Aromatherapy

I love the smell of bread baking.  It always puts me in a good mood.  There's just something so satisfying about making my own bread.  This recipe is a favorite of mine, in part because it's made all by hand--no mixer involved.  It was a good choice for a lazy afternoon while I was home with a sick kiddo.  I usually prefer rolls for sandwiches, but sometimes a hearty white sandwich bread is just want you need or want.  I had a variation on a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner, and it was delicious.  If you'd like to try this Simple Milk Loaf for yourself, my friend Nancy has the recipe on her bread blog.

Weekend wind-down 9.16.2012

Welcome to another episode of Di's stream of consciousness week in review. =)  My big accomplishment for this weekend?  Rediscovering how much I love baking bread.  I spent a couple years baking almost all of the bready things that we ate, but then for some reason stopped doing it.  I don't know that I'll go back to doing everything, but I do want to get back in the habit of baking bread on a weekly basis.  Yesterday I made my favorite sandwich loaf recipe, Dan Lepard's Milk Loaf.  You can find the recipe on my friend Nancy's bread blog.  I actually don't use it much for sandwiches for me, but the girls like it, and it makes fantastic toast.  Since I plan to use it mostly for kids' lunches, I made two smaller loaves, in these pans.  I increased the original recipe by one third, and it was just the right amount of dough.  

Once I got started, I was asking myself why I don't make this dough more often.  It's a great method, and such a nice dough to work with.  It's the getting started that's the challenge.  Once I get going, I'm fine.  I did the same thing this evening with another dough.  I meant to make the dough much earlier in the day, but kept putting it off, thinking it would take too much time.  I finally just told myself to get in the kitchen and do it.  The amount of active time I spent?  Maybe 10 minutes.  Now I just have to hold on to that and remember it the next time I'm procrastinating.  

I also made applesauce this weekend, and muffins for Sunday breakfast.  The applesauce was because we're starting to get some good fall apples, and homemade applesauce is the best.  I found some very large Paula Red apples at Central Market, and bought a whole bunch.  Gillian isn't a big fan of the applesauce, but Brianna likes it, so that's one more thing ready for the lunchbox this week.  The muffins were pretty good as well.  Muffins are good for grab & go breakfasts during the week, so that seemed like a good thing to make today.  I've been wanting to make crumb cake, but couldn't settle on a recipe, so I decided to make a basic muffin and add some crumbs on top.  For the base, I made the batter for these doughnut muffins from KAF.  I know from past experience that the muffins end up very domed on top, so I made 16 muffins instead of the usual 12.  I topped each one with some streusel that I modified from a crumb cake recipe.  It worked pretty well, but isn't exactly what I was after.  I plan to play around with it a bit more, so when I get it the way I want it, I'll have to do a full post.

I also did some baking to take to work last week.  I may not always have something to make for dinner, but I always have the stuff to make some sort of cake. =)  In this case, I was looking for something else to make with apples.  I wanted to make this cake that my friend Tracey posted, but actually didn't have everything I needed.  (Now you know another reason why I made applesauce this weekend.)  So I went looking, and found this Apple-Ginger Streusel Coffee Cake.  (I didn't have applesauce, but did have both fresh and crystallized ginger. Go figure.)  I used pecans instead of walnuts, but otherwise made the recipe as written.  I was happy that the recipe called for a 10-cup bundt pan, because it gave me a reason to get out my Heritage Bundt pan.  I got lots of compliments on the cake, and it did look really pretty.  It was very moist, but next time I think I'll add just a bit more salt.  

And for non-baking stuff?  Well, Gillian was under the weather for a good part of the week (still that annoying cold from last week), but finally seemed to be doing better today.  We had an interesting trip to Costco in the rain this morning.  I'm thrilled to have the rain, though, and the cooler temperatures that have come along with it.  It actually feels like we really might be approaching fall.  I also survived a trip to the outlet mall with Brianna last night for some new clothes.  We managed to find some stuff with a minimum of drama, so I can't really complain.  And Jamie had an interesting day on Friday; hopefully this week will be less eventful.  

I think that's about it for tonight.  

Tooth Fairies and sweet teeth

It's been a busy week for the Tooth Fairy at our house.  Between them, my children managed to lose three teeth in the span of four days.  Brianna lost one last Wednesday (I had to help that one along a tiny bit).  Then on Friday when I picked Gillian up from daycare, she proudly showed me the tooth that came out at naptime (she managed that on her own).  But the most dramatic was on Saturday night, when B bit down on the piece of chocolate that she was eating for dessert and another tooth came out with it.  Much more of this, and the Tooth Fairy is going to start demanding overtime pay!

Maybe I can bribe her with some danish instead.  I know how powerless I am at resisting the buttery, flaky goodness that comes with laminated dough.  I've made danish and croissants the traditional way, wrapping dough around butter, and doing lots of folds and turns.  There's no question that the end result is fantastic.  But I'm not always in the mood for something that finicky.  That's why I was glad to see a recipe for Rough Danish Dough in Dan Lepard's column in the Guardian last weekend.  First you make a quick sponge with water, instant yeast and bread flour, and let that sit for about an hour to get bubbly.  The final dough calls for 00 flour but I didn't have any, so I used all-purpose flour instead.  Being danish dough, there's a little sugar and a couple egg yolks added to the dough as well.  Instead of forming the butter into a big block, you leave it in large cubes and mix it into the dough.    

As you roll the dough out, the butter is flattened out into thin sheets.  As you fold the dough (like a letter, in thirds) and roll it out again, layers are formed.  The dough goes into the fridge for half an hour between the turns so that the dough can rest (which makes it easier to roll out again) and the butter can firm up a bit (so it doesn't get squished out all over the place).  For some tips and great step-by-step photos of folds and turns (for traditional croissants), check out my friend Tracey's blog.  She and I actually made the danish dough together via Twitter.  One tip that I found helps with the rough version is to keep extra flour handy.  If the dough is sticky and the butter is trying to break through, coat that spot with some flour and keep going.  I also kept my bench scraper nearby to pick up the dough and make sure there was enough flour underneath as well.  The first turn is kind of a mess, but don't be discouraged.  The second will be better, and by the third, the dough will look a lot like traditional laminated dough.

The recipe says you can shape the dough right after the chilling after the third turn, but I left my dough in the fridge overnight.  You don't want to leave it for much longer than that; the yeast in danish dough keeps fermenting and it gets pretty puffy.  When I was ready to use the dough, I divided it in half.  One half I wrapped really well (plastic wrap and then a freezer bag) and put it in the freezer.  The rest I made into rolls filled with chocolate.  I ended up making half a dozen, and dressed them up with a drizzle of chocolate glaze after baking.

The verdict?  So, so delicious.  Brianna and Gillian loved the chocolate-filled danish.  The glaze was a bit over the top for me, but still really good.  I eventually ended up making a raspberry-filled danish braid with the other half of the dough, and it was amazing.  I'll definitely be making this recipe again.  I even bought some 00 flour when I was at Central Market this weekend so I can try the recipe with that.  

If you'd like to try your hand at danish dough, you can find the recipe here in the Guardian.  You can also find lots of other great recipes from Dan Lepard in their How to Bake series.  Also, check out Yeastspotting for lots of other amazing yeasted treats!

I did it my way

I used to be so good.

When I first joined Tuesdays with Dorie four years ago, I was very excited.  And I was careful to follow the recipes as written.  For my first recipe, the Brown Sugar-Apple Cheesecake (2/12/2008, can you believe it's been that long?!), I even bought a new pan, since I didn't have the 10" springform pan that was called for in the recipe.  That was before I learned to make small versions of some recipes, so we didn't have the temptation here at home and I didn't always have to find other people to eat things.  Then I started to play around more with the recipes, and not just in the ways that Dorie suggested.  Which brings me to this week's recipe.  I was excited to see that Laurie & Jules picked a bread recipe for our first week of TWD: Baking with Julia.  I love to bake bread.  At one point, I was baking pretty much all of the bread-type things that we ate.  I've backed off a bit from that, since work and kids have been taking more of my time, but I still like to bake as much of our bread as I can.  Because I've baked so many yeast loaves, I've tried a variety of different techniques and definitely have some favorites.  So when I started to make the recipe for this week, I couldn't help myself.  I pretty much stuck to the ingredient list, but went my own way when it came to mixing and kneading.

I'm getting ahead of myself a bit.  For this new incarnation of TWD, things have changed a little bit.  Instead of doing a recipe every week, we're doing two a month, on the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays.  The expectation is that everyone will bake at least one of the recipes each month, if not both.  The hosting duties will be determined randomly from those interested in hosting a particular recipe; if you want to be a host, you need to participate at least once per month.  For this first recipe of the new book, Baking with Julia, our hosts are our fearless leaders, Laurie and Jules.  They picked White Loaves (p. 81-82) for us to make this week.

             

left - the pretty side; right - the blow out side =)

I don't make straight white bread all that often.  I usually substitute some whole grain flour for part of the white flour in that sort of recipe.  I figured I should try to stick with the recipe, though.  It says that you can use bread flour or all-purpose flour; I decided to do half of each.  I pretty much always make full recipes of bread, since we eat a fair amount of it (one loaf usually goes in the freezer).  In this case, I knew we needed hot dogs buns for dinner this week, so I made one regular loaf and made rolls with the rest of the dough (some oblong, some round).  

I measure pretty much everything by weight, so the first thing I did was sit down with my notebook and do some math.  The information in the front of the book led me to use a weight of 5 ounces (about 140 grams) per cup of flour.  That gave me just about a kilo of flour all together.  I used 560 grams (20 ounces) of water, but would increase that a bit next time since the dough was rather stiff.  I always use instant yeast, and since you need less of that than active dry yeast, I went with 7 grams.  13 grams of sugar, 17 grams of salt and 55 grams of butter rounds out the list of ingredients.  

I started off doing the initial mixing by hand with my dough whisk.  Then I switched to my stand mixer, with the dough hook.  I quickly realized that wasn't going to work without overheating my mixer, so I was going to have to knead by hand.  I wasn't in the mood for an extended stint of hand-kneading, especially once the butter was in there, so I went with a different method.  In a lot of the Dan Lepard bread recipes I've made, you knead the dough for very short periods every ten minutes until the dough starts smooth out and the gluten is developed (3-4 periods of kneading for about 10 seconds followed by a 10 minute rest).  Then you let the dough proof for about 45 minutes undisturbed.  You can read more about the technique on my friend Nancy's bread blog.  Once the dough finished its bulk proof, I shaped it.  I used about 820 grams of dough for the loaf, and made 10 rolls of about 80 grams each.  I realized after baking that I probably didn't let my shaped dough rise quite long enough--my loaf had a ton of oven spring, and ended up kind of deformed on one side. =)  I baked the rolls for 20 minutes and the loaf for 35 minutes, taking the bread's temperature to make sure it was done (about 200ºF internal temperature).

The verdict?  Definitely a nice white bread--it was very tasty as toast and had a nice texture.  I think the hot dog buns will work out well and stand up nicely to some sauerkraut.  B took one of the rolls in her lunch; I'll have to check with her later to see what she thought.  G ate one of the rolls for breakfast and informed me that it was "too puffy," meaning that she'd rather have an oval roll than a round one.  But except for the shape, she liked it.  I doubt this will replace my other favorite white loaves, but it's always fun to try a new recipe.  

If you want to try this bread for yourself, you can find the recipe in Baking with Julia or over on Julie's blog.  Be sure to visit our other host, Laurie, too.  And check out this week's Links to see what the hundreds of other TWD bakers thought.  If you'd like to join in the fun (assuming you haven't already) you can find the sign-up info here.  

Spur of the moment

This was my weekend off.  I worked the last two Saturdays, and will work the next two.  (Sometimes the schedule just works out that way, with lots of vacations this time of year.)  I had lots of plans for stuff to make this weekend.  I've done almost none of them.  Yesterday, the girls and I went to the farmers market (only came home with tomatoes; very sad that my usual cheese guys wasn't there this week), Build-a-Bear (finally spending B's birthday present from Aunt Kate), and story time at Borders.  This morning, we went to the pool with some friends, stopped to pick up some lunch to bring home, and all took naps.  I did squeeze in some baking this morning, and still hope to this evening, but things didn't really go according to plan.  

What's funny is that last weekend, I made all sorts of stuff in a much smaller window of time.  Sometimes it just happens that way.  Some of the things I had made before, like the scones we ate for breakfast on Sunday.  And then I couldn't resist making the plum cake again, with peaches.  For the record, the plum version is better. =)  But one of the recipes I made was a brand-new one.  One of the things that pops up in my Google Reader every weekend is Dan Lepard's baking article in The Guardian.  There are all sorts of yummy looking recipes, but the ones that really catch my eye (and the ones that I've actually made) are the bread recipes.  

The recipe for July 17th was Semolina BBQ Buns.  Right away, I was drawn in by the semolina part.  I love breads with semolina (I often add it to pizza crust, too).  I took a quick look at the ingredient list and was happy to see that I had everything on hand to make them--semolina, butter, honey, yogurt, salt, yeast, and bread flour (what I usually use when UK recipes call for "strong flour"), plus water and a bit of oil for kneading.  This recipe employs one of my favorite techniques, which I originally learned from another Dan Lepard recipe.  Once the dough is all mixed together, you knead it on an oiled surface for about 10 seconds every ten minutes for about half an hour.  Each brief knead develops the gluten a bit more, until you have a fairly smooth dough.  Then you let the dough rise for a longer period (an hour, for this recipe).  For these buns, you then roll the dough out into a large rectangle and place it on a parchment lined baking sheet.  The dough is cut into 8 rolls (I used my metal dough scraper to cut through the dough) that are left in place.  The dough is covered and allowed to rise a bit more.  Before baking, the dough is brushed with water, sprinkled with more semolina, and lightly scored with a butter knife (for decoration).

The verdict?  Dan suggests in the article that these are perfect buns for barbecued pork.  I'm not a big barbecue person, but I have to say, they're great with chicken salad.  Or for most other sandwiches--including jam, according to Gillian. =)  They're also quite good eaten plain, with some salted butter.  Or toasted.  So yes, I'm telling you that these didn't last all that long around here.  I ate the last one for breakfast this morning, and they only made it that long because I froze most of them.  I really love the bit of crunch in the crust from the semolina sprinkled on top.  I generally prefer rolls over sliced bread for sandwiches, since they have a higher ratio of crust, and these are perfect in that respect.  

If you'd like to give these a try for yourself, you can find the recipe here.  And be sure to check out the other recipes on that site.  (The Buttermilk Baps are another favorite of mine.)  And these rolls are also being Yeastspotted!