Showing posts with label bread. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bread. Show all posts
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
Beer, Herb, and Cheddar Bread
Ingredients:
3 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp dried parsley (1 Tbsp fresh)
3/4 tsp dried rosemary (2 tsp fresh)
3/4 tsp dried thyme (1 Tbsp fresh)
1 1/2 cups or 1 bag shredded cheddar cheese blend
12 oz beer of choice
Method:
Combine flour, soda, and salt in a large bowl. Add herbs and most of the cheese (reserve a good handful to top the loaf before baking) and combine once more. Pour in beer slowly and mix all til just combined, making sure all flour has been incorporated. You may need to turn the dough with your hands a couple times to do that. Press dough into a greased loaf pan, stretching to the corners and leveling the top. Cover with the remaining cheese. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45-60 minutes until loaf is browned and sounds hollow when tapped. Cool before slicing and use a serrated knife.
3 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp dried parsley (1 Tbsp fresh)
3/4 tsp dried rosemary (2 tsp fresh)
3/4 tsp dried thyme (1 Tbsp fresh)
1 1/2 cups or 1 bag shredded cheddar cheese blend
12 oz beer of choice
Method:
Combine flour, soda, and salt in a large bowl. Add herbs and most of the cheese (reserve a good handful to top the loaf before baking) and combine once more. Pour in beer slowly and mix all til just combined, making sure all flour has been incorporated. You may need to turn the dough with your hands a couple times to do that. Press dough into a greased loaf pan, stretching to the corners and leveling the top. Cover with the remaining cheese. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45-60 minutes until loaf is browned and sounds hollow when tapped. Cool before slicing and use a serrated knife.
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Butternut Bread with Walnuts and Chocolate Chips
Ingredients:
*1 cup butternut squash purée
2 eggs
1/2 cup coconut oil, melted and cooled
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp orange extract
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup roughly chopped walnuts
1/3 cup mini chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease (vegetable shortening or butter) and flour one 8.5 x 4.5 x 2.5 inch loaf pan.
In a large bowl (KitchenAid mixer with paddle attachment), mix together the butternut squash puree, eggs, oil, water, orange extract, and sugars until thoroughly combined.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
Stir the dry ingredients into the butternut squash mixture in two additions. Combine just until incorporated; do not over mix. Mix in walnuts and chocolate chips gently. Pour batter into the prepared pan.
Bake for 65-75 minutes or until a wooden skewer inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.
*I prefer to roast my own honeynut butternut squash for the best tasting bread. Those little dickens can be hard to find, so you can substitute canned butternut, pumpkin, or sweet potato puree with similar, delicious results.
*1 cup butternut squash purée
2 eggs
1/2 cup coconut oil, melted and cooled
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp orange extract
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup roughly chopped walnuts
1/3 cup mini chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease (vegetable shortening or butter) and flour one 8.5 x 4.5 x 2.5 inch loaf pan.
In a large bowl (KitchenAid mixer with paddle attachment), mix together the butternut squash puree, eggs, oil, water, orange extract, and sugars until thoroughly combined.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
Stir the dry ingredients into the butternut squash mixture in two additions. Combine just until incorporated; do not over mix. Mix in walnuts and chocolate chips gently. Pour batter into the prepared pan.
Bake for 65-75 minutes or until a wooden skewer inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.
*I prefer to roast my own honeynut butternut squash for the best tasting bread. Those little dickens can be hard to find, so you can substitute canned butternut, pumpkin, or sweet potato puree with similar, delicious results.
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Brioche Bread
If you're up for a bread challenge, this is the one that will be worth the effort and knock your socks off. My kids LOVE this bread. It's enriched with eggs and butter and bakes to a heavenly yellow color inside. So tender, so buttery, so wonderful.
Notice that some bakers use ingredient weights instead of cup measurements. Weight is much more accurate when it comes to baking. Invest in a small digital kitchen scale and you will be baking like a semi-pro! Otherwise, there are conversion tables you can google for measurements and oven temperatures.
Brioche loaf via Simply Delicious
Notice that some bakers use ingredient weights instead of cup measurements. Weight is much more accurate when it comes to baking. Invest in a small digital kitchen scale and you will be baking like a semi-pro! Otherwise, there are conversion tables you can google for measurements and oven temperatures.
Brioche loaf via Simply Delicious
Irish Soda Bread
Yes, St. Patrick's Day has passed us by, but Irish soda bread can still be baked and eaten any old time of the year! I did make this a few days previous to St. Pat's, but didn't start my blog til a couple days ago. While the paper recipe is still here, I thought I would transcribe it to the blog, so it's searchable and handy for the next time we want to make it.
I prefer the American-style bread, which includes a little more sugar and raisins. When I was younger, I did not like raisins in bread. My kids currently feel the same way. But somewhere along the way I decided I DID like them. In this bread they are GREAT. They add a little bit of juiciness to an otherwise dry bread. There are different colors of raisins, and I encourage experimentation. Since as far as anyone knows, we only go around this good green Earth once, so why NOT try colorful raisins?
Second important thing to note is the use of CAKE or PASTRY flour. Flour is made from different kinds of wheat, some are harder and some are softer. The softer wheats have a lower protein content, and therefore bake lighter. All-purpose flour is a blend to reach a certain ratio of protein that works well in most recipes. As you gain more experience with baking, you will start to understand why pastry flour is needed in some recipes and how it performs. The opposite would be BREAD flour -- heavy, more proteins. Some kinds of wheat also make flour that are appropriate for pasta. Oh, the wonderful world of wheat!
Third note is buttermilk. That is just not something I use regularly enough to have on hand in the fridge, so I usually "clabber" regular milk. For every cup of milk, add a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar, and let it sit on the counter for about 10 minutes. The acid will clump or "clabber" the milk to be something like buttermilk. It will not be as thick, but it will do the job. The job that buttermilk does is to react with the baking soda and powder in this recipe that adds air and tenderness to the bread. It's very necessary. Without the right kind of flour and the buttermilk, you might bake a nice brick with raisins in it.
3 cups sifted cake or pastry flour (sifting adds to air and lightness, too)
4 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup raisins
1 1/3 cups buttermilk (or clabbered milk)
Add all the dry ingredients to a bowl and stir. Add raisins and buttermilk and stir gently to combine. I say gently because I use scooping motions to press the mix together, turning and scraping the bowl to incorporate all the dry bits. Don't undo all your hard work from sifting and using light flour by beating the mix to death! Over-mixing will toughen your dough.
When the sticky dough is just combined, turn it out on a floured surface and knead it up to 10 times to smooth it out. Prep a 9" round cake pan with a circle of parchment paper in the bottom. Perfect circles are not required. Spread the dough to fill the pan and mark the top with a really cool "X" using a knife and cutting not more than 1/4" deep.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 65 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. This bread does not keep well, so eat it within a couple days (no problem, right?). Store it in a cool, dry place out of the light.
Bonus -- great with coffee!
I prefer the American-style bread, which includes a little more sugar and raisins. When I was younger, I did not like raisins in bread. My kids currently feel the same way. But somewhere along the way I decided I DID like them. In this bread they are GREAT. They add a little bit of juiciness to an otherwise dry bread. There are different colors of raisins, and I encourage experimentation. Since as far as anyone knows, we only go around this good green Earth once, so why NOT try colorful raisins?
Second important thing to note is the use of CAKE or PASTRY flour. Flour is made from different kinds of wheat, some are harder and some are softer. The softer wheats have a lower protein content, and therefore bake lighter. All-purpose flour is a blend to reach a certain ratio of protein that works well in most recipes. As you gain more experience with baking, you will start to understand why pastry flour is needed in some recipes and how it performs. The opposite would be BREAD flour -- heavy, more proteins. Some kinds of wheat also make flour that are appropriate for pasta. Oh, the wonderful world of wheat!
Third note is buttermilk. That is just not something I use regularly enough to have on hand in the fridge, so I usually "clabber" regular milk. For every cup of milk, add a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar, and let it sit on the counter for about 10 minutes. The acid will clump or "clabber" the milk to be something like buttermilk. It will not be as thick, but it will do the job. The job that buttermilk does is to react with the baking soda and powder in this recipe that adds air and tenderness to the bread. It's very necessary. Without the right kind of flour and the buttermilk, you might bake a nice brick with raisins in it.
3 cups sifted cake or pastry flour (sifting adds to air and lightness, too)
4 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup raisins
1 1/3 cups buttermilk (or clabbered milk)
Add all the dry ingredients to a bowl and stir. Add raisins and buttermilk and stir gently to combine. I say gently because I use scooping motions to press the mix together, turning and scraping the bowl to incorporate all the dry bits. Don't undo all your hard work from sifting and using light flour by beating the mix to death! Over-mixing will toughen your dough.
When the sticky dough is just combined, turn it out on a floured surface and knead it up to 10 times to smooth it out. Prep a 9" round cake pan with a circle of parchment paper in the bottom. Perfect circles are not required. Spread the dough to fill the pan and mark the top with a really cool "X" using a knife and cutting not more than 1/4" deep.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 65 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. This bread does not keep well, so eat it within a couple days (no problem, right?). Store it in a cool, dry place out of the light.
Bonus -- great with coffee!
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
English Muffin Bread
Recently I realized how great home-baked bread really is. It smells great, it's great warm from the oven, and it's fun to make. At some point I will be buying the Breville BBM800XL Custom Loaf Bread Maker because I have three other Breville appliances in my kitchen that I love. At the moment I can make great loaves with my KitchenAid stand mixer (now going on 13 years old) using the dough hook, or with just a bowl and wooden spoon.
Bread is new territory for me. The multi-step process seemed intimidating. Rising dough and warm spots in the kitchen and refrigerating overnight and hollow noises -- I mean really, just too many steps that I didn't fully understand. But I have become a more confident baker, and King Arthur Flour has a lot to do with that. Two main ingredients have really taken my baking to the next level --King Arthur flours and Kerrygold butter. Once my recipes started TASTING so amazing, I started paying more attention to technique and nuances to make things I'm really proud of.
I started with boxed bread mixes from King Arthur. I had good results with those, so now I'm trying recipes from scratch. First I tried brioche, then a country white loaf, and tonight I'm making English muffin bread. Brioche was pretty challenging, so I think this bread I'm making tonight will be much easier. This recipe makes two loaves in smaller pans (8X4).
5 cups all-purpose flour
4 1/2 tsp dry active yeast
1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 cups warm milk
1/2 cup warm water
cornmeal
In my KitchenAid mixer I added the yeast, sugar, salt, milk, and water. I gently stirred in half the flour. Let this sit for 5 minutes for the yeast to activate. The activation happens from the warm liquids and the yeast eating up the sugar. You will see bubbles forming in the dough. This is perfect. If you aren't seeing bubbles, you may need to set your bowl in a warm place in the kitchen to encourage the reaction. When the top is completely covered in bubbles, add the remaining flour in 2-3 additions. This will be easier if you use a wooden spoon at this point, as the dough gets quite sticky and thick. Using the mixer will probably OVER-mix the dough, which will make tough bread. Stir gently to incorporate all the flour.
Grease the bread pans on all sides with whatever spray or oil you like. I use organic vegetable shortening. Once they are greased, sprinkle cornmeal generously all over the sides to coat the pan. Your oil or butter will help it adhere. Tap out the excess. Divide the dough in half and roughly shape a loaf that fills the pan from end to end. It will be a bit sticky, but it's okay. It may even look a bit ugly, but it's still going to be okay. First we work on taste and then we work on presentation. Do the same with the second loaf.
Cover the loaves and put them in a warm spot to rise. I preheat the oven to 400 degrees F at this point and put the loaves on top of the oven covered with a clean dish towel. The heat from the oven helps the loaves rise. The loaves are ready to bake when the volume has doubled in the pan or the dough rises higher than the top of the pan (30 minutes to 1 hour). Just before you are ready to put them in the oven, sprinkle more cornmeal on top.
Bake at 400 for 30 minutes. The bread will brown nicely and has a nice hollow noise when you tap it. Cool the loaves completely on a wire rack. I actually put on oven mitts and removed the loaves from their pans to cool.
Cut loaves with a long serrated knife. This type of bread will be great with butter and jelly, or my daughter's favorite of peanut butter and honey. Mmm, nooks and crannies...
*Evening edit: We couldn't wait to taste it, so we all had a warm slice. My daughter and I had ours with butter and Bonne Maman strawberry preserves, and Eric smeared his slice with Stonewall Kitchen's fig and walnut butter. We are impressed.
Bread is new territory for me. The multi-step process seemed intimidating. Rising dough and warm spots in the kitchen and refrigerating overnight and hollow noises -- I mean really, just too many steps that I didn't fully understand. But I have become a more confident baker, and King Arthur Flour has a lot to do with that. Two main ingredients have really taken my baking to the next level --King Arthur flours and Kerrygold butter. Once my recipes started TASTING so amazing, I started paying more attention to technique and nuances to make things I'm really proud of.
I started with boxed bread mixes from King Arthur. I had good results with those, so now I'm trying recipes from scratch. First I tried brioche, then a country white loaf, and tonight I'm making English muffin bread. Brioche was pretty challenging, so I think this bread I'm making tonight will be much easier. This recipe makes two loaves in smaller pans (8X4).
5 cups all-purpose flour
4 1/2 tsp dry active yeast
1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 cups warm milk
1/2 cup warm water
cornmeal
In my KitchenAid mixer I added the yeast, sugar, salt, milk, and water. I gently stirred in half the flour. Let this sit for 5 minutes for the yeast to activate. The activation happens from the warm liquids and the yeast eating up the sugar. You will see bubbles forming in the dough. This is perfect. If you aren't seeing bubbles, you may need to set your bowl in a warm place in the kitchen to encourage the reaction. When the top is completely covered in bubbles, add the remaining flour in 2-3 additions. This will be easier if you use a wooden spoon at this point, as the dough gets quite sticky and thick. Using the mixer will probably OVER-mix the dough, which will make tough bread. Stir gently to incorporate all the flour.
Grease the bread pans on all sides with whatever spray or oil you like. I use organic vegetable shortening. Once they are greased, sprinkle cornmeal generously all over the sides to coat the pan. Your oil or butter will help it adhere. Tap out the excess. Divide the dough in half and roughly shape a loaf that fills the pan from end to end. It will be a bit sticky, but it's okay. It may even look a bit ugly, but it's still going to be okay. First we work on taste and then we work on presentation. Do the same with the second loaf.
Cover the loaves and put them in a warm spot to rise. I preheat the oven to 400 degrees F at this point and put the loaves on top of the oven covered with a clean dish towel. The heat from the oven helps the loaves rise. The loaves are ready to bake when the volume has doubled in the pan or the dough rises higher than the top of the pan (30 minutes to 1 hour). Just before you are ready to put them in the oven, sprinkle more cornmeal on top.
Bake at 400 for 30 minutes. The bread will brown nicely and has a nice hollow noise when you tap it. Cool the loaves completely on a wire rack. I actually put on oven mitts and removed the loaves from their pans to cool.
Cut loaves with a long serrated knife. This type of bread will be great with butter and jelly, or my daughter's favorite of peanut butter and honey. Mmm, nooks and crannies...
*Evening edit: We couldn't wait to taste it, so we all had a warm slice. My daughter and I had ours with butter and Bonne Maman strawberry preserves, and Eric smeared his slice with Stonewall Kitchen's fig and walnut butter. We are impressed.
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