Cinnamon Raisin Bread

I wish you could smell my house - it smells heavenly!  I just took these two loaves of Cinnamon Raisin bread out of the oven. 

I used Bob's Basic Sourdough Recipe.  I believe it is posted in an earlier blog - I used it to make the Cinnamon Rolls (do I notice a pattern here?).  I used my Spuds Sourdough Starter to make this bread.  The Spuds Starter was made using instant potato flakes and makes a "sweet" starter.  Excellent for cinnamon rolls (or bread). 

I made the dough following his recipe. Combine the starter, flour, warm water, sugar, and vegetable oil.  Let it sit overnight in a warm place.  In the morning, instead of shaping the dough into loaves, I rolled them out into a rectangle and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and raisins (I believe Bob also adds chopped pecans).  The dough is then rolled up in jelly roll fashion and put into a prepared loaf pan.  This is allowed to rise for 3 to 4 hours in a warm place. 

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  The loaves are baked for 30 to 35 minutes.  The hardest part is waiting for them to cool down.  This bread is excellent for making french toast - YUM!  Sorry Peter Reinhardt, but I think this is the better cinnamon bread recipe!

Proofing Box for rising bread dough

All bread recipes usually call for one or two risings.  The first rise is after all the ingredients are added to the dough.  Typically, you want the dough to double in size, roughly 1 to 1 1/2 hours.  The second rising is when you mold the dough into the final shape for baking - either freeform or in a bread pan of some sort.  Again, the goal is for the dough to double in size.  To get the dough to rise, you must put it in a warm spot.  Normally, I will put it in my cold oven with the light on.  Sometimes that is not an option particularly if you have recently done some baking - the oven would be way too hot! 

My husband built this  "proofing box" for me.  It works wonderfully!  He used a plain old styrofoam box he got from work (I've seen these all over the place, so it shouldn't be too hard to find).  He bought the electrical supplies from Walmart.

The most labor he did was drilling a hole in the lid and assembling the light bulb fixture with the electric wire and plug.  It uses a 15 watt bulb.  You won't think this small bulb would put out any heat, but it does.  It almost gets too hot, so I have to prop one side of the box open to keep it cool.

I've also used this in my cheesemaking (I own a small dairy goat farm).  This is a very versatile little box!

Low Salt Classic White bread - the result

Looks good, doesn't it!   First of all, using the unbleached flour did make the crust alot lighter.  I will have to try this on my other bread recipes to see if I get lighter crusts (I really must have been a mad scientist in my former life!).  More adventures!!!

I did notice the dough rose a lot faster and bigger.  I am sure this is due to the less salt.  I did watch the risings because some rising is good, but a whole lot of rising is not!

I did, impatiently, wait for the bread to cool before I had my first taste.  OH MY!  It is good.  I don't taste any salt (so there! salty customer!).  It has a nice crust and good crumb.  This is definitely a keeper. 

So if you want to get the same results, on the recipe change the salt to 10 grams and change the flour to unbleached all purpose flour.  Everything else stays the same.  Enjoy!!!

Martha Stewart's Classic White Bread - Revisited

I had a customer complain the other day that she thought Martha's bread was too salty.  It does contain 20 grams of salt.  The second time I made the bread, I used salted butter which made it taste salty to me (now I only use unsalted butter).  So today I am going to cut the salt in half and use only 10 grams of salt.  This shouldn't affect the final product because salt is mainly used to enhance the flavor.  Also, to test my theory on the dark crusts, I am going to use unbleached all purpose flour. 

On the website Sourdough Companion (http://www.sourdough.com/), one of the bakers in his blog wrote about reducing the salt in baking.  He found that it enhanced the flavor.  Very interesting article - if you would like to read it:

http://sourdough.com/blog/rossnroller/salt

Off to the kitchen to begin another adventure!

Mystery of the Dark Crusts solved!

Remember my main complaint about Martha Stewart's Classic White bread and the dark crusts.  Well, Sherlock, I believe we have solved the mystery. 

The other day I ran out of flour, so off to Kroger's I went.  Fortunately, for me, their flour is on sale $1.32 for 5 pounds (I know it is cheaper at Walmart, but I was at Kroger's not Walmart).  BUT, Kroger's was out of the bleached All-Purpose flour.  So I bought several bags of the unbleached All-Purpose flour.

The next day, I made another batch of Martha's Classic White bread.  The loaves came out beautiful!  I just sat there and marvelled at my creation!  Then I realized I had used unbleached flour - mystery solved.  Who would have thought using bleached flour would make the crusts dark!  So if you like nice golden crusts, the next time you make Martha's Classic White bread, use UNBLEACHED All Purpose flour.  I am so proud of myself (as I pat myself on the back!)

Mum's White Bread Recipe

This recipe is "from across the pond".  My good friend, Old Camp Cook,  gave me this recipe that he got from a friend over in England.  It is so simple!

12 grams of salt (1 1/2 tsp)
6 grams sugar (1 tsp)
10 grams butter/lard (1 T)
1 1/4 cup warm water
6 grams dried yeast (1 1/2 tsp)
450 grams bread flour (3 cups)

If you are using Instant Yeast (like SAF) mix the flour, yeast, sugar and salt in large bowl.  I usually add the butter to the hot water, let it melt a little and add that to the flour mixture.

Using my Kitchenaid mixer and a dough hook, I "knead" the dough for 8 minutes until it pulls away from the side of the bowl as shown below:

Remove the dough from the dough hook.  I grease a bowl to let the dough rise in - cover the bowl with saran wrap and let it rise for about 1 1/2 hours.  The second rising is when you shape the dough to fit into a bread loaf pan.  Let it rise another 1 1/2 hours.  Bake the loaf for 25 minutes in a 375 oven.

I was concerned at the first rising.  Seemed really slow, but then the house is rather cool so that could be the culprit.  I put it in a standard bread loaf for the second rising - OH MY!  The bread took off!   I do love it when I bake bread - just love the way the house smells - YUM!  warm bread!  The hardest part is waiting for it to cool.

The bread is really good.  A thin crust and the crumb is very nice.  This is definitely a keeper recipe.  It only makes one loaf.

Why do I bake?

My husband commented the other day how boring it must be to stay at home and bake muffins!  I guess to a man, baking would seem boring.

Why do I bake?  Is it because I get bored and baking fills the time? No, because I have plenty of things to do if I weren't baking.  I enjoy baking.  I must have been a mad scientist in my former life.  I love trying new recipes, new foods, etc.   To me baking is very relaxing and also very creative. You take a egg, mix it with flour, sugar and butter and you have a delicious cookie or cake.  Granted it is not the most glamorous job and, it certainly doesn't pay much!  But think of all the wonderful things you can make!  The nice thing about baking is that you know exactly how it is made and what ingredients were used.  Homemade is so much better than store bought!

Go into any bookstore and look at the cookbook shelves!  So many cookbooks, so little time!  I cheat - I see a cookbook I am interested in - I go to the library and borrow the book.  If I like, I then buy it ( usually on eBay or Half.com).  If I don't like, nothing lost - just return it to the library and get another cookbook.

Someday after we win the lottery, I would love to build a commercial kitchen and get a professional bakery license.  Someday is far away right now, but someday . . .

Martha Stewart's Classic White Bread Recipe

I think this is the best homemade white bread I have ever tasted.  The only thing I don't like about it is the crusts get too dark.  I like nice golden crusts.  My friend, old camp cook, and I have been experimenting with different techniques to see if we could fix this problem  Yesterday, I made the bread again.  What I did seems to work (at least for me).  The recipe calls for you to turn the loaves after 20 minutes.  I moved the loaves down one shelf level.  Also I did not butter or put oil on the crusts prior to baking.  This seemed to help. 

Here is the recipe.  Martha uses measurements, I prefer to use weight.  When measuring, you can not guarantee consistent measurements - one day the flour might be fluffier, you packed it a little heavier, etc.  100 grams of flour will always be 100 grams of flour.  Also it is easier doubling, tripling or halving (is there such a word??) when using grams - to double 100 grams - you get 200 grams - to half 100 grams of flour - you get 50 grams.  Now how would you half 1 2/3 cups of flour.  It can be done, but if you are not a mathematical genius, you could be in trouble. 

Here is Martha's recipe with both measurements and weights (weights are shown in parenthesis):

Classic White Bread


INGREDIENTS:

1 T plus 1 1/2 t active dry yeast (20 grams)

2 1/2 cups warm water -100ºF. (552 grams)

3 T plus 2 t (175 grams) honey

4 T (50 grams) unsalted butter, melted **** don't use salted butter - it makes the bread taste very salty!

7 cups (945 grams) Unbleached All Purpose flour

2 T (38 grams) salt

PROCEDURES:

1. (If using Active Dry Yeast) - Sprinkle yeast over 1/2 cup water. Add 2 teaspoons honey. Whisk until yeast dissolves. Let stand for 5 minutes - should get foamy. Transfer to mixer bowl. Add melted butter and remaining 1 3/4 cups water and 3 T honey. Whisk flour with salt. Add 3 cups to yeast mixture. Mix on low until smooth. Add remaining 4 cups flour - 1 cup at a time until dough comes away from sides of bowl and forms a ragged, slightly sticky ball.

(If using SAF Instant Yeast) - Pour all of the water and the yeast in the mixing bowl. Stir to mix. Add all of the honey and the melted butter. Add approximately 3 cups (305 grams) of flour and stir. Let rest 5 minutes. Add remainder of flour and salt. Mix for about 5 minutes until dough forms a fairly smooth ball and pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

2. Remove dough from mixer.

3. Knead dough on floured surface until smooth and elastic, but still slightly tacky - about 5 minutes.

4. Shape into a ball. Transfer to a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap.

5. Let dough stand in a warm place until it doubles (about 1 hour).

6. Grease 2 loaf pans. Punch down dough and divide into half.

7. Shape dough and place in pans. Brush each loaf with butter.

8. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

9. Put pans of dough in a plastic bag and tuck open ends of bag underneath.

10. Let stand until dough rises about 1 inch above tops of pans (45 minutes to 1 hour). - not in oven!!

11. Reduce oven temperature to 400.   Remove plastic bags from bread pans.

12. Bake, rotating pans after 20 minutes, until tops are golden brown - total bake time about 45 minutes. ** I bake for a total of 40 minutes - see my notes above.

13. Remove loaves from pans and transfer to wire racks.

The hard part is waiting for the bread to cool!!! It is so good warm with butter melted on it.  This makes an excellent sandwich bread and also great as french toast!

Verdict - Julia Child's Country Bread

Very easy recipe to work with.  The dough rises like it should and in the time period it was supposed to.  Several aspects I wasn't really pleased about.  I am used to bread turning a nice golden brown.  The loaf pretty much remained the same color as the original dough.  The crust is very hard.  This bread reminds me a lot of Eric's No-Knead Bread from Breadtopia, though Julia's bread had a better taste.  Whether I would make this bread again - not sure.  It was good, but not a show-stopper.

Julia Child's Country Bread

This recipe is taken from Julia Child's Baking with Julia cookbook.  You create a sponge which consists of flour, warm water and yeast.  The interesting aspect of this particular sponge is that it consists of 3 different flours:  Unbleached All Purpose, Whole Wheat and Rye.  Last night, I mixed the 3 flours, warm water and yeast and covered the bowl with Saran wrap and a dry dish towel.  I left it on my kitchen counter.  This morning the sponge was very much alive and well!  This will be added to the ingredients that make the final dough.  The final dough will have two "risings" before it is finally baked.   I am off to the kitchen.  Let's see what happens!

The Cupcake Experiment continues . . .

Yesterday, I tried Martha Stewart's Gingerbread cupcakes from her appropriately named Cupcakes cookbook.   I had an interesting thing happen with these cupcakes.  When I was removing the cupcakes from the muffin tin, the bottom of each cup was a small pool of what looked like butter.  The paper liners all felt greasy.  I've never had this happen before.  The cupcakes tasted good - my family loved them and they were almost gone by last night.  Per the recipe, I used room temperature butter, so I don't understand why the butter would melt - I guess one of life's little mysteries. 

Today I am going to make my Sour Rye bread.  I love that bread.  It is so good.  And I can guarantee it is better than Martha Stewart's rye - sorry Martha - you lose on this one!  And I do promise to try Julia Child's French Sandwich bread this week, so stay tuned for more adventures!

The Cupcake Experiment

Cupcakes seem to be the latest rage.  So I thought I would give it a try and picked up a couple cupcake books at our local library

My first cupcakes are from a recipe in Martha Stewart's Cupcake book, Chocolate Chip Cupcakes. The recipe is supposed to make 30 cupcakes, but I decided to be clumsy today and dropped the second pan. I guess this happens to the best of the cooks!


These are very moist cupcakes because you use whipped egg whites instead of the whole egg. The whipped eggs also make the cupcakes very light and fluffy. So be very gentle when you fold the egg whites into the batter because you don't want to lose that fluffiness. My husband and I tasted one without icing and they are very good! So this is definitely a keeper recipe.

The icing is to die for! It made with cocoa powder, confectioner's sugar, chocolate and real butter - don't think you will find this on the Weight Watcher's menu!

Verdict - Martha Stewart's Rye Bread

Don't waste your time!  I was not impressed by her rye.  My Sour Rye bread is far more superior than her's.  It took over 2 hours to get the dough to double for the first time.  After dividing the dough into 2 loaves and putting them into bread pans, it took another 2 hours to get a rise.  There was hardly any oven spring.  The taste was OK, but not great.  I think my chickens are going to eat good tonight.

If anyone is interested in a good rye bread, send an email to Diane@b-dgoats.com.  I will give you my address for you to send a self-addressed stamped envelope plus $5 for rye sourdough starter and mySour Rye bread recipe.

Martha Stewart's Rye Bread Recipe

Today I am trying Martha's Rye bread recipe.  I do think my Sour Rye will be the better bread.  The bread is now doing its first rise in the oven (I use the oven sometimes to do my proofing if the house is cold - just turn on the oven light and put the covered bowl with the dough in on the first rack).  I have my doubts about this bread.  The dough seems heavy - very hard to knead.  I am curious to see what kind of rise I get out it.

Yesterday, I tried her Classic White bread again.  This time I accidentally used Salted butter instead of Unsalted.  Everything went well, except I thought the bread tasted very salty.  The recipe does call for Unsalted butter.

I read an article in Cook's Country magazine about using Salted versus Unsalted butter.  According to the article you should stick with Unsalted (unless the recipe specifically asks for salted butter).  There is no standard for how much salt the manufacturers put in the butter.  So one brand might be more saltier than another.  It is just easier for you to add how much or how little salt you want.  I do feel the Salted butter did affect the taste of the bread.  Today, I used Unsalted butter.