This Weekends Bread

This weekend resulted in three batches of bread. The first was my old standby of 12-grain sandwich bread. It's made with 12-grain cereal from the co-op store, rye, oat meal, wheat bran and flax meal.


I also did another run of the whole-wheat cranberry pecan cinnamon bread (WWCPC). I used some of the SAF Gold yeast that I got for the folks at King Arthur. I got a much better rise this time which I attribute to the yeast. Funny story about the yeast. Turns out that it is made about 2 miles south of where I live. So, to get to me, it went from Milwaukee to Vermont and back to Milwaukee. As one person pointed out, will need to purchase a bunch of carbon offsets for that one.


The last bread for the weekend was my first attempt at Pane Siciliano from Peter Reinhart's "The Bread Baker's Apprentice". It is a French bread style with about 40% semolina flour which gives it more of a nutty flavor. Flavor turned out but I had some issues with the shaping and baking. Will certainly have to try it again.

This weekends baking...

This weekend I did a batch of rye bread... While I polled a bunch of my co-workers as to whether I should make rye or multi-grain and the polling was leaning toward the multi-grain, I found some pastrami at the store on the way home. That forced me to go the other way....



I also made chocolate stout cake from a recipe from the King Arthur site. It turned out pretty well but is very very rich. Will be taking some into work which should but the whole office into an insulin comma for the day.

Forming kolaches...

In my previous post about making Bohemian style rolls, I talked about forming kolaches. In that post, I hadn't confirmed the process. Well, a few weeks ago, I finally got around to confirming the process and also documented the forming process.



After the ferment of the dough, divide with a dough scraper into 36 pieces. Roughly form into a ball and then form by taking your right palm and flexing it back as far as you can. Place the ball of dough in your palm and then using your cupped left hand, lightly roll the ball around with more pressure on the sides than the top. With a little practice, you should form a tight ball somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a walnut.


Place on sheet pans with parchment paper separated by 1 1/2" from the sides and 3" from each other. Lightly depress each ball with your fingers and then cover with cling wrap to proof for about 30 minutes until the dough rises approximately 1 1/2 times. After the first proof, use your fingers to depress the centers and spread the dough to form a rim of dough approximately 1/4". Let proof for another 15 to 20 minutes. Degas the centers again and fill. Bake as directed by recipe.

Link to keep track of... Wheat Gluten...

Found this paper from Oklahoma Extension that appears to give the information needed to calculate how much wheat gluten should be added to flour of a given protein to raise the protein content. This will be handy so I wanted to keep track of it...

How to make kaiser rolls...

A month or so ago, I did a post about making Bohemian rolls. In that post, I didn't have pictures of how to make the kaiser style roll. Well, here is a picture series of how to do it.

Bread this weekend

This weekend, I did 3 different breads. I did classic french baguettes which turned out pretty well. They had a nice crust to them. I also attempted a new bread from Peter's "Whole Grain Breads" book called anadama bread. It is a whole wheat bread with corn meal. It turned out
OK but ended up on the heavy side. I think I over fermented it and then it did not have enough to finish rising during the final proof. It has good flavor though and I will have to try it again.


I also made some pretzel rolls using my pretzel recipe. I tried them with the King Arthur high protein flour as an experiment. The texture was excellent and the only real downside to using the flour is the cost. Might try a mix of just regular KA bread flour and some wheat gluten the next time.

Bookshelves

This weekend I finished up a pair of bookshelves for your breakfast room. One of them is shown above. They are made of oak plywood with solid oak for the face frames and top. They are sized to match the old farmhouse kitchen table we have. They haven't been stained and finished yet but that will have to wait until the weather gets warmer. Until then, they have been put into immediate service as storage for our cookbook collection.