sweet bread dough

I hope every one had a lovely Christmas and a Happy New Year!  Quiet was happened for me which I have to admit is my favourite.  New Year's Eve was movies and tea.  There was a bit of sparkling wine with a nice steak and salad.  To me, it was about perfect.

There were a lot of experiments last week and over the weekend.  Which I will get to.  But the one thing I discovered when I made the St Lucy's buns that I am still itching from, is a lovely sweet bread dough.  It is nice to have a go to sweet bread dough.  Again, from the tome.  This dough works really well with sourdough.  Since I only do sourdough, pretty huge.  

I made it into cinnamon rolls and punky monkey bread.  The monkey bread started to be called funky punky monkey bread.  And then it started to get called zombie bread because of the reactions it was getting.  It was like zombies going after brains.

I am getting ready to try panettone next.  I am making the candied citrus peel for that.  It would help if it did not get thrown out.  I have helping hands.  Which is a good reason to have a sweet bread dough that I can use as a guideline.

sweet bread dough

Note:  Modified from The Nordic Cook Book to use sourdough and a bit of whole wheat flour.

sourdough starter

100 grams water

100 grams flour

320 ml / 1 cup 5 tablespoons milk

150 grams butter

1 tablespoon cardamom

1 egg

125 grams sugar

1 teaspoon salt

250 grams whole wheat pastry flour

500 grams all purpose flour

Eight hours or the night before, mix the starter, 100 grams flour, and 100 grams water in a large bowl.  Cover.  When it is bubbling, take out a portion for next time.

To the starter, add the milk, butter, cardamom, egg, and sugar.  Mix well.  Mix in half the flour.  Cover and let rest for about an hour or an hour and a half.  It should be bubbling and the consistency of pancake batter.

Mix in the salt.  Mix in about half of the last of the flour to make a soft dough.  It may be very soft.  Turn out on a clean surface and use the last of the flour to knead until smooth.  You might need a bit more. 

Put into a clean bowl and let rise for one hour.  Take it out.  Flatten into a rectangle.  Fold the long side of the dough into the middle, and repeat with the opposite side.  Fold the ends toward the center.  Gather it up into a cubish round and put back into a bowl.  Cover.  Repeat this process three times.

At this point, I sometimes need to put the dough into a ziploc and put it into the refrigerator until the next day.  It works well.

If you refrigerate it, the next day let the dough come to room temperature.

Shape and fill the bread anyway you please.  The middle picture is the zombie bread.  Above is cinnamon rolls.  Put the shaped dough in the correct pan for shape with the pan buttered and lined with parchment paper.

Let rise until puffy.

The oven temperature will depend on shape.  Higher for smaller and a shorter bake time.  Longer bake and lower temperature for larger loaf.  Most loafs I bake at 350 degrees Farhenheit for an hour.

Whatever you make of it, this is a good sweet bread.  Have fun!

Yes, Chef!

Koda Bear and I were mixing up bread dough this afternoon.  He was talking to me about how wet it was and then I added the flour.  He asked me what it should be like and I said it should be pancake batter.

Koda Bear, who only wishes to eat fish and chips (halibut is preferred), wanted pancakes for dinner.  The planned loaf of bread became the pancakes.  Pancakes even fed company!

I was making oatmeal bread so I was not sure how these pancakes were going to turn out.  I was pleasantly surprised  I  served them with sugared berries instead of syrup.  Everyone seemed very pleased and no one went away hungry.  I would say that was successful.  And Koda Bear did not eat his weight in fish!

Now, particulars.  These are yeasted pancakes.  There is no other leavening.  I have mentioned it before but I do not really like the taste of baking powder.  I would have used baking soda here because of the sourdough but I still do not like the flavour.  I also do not like cakey pancakes.  These are much less cakey.  With the leftover batter, I added some more makings and have dough rising for bread.  Two for one is about my speed right now.  

oatmeal pancakes

Note:  if you want a cakey pancake, add 1 teaspoon baking soda to the batter.  I was working with Koda Bear on this.  He really likes the scale but we were more in a dump mode which is why the volumes.  I also do a lot of bread by feel and eye anymore. 

sourdough starter

3/4 cup water

1 cup flour

1 cup flour

1 cup old fashioned rolled oats

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

2 cups flour 

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup melted butter

butter for frying.

In a large bowl hours before needed, mix the sourdough, 1 cup flour, and 3/4 cup water together.  Let sit covered until bubbly.  Reserve a couple tablespoons and store in the refrigerator for next time.

To the starter, mix in the rest of the water, the oats, and the brown sugar.  Give it a good stir.  Mix in the eggs.  Mix in the flour.  It should be the consistency of a thick pancake batter.  Cover, and let sit at least one hour.  

After the hour, the batter should be bubbly and you should be able to see the gluten stretching.  Heat a frying pan or griddle of medium low heat.  When hot, melt butter on it.

Mix in the salt.  Mix in the butter.

I used a third cup measure to pour the batter on the pan.  Wait until bubbles have formed and popped, and the top is dry looking before flipping.  There should be some golden brown.  Flip and cook the other side for a minute or two or until there is some brown.  I fry these on cast iron which continues to heat.  I have to slowly turn the heat down as I fry pancakes.  I get three in my pan at a time.

Fry pancakes until the batter is gone or bellies are full.  Extra pancake batter can be stored in the refrigerator or made into bread.

I served these with sugared berries.  You could use maple syrup but Koda Bear did not need that.  I was thinking that I would have also liked roasted apples with cinnamon and ginger.  But the heat index was 109 degrees Fahrenheit today so roasting apples was not high on the list.  Maybe when it cools off.  

The title of the post is due to Koda Bear starting to say "Yes, Chef!" everytime I asked for his help.  It made me laugh.  

playing with lamination

Putting hands in dough is always a good place for me.  I really want to be able to make a nice naturally levained croissant and have in the past.  But people swear by the Tartine Bread book.  I am not sold.  But I thought to give it a try again.  In that book, yeast is used but the flavor should be right.  Part of the levaining is actually sourdough/levain.

The first try was disasterous.  Over baked and the kouign amman I made by using another recipe that said start with a croissant dough was awful.  My tastes have become less American.  I like salt and the American recipe I used was too salty.  I composted the end result.  Which I really do not do with bread.  But am I willing to just give up?  No.  So I tried again.

The croissants were not bad.  The end bits I faked into a kouign amman type pastry.  I think I will go looking for another starting point.  But then maybe that is really not fair.  I have never liked any recipe I have tried from the Tartine Bread book.

I am odd.  I need to buy more butter.  I thought I was going to be out of town last weekend but that did not happen so maybe this weekend more lamination can take place between stitching for the Maker's Market.

mjukbrod or mjukstut or trunnbrod = Swedish flatbread

I will admit that I watch too many cooking shows, too much science fiction, and too many romantic comedies that include bullets and explosions.  Too many cooking shows that I try new things.  I personally like the ones that come from PBS the best but that does not mean I do not enjoy the rest.

Watching Mind of the Chef on Neftlix, Magnus Nilsson was featured.  I own his most recent tome.  I am very particular about the cookbooks I won because usually they are just a waste of space and I hope to down size to less the 556 square feet someday soon.  I do plan to have a separate art/textile studio.  He, his Mom, and Aunt made a traditional Swedish flatbread during one episode. 

Now, I am quite fond of potato lefse which is part of my heritage.  We have even been using it in the place of tortillas.  This Swedish one I had to try.  It is yeasted.  It has spices in it I like.  It is a flatbread. 

Yummy!  I have actually been asked to have this in the house every week now.  It has taken the place of all tortillas in the household.  The day I make it is the day we have salmon fish tacos.  I have started making chipolte aioli as well and the combination is soul satisfying.  One of those meals where you take a bite and sigh over the goodness.  The flavors just all go well together. 

I changed the recipe to use sourdough and I cut it in a quarter.  The biggest thing I did was figure out what was meant in the recipe.  It is not the most clearly written recipe I have come across.  It does have a couple speciality ingredients and it is done by weight.  Weight is easy but I find it is easy when you have a good scale.  A good digital scale is huge.  I was gifted with a MyWeigh scale and it has made a huge difference.  Also, the original recipe specifies two different styles of rolling pins.  These can be made without them but it is a heritage thing for me.

mjukstut

sourdough starter

3/4 cup milk

188 grams of a mix of whole wheat and rye flour

3/4 cup milk

63 grams of butter, room temperature

70 grams of golden/light agave (or golden syrup)

3/4 teaspoon ground aniseed

3/4 teaspoon ground fennel seed

1/4 teaspoon ground coriander seed

1/2 teaspoon baker's ammonia

3/4 teaspoon salt

438 grams wheat flour

The night before, in a large bowl mix the sourdough, 3/4 cup milk, and 188 grams of rye/wheat flour.  Cover and let sit until bubbly.  Take a bit of the bubbly mixture out for you next baking.

Into the bubbly mixture, mix the 3/4 cup milk, room temperature butter, agave, aniseed, fennel seed, coriander seed, baker's ammonia, salt, and 400 grams of the wheat flour.  Mix this very well.  Once it comes together, start kneading in the rest of the flour (38 grams).  The dough should be smooth but very soft, easily sticky as the kneading continues.  Cover and let rise until double.

Once double, tip the dough out and portion out into balls.  The first time, I made 8 portions. The second time 13.  It all depends on what size you wish the final flatbread to be.  Cover and let rest for 25 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 500 degress Fahrenheit with a pizza stone in it or a cast iron pizza pan.  Or just a pizza pan.  Some type of heavy baking sheet.

Flour the work surface generously.  This can be a sticky dough.  Roll out into a round.  For a soft flatbread, roll out to 1/8 of an inch thick.  For a hard flatbread, like a cracker, roll out as thin as you can.  Traditionally, the bread is rolled out first with the ridged rolling pin.  Then the rolling is finished with the knobbed pin.  Heritage thing, it is fun to have.  The pins are not needed though.  Brush off any excess flour.

Place the flatbread in the oven on the baking sheet.  Bake until bubbling and golden.  There may be some char around the edges.  I find about two minutes in my oven is correct.

Once they are cool, bag in plastic to keep them soft.  If left in the air, no matter what thickness, they do become brittle (hard). 

Right out of the oven, they are pretty fantastic with a smear of very good butter.  Because of the spices used, there is a sweetness to them that is quite lovely.  Goes well with the fish and chipolte aioli in fish tacos!  They have a tendency to contain the most interesting items in this house but then that is why I have been requested to make them every week!

enjoying my Christmas present to myself

I bought myself a cookbook about bread baking at Christmas for myself.  I think I did pretty well because in total I think I went to four different bookstores at Christmas.  I went shopping by myself.  I went shopping with my Mom.  Everyone gets books in their stockings in our family.  And I was tempted by the Bien Cuit baking book by Zachary Golper.  

I have had so much fun using his techniques and my bread is getting lighter.  Even though I am not using any active dry yeast at all.  The techniques definitely help but I am find that the baking by weight gives me a starter that I like the consistency of better.  Also, I have been being heritage flour that has been shipped to me so that the weight measure is much more accurate due to how packed down the flour is when it arrives.

The technique lets me actually have a dough to work with compared to the no-knead recipes or even the Tartine recipe that many people swear by.  I do bake the bread so that the crust is not hard and crispy.  That is something that I get asked repeatedly not to do.  My whole family, no matter age or generation, hate eating bread that has the possibility to cut their mouths.  I can live with that if I can bake bread.  And with the recipes creating a dough, my hands are in dough much longer.

Simple things, better bread.

More toast.

More joy!

I am going to start tweaking a few of the recipes to add more flavors.  I am thinking cardamom or cinnamon rolls from the pane dolce and if I can figure out croissants . . .  

More bread!