Category Archives: Food & drink

02/8/14

Raisin and sourdough this week


raisin bread disasterWhile I haven’t tried to make a sourdough raisin bread yet, that idea occurred to me while I was making my latest breads, this week. I’m sure it would be a good mix, but I’ll have to build my levain up again, since I used all my countertop levain in yesterday’s bread (about 350g).

I still have a culture in the fridge, however, and will take some out to get it going in the warmer kitchen, today.

I made a medium-sized sourdough loaf, and two smaller raisin-cinnamon loaves, Friday. Somewhat ambitious of me, but with mixed results.

raisin bread disasterTwo? You ask. Yes, because my first loaf was a mess. It stuck in the pan and broke at the cinnamon-spread layer when I attempted to get it free of the pan. Very disappointing. I decided to try another while I still had the ingredients on the counter. I wanted to offer Susan a good-looking loaf, Saturday morning. Presentation matters.

I’m trying to determine the best way to make a raisin-cinnamon bread that combines the nicest combination of  texture, flavour and structure. I have the flavour down pretty well, and the texture is close, but in most of my efforts, the bread has de-laminated where the layers of cinnamon spread are rolled into the dough. Sometimes just a bit, sometimes more. An elegant structure eludes me somewhat.

raisin bread disaster

My first effort at raisin-cinnamon bread was a recipe from the 300 Best Canadian Bread Machine Recipes book. It combines everything in the machine, but used only a small amount of cinnamon (1 tsp). It didn’t make the bread very flavourful. While edible, it wasn’t spectacular.

I like more cinnamon, but because it’s a yeast inhibitor, I chose to put more (1 Tbsp) into a spread that could be used in a swirl in the bread itself.  I tried that in a bread a couple of weeks ago, with modest success. The idea works; the technique needs refinement.

I used molasses instead of sugar in the recipe, but otherwise used the book’s basic 1.5 lb. loaf recipe as presented for Friday’s loaves.

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02/3/14

Corn and other breads


Corn breadThe last loaf of January, 2014 was a machine-made corn bread, made using a recipe from Washburn’s & Butt’s 300 Best Canadian Bread Machine Recipes book that I’ve mentioned previously. It’s a good book for bread machine users.

Unlike my previous efforts to tinker with bread recipes, I used the basic, printed 1.5-lb. recipe without any alterations this time (not even in the salt). Medium crust setting, basic (white) bread menu selection. The results were good, if not spectacular.

The recipe calls for 1/3rd cup of cornmeal. I used a commonly-available, supermarket brand, the sort I often use for dusting pans, parchment paper and the pizza peel, to prevent sticking. However, it didn’t really give the bread a noticeable corn flavour or the mealy/gritty texture one expects in corn bread and muffins.

I later found a bag of Bob’s Red Mill medium grind cornmeal which is less refined and will likely impart more flavour next time I make this bread, and likely heighten the texture.

Bob’s Red Mill products are available at several local supermarkets. I don’t know what sort of cornmeal is available at the local Bulk Barn, but will check next time I’m there.

Corn breadThe bread came out with a nice, light and distinctly yellow crumb, consistent throughout the loaf and evenly cooked. It had a light top crust, but a bit crunchier side and bottom.

The flavour is pleasant – in part because the recipe called for an egg (and I had some free-range eggs on hand, which are always tasty), 1 tbsp honey, and 1/4 cup skim milk powder. These add to both the texture and taste.

We tried the bread with soup one day, and with beans-on-toast the next. The cornmeal makes for a crumb that doesn’t stay together as well as an all-wheat bread, so it has a tendency to break apart. It toasts well, however. This week we will likely finish the loaf with some four-bean chili (not, of course chili con carne, which is Texan, not a Mexican dish) one night for supper.

Next time I will try some variations with this bread, aside from using the better cornmeal. I will look up cornmeal recipes online, too, to see what amounts others recommend. I don’t know if 1/3rd cup is sufficient, or if additional cornmeal will make the crumb even more friable.

I may add some gluten flour to boost the stickiness; this may avoid the tendency for the bread to crumble. I may also try buttermilk instead of water and milk powder. I’d also like to try substituting agave syrup or even molasses for honey, and maybe even some Osprey bread flour (from the K2 mill in Beeton) for a portion of the unbleached white.
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01/23/14

Water, water, everywhere


K2 flour breadHydration matters. Not just to athletes and long distance runners. It matters to bakers. How much water is in your dough is crucial to how the crumb develops. It’s amazing how a few grams more or less of water can make a real difference in the resulting loaf of bread.

This week I did a little experiment that got me thinking about hydration. I made a loaf of bread in the machine using the “French” recipe and settings, (see my previous post about making French bread in the machine) but this time substituting the same volume of K2 organic bread flour for the called-for white bread flour. The result was a dense, misshapen loaf – tasty but not anywhere near the result I had expected. Very crisp crust. And I think hydration was the reason.

Or, more accurately, the lack of sufficient hydration for that kind of flour. But because the recipe is in volumetric measurements, not weight, the calculation of actual hydration is at best inexact. In future, I will have to measure then weigh the ingredients before mixing, to better understand the hydration percentage.

K2, by the way, is a small flour mill in Beeton Susan and I visited late last year. Great artisan products, and a bread market on Sundays. Worth taking a trip. I came home with 10lbs each bread flour and Red Fife flour.

Red Fife labelRed Fife is a Canadian heritage grain, a whole wheat flour I have only used minimally, but plan to experiment more with in the coming weeks. I do not know the exact protein percentage of either (although this NatPost article suggests Red Fife has lower protein, this report on a lab analysis suggests that’s not true: but that “the gliadin protein level is ~35% of this wheat’s overall gluten protein content. Wheat gluten’s insoluble proteins are gliadin and glutenin. This compares to ~80% gliadin protein levels found in a popular modern bread wheat.” And the nutritional label (see image on left) on this site suggests it’s actually higher protein that commercial AP or bread flours – 15%! Food With Legs site has a label that shows 13%. Harvest Hastings shows it at 13.4%, however… and if you wonder what the falling number of 340 cited is, see here and here*).

In my few tests, whole wheat flours and artisan blends tend to have different weights than the usual commercial bread or unbleached white flour I use. Plus the weight per cup changes depending on whether the flour is sifted or fluffed (or compacted).

My own per-cup weights are sometimes as much as 20% more than those shown in books and on sites for the weight of a cup of flour (typically 125-140 grams unsifted for AP flour, but I’ve weighed it over 160g). That would throw off the recipe’s hydration which is based on commercial all-purpose or bread flour (and a good reason to have recipes listed by weight, not volume).

By the way, Lime Leaves and Taste Buds says this about Canadian whole wheat flour, just adding to the reasons to buy artisan flours rather than commercial blends:

Even more disheartening is that fact that whole wheat flour sold in Canada is not necessarily whole grain due to a ridiculously outdated piece of 1964 regulation which allows millers to legally use “whole wheat” on the label despite their removal of up to 70 per cent of the wheat’s germ!!!

As a sidebar note, the K2 bread flour has a wonderful texture, a bit like having cornmeal added to the bread. That may lessen somewhat if there is higher hydration and longer fermentation time to soften it. However, I really liked the texture and flavour. But back to hydration…

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01/20/14

The Short and the Tall of It


Mixed yeast bread 01This past week saw several new experiments in my bread laboratory. Okay, it’s a kitchen, but sometimes it feels like a lab, what with all the tinkering and testing I do. I just can’t seem to stop trying new things in bread. It would fee even more science-like if Susan would let me buy the implements and tools I want.

First, however, the good news: my levain remains thriving and healthy. I have two batches now: one on the counter, the other in the fridge. The counter batch is used as a poolish right now; the fridge is the long-term colony.

I used most of the counter colony last week to make a mixed-yeast bread, based somewhat on a recipe in Peter Reinhart’s book, Artisan Breads Every Day. I’ve since restored the levain to fuller size by feeding, and will use it again this week for another mixed-yeast loaf; this one with some tweaks.

You can read some of Reinhart’s ideas about bread, poolish, hydration and cold fermentation here in this PDF file. Or check his blog for ideas and new recipes. I really enjoy Reinhart’s writing and recommend his books. There’s always something to learn in them.

The idea of mixing the two yeasts intrigued me. I’ve learned a lot about pore-ferments and cold fermentation since I started baking. Reinhart writes:

The use of old dough or pre-fermented sponges was developed by traditional bakers as a way of slowing down fermentation and, essentially, buying the dough more time to release its flavor (a result of starch molecules releasing some of their sugar and saccharide chains, as well as the formation of acids due to fermentation by yeast and bacteria). Some of these pre-ferments are wet and batterlike, while others are dry and firm; some are made with commercial yeast, while others use naturally occurring wild yeast (sourdough starters); some have salt, and some don’t. What they all have in common is the idea of adding older, slowly fermented dough to young, freshly made dough to instantly age it so that greater flavor can be developed in less time. This is an example of the manipulation of time by the manipulation of ingredients.

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01/12/14

Two more loaves, new lessons learned


Raisin breadFollowing up on my desire to make homemade raisin-cinnamon bread for Susan, I spent several hours collecting recipes online and entering their ingredients into a spreadsheet so i could compare them. Quite a range in the amounts of some (like cinnamon and sugar).

Then an Amazon order arrived, which included a 2012 book called 300 Best Canadian Bread Machine Recipes, by Donna Washburn and Heather Butt. Good book, lots of great stuff in it and many ideas to try.

And it’s by far the best bread machine book I’ve encountered. If you get it, be sure to read the introduction – these ladies know their stuff.

I decided to go with that book’s recipe, first, rather than cobble my own together. After all, the book is designed for Canadian bakers. Our flour is somewhat different from American flour (although some types are similar), so it’s nice to be able to bake something without fretting over adjustments to an American recipe.*

300BCBMR has two recipes for cinnamon-raisin bread I wanted to try: a basic one in four sizes (1.5, 2, 2.5 and 3 lb loaves – fifty of their breads have the four sizes listed; the rest one or two), and another called “Grandma’s Raisin Cinnamon Bread,” which includes an egg in the ingredients, and a slightly different mix of the rest. It also lists a 1.5 and 2 lb recipe for that variation. I decided to start with the basic, small size-loaf (10-12 slices), medium crust, sweet bread setting.

Of course, I can’t resist tinkering. Mad scientist runs through my veins. I should be a virologist.**

Raisin breadI changed the sugar called-for in the recipe to molasses (I pondered using agave syrup, but decided to save that option for a future loaf). Here I had to guess a bit: is the sugar content in 2 Tbs of granulated sugar the same as that in molasses? (No, actually, molasses has more, i found out later, but it also adds gobs of flavour).

I traded about 3/4 cup of the total unbleached flour for whole wheat. And I plumped the raisins first – soaked them in warm water before use. Several of the online recipes recommended this.

The molasses darkened the loaf, but otherwise didn’t do much to the taste (I may have used a little less than the sugar it called for – it isn’t as easy to pour or measure or get out of the measuring spoon as granulated sugar).

The whole wheat flour may have contributed to the bizarre shape/rise, and the plumped raisins likely made it a bit too moist for a proper rise. But I’m guessing here. The recipes all call for all-purpose or bread flour. I use unbleached white. I don’t see a difference in ingredients or protein content on the labels, but it could be in the amount of amalyse.

The loaf came out misshapen. The top looked like a 3D map of the Rockies. And one end didn’t fully reach to the end of the pan.

The crumb seems to have fully cooked, but it almost looked as if the top rose too much, then collapsed. I may have used a tad too little yeast, too. The plastic measuring spoons I have generate static, and I found after I added the yeast that some had adhered to the spoon surface. I didn’t think it was enough to make a difference, but it may have been. Note to self: get metal measuring spoons.

Taste is good, although not significantly different from commercial loaves. The crumb is slightly too chewy, according to Susan (I like it though), but the crust is good. I might turn it up to dark crust next time.

The cinnamon is muted and doesn’t come across as strongly as I had hoped. Not a bad bread – edible and very good toasted, but hardly presentable. Not sure if this is the machine or my tweaking.

I am unsure the machine (or any bread machine) can really mix the dough effectively. I’ve thought of removing the dough after the kneading cycle, pausing the machine, then fashioning the dough by hand with a bit of folding and stretching, and returning it to the pan for the rising and baking.

Next time: dry raisins, no whole wheat.

I may try to make a “swirl” bread which incorporates raisins and cinnamon sugar inside. Cinnamon is also a yeast inhibitor, like salt, so you have to be careful when adding it to the dough. This recipe called for 1 tsp, but I would prefer at least double that. Yet the recipe warned against adding more.

Making it by hand, in the oven, with a centre swirl, may be the solution. Use the bread machine for the dough setting only. Or just leave it in the cupboard.

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01/5/14

What, no raisin bread?


Cinnamon-raisin bread. Not mine, however.I have a large – and growing – stack of books about bread. So many that I’m running out of shelf space for them all. Some are for artisan bread, some for regular homemade bread (traditional recipes, usually with lots of kneading), others are for bread machines. A couple are generic “all-about-breads-of-the-world” books with recipes.

Yet only one of 15 has a recipe for making the basic raisin-cinnamon bread. This is a loaf I want to make in the bread machine on the timer, so next weekend we’d awake to fresh raisin bread, ready to toast.

There are all sorts of variations in the books; all sorts of recipes with either raisins or cinnamon, and a few with both. I have recipes for raisin sourdough, raisin rye, Chelsea buns, frosted raisin loaf cake, fruit and spice loaf, cinnamon buns, Greek Xmas bread, Greek Easter bread, hot cross buns, panettone, sticky buns, maritimer’s bread, stollen, ginger and raisin whirls, Polish babka, rum and raisin loaf, schiacciate con uva, cinnamon bagels, christopsomos, focaccia, lambrospomo,walnut-cinnamon bread, cinnamon raisin roll, cinnamon and cranberry bread, and others.

None of which is what I want, and on top of that, they’re all arranged for oven baking, not bread machine.

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