Bread For Sabbath

I know I have not posted in a while, but I have been reading the introduction to ‘Whole Grain Breads’, and getting comfortable with Peter Reinhart’s style of baking before I start!  In the meantime, I have been baking and here is a picture of the bread that just came out of the oven!!!

Sunflower Raisen and Potato Garlic Herb

The following recipe makes enough dough for at least 4 one pound loaves.  I made 2 loaves from each recipe because I wanted bigger loaves and I wanted my oven on as little as possible!!

Recipe adapted from ‘Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes A Day’  by Jeff Hertzberg, M.D., and Zoe Franqois

Herbed Potato and Garlic Bread

3 cloves Garlic

3 1/2 C Spelt Flour

3 C Whole Wheat Flour

1/4 C ground Flax seed

1 t herb mixture of your choice

1 1/2 T granulated Yeast

1 T Kosher Salt

1/4 C Vital Wheat Gluten

1 large Potato raw and cut into 1/4inch cubes (clean but don’t peel)

3 1/2 C lukewarm Water

Mixing and storing the dough: Wisk together the flours, flaxseed, herbs, yeast, salt, and vital wheat gluten in a 5qt bowl or lidded food container.  Add the potato, water and garlic and mix with wooden spoon till all ingredients are combined!  The dough will be very wet and sticky…too sticky to knead and that’s ok, because this is a ‘No Knead’ method.  Cover (not airtight) and allow dough to rest at room temperature until it doubles in size.  Approximately 2 hours depending on the temp of your house.

The dough can be used immediately after it’s inital rise, or stored in the fridge for later use.  It is easier to handle if it is stored in the fridge first, but I have done it either way.  You can refrigerate it for up to 10 days, but the longer it is in the fridge, the more sour the flavor will be.  I like to use it right away, because I don’t like the sour flavor.

On Baking Day:  Dust the surface of the refrigerated dough with flour and cut off desireable loaf size.  Dust the piece with more flour and quickly shape into a ball by pulling it down and around with both hands rotating a quarter turn as you go.  Leave as a ball (which is called a boule), or elongate into a narrow oval for more of a loaf shape.  Dust the top of the loaves with flour and score the loaves to allow for expansion while raising and baking  Allow dough to rest on a well floured bread board or parchment paper lined sideless cookie sheet for 30-40 min while oven is heating to 450 degrees.  Place the baking stone on the bottom rack of your oven for preheating.  Once your oven is up to temperature, slide the bread onto the hot stone and pour a cup of water into and empty pan that is in the oven to create steam for the crust on the loaves.  (make sure the steam pan is NOT GLASS)  Bake for about 30-35 min, until richly browned and firm.  If you have an instant read thermomitor, it should read between 190 and 200 degrees when inserted into the middle of a loaf.  This is how you know the inside of the loaf is done cooking.  Take the bread out of the oven and cool on rack for an hour or more so that the bread can finish baking and cool before you cut into it!

Whole Wheat Flatbread

I made flatbread last night for supper!  We had a family from my MOMS group over for supper who just had a little girl a few weeks ago, and instead of taking them dinner, I had them over for dinner!  We had a very nice time, and the flatbread with falafels and hummus was very good!!  Just thought I would share the photo’s with you! (This bread was made with the basic recipe from ‘Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes A Day’)

Artisan Bread in 5min a day!

For some reason whenever I make this bread…it turns out kinda flat, and never gets the nice golden color like it did for my friend Rachel at www.alittlebitofzest.blogspot.com.  Now I did do about half whole wheat, and maybe that’s my problem, but I want it to puff up nice and get the real artisan look!! 

Below are the pictures of the process…I am still trying to figure out a good and easy way to post pictures and instructions, so bear with me!!  The first two pictures are of the bread rising in the cupboard and the others are pretty self explanatory.  I will keep trying to get the nice browned and crispy artisan look and feel, but in the meantime…my husband told me that he would buy this bread and that it is very good!

Week #1 Power Bread

Power Bread is the kick-off recipe for baking my way through Peter Reinhart’s book ‘Whole Grain Breads’.  It happens to be the kick-off recipe because I don’t actually have his book yet, and this is just one of the recipes from the book that I was able to find online!!  So without further ado…

I started on Sunday by putting raisins, flax-seed and water in a container to sit out overnight on the counter.  That is called the Pre Soaker. (didn’t get a picture of that)

Monday morning, I blended up the Pre Soaker and added flour and salt.  This is called the Soaker and it sat out all day Monday and overnight.

Monday I also made what is called the Biga.  It is water, flour, salt and yeast.  I mixed this up and put it into the fridge for the rest of the day and overnight.  Malachi helped me with this part.

On Tuesday as soon as I got up, I took the Biga out of the fridge so that it would be at room temperature when I started working with it.  I added the Soaker to the Biga along with the rest of the ingredients and made the Final Dough.

It was very sticky, so I had to add some flour!!

Finally got it from sticking to my hands and now it is ready to rise.

Once doubled in size, it is ready to form into loaves to raise again.

Then it’s ready for the oven…and this is where it gets complicated…The recipe says to bake till nicely browned and internal temperature reads 195 F.  Well the outside was nicely browned but the internal temperature was only like 150 F.  So I took the bread out of the pans and placed them directly on the rack of the oven attributing to an even darker outer crust.  I finally got the internal temperature up to within 10 degrees of where it should be and called it good! 

The results are pretty good, but I will figure out next time how to cook it a little more evenly so that the top doesn’t brown before the internal temperature is where it should be.

I will make this recipe again…hopefully with a little different result!!

Whole Grain Bread Adventure

I have been inspired by a number of other bloggers to bake my way through a book by Peter Reinhart called ‘Whole Grain Breads’.  I am very excited about my new adventure and am hoping to stay on track with one new recipe per week. (give or take a week…because life happens) 

I don’t even own the book yet, but have read such great reviews that I have already started a recipe that I found online!  I will be finishing the bread tomorrow and will post the pictures and descriptions when it is finished!!  I hope you will come along with me on this adventure and we’ll see where it leads.