This Weekends Bread

This weekend, I made some rye bread. This is a darker rye made with molasses which gives it a little different character.


I also gave bagel making a try. I used the bagel recipe from Peter's "The Bread Baker's Apprentice". They turned out pretty well for a first run but I need to practice it a bit more.

This weekends baking...

This weekend I did a fair amount of baking. There was the old standby transitional whole wheat bread made with butter milk from Peter's book.



I also did pretzel rolls. I got a new baking book a month or so ago called Advanced Bread and Pastry by Michel Suas. The book is an excellent technical manual by the founder of the San Francisco Baking Institute. I took the recipe for pretzels from the book and modified it to use rye flour. This is different from my other pretzel recipe because it uses a pre-ferment called a Poolish to add an additional flavor component. The recipe will be at the end of this blog post.

The last baking I did this weekend was to make cranberry scones with orange zest. I used the butter scone recipe from the Advanced Bread and Pastry book but I used Alton Brown's "Biscuit Method" from his book "I'm Just Here For More Food". By using Alton's method, the scones come out very light and flakey. According to my official taste tester (aka my wife), this produces a result that is so pleasing, she needs a moment alone afterward.


Soft Rye Pretzels - Take II

Poolish

1.75 oz bread flour
1.75 oz water
1/8 tsp instant yeast

Mix together Poolish ingredents and let stand lightly covered at room temperature for approximatly 12 hours. It will be ready to use when it is very bubbly.

Final Dough

12.70 oz bread flour
4.00 oz white rye flour
0.80 oz wheat gluten
0.50 oz non-diastatic malt powder
0.15 oz instant yeast
0.40 oz salt
all Poolish
5.15 oz water (body temperature)
5.15 oz milk (body temperature)
0.50 oz butter (melted)

Water Bath

1 oz salt
3 oz baking soda
1 quart (approx) water

Combine the dry ingredents in a large bowl and add the Poolish. In a microwave safe dish, warm the water and milk until just body temperature (approx 95 degrees). If you want you can include the butter to soften it. Otherwise melt the butter until soft but not liquid.

Mix together until you have a rough dough and then turn out onto a well floured board and knead for approximatly 8 minutes. Let rest for about 5 minutes while you prepare a clean bowl with spray oil. Knead for another 2 minutes and then form a tight ball.

Place in clean oiled bowl and cover with plastic film to ferment for approximatly 1 hour until the dough increases by 1 1/2 times. Before the end of fermentation, prepare 2 baking sheets with parchment paper that has been lightly sprayed with oil. This will help release the pretzel shapes when it is time to boil them

After fermenting, turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and divide into 12 pieces. Form each into a small ball and let rest for 5 minutes. After resting, roll each into a 3/8" - 1/2" diameter rope approximately 18" long and then form into a pretzel shape. If the dough is still to elastic, let rest for a few minutes and then continue rolling.

Place pretzel shapes on the baking sheet covered with parchment paper for proofing. Loosely cover with cling wrap while proofing. Proof for 1 hour until the dough expands from 3/8" to approx 3/4" diameter. While the dough is proofing, prepare a water bath by placing the water, salt and baking soda in a large stainless steel pot.

NOTE - Do not us an aluminum pot because the baking soda will react with aluminum.

Bring water to boil and stir to dissolve salt and baking soda. Reduce the temp so the water is just at a light boil. Before you start processing the pretzels in the water bath, preheat oven to 425 degrees.

After the pretzels have proofed, place them one at a time in the water bath; letting one side in the water for 30 seconds and then flipping them with a large sloted spoon. After the other side has cooked for 30 seconds, remove from water and place on baking sheet again. After all pretzels have been processed, place in oven. Bake for 15 minutes and then rotate the pans for even baking. Continue baking for approximately another 15 minutes until the pretzels take on a dark brown color. Let cool 20 minutes before eating.

Makes 12 - 5" pretzels. Can also make 8 Kaiser style rolls.

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.