLIES WHEN YOU'RE HAVING FUN!

Just realized it's almost two years since I last posted - where does the time go? Still bake two or three times a week however. Earlier this year my bread machine finally failed after several years of weekly use. Not bad for a machine bought used at a resale shop. Would really like a Zojirushi but they are beyond my budget. Did find a West Bend two blade machine that is similar and bakes a rectangular loaf. Much more affordable on Amazon so that is my replacement.

Most recently I've been working with biga.Nearly titled this post The Biga the Better but thought better of it. Once again, Linda Eckhardt and Dianna Butts' book Rustic European Breads for the Bread Machine has been my inspiration. They have an Italian Winter Biga that is simply:

• 1/4 tsp bread machine yeast
• 3/4 cup water
• 1 3/4 cups bread flour

Add the yeast, water, flour and mix by hand until hydrated in a large plastic container. Cover and let sit for a minimum of ten hours. If you don't use it all, refrigerate the balance for up to two weeks and use as a starter for another batch later.

They have four recipes using this biga!

Como Bread - based on 3C bread flour and 1/2C of whole wheat for 1 1/2lb loaf, this classic northern Italian bread is moist and chewy inside with a crisp crust and keeps well just wrapped in a tea towel. Direct substiution of rye flour for the whole wheat makes an interesting alternative.

Pane All'uva - an Italian raisin bread with a similar texture to the Como Bread. For variety, I have substituted cranberries or chopped dates for the raisins, as well as golden raisins for regular. My personal favorite is the chopped dates.

Ciabatta - this has become my 'go to' recipe for both ciabatta bread and also for a ciabatta roll that I make by cutting the dough before the final rise into rectangles about 4 inches each side.

Raisin in the Rye Rolls - a wonderful combination of dark raisins with rye, these rolls can be eaten plain or with a smear of butter. The book recommends mashing 4ounces of goat cheese, Stilton, or mozzarella with 2 -3 tablespoons of creme fraiche or fresh cream and spreading this mix on the the split roll and adding additional raisins. Have not tried this but it should be excellent.

Jewish Rye bread is my current nemesis. Rustic European Breads has a recipe that looks good but every time I bake it the top collapses. Otherwise, it is a well flavored rye with caraway seeds and a great texture. Toasts well after the first day. Yesterday I found a recipe online for Rebecca's Jewish Rye Bread on food.com. The two recipes are similar except for the addition of some whole wheat flour and gluten with dried onion flakes as an option. Still get a top collapse but much less than the other recipe.

Today is a baking day, four Challah for the local Jewish Temple and a Como bread for the weekend. Until my next post don't forget - Friends don't let friends eat Wonder Bread.

I've Been Busy

I'm continuing to bake my standards, sourdough bread, orange and cranberry muffins and sourdough cinnamon buns. And I still bake four challah every four weeks for the local Jewish Temple. I was on a bread baking forum recently and found a reference to Brother Juniper's Santa Rosa Struan, which is a struan baked in a bread machine. Some further research found this was published in Rustic European Bread from your Bread Machine by Linda West Eckhart and Diana Collingwood Butts. Straight to Amazon.com and they had several used in very good condition. The book arrived Saturday.

Turns out that the struan is one of Peter Reinhart's recipes, when he was running Brother Juniper's Bakery in Santa Rosa, CA. Interesting co-incidence since I was a tester for Peter's latest book (due out soon).

Anyway, had a yearning for baguettes and there is an interesting recipe for Pain a L'ancienne -(that's French for old fashioned bread if anyone is interested) in the book. Has some rye flour in the mix and starts with a sponge made the night before. Very easy to make and got two nice baguettes. Crust was not as crisp as I would have liked. May need to be more aggressive with the steam when baking next time. Good texture and taste.

Here's a photo of the finished product:


Happy baking!

Miserable Weather

This has been a miserable weekend with rain and low temps both days. So it was a bake weekend! Two batches of sourdough cinnamon buns for the freezer, a batch of three fruit marmalade with molasses for the cupboard and savory muffins for a breakfast meeting next Tuesday.

I still play with Peter Rheinhart's new recipes. Latest was to make the multigrain struan with Bob's Red Mill Ten Grain cereal as the cooked cereal, substituting two cups of whole wheat flour for the same bread flour with two tablespoons of gluten, and molasses for the honey. Made two loaves of this last week and two of the multiseeded bread.

Revived the sourdough starter today so tomorrow will be two sourdough loaves and a batch of cranberry/orange sourdough muffins.

Still trading bread for eggs with the two guys across the road. They sell their surplus eggs at a Farmer's Market and keep on trying to get me to sell bread there. But do I reaaly want to get up at 3:00am on a Saturday morning to bake? I'm too much of a perfectionist to want to sell day old bread at the Market. Perhaps I should take samples to the market and test the waters for artisan bread. Now if I could just take orders there and deliver later in the week. I do have one regular customer however. I bake challah for the local Jewish Temple, four loaves every four weeks. I use a bread machine recipe for this, Peter Rheinhart's recipe uses far too many eggs!

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.

Playing Catch Up

The Holiday Season sort of got in the way of regular posts, so this is the catch up for the past six weeks or so. I've worked on two more of Peter Reinhart's test breads, a Struan and a Challah recipe.

Struan

Struan is a soft, enriched multigrain bread. It has corn meal, oats, wheat bran and cooked grain. My cooked grain of choice is bulgar wheat, but you could use brown rice, quinoa, millet or couscous. This is a picture of the dough before it went in the refrigerator for the overnight slow rise.



This made two pan loaves. Not as much oven spring as I expected, but a nice, dense wholegrain loaf nevertheless. This is the finished product.



Challah

What an interesting recipe. Makes a very soft enriched dough with a great golden color from 8 egg yolks! Finished up with four challah and one soft pretzel. Photos will have to wait as the loaves are currently in the freezer. They will be taken to Temple B'nai Shalom for use in the Shabbat services.

Other Breads

Along with the testing, I also made several batches of bagels, a pannetone, and several harvest grain ciabatta. The ciabatta recipe came from the King Arthur Flour website. All in all we had no shortage of homebaked breads for the holidays.