That's how the biscuit crumbles

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is from Lindsay of A Little Something...Sweet!  She picked Maple Cornmeal Biscuits for us to make.  This was a great recipe for me to get back on track with TWD--quick to mix up, and quick to bake.  Gillian was quite happy to help me with the mixing, too. =)

The verdict?  Sadly, I didn't like these as much as I hoped to.  I like cornmeal and maple syrup, but unfortunately, my biscuits turned out kind of dry and crumbly.  I'm not sure why.  The only change I made was to use soured milk (milk plus vinegar) in place of the buttermilk, because I didn't have any. (Oops, never mind. That was another recipe I made over the weekend. These used regular milk.)  Maybe I had too much cornmeal.  Maybe I baked them too long (though it was only 14 minutes).  The flavor was good, so I might play around with the recipe next time to get a better result.  I'm thinking of adding an egg to get a more scone-like texture.

If you'd like to give these a try for yourself, Lindsay has the recipe.  And to see how everyone else fared this week, check out the Links.  

A day late and a few kernels short

I'm behind, as usual.  I actually managed to make this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe on Sunday.  Jill of My Next Life picked the Corniest Corn Muffins for us to make this week.  I took pictures that I was happy with.  And then Monday rolled around, and I had to work.  Work has been nuts.  It was all I could do to come home and get kids showered, fed and put to bed before I collapsed myself.  Tuesday was worse, since I got home late.  But thankfully today was better.  I managed to escape from work a few hours early.  (I'll more than make up for it when I work on Saturday.)  I was able to go get a massage.  I knew I was tense, but I didn't realize just how knotted up my neck and back were.  Make that, still are.  I really need to go back once my sore muscles recover from today.  The trick is going to be finding the time.  I also got to pick up the girls early, got all the other stuff done early, and actually got them to bed early.  Amazing.  That allowed me to have a fairly relaxing evening.  I even found the motivation to write this post and make pizza dough for tomorrow's dinner.  Obviously I need to put my children to bed early more often. =)  (Easier said than done, most days...)  So what sort of things do you all do to alleviate stress?  Especially when you don't have much time to do anything that isn't absolutely necessary?

The recipe says that these are the "corniest."  Mine are not, since there was no way that I was going to put whole corn kernels in my muffins.  I tried that once before when making cornbread, and determined once and for all that I prefer my corn muffins with just cornmeal.  Aside from leaving out the whole corn, I didn't mess with the recipe very much.  I used canola oil rather that corn oil, since that's what I have on hand.  I didn't add the optional nutmeg, though I may do that next time, since I do like it.  I substituted creme fraiche for half of the buttermilk--I have a bunch that I've been trying to use up.  My favorite corn muffin recipe uses sour cream and milk, so I figured it was worth trying a combination of creme fraiche and buttermilk in these.  I used my #16 disher (which holds 2 ounces, or 1/4 cup) to portion the batter and ended up with 9 muffins.  (I assume my yield was low because I didn't add the corn.)  I baked them for 15 minutes at 400ºF.

The verdict?  As Brianna likes to say, these were okay, but not my favorite.  I think the use of creme fraiche was good.  But I think that I didn't bake the muffins long enough--they needed just a few more minutes.  The muffins seemed baked, but a bit gummy in the middle.  I should really give the recipe another try, especially since I've read lots of rave reviews.  But even if the muffins turn out better, I'm not sure they'll take over the top spot as my favorite corn muffin.  (I really need to blog about those one of these days.)

If you'd like to give these a try for yourself, either with or without corn kernels, you can find the recipe on Jill's blog.  And to see what everyone else did this week, check out the Links.    

Mellow yellow

My favorite color is green.  But when I'm feeling stressed or down in the dumps, I really like yellow, especially yellow flowers.  They're great for cheering me up.  Daffodils are my favorites, but I love yellow tulips as well.  And yellow roses smell the best (and were my mom's favorite, part of why I love them).  Besides flowers, another thing that often makes me feel better is baking.  It's fun to make things for us to eat or to give to others.  

It also helps to have others to pull me out of whatever funk I've fallen into.  That's actually what prompted me to make this bread.  I was stuck at home with a sick kiddo a couple weeks ago, and my friend Kayte suggested (via Twitter) that I make bread with her, since I was home anyway.  Besides my bread baking adventures with the BBA Challenge, I've joined a new group, called the Mellow Bakers.  It was started by Paul of Yumarama, in part because he finished the BBA Challenge and was looking for something new to do.  The forum includes information on the start of the group, as well as boards for the monthly breads.  The recipes are chosen more or less randomly from Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread, three each month.  The great thing about this group is the whole "mellow" part--members are welcome to do as many or as few breads as they like.  You can blog about them, or not.  Everyone is encouraged to share their experiences so we can all learn from each other, but it's a very laid-back environment.  In other words, perfect for someone like me, who wants to bake more bread, but isn't always sure when or how much time I'll have to do it!

So far, I baked one of the April breads (Rustic Bread), but haven't had a chance to blog it yet.  I want to bake the other two (Bagels and Light Rye), but haven't had time.  When Kayte asked me about baking something, I was already thinking about mixing up the preferment for one of May's breads, Corn Bread.  It definitely helped to have her give me a bit of a push, though.  (Kayte's baking along with the Mellow Bakers unofficially for now.  I'm trying to convince her to be "official" since we are mellow, after all.)  I was feeling frustrated with the whole dilemma of balancing work with the needs of my children.  The prospect of baking--a yellow bread, no less--with a friend, definitely cheered me up.  

The dough is pretty straightforward to make.  It uses a poolish to add flavor.  So before I went to bed (around 11:00pm), I mixed together equal weights of water and flour with a little bit of instant yeast.  Things tend to rise quickly in my kitchen, and by about 7:00am the next morning, the poolish was threatening to escape its container.  So I stashed it in the fridge until I was ready to bake later that morning.  To compensate for the cold preferment, I warmed the water a bit, but I probably didn't need to.  Across the board, my times were shorter than those indicated in the book, which is typical of my kitchen--my bulk fermentation was 45 minutes, fold the dough, then 35 minutes more.  I shaped the dough into two batards.  I love the shaping diagrams in this book--they've helped me a lot!  Rather than trying to transfer them from a linen couche, I place the loaves seam-side down on a sheet of parchment paper on the back of a sheet pan.  The loaves proofed for just under an hour.  (I started preheating the oven after the first 30 minutes.)  After slashing them, I slid the loaves onto my baking stone, parchment and all, then poured hot water into a steam pan (the bottom of my broiler pan, placed on the floor of my oven).  I rotated the loaves after 20 minutes, and baked them for a total of 28 minutes, at which point the internal temperature was 198F.

The verdict?  I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I really like this bread.  It has a lovely color, and I like the texture of the crust.  It's not my favorite for things like sandwiches--it seems a bit dry to me--but it makes excellent toast.  It smells a little bit like popcorn when you toast it. =)  It also worked well as makeshift pizza. =)  Brianna liked it well enough to ask for some in her lunch (always a good sign).  If you'd like to try this bread for yourself, I highly recommend that you get a copy of Bread for yourself.  And if you like bread baking at a mellow pace, join in the fun over at the Mellow Bakers forum.  You can read about the other members' adventures with Corn Bread there.  

Sometimes you feel like corn...

...sometimes you don't.  And I have now determined conclusively that I do not like actual corn in my cornbread.  In the past I've avoided it, figuring I probably wouldn't like it that way.  But the next bread in the BBA Challenge was cornbread, including actual corn, so I figured I'd finally give it a try.  Since it's a quick bread, the batter doesn't take all that long to mix together.  You do have to plan ahead a bit, though, since the recipe calls for coarse cornmeal (polenta) that has to soak overnight.  The cornbread also has bacon on top.  Reinhart recommends cooking the bacon in the oven, and that's my usual method anyway.  It's nice to be able to do a whole batch at once and not make a big mess of the stovetop.  One thing I do recommend is completely lining your sheet pan with foil to make clean up a lot easier.  The batter is made with the standard muffin method--combine dry ingredients in one bowl, wet in another, then combine the two.  I decided to make muffins--a dozen, since I only have one muffin pan--and used an 8" round pan for the rest of the batter.  I heated the pans in the oven, added a bit of the bacon fat, added the batter, and put everything in the oven.  Oh, and I did add corn to the round pan, though not to the muffins.

The verdict?  Big failure on this one.  The muffins had leavening issues, I think.  They ended up with divots in the middle.  And they tried to stick to the pan, though I was able to pry them out intact.  The round pan was a total disaster.  I think the pan wasn't hot enough (plus the only pan I had was shiny aluminum, and I think a dark pan would have worked much better).  The cornbread stuck in the middle, so I ended up with a ring of soggy cornbread.  Yuck.  I did sample it, and as I mentioned above, I definitely don't like corn in my cornbread.  Gillian seemed to like the muffins okay.  She ate one and part of another.  Brianna mostly picked the bacon off the top of hers and left the rest.  Jamie thought the cornbread was okay, though not great, but he eats almost anything. =)  I ate a muffin and wasn't impressed.  Just not my cup of tea, I guess.  I prefer my cornbread sweeter, and despite containing white sugar, brown sugar and honey, this cornbread was not particularly sweet.  I'm fairly certain I won't be making this one again.

Others had a lot more luck with this recipe.  Head over to the BBA Challenge blogroll to see how everyone else is doing with the challenge (the main group is well past the cornbread).  And check out Nancy's blog sometime soon for a cornbread round-up from the Slow and Steady sub-group.

A is for Anadama

I've gone and done it.  I joined another baking group.  It's all Cathy's fault. =)  A couple weeks ago I saw a post about a group that was planning to bake their way through Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice.  I have the book, and I've made a few recipes from it, including a couple of Daring Bakers challenges.  But my initial thought was "I have enough to do already, and I don't know if I want to commit to another group."  So I decided not to participate.  Then Cathy sent me a message on Facebook and asked if I was going to join the group.  And Nancy emailed me, as well.  So here I am.  =)  Yes, Mom, if all my friends jump off the bridge, I'll be right behind them... =)    

The group was started by Nicole of Pinch My Salt.  You can read the whole story here.  I'm sure I'll write more about the group later, but it's already taken me three days to get this post done, and I'm not sure how much more I can do before the coughing and sneezing do me in... =)  (gotta love 2 1/2 year olds who bring home germs from daycare...)  

The premise of the group is simple.  Start at the beginning of the book, and bake each recipe in order.  So we start with A, and Anadama Bread.  It's a sandwich loaf sort of bread, made with cornmeal and molasses.  I didn't have coarse grind cornmeal, like polenta, so I just went with the cornmeal I had on hand.  (it's from the bulk bin at Central Market, so not sure what brand)  And I used Brer Rabbit mild flavor molasses.  For the flour I used King Arthur bread flour.

You have to start the day before, but the first day is very quick--mix some cornmeal with water, cover it and leave it overnight.  Mine sat on the counter for almost 24 hours.  For most of the time, it looked like cornmeal sitting in water.  But toward the end of the time, it started to get bubbly.  My best guess is it was from random yeast floating around in my kitchen, since I bake a lot of bread these days.  It smelled okay, so I kept going.

Next you make a sponge by mixing the cornmeal soaker with part of the flour, the yeast and more water.  That sits for an hour or so until it's bubbly.  Then you add the rest of the flour, salt, molasses and a bit of butter.  I used my stand mixer for the mixing and kneading.  I did have to add a bit more flour while it was kneading to get the tacky but not sticky dough called for in the recipe.  When the dough was done kneading, I decided that I wasn't going to manage to finish that night, so I put the dough in one of my rising buckets and tucked it in the fridge to rise overnight.

The next morning, I took the dough out and let it warm back up.  The recipe says it makes two large (24 ounce) or 3 small (16 ounce) loaves.  I only have the smaller loaf pans (8 1/2" by 4 1/2" Pyrex pans), and only two of those.  Plus, I knew that I would probably give some of the bread away.  So I shaped two 16-ounce loaves.  With the remaining dough, I made 8 2-ounce rolls and placed them in an 8-inch round cake pan.  

I didn't have any problem with the dough rising.  Once it came up to the tops of the pans, I put everything in the oven for 40 minutes (rotating after 20 minutes), at which point it registered 190 degrees F on my instant read thermometer.  I removed the bread from the pans and let it cool.  (Oh, and I had sprinkled cornmeal on top before baking.)

The verdict?  Jamie and I liked this, but Brianna wasn't a fan.  Gillian didn't seem to have a strong opinion either way.  The bread is very good toasted, and made a nice tuna sandwich. =)  I took the rolls to the daycare (easy to portion!) along with some flavored butter (it would have been honey butter, but I was out of honey, so I used golden syrup).  I figured they'd appreciate me bringing something that wasn't loaded with sugar and fat for a change... =)  

Next up is Artos - Greek Celebration Bread.  And to see how others fared with the Anadama Bread, check out Nicole's post, here.