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.

Ciabatta and Foccacia

I made these breads last Friday.  The foccacia was a snack for Jackie's wine tour birthday party and the ciabatta was for the hell of it.  Both of these doughs were incredibly wet.  The goal is to get nice big holes in the crumb with a crispy crust.  I really only succeeded at this in the focaccia.  The ciabatta had fantastic flavor, but it didn't have the large holes I desired.  Next time I try making this I'm going to add more water and some olive oil.

Using the poolish I started on Wednesday I mixed the rest of the dough for the ciabatta.  This time the dough really wasn't kneaded in the traditional sense.  Instead it uses the stretch and fold method which requires a little extra time for it to rest in between stretches and folds:

After it was done with the stretch and folds I had to setup a makeshift couche to keep the bread shaped and in place.

The dough has rested and is ready for the oven.

End result!

The focaccia also took a long time to prepare.  I did not plan ahead and did not make a poolish to start so I had to use a straight dough method.  The dough was incredibly wet and poured almost like a super thick batter.  It spent almost 30 minutes in the mixer mixing and kneading.  The consistency was about equal to that of salt water taffy in the end.

After almost 5 hours of rising this was the dough.  It was very stretchy and shiny.

It poured right out onto the sheet pan.  I had to let it rest 10 minutes in between trying to stretch it out to fill the hole pan.  The difficult part was not losing all the precious air bubbles!

A mere 15 minutes of baking!

Sliced and packaged.