No Knead Breads

Due to a recent lack of time I've taken to trying some no knead breads this week.  The concept for this is pretty simple: bread that you don't knead.  The point of kneading the dough is to activate the gluten in the flour.  This acts as a binding agent (like eggs in a cake) allowing the bread to hold together during baking.  No knead bread's gluten develops over time.  One benefit, aside from not needing to knead, is as the dough takes its time rising and fermenting, a great deal of flavor gets to develop.  The downside is that this does take a great deal of time; upwards of 24 hours.

The recipe I followed is similar to a basic bread recipe:

3 cups flour
1 1/2 cups water
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp instant yeast

As the dough ferments and rises the yeast will multiply, this is why only 1/4 tsp is needed.

First mix all four ingredients in a large bowl.  I preferred to do this by hand so I didn't need to clean the mixer!  After the ingredients are combined it will be a thick sticky mess:

 

After all of the ingredients are combined, cover it and let it rest 12-20 hours.  Doing this right before bed or when you wake up if you want some fresh bread with dinner the next day is the perfect. When it is done fermenting it should be very bubbly:

Here comes the tricky part.  Since this bread is very wet, 50% hydration, it is going to be a lot harder to handle and form.  Make sure you are very careful not to work the bubbles out of the dough.  Using a wet or oiled spatula, pour the dough onto a heavily floured surface.  Using wet hands shape the dough into a boule tucking the sides under the bottom.  Make sure that the dough is completely covered in flour as well.  Next, place the boule on a floured cloth (NOT A TERRY CLOTH!) and place it in a bowl.  

  

As you can see, this cloth is not floured nearly enough.  I ended up losing some dough to it being stuck on the bottom.  Cover the top and let this rest for 2 hours. 30 minutes before the 2 hours are up, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.  At the same time, place a dutch oven (cast iron or ceramic is fine) in as well to let it heat up.  After the dough has risen, carefully take the dutch oven out of the oven.  Pick the dough up by the cloth and dump it right in there.  Don't worry about how it lands.  As soon as the dough is in the oven put the lid on and slide it back in the oven.  Bake it with the lid on for 30 minutes.  Then remove the lid and let it bake for another 20-30 or until the internal temperature reaches 210 degrees F.  When its done remove it from the oven and allow it to cool for an hour before you cut it.  The crust should be very chewy and the crumb will be full of large holes and moist.

My first attempt failed miserably.  For some reason I baked it for the minutes at 350 instead of 450.  I tried to make up for it but it did not work out well at all.  I also had a lot of problems handling it because of how wet the dough is.  It wound up in the trash quickly.

First attempt:

My second attempt the next day was MUCH better!  So far it has been my best one yet.

Tonight's was a little flat, it didn't have a lot of oven spring.  Oh well, it turned out fantastic anyway!  I will be posting the soup recipe I'm eating with this soon!

Ten Grain Torpedo and Rye

This weekend I decided to retry the Tyrolean Ten Grain Torpedo.  The last time I tried this I ended up with a big lumpy mess of blegh dough and tossed it.  Although it resembles more of a football than a torpedo, it came out much better this time around.  I think if I added some wheat germ to the preferment it would really bring out a better "wheaty" flavor

I'm still practicing my scoring, can't quite get it pretty enough.

I also made my first Rye bread following the Levy's Real Jewish Rye recipe out of The Bread Bible.  I'm very happy with how this one turned out.  I brought it to work today so I could not get any crumb shots.  It looks about the same as the ten grain torpedo's crumb only instead of cereal it has caraway seeds.  We ate it with some fresh butter and hummus somebody else brought in.

One corner split :(

Ten Grain Cereal

I made this one last night to bring over to Grant and Michelle's for dinner. I had initially started a sponge the night before but the yeast had not activated in it.  I think its just too cold in the house to leave anything on the counter.  Oh well.  I tossed it out yesterday afternoon and started one from scratch.

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons Bob's Red Mill 10 grain cereal

1 1/4 teaspoons salt

1/2 cup hot water

3 cups bread flour

2 teaspoons instant yeast 

3/4 teaspoons salt

1 tablespoon honey

1 cup hot water water (110 degrees F)

In a small bowl the night before mix the 10 grain cereal, salt, and hot water.  Mix until the grains are thoroughly soaked.  Cover and let it cool to room temperature.  Then place it in the refrigerator overnight.  

This grain mixture was originally intended for the first loaf that I ended up scrapping so I decided to keep it and toss it in here.  I had to make sure to lower the salt and water content of the dough before I mixed this in to keep the total flour to moisture ratio roughly the same.

Preheat the oven to 375 an hour ahead of baking time to let the pizza stone warm up.

The next day mix the bread flour, instant yeast, remaining salt, honey. and the hot water.  I use my kitchenaid at setting #2 for 2 minutes or so with the dough hook.  It will be a little dry so a little extra hot water may be necessary.  Once the ingredients are mixed turn it up to speed #4 for about 7 minutes until the dough becomes smooth and elastic.  Mix in the grain mixture from the previous night and knead for another 3-5 minutes until it is incorporated.  Place dough in a greased bowl and give it a turn.  Cover and let rise until doubled, 60-90 minutes.  Punch down and turn out onto a piece of parchment on a sheet pan or peel.  Stretch the dough out to form a rectangle and then form a batard or baguette shape.  Cover with oiled plastic and let rise until doubled another 30-45 minutes.

Dust with rye flour and score the bread.  I did 4 scores about 1/2 inch deep at a 30 degree angle.  I'm getting much better at scoring!

Slide the parchment paper on the pizza stone and toss 1/2 cup of ice cubes on the bottom of the oven and quickly shut the door

Bake for 40-45 minutes at 375.  Less time if you made a longer, skinnier loaf.

Everybody thought this loaf was the best one I've made yet.  I think that if I could modify this recipe to use a preferment it would have a much deeper flavor.  I will add some wheat germ into the preferment next time too I think.

The scores could have been a little bigger, I got some cracking down the side of one of them.

The crust was nice and crispy while the crumb was a heavy but incredibly moist and chewy. 

Red Velvet? Red Velvet!

With my roommate Eugene's birthday party coming up I really wanted to bake him a cake.  I've been thinking a lot about red velvet lately and figured this was a perfect time to tackle it.  I started out with a modified version of a cupcake recipe from an episode of Bobby Flay's Throwdown here.   

Cake:

4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 

2 teaspoons baking soda 

2 teaspoons salt 

1/8 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 1/4 cups vegetable oil 

3 1/2 cups granulated sugar 

2 cups buttermilk 

4 1/2 eggs 

3 tablespoons red food coloring 

3 teaspoons red food coloring 

2 teaspoons vinegar (white or apple cider can both work) 

2 teaspoons vanilla extract 

1/4 cup water

Cream Cheese Frosting:

 

2 lbs cream cheese, room temperature

1 1/4 lbs butter, room temperature 

2 1/2 lbs powdered sugar, sifted 

1 1/4 tablespoons vanilla extract

 

Preheat oven 350 degrees F.

 

Sift together flour, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder into a bowl and set aside.

   

In a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, mix oil, sugar, and buttermilk until combined. Add eggs, food coloring, vinegar, vanilla and water and mix well. Add the dry ingredients a little bit at a time and mix on low, scraping down sides occasionally, and mix until just combined. Be sure not to over mix, or the batter will come out tough. 

 

I used 2 10" springform pans to bake the cake in, splitting the batter evenly between the two pans.  Bake the cakes for 40-50 minutes at 350 degrees F or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove the cakes from the pans and let them cool.  

*This cake was going to be 4 layers so I had to make the cake portion of the recipe twice.  The amount of frosting I made worked for the entire cake so no need to scale it if you are making a cake as big as mine.

For the cream cheese frosting:. Whip the butter and cream cheese together in a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment until creamed. Gradually add powdered sugar to the mixture and scrape down the bowl as needed. Add the vanilla and mix until combined.  The frosting can be used right away or stored in the fridge for a week.  

 

On the test batch of cupcakes I did with this recipe I had WAY too much cocoa powder.  The batch was roughly half the size of the recipe listed above but I used almost double the cocoa powder.  OOPS!  The flavor wasn't exactly bitter, but the abundance of cocoa washed out a lot of the flavor of the cake.

 

Suddenly: Cupcakes!

 

Decorations courtesy of Elana!

 

When I started the cakes on Friday morning.  I ran into one problem that I didn't really think about when planning my day.  Cooling time!  The first two cake layers had enough time to cool to get started.  However, by the time I added the 4th layer, it was still too warm and ended up melting some of the frosting and split in half.  Unfortunately I had to trash the top layer and stick with three.  At 10" across and each cake being 1 1/2" high, there was still plenty of cake to go around!  Again, 1/8 of a cup of cocoa powder gave this cake a chocolaty taste without making the cake bland or bitter.

The first two layers:

 

 This was before the layer 4 disaster.  Pics were scarce after this due to frustration!

 Completed!

 I used crumbs from the scrap cake to decorate.  It covered up the inconsistencies of my icing job well!

I think the biggest lesson learned is to allow more time to cool.  I'm going to try another cake sometime soon, this time making it a 2 day process.  Allowing the cake to sit in the fridge overnight should do the trick.  Watching that top layer slide off was almost heartbreaking!

 

Almost Back!

I am almost back to baking.  Getting settled back in from Japan was a lot more stressful than I thought!  Tomorrow I will begin baking test batches for a red velvet cake for my roommate Eugene's birthday party this weekend.  I've never made a cake from scratch before like this so I am going to try a few recipes out tomorrow night and see which one I like the best to bake the real deal on Friday.

Blueberry Muffins

I ended up with about 2 cups of leftover blueberries from earlier in the week so I decided to make some blueberry muffins Saturday morning using the following recipe:

4 eggs

2 cups white sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups sour cream

2 cups blueberries

This recipe makes 24 regular-sized muffins or 12 jumbo muffins.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a large bowl beat eggs, gradually add sugar while beating.  Continue beating while slowly pouring in the oil, and then vanilla.  In a separate bowl, stir together flour, salt, and baking soda.

Mix in the sour cream and then the dry ingredients.  When thoroughly mixed gently fold in the blueberries.  Scoop the batter into prepared muffin tins (greased, or lined with paper cups).

Bake for 20 minutes for standard sized muffins, 30 for jumbo.

 

Jumbo Muffins!

Later that night I got together with some friends and we made sushi.  Here are a few pics from the evening.

 

Of Sourdough and Cheesy Braids

So my first sourdough from my own starter was a success!  My only setbacks throughout all of this was the amount of time every stage of it needs to rise and proof.  The starter itself was ready (a very loose usage of the word ready, more on that later) after 6 days.  From there it needed another 6 hours after I mixed it into a biga before it sat in the fridge overnight.  Then, when I mixed a part of that into a firm starter it took another 4 hours on the counter before another night in the fridge.  The next day I mixed the final dough but as usual, 4 hours of counter time and another night in the fridge.  Fortunately, I was randomly woke up at almost 2am the other day to preheat the oven in time and bake the 2 loaves before work!  

The thing I find strangest about the whole sourdough experience is that it doesn't smell like sourdough until it's completely finished.  But the wait was well worth it!  I have another firm starter proofing right now so I should have another loaf on Sunday.  I have some cool ideas on how to incorporate my dutch ovens into finishing this next one.

They were a little smaller than I expected.  As mentioned earlier calling the dough "ready" at any point was a bit of a misuse of the word.  From the beginning it took longer at each step than I had read it would.  I think that part of that was I typically keep it colder in the house.  With it being winter and all, it was in the mid 60s in the kitchen most of the time.  This would hinder the wild yeast growth.  Also, my keen-eyed mother pointed out I was using plastic to grow my starter instead of glass and that may have hindered growth as well.  When I return from Japan I am going to start all over again and see what I can come up with.

My first two loaves of sourdough:

Like my first bread posted here, it was a little dense.  However, it was incredibly chewy and had a wonderful sourdough flavor/aroma!

That same afternoon at work Charles had brought in some homemade pulled pork, baked beans, and coleslaw.  I offered to bring in my dutch ovens and cook some bread on charcoal!  This bread was made from the recipe found in The Full Circle Dutch Oven Cookbook.  One of my absolute favorite Dutch Oven books.  I had to pay very close attention to temperature and heat on the dutch ovens.  This was only the second time I've baked bread on charcoal and several burned a batch of rolls on the bottom the last time.  Fortunately diligence paid off and they turned out PERFECT!  I only wish I snapped a crumb shot before it was gone.

When dividing the dough I got a little distracted and miscut a few pieces.  This is the smaller loaf.

 The larger one took a few more minutes to hit 200 degrees internally.

Both were cooked in 12" Dutch Ovens, the larger loaf had to go in my 12" deep.