flour girl: Whole Wheat Santa Lucia Buns

I’d prefer to call these `S` buns. I’m ‘S’; they’re ‘S’. They’re my buns.

Kinda like ‘S’ cookies that I loved as a kid (and that I still love now because they are amazing with coffee or tea). I deemed them mine and mine alone because they bore my initial.

These buns have a soft crust and crumb that makes them great for sandwiches and they`re good toasted after a few days as well. The flavour is hearty and slightly sweet, but more subdued than sprouted grain bread.

Whole Wheat Santa Lucia Buns

From the book Whole Grain Breads

Soaker

1 3/4c. whole wheat flour
1/2 t. salt
3/4 c. soy milk

Day 1:
In a bowl stir together the soaker ingredients until they form a ball of dough. Cover and leave at room temperature overnight.

Starter

1 3/4 c. whole wheat flour
1/4 t. quick rise yeast
1/2 c. water
1 egg, beaten

Day 1:
Combine all the starter ingredients together in a bowl. Knead the starter dough by hand for a few minutes. Place the dough to a clean bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight. Remove from the fridge a few hours before needed for the final dough.

Final Dough

starter
soaker
3/4 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 t. salt
2 1/4 t. (one packet) instant yeast
1/4 c. honey
1/4 c. vegetable oil

1 egg white, beaten with 1 T. water (for egg wash) and 1 t. honey
raisins for topping

Day 2:

Chop the starter up into 8-10 pieces and place in a large mixing bowl. Add all the remaining dough ingredients to the bowl.

Stir the ingredients together with a spoon until the mixture begins to form a ball.

Transfer the dough to a floured surface and knead for 5-10 minutes. Add extra flour as needed so the dough is firm and a bit tacky.

Let the dough rest for 5 minutes, then continue kneading for another few minutes until the dough passes the windowpane test so you know the gluten is developed.

Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise at warm room temperature until almost doubled in size (about 1 hour).

Punch down the dough. Divide it into 12 pieces and roll each piece into a ball. Let the dough balls rest for 10 minutes. Roll each ball out into a 10” long snake.

Shape each snake into an ‘S’ by rolling the ends in toward each other on the same side, then flip one spiral over to get an ‘S’.

Place the shaped buns on a foiled lined baking sheet. Cover again with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature again until 1.5x original size (~1 hour).

Brush the buns with the egg wash and place a raisin in the centre of each coil.

Bake in a 350F oven for 30 minutes rotating the pan 180 degrees after 15 minutes until it sounds hollow when thumped on the bottom and/or has an internal temperature of 195 degrees fahrenheit.

Cool on a rack before serving.

Submitted to Yeastspotting

flour girl: Powerhouse Sprouted Grain Bread

You probably saw this bread on the blog last week and I promised a recipe for it, so here it is. I took the recipe for Power Bread from the book Whole Grain Breads and adapted it to be even more nutritious.

This bread is a total powerhouse. It is high in protein which makes it a good pre-workout snack. It’s also full of nutrition with the benefits of the enzymes from sprouted wheat kernels, the omega-3s from the walnut flour and flax seeds, and just one slice has 30% of your daily recommended intake of fibre. It’s pretty hardcore.

Make it. It’s good for you.

Nutrition per slice : 126 calories
Fat : 3.6g / 32.4 cals (24.4%), Carbs : 20.9g / 83.8 cals (63%), Protein : 4.2g / 16.9 cals (12.7%)

Powerhouse Sprouted Grain Bread

Soaker

1/3 c. raisins
5 t. flax seeds
3/4 c. water

6 oz sprouted wheatberries food-processed into a paste (how to sprout wheat)
1 1/3 c. whole wheat flour
2 T. oat bran
1/2 t. sea salt

Day 1:
Combine the raisins, flax, and water in a bowl and leave at room temperature overnight.

Day 2:

Puree the raisin mixture in a food processor.
In a bowl stir together the puree and the remaining soaker ingredients to get a wet batter. Cover and leave at room temperature overnight.

Starter

1 1/3 c. whole wheat flour
1/4 t. quick rise yeast
1/2 c. soy milk

Day 2:
Combine all the starter ingredients together in a bowl. Knead the starter dough by hand for a few minutes. Place the dough to a clean bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight.

Dough

starter
soaker
2/3 c. walnut flour
1 1/3 c. whole wheat flour
3 T. sesame seeds
1/2 t. salt
2 1/4 t. (one packet) instant yeast
3 1/2 t. honey
1 T. date molasses

Day 3:
Chop the starter up into 8-10 pieces and place in a large mixing bowl. Add all the remaining dough ingredients to the bowl.

Stir the ingredients together with a spoon until the mixture begins to form a ball.

Transfer the dough to a floured surface and knead with wet hands for 5-10 minutes. Add extra flour as needed so the dough is firm and a bit tacky. The dough should pass the windowpane test so you know the gluten is developed.

Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise at warm room temperature until doubled in size (about 1 hour).

When the dough has doubled in size, form the dough into a loaf pan shape and place into an oiled 8×4” loaf pan. Cover again with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature again until 1.5x it’s original size (~45minutes).

Bake in a 350F oven for 40 minutes rotating the pan 180 degrees after 20 minutes until it sounds hollow when thumped on the bottom and/or has an internal temperature of 195 degrees fahrenheit.

Cool on a rack before serving.

Submitted to Yeastspotting

flour girl: Best Chewy Bagels

Remember back in the summer when I went to Montreal and had those overrated bagels from Fairmount bakery?

Well these aren’t them.

I don’t get Montreal bagels and if that’s sacrilegious to admit then have me excommunicated.

Sure, they are a bit sweeter (thumbs up!) but they are too dense (thumbs down) and too dry (thumbs down) and the centre is too big (thumbs way down—I want more bread, not more air, thank you very much).

So, no, these aren’t Montreal style bagels.These are MY bagels: ever so slightly crispy crust, chewy crumb, and a hint of sweetness. They’re perfect.

At least I think so.

The Best Chewy Bagels

Yields 10

Ingredients:

Dough
18 oz bread flour
4-1/2 tsp yeast
3 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp salt
12 oz warm water

Water Bath
3 L water
2 Tbsp sugar

Topping
1 egg white
1/4 poppy or sesame seeds

Directions:

In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients then slowly add in the 12 oz water. Mix until the ingredients come together.

Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and knead by hand for 10 minutes, adding flour as needed to created a firm, dense dough. The dough should pass the windowpane test for gluten development… if not, keep kneading!

Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let sit in a warm place until the dough doubles in volume (~1hour)

Divide the dough into 10 equal pieces. Roll them into snakes about 25 cm long. If the dough wont roll out easily just let it rest for 5 minutes and try again.

Wrap the snake around your palm to form a bagel shape and with your palm still in the centre, roll the bagel on the counter to seal the seams.

Cover the bagels and let them rise for 10 – 15 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400F, prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper, and bring the 3L of water to a boil on the stove. Once the water is boiling, add in the 2 Tbsp sugar.

Add the bagels to the water bath 3-4 at a time being careful not the overcrowd the pot. Keep them in the water for 30 seconds on one side and then 30 seconds on the other. Remove them with a large slotted spoon and place them on the baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining bagels.

Brush the bagels with the egg white and sprinkle with seeds of choice.

Bake at 400F for 25-30 minutes or until the bagels are golden brown. They will still be soft when you take them out of the oven but once they cool the the crust will firm up a bit.

This post was submitted to Yeastspotting.

Previous Posts in the Flour Girl Series:

All About Enzymes

Gluten and Its Role in Baking

Baking Tips and Tools

How to get a Crispy Crust

German Bread

Italian Bread – Ciabatta

How to Fix an Over-Risen Dough

Multigrain Wheat and Barley Bread

Sweet, sweet Stollen

flour girl: Stollen

I’m trying to just eat one dessert a week in my efforts to win the office Biggest Loser. And no, those handfuls of Jelly Belly’s from the Cost-Co sized tub on top of my fridge don’t count as dessert. What? They’re made with real fruit!

While I may not be entirely successful in cutting out the sugar, I was entirely successful in baking my own dessert this week. In true Samantha fashion it came in the form of a yeast bread: Stollen.

Okay, let’s not kid ourselves here with the bread moniker, this is cake. Maybe I only put 2 tablespoons of sugar in it, but the with the richness from the butter, egg, milk, booze, and fruit the term bread just doesn’t do it justice.

This is my first time making stollen and, actually, the first time I’ve ever eaten it (the bonus to that being that I don’t know if I FUBAR’d the recipe). Stollen is a German holiday bread that is a lot like Italian panettone in theory, but not quite in practice. It’s much denser. heavier. Whereas I could eat half a loaf of panettone without second thought (and I may or may not have done this before… like, on Saturday afternoon), a small piece of stollen is substantial. Maybe it has a little something to do with all the dried fruit in it, or maybe the has a gooey marzipan filling (my favourite part)  :d

That’s marzipan mixed with butter.

Fold the dough over into an ‘S’ shape and then form into a crescent.

I left 1c. of Thompson raisins and 1c. candied citrus peel to soak in a few tablespoons of peach schnapps for 3 days to get really plump and absorb full flavour of the liqueur and that way they would keep the Stollen moist.

Did I mention that as soon as it comes out of the oven you slather it in butter and roll it in icing sugar? Oh yeah, that keeps it pretty moist too. …but don’t worry, you’ll probably eat it all before it has any chance of drying out.

Make a stollen for yourself. It’s a good foray into the wonderful world of yeast baking.

Here are some Stollen recipes online if you’re interested in making a loaf for yourself. After all those delicious pictures, you probably are.

Holiday Stollen (NY Times)
Stollen (David Lebovitz)
Peter Reinhart Stollen (The Cooking Route)

*This bread was submitted to Yeastspotting

flour girl: wheat & barley bread

I really love baking lean white breads, like ciabatta or pain a l’ancinne, because the only ingredients are flour, salt, yeast, and water. All the flavour then comes from the fermentation process. I find it to be pretty damn amazing that such bland ingredients can create such a flavourful dough.

. . . but then I also love to bake whole grain bread. Experimenting with endless possible combinations of whole grains to see which one gives the best flavour or texture. Wheat kernels, emmer, amaranth, barley, quinoa, millet, rice. . . there really is no limit to the amount of experimenting you can do.

This weekend I made an enriched whole grain bread, meaning in addition to the standard bread ingredients I also added some fat and some dairy which provide a soft, melt-in-your-mouth texture. It makes for a really delicious sandwich bread.

This bread contains wheat and barley (a grain I hadn’t yet worked with in bread) that came out fabulous. I also included a few top secret ingredients to make the bread sweet and soft.

All in all, this enriched wheat and barley bread was delicious! Now excuse me while I go make a sandwich. . .

flour girl: holiday wheat thins

Matt and I are hosting a wine and cheese party at our place on New Year’s Eve. I’m going to baking some bread for the event as well, but I decided to start with something easy that also complements the cheese: Crackers!

Don’t forget the crackers, Gromit!

(source)

Any other Wallace & Gromit fans out there?

The recipe called for milk and honey, but since I had some egg nog in the fridge I thought: It’s milky and sweet. Score! You can, of course, just sub in 3 oz. of milk + 1 T. honey for the nog and drop the ‘holiday’ moniker.

Holiday Wheat Thins

Adapted from Peter Reinhart

Ingredients

1 c. whole wheat flour (+ extra for adjustment)
1/2 tsp. salt
3 oz. egg nog
3 T. vegetable oil

Directions

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and form a ball. Place the ball on a floured surface and knead for 3-5 minutes adding extra flour as necessary to create a smooth, shiny dough that is neither tacky nor sticky.

Set the dough aside for 10 minutes to rest. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with parchment or silpat and sprinkle with cornmeal.

Roll the dough out as thin as possible on a large floured cutting board. Cut into squares with a pizza cutter or a sharp knife.

Using a spatula, transfer the crackers to the baking sheet. They can be close, but should not touch.

Bake for 10 minutes, rotate the pan if necessary, and then bake for 5-10 minutes more.

I baked the first batch on my industrial baking sheet and the second on a standard baking sheet. The second batch burned

Make sure you keep an eye on the crackers in the last 10 minutes of baking because every oven and every baking sheet is different.

flour girl: falling flat

Sunday evening I was caught up in a baking frenzy. Frenzy.

It was mostly to bring down my blood pressure after driving all across the city on terribly snowy roads to get all my Christmas shopping done. When you hate driving in snow, detest shopping, and loathe the mall at Christmas it makes for a stress-inducing afternoon.

So I set to whipping up 2 different types of cookies and my favourite sprouted grain bread. Maybe it was the cloud of flour in the air that hindered my awareness, or possibly the fact that the oven was working overtime and the kitchen was heating up like a sauna but before I knew it my lovely rising dough fell flat

Flat as a pancake.

Normally this wouldn’t worry me all that much, but Matt was bringing this bread to a staff party and I was hoping to impress with my baking skills. An over-risen dough bakes to be tough and gummy– not very impressive.

So if you ever get yourself in the situation where you forget about your dough and come back to find it looking like it was steamrolled, never fear it can be saved.

How to fix an over-risen dough:

1. Punch down the dough.
2. Knead the dough by hand for ~2 minutes to remove all air bubbles.
3. Shape the dough into the desired form, spray with oil, and cover with a clean tea towel.
4. Place the dough into a oven warm oven to proof. (Pre-heat the oven to the lowest temperature setting you have and then turn it off before placing the dough inside. I like to keep the oven door open a crack so that the bread doesn’t get too warm.)
5. Depending on the warmth of the environment, the dough should rise again within 1-2 hours.
6. If the dough doesn’t rise then the yeast is dead and it probably can’t be salvaged. Roll out the dough thinly onto a floured surfaced, cut into squares, and bake. Congratulations you have made crackers.

Luckily I was able to salvage this dough. After only 20 minutes in a warm oven it rose beautifully once again:

And after 45 minutes of baking voila, a beautiful loaf of sprouted grain sandwich bread.

Ezekiel, eat your heart out.

Flour Girl: Ciabatta

Ciabatta is probably one of my favourite white breads. It has a crust that is soft but toothsome and a crumb that is moist and chewy.

It makes a perfect bread for a panino. These loaves didn’t quite make it that far. Matt brought one to share with his staff and the other two we gobbled up over the course of 2 days : /

That’s usually how it goes with the homemade bread at my house.

I’ve made ciabatta a few times in the past. This is the first time I think I really got the hang of the shaping method, so they actually do look like ciabatta.

The basic dough is traditional, made with the basic 4: flour, yeast, water, and salt. It starts with a pre-ferment made of the same ingredients (minus salt) a day in advance. The preferment gets the yeast working and helps to really develop the flavours of the final dough. When a dough is made with only the basic 4 the fermentation process is crucial to imparting flavour on the final loaf.

The ratio of water to flour of ciabatta dough is very high, so the dough itself is quite wet and sticky. It’s best to knead it right in the bowl.

The dough is both proofed and shaped through a series of stretching, folding, and resting. I let the dough proof for extra long this time (about 5 hours) before baking. In my cold house that was entirely necessary.

And voila, my best ciabatta yet.

Fall Fun Weekend

In spite of the very warm and sunny weather this weekend that is more typical of early summer than mid-autumn I had a characteristically fall weekend filled with fallen leaves, pumpkin picking, beer and baking.

I was extremely excited when I came across this at the LCBO on Saturday:

Pumpkin Ale! Last weekend they were all sold out and told me they wouldn’t be getting any more in stock. I was so excited when I saw this one that I dished out $9 of Matt’s money for a bottle just to try it.

And it sucked.

One sip and I was done with it. It was too strong, too bitter, too hoppy. I was expected something more like a pumpkin lambic. This beer was an utter failure and unfortunately most of it ended up down the drain.

On a brighter note, Matt and I also went to pick out some pumpkins from Mr Goodlawn for decoration/eating. I had never been to their farm before (which is owned by a friend of ours) so I was really impressed by the awesome Hallowe’en set-up they have going on there with haunted houses, creepy props, and tonnes of pumpkins. I can’t believe I forgot my camera! I took a few pictures of the pumpkins on the stoop.

Let’s just call the dead leaves on my porch ‘festive’.

The green one is apparently the best for cooking so once Hallowe’en is over I’ll have to come up with something really creative to make with it (and by really creative, I mean pumpkin pie).

And speaking of baking. . .

My Nonna’s birthday is tomorrow. She will be 87 years young and she’s still going strong. What do you get for an 87 year old who has everything? Panettone.

I spent Saturday baking this beauty as her present:

Yes ladies and gents that beauty is straight from the Menzies’ oven (and onto the Menzies porch)

For anyone who doesn’t know what panettone is I feel bad for you. It’s my favourite festive bread (yeast cake? coffee cake? loaf of deliciousness?) . It’s a sweet bread that originated in Milan and is eaten by Italians primarily at Christmas time. It’s made with butter and eggs and a touch of sugar and is filled with orange-peel and raisins that have been soaked in rum. It’s as good as it sounds.

With the success of this bread I think I’m going to be making a lot more loaves for the Christmas holidays coming up.

Nonna certainly liked it.

flour girl: Crispy Crusts

So you go to the bakery and you buy a delicious loaf of bread. You’re barely out the door when you decide to rip into it because the aroma is so enticing. The crust is firm and crispy and cracks as you break into the loaf. The crumb is soft and chewy with nice big air pockets. How do they get the loaf to come out like that?

It’s surprisingly not very difficult to replicate this at home. Bakeries may have ovens that can get much hotter than yours, and they may be equipped with steamers, but these are all things that you can replicate at home.

Hearth-style baking involves breads that are not baked in a loaf pan in a very hot oven. You can replicate this by inserting a thick baking stone into your own oven and placing the loaf on top of the stone to bake. The stone improves heat retention that is necessary for that crispy crust that you’re looking for.

Professional bakeries have devices blast steam into the oven at regular intervals during the first 5 to 10 minutes of baking, and then subsequently stop producing steam to create a dry environment. Steam will condense on the dough’s surface keeping the outside of the loaf moist and flexible thus delaying the hardening of the crust. This allows the bread to rise for a longer time period in the oven creating large uneven holes in the crumb. Once the steam runs out and the oven is dry the crispy crust is able to form. Additionally, the moisture from the steam dissolves sugars in the dough so when the oven stops producing steam during the second half of baking the moisture evaporates leaving sugar on the dough’s surface to create the brown crust.

You can do this at home by using a steam bath with just a cup of water and a metal baking pan:

• Place a cast iron (or other metal) pan in the cold oven directly above or below the shelf where the bread will be placed (depending on the size of your oven). Don’t use glass or ceramic because you’ll end up crying to your husband that you broke your favourite green Le Creuset baking dish. Trust me.
• Preheat the oven to 50 – 100 degrees F above the required baking temperature with the empty steam pan inside.
• Place the bread on the baking stone.
• While wearing oven mitts add 1 cup of hot or simmering water to the steam pan and close the oven door immediately. (Avoid using ice cubes or cold water which will bring down the temperature of the oven.)
• Reduce oven temperature to the recommended baking temperature.
• Do not open the oven door during the first 10 minutes of baking. After that you can open the oven to rotate your loaf 180 degrees and remove the steam pan if there is still water left in it.

This method of hearth baking with a baking stone and steam pan can be used on any number of different types of breads. It is usually used for breads that aren`t enriched with butter or oil and are primarily flour, water, yeast and salt, such as french bread, ciabatta, sourdough, pugliese, pain a l’ancienne, etc.

Check out some recipes where you can use this technique:

• Sprouted Grain Hearth Bread
• French Baguette
• Poolish Ciabatta