Cracked Wheat Knot Rolls
Once again, a small group of bakers is tackling a Gourmet magazine challenge, this time the breads featured in the February issue. The team tackling this fun challenge includes:
Kelly of Sass & Veracity
Judy of No Fear Entertaining
Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen
Courtney of Coco Cooks
Sandy of At The Baker’s Bench (It was her idea this time.)
Me
If the bloggers sound familiar, that’s because we baked a boatload of cookies together back in December. This time around we had six breads to choose from, one per week during February. We’re tying this in with BYOB, aka Bake Your Own Bread, hosted by Sandy. Visit her blog for more information on how that event works.
I chose these cracked wheat knot rolls first because they have some whole wheat flour, plus I like the crunch of cracked wheat and the shape of the rolls. Cracked wheat, similar to bulgur, is a crushed wheat grain that has not been parboiled. It’s not always easy to find and might even be labeled as bulgur because experts do not necessarily agree on the difference, so check any local Indian or Middle Eastern markets for it. If you can’t find it, bulgur makes a fine substitute. Read more
Slow Rise Panettone
We like to make fruit-studded breads during the holidays, and the boxed panettones look so pretty and tall, but my experience has been that they are mostly dry and flavorless or have a fake taste to them. I’ve wanted to bake my own for a while and read many recipes in my search for a good panettone.
I saw Jim Lahey’s slow rise panettone recipe in Gourmet’s December edition and knew right away that this was the recipe for me. Shipping costs on panettone molds were a little prohibitive—even more than the cost of the paper molds—and I thought I wouldn’t get to make it. Fortunately King Arthur Flour offered a free shipping deal last week and my panettone papers arrived on Monday, a few days before Christmas and in just the nick of time to make this lovely bread for Christmas morning breakfast.
Lahey is famous for his no-knead bread, and he uses the same cold rise technique to bring wonderful flavor to his panettone (which is kneaded with a heavy duty mixer). The bread takes up to 24 hours to make, so start a couple days before you serve it. This is how I would break up the steps:
The Daring Bakers Make Peter Reinhart’s Pizza Napoletana
I remember seeing Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice for the first time at a bookstore the year it was released. The striking photo on the cover immediately grabbed my attention and I heard my own voice say aloud, “I want to make bread like that.” The book did not go home with me that day, and in fact I waited almost a year before buying it, feeling that I needed to bake more things from some of my other books before adding another bread book to my collection. I was ecstatic the day it arrived in the mail, and I immediately sat down and started reading and tagging breads of interest. For my very first bread, I tackled the Napoletana pizza dough, and I was thrilled with the results. The dough was silky smooth and had enough resting time that I could easily stretch it and make a thin crust, the type I prefer. After falling hard for this dough, I added Reinhart’s American Pie to my wish list, which actually has another variation of this dough formula.
It’s been two years since I wrote about Reinhart’s Napoletana pizza dough (recipe posted there), but time has not diminished my adoration of this dough, and I gladly played along with this month’s Daring Baker challenge. The formula is forgiving enough to allow some whole grain flour, but the original still makes a delicious pizza. Read more
The Daring Bakers Make Danish Braid
I was so excited to see this challenge when it was posted earlier this month because we love bread in any shape or form. Ask my boys what they want for a snack, and they’ll say anything in the bread category even before cake, cookies, ice cream, popsicles, and lollipops. It’s almost as if this month’s Daring Baker hosts KellyPea and Ben could read my mind! The recipe comes from Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking, but it’s no big secret that this is a delicious pastry! The dough is fragrant and easy to work with. We could choose our filling and substitute flavors in the dough if we wanted, and of course we had to make at least one braid, then we could do whatever we wanted with the remaining dough. I stuck with the dough recipe as is and made a cherry filling. So far I’ve only made the braid, but I envision some nice little pastries for our 4th of July breakfast, maybe with some of the apple butter I made last fall.
I knew if I could pull it off my family would love it, but I was worried, too. My health has been an issue for a while now and I’ve been struggling in the last couple months. I won’t go into all the details here, but you can read my coming out story over at DC Metro Moms Blog. Oh, and I decided it was time to go back to work part-time after a two-year hiatus. Could I possibly squeeze anything else into this month? The answer is obviously “no” because I am late with my challenge!
My plan was to make the braid for Father’s Day weekend, but I wasn’t well. I had to work the following weekend, and last weekend we were supposed to leave for vacation, so I wrote a pitiful email to Lis and Ivonne bowing out for June. (It really was pathetic, I’m embarrassed to say.) Then on Wednesday I got a call from my doctor saying we needed to schedule a biopsy ASAP, so I’m going in tomorrow. (Not really looking forward to it, but at least we’ll have some answers.) We postponed vacation and I vowed I would start the challenge last Friday evening. Friday evening came and I couldn’t do it because my brain was in a fog and I couldn’t focus, and Saturday was more of the same. It all came down to Sunday, posting day. Read more
Easy Daily Batard and Couronne
I have been trying to bake bread for years, sometimes with good results, other times edible but not pretty, and more often than I care to admit I was too ashamed to even feed it to the birds. I have willingly spent hours tied to the kitchen looking after rising doughs, though not as often as I would like, but now that I’ve gone back to work I can’t devote a lot of time to my bread baking projects anymore. While a part of me is in mourning for my hours playing in flour, I am happy to have found a viable alternative that provides good, artisan-quality fresh bread for my family without a huge time commitment. It’s a variant on the famous (infamous) no-knead bread, and after a couple months of baking using the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day method, I can say I’m hooked and so is my family.
The method uses steam to make a crispy, crackly crust with a chewy crumb, and my boys can eat their way through an entire batard or couronne in one meal if I don’t set limits. The concept is like no-knead bread crossed with grocery store refrigerator dough, only much better than the grocery store stuff. This isn’t airy, squishy bread, this is substantial and well worth the short amount of work time required. You spend just a few minutes hand mixing the dough in a bucket, no kneading required, refrigerate for up to 14 days depending on which type of dough you make, then shape, rise, and bake. The title refers to the hands-on work time for making a basic loaf of bread, which is what most people want on any given day. You want a baguette or a batard to have with soup or appetizers, or you want a nice pizza dough, or you get a phone call saying someone is coming over for dinner and you want a nice couronne for the meal, and you can have any of those with just a few minutes of active work. You still have to plan for rising time and preheating the oven, which are not factored in to the equation, but overall this method is one of the easiest I’ve ever tried. We have buckets of the master recipe and the olive oil dough in the refrigerator all the time now so I can bring some out on short notice and bake bread, and I’ve tried some of the other doughs with success.
Chocolate Prune Bread
When I was a child I did not like prunes, which is quite silly because I adore plums. My boys also enjoy plums, and if we have some on hand they don’t last long. Every day for the last two weeks the boys have been raiding the plums and I would either find them off in a corner nibbling and getting sticky plum juice everywhere or they would come right up to me, asking, “Mommy, may I have a plum?” with one bite already taken. When I was chopping the prunes for this bread and explained that they were dried plums, that was all it took. They kept coming back asking for more prunes and I had to start rationing so I would have enough for the bread.
The recipe comes from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, and I have enjoyed all the doughs I’ve tried from this book. I’ve had a lot of fun with my forays into sourdough and starters this year, but I find myself increasingly drawn to this type of bread dough for the time savings. The dough is already mixed for me, I just shape, rise, and bake, and that has a lot of appeal on busy days. I can still make good bread for my family without the extra time investment of daily mixing and multiple risings and trying to work all that in with the crazy schedule. Though the dough recipes can be halved, the method requires some dedicated refrigerator space. I have had as many as three buckets of doughs in the refrigerator all at once, though two is my usual now.
