Still Baking Bread

I was nominated to bring bread to a potluck last week, so I contributed two loaves.   The back loaf is my regular whole wheat bread, which I posted about back in 2008.  The front loaf is a version of the no-knead artisan bread which has been making the rounds for years.  Jack sent me a recipe for it recently, and I tried it with 2 cups whole wheat flour and 1 cup white flour, plus 1 1/2 tablespoons gluten flour.  It was very good, and was by far the favorite of the dinner guests.

Today I'm making it with all whole wheat flour, and a little more gluten. It's looking good so far.

Cauliflower Flatbread

This was one of the strangest, silliest things I've ever made, but it was surprisingly tasty, so I thought I'd memorialize it here.

I've been avoiding sugar, white flour, and the like (also, red meat) for the last month. That's pretty easy: Just make different foods. We make curries and salads instead of sandwiches and pasta dishes. I'm not the kind to seek out special products (low-carb bread?!) or recipes to mimic the things I'm not eating. But I stumbled upon a paleo diet blog while looking up the nutritional content of something or other, and it had a recipe for cauliflower pizza.

The internet, it turns out, is teeming with recipes for cauliflower pizza.

The idea stuck in my head, and finally I just decided to try it.

Basically, the cauliflower gives structure to the ... well, it's not a dough at all — more of a malleable paste. Cheese provides most of the flavor and browning. And egg holds it together. I didn't expect each slice would stay in one piece, but it does.

Reading these two posts helped me: The Lucky Penny and Closet Cooking. I didn't squeeze the water out of the cooked cauliflower, though I'll try that next time. I won't recreate the entire recipe here — read their blogs — but here are the proportions I used:

1/2 small head of cauliflower, grated on a box grater, about 2 1/2 cups before nuking
4 oz cheese (I used cheddar because we have a lot of it, with a little Parmesan)
1 pinch salt
1 egg
1 t Italian herbs

I put goat cheese, roasted red pepper strips and marinated artichokes on it, and baked it on my Silpat, which was perfect, for about 35 minutes (it was very thin) at 400 degrees.

I couldn't bring myself to call it pizza, because, well, no, but I think flatbread is a reasonable term. It's very cheesy and really fun to make.

Broa

Broa is a Portuguese yeast cornbread. I've eaten it in the Azores and made it a few times from Jean Anderson's The Food of Portugal. This loaf turned out especially well. I served it for the first course of a dinner with the neighbors, accompanied by Iberico cheese and Black Olive Pate.

Broa

Make a sponge by mixing 1 package dried yeast, 1/3 cup stone-ground cornmeal, and 1/4 cup warm water. Let work for about 40 minutes. I do this first step in the bread maker, and then add these remaining ingredients:

2/3 cup stone-ground cornmeal

1/2 cup warm water

1/2 cup scalded milk, or reconstituted evaporated milk

1 tablespoon olive oil

Scant teaspoon salt

2 1/2 cups unbleached flour (more or less depending on humidity)

Mix and knead in bread maker, and let rise until puffy. Form a round loaf and let rise in a greased pie pan for 20 or 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 475 degrees--get it really hot!-- turn down to about 425 when you put the loaf in and then bake for 30 or 35 minutes. Remove from pan and let cool on rack.

For the Olive Pate: Wrap a whole head of garlic in a a double layer of aluminum foil and bake for an hour at 300 degrees. Let cool, and then squeeze out the softened garlic into food processor bowl. Add 1 cup pitted Kalamata olives and some fresh black pepper and puree. Serve with bread.

Corned Beef and Cabbage

I didn't do anything very fancy with this. I just boiled the corned beef, cooked the carrots and potatoes separately, and added the cabbage for the last 25 minutes--too long, but some people like soggy cabbage. It was flavorful and sort of homey and satisfying. I served horseradish and mustard with it. As usual, I mixed the horseradish with yogurt--it makes a perfect simple sauce.

I made Irish Soda Bread for the first time--I used the Joy of Cooking recipe--and we decided to have it for dessert because it was sweet. This version was a quick bread, sort of like banana bread with raisins instead of bananas. The traditional caraway seed made it interesting.

Bread No. 1 in a Convection Oven

This is my first loaf of bread in the new oven. It's a convection oven, which I've never used for bread before. I used a plain old pizza stone on the rack. I set it to 500 degrees, which the oven automatically adjusted down to 475 because the convection is faster and more efficient.

The crust got quite brown; I haven't decided if it's too brown yet. But the loaf is wonderfully light in weight and crinkly and evenly baked, so I think with some experimentation this will be positive.

I used my go-to recipe for basic, accessible (by which I mean a little softer) European white bread, which is based on Peter Reinhardt's Italian bread recipe and is almost identical to my pizza dough recipe. Really, it basically is my pizza dough recipe, except that I make a sponge the day before, pretty wet, with 1/2 t of the yeast and half the flour (2.5 cups) and over half the water. I use only 1 T of olive oil in the final recipe instead of 3, but otherwise it's about the same. Makes two lovely loaves or four home-sized pizzas. The second half of the dough is in the freezer awaiting its fate.

I am dreaming about your olives, by the way, Mom. They were so good. Wish we had an olive tree here.

Birthday Dinner

Dad and I collaborated on my birthday dinner last night. We had Crab Louis, Stromboli Bread, Golden Mushroom Soup, and two cute little desserts Dad picked up at AJ's. And Dad stayed up late and did all the dishes!

I saw this Stromboli Bread in a bread cookbook. I made my regular French bread dough (3 cups white flour) with the addition of 2 tablespoons of olive oil and let it rise; rolled it out to about 8 by 14 inches; sprinkled it with a mixture of Swiss cheese cubes, shredded parmesan, chopped ham, 2 cloves garlic, and a handful of chopped basil; rolled it up starting at the short end and brushed it with olive oil, then sprinkled on salt, pepper, and chopped rosemary; then poked holes in it before baking it without a second rising at 400 degrees for an hour. It was good-looking and delicious.

Pappadums in the Microwave

This was fun. I had fried Indian papad disks (made with garbanzo flour) in oil before, but it was messy and caloric. Somewhere I read that they could be microwaved, so I searched the web and found many forms of advice. Here's one: http://www.geocities.com/rananegro/papad.html

I made a few at 23 seconds per side, and Dad cooked the rest. They were a delicious and exotic alternative bread with our meal of Shanghai tofu salad and snow peas stir-fried with mushrooms.

NY Times: Southern Cooks Use Premade Biscuits

And some of the best barbecue joints serve canned sweet potatoes and flavorless storebought dinner rolls. Just because these foods have authentic uses doesn't mean they're any good.

I sure do want to try some Sister Schubert rolls now, though.

Enchiladas and Beans

We cooked our standard comfort food yesterday: green chile enchiladas and beans. Tonight we had pulled pork, sweet potatoes, and ratatouille over at Grandma's. It's cold here. At 50 degrees, our thoughts turn to all-day oven dishes.

However, the real purpose of this post is to share that flatbread recipe you asked for.

Brown Rice Flour Flatbread

3/4 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup blanched almonds
3/4 cup mixed gluten-free flour mix
1/2 teaspoon anise seed
2 tablespoons sesame seed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon xantham gum

Process above ingredients in a food processor until finely ground.

1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 egg
1/2 cup water

Mix yogurt, olive oil, egg, and water in a measuring cup. Add to processor bowl and process for about 30 seconds to make a sticky batter.

Spray a baking sheet with non-stick spray, or line with parchment paper.

Scoop the dough out onto the baking sheet into two lumps. Pat into flat round cakes with the help of a little additional rice flour. Slash the tops of the cakes in a grid pattern, 1/4 inch deep. Bake at 400 degrees for about 25 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

Cooking Fish with Eva

Here's another meal we made together last week: red snapper with charmoula, green beans, and gluten-free flatbread.

I liked this flat round of unleavened bread made of brown rice flour, gluten-free baking flour mixture, egg, yogurt, and baking soda. It didn't try to mimick yeast bread, but was flavorful and slightly crunchy. It's from The Wheat-Free Cookbook by Jacqueline Mallorca.

Lamb Stew and Bread

Coming soon: thorough documentation of my first home sausage-making experiment.

For now, though, there's just this lamb stew (two lamb shanks, onions, carrots, potatoes, parsley, etc.) and homemade multi-grain bread (white flour, wheat flour, cornmeal, oatmeal, wheat gluten, honey, yogurt, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, etc.)

I'll be back late Monday with sausage tales.

Eating in the New Year

This whole January 1st meal was a New Year's resolution: pasta e fagioli (I used black-eyed peas for good luck); low-gluten bread; and a very fresh green salad.

Recently I've been making a very satisfactory bread of 1/3 unbleached wheat flour, 1/3 whole spelt flour, and 1/3 gluten-free baking mix and cornmeal. This recipe wouldn't work for anyone actually allergic to wheat, but it's a very digestible compromise for us.

And aren't Dad's winter salad greens gorgeous?

Naan

We made some Indian food while Mark was here, including a batch of naan. Very easy, with full flavor even though it only took a few hours. The yogurt gave it a nice complexity.

I used my KitchenAid dough hook for this one. The dough is easy to work with, probably because of the fat in the yogurt and the oil.

Adapted from Joy and a few Indian recipes, naturally:

Naan

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 teaspoons yeast
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3/4 cup yogurt (A variety with some fat in it would be best. We are addicted to Seven Stars plain yogurt around here.)
• 1 tablespoon water

Preheat oven to as hot as it will go (550 in my case).

Mix, knead for 10 minutes, and let rise 1.5 hours, or more if refrigerated.

Separate into four pieces, roll into balls, and let rest 10 minutes. Preheat a thick pan if you don't have tiles or a baking stone already in the oven.

Roll out dough into strips or ovals about 10" long, 1/4" thick.

Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with poppy seeds or sesame seeds.

Slide into oven. I used a floured pizza peel.

Bake 6 to 7 minutes, until golden.

Bread Now Lost to the World

This is the best sourdough bread I've ever made. During the week of the local food challenge I started a recipeless sourdough starter using Anson Mills flour. It was funky and foul for several days, stinking up the whole kitchen, but by the end of the seventh day it was bubbly and sweet and made an exceptional loaf of bread.

Unfortunately, it will only ever make one loaf of bread, as I forgot to save any starter when I made the final dough. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I'll make another starter soon, I guess. I probably wouldn't have been able to keep this one going strong, anyway, since I'm not a daily or even a weekly baker.

In other baking news, for this week's Free Times I wrote about that glorious microwave chocolate cake recipe that made the rounds of the internet a few weeks ago. So fun! I love microwave chocolate cake.

Gluten-Free Adventures

Here's a picture of Mock Rye Bread--actually I did put a little rye flour in there--it was flavorful but more like cake than bread. Fine for toast, bad for a sandwich. I found that my Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook by Beth Hensperger had a whole chapter on gluten-free breads.

Tonight I made Quinoa Tabulli, quite a success. Dad provided parsley and green onions from the garden.

Southern Cornbread

I was never much of a fan of cornbread until I moved to South Carolina and learned about Southern cornbread. It's not cake-y at all -- no wheat flour, only cornmeal -- and has no sugar. It's crusty and crunchy and basic, as well as super-easy to make.

My recipe is modified slightly from traditional recipes in that it contains yogurt instead of buttermilk. I don't keep buttermilk around, but I always have some yogurt, so it's worked out this way.

I like coarse yellow cornmeal. Anson Mills is my favorite, but it's expensive, so lately I've been using Adluh and liking it fine. Sometimes I blend grits and cornmeal.

I should add that much of the cornbread I've eaten down here is not like this. I've had some very, very sweet homemade cornbreads, and plenty of people don't seem to like gritty, all-corn cornbread. But to me it's the only way.

Put 1 to 2 tablespoons of lard, bacon grease, or butter in a large cast iron skillet. Place in oven and preheat to 425 degrees.

Whisk together in one bowl:
- 1 and 1/2 cups cornmeal
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 scant teaspoon salt

Whisk together in another bowl:
- 1/2 cup yogurt
- 1 egg
- 1 cup milk

Combine without overmixing. When grease in skillet is sizzling hot, pour batter in and return to oven. Bake about 20 minutes and eat immediately.

Tonight I also added kernels from two ears of sweet corn we parboiled and froze last fall. It tasted a little freezer-burnt to me, but Lawson didn't think so, so I guess it was okay. Fresh sweet corn would be better.

Accidentally Great Multi-Grain Bread

This all started because Russell asked me for my standard whole wheat bread recipe. Here it is:

Whole Wheat Bread

3 cups whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons gluten flour
2 teaspoons honey
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ cup buttermilk
1 cup water
1 pkg. dry yeast

Mix and rise in bread machine on dough cycle. Shape loaf, let rise ½ hour. Bake at 400 degrees for 35 minutes.

***

This reminded me to make bread, since we were eating dry crusts of frozen leftover loaves at this point in our hectic week.

As I watched the bread mixing in the first stage, it seemed way too dry, so I added water until it seemed right. I went away until the bread machine beeped. I looked in--the dough was pasty and wet, a puddle of dough, really. I added some rolled oats and coarse corn meal to take up the excess moisture, and restarted the cycle. I went away again, and returned to find a slightly less sodden pile of dough in the bottom of the bread pan. Then the light bulb went off: I had forgotten the yeast. So I threw the dry yeast directly on top of the dough and set the machine for a third cycle and went away.

The dough became beautiful, rose with exuberance, and baked to a lovely loaf. By the way, I now usually use just a quarter teaspoon of sugar instead of the honey, so that I can bake the loaf in a hotter oven for a longer time. It develops more flavor that way.

Turkey Chowder and Dilly Casserole Bread

I find I'm using this blog to record old family favorites more during the winter and holiday season. This soup is the first and best thing we make with leftover turkey and broth. Grandma discovered it and many other great things in Casserole Treasury by Lousene Rousseau Brunner. My copy is dated 1964. I saw one at an used book sale last month.

The bread is a sort of seventies recipe that's very satisfying. The batter bread format is so forgiving. I substitute freely and it's always good--not exactly European-style artisan bread, but it has its place.

Hearty Turkey Chowder

1 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 teaspoon curry powder

Melt butter in large saucepan and sauté onion until transparent. Add curry powder and cook 2 minutes longer.

3 cups turkey or chicken broth
1 cup diced potatoes
1/2 cup diced carrots
1/2 cup sliced celery

Add broth, potatoes, carrots, and celery; bring to a boil, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes.

1 cup diced cooked turkey
1 teaspoon oregano
1 tablespoon minced parsley
1 14-ounce can evaporated milk

Add turkey, oregano, and parsley. Continue to simmer about 10 minutes longer, or until vegetables are just tender.

Stir in evaporated milk and cook until heated through. Do not boil.

Dilly Casserole Bread

1 cup cottage cheese
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon butter

Heat together until butter melts. Place in large mixing bowl.

1 cup flour (I use whole wheat, but any mixture of white or whole wheat is fine)
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
2 teaspoons dill seed
1 teaspoon dried dill weed, or 2 tablespoons fresh
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon dry yeast
1 egg

Add next 8 ingredients to mixing bowl. Beat at medium speed with electric mixer for 3 minutes. (I use a bread machine for all this. After the first rise I put the batter in a greased casserole.)

1-1/2 cups flour

Beat in remaining flour. Cover bowl and let rise until doubled, about 45 minutes. Stir down. Place dough in greased 2-quart casserole and let rise again, covered, for about 30 minutes. Bake at 350º for 30 to 40 minutes.

Southern Italy and the Southern US

On Sunday I made:

• Tuscan Baked Cannellini Beans with Rosemary and Garlic. The recipe came from the Jack Bishop Italian Vegetarian book you gave me for my birthday. It was awesome, although next time I will probably use the crockpot instead of the prescribed Dutch-oven-in-the-oven, because I would like my beans a little bit moister.


• Fennel and Orange Salad with Mint and Olives, also from the Bishop book. The taste was phenomenal, but I didn't like the size and shape of the orange and fennel pieces as dictated by the recipe -- the oranges were in big rounds, beautiful but hard to handle, and the fennel was in weird chunks.


• Piadina, a Roman flatbread I have probably mentioned before.
  


• Collards cooked for five hours with some smoked pork neckbones.

I liked the way the collards fit right in with the three Italian dishes. A very balanced meal, all in all.

More on collards very soon...

3.5-Grain Bread

Lawson gets really depressed by whole wheat bread.

He likes the various crusty white European loaves I make, and he likes all those storebought multigrain and honey wheat breads, which are pretty slim on actual whole wheat. True, some whole wheat can be cardboardy. But even the freshest, most wonderfully brown homemade whole wheat makes him kind of sad. Whole wheat tortillas, too. And whole wheat biscuits. So I don't make all-whole-wheat bread very often.

Because I don't want to either eat white bread or make Lawson sad all the time, over the past year I've been making bread out of varying combinations of good white flour and various other grains and seeds. The doughs are still built over several days, like good artisanal bread, with very little yeast or sugar and lots of liquid. But I add various things in hopes of upping their fiber and vitamin content. Wheat berries are fun -- I soak them separately and add them to the dough near the end of the kneading. 1/2 cup of coarse cornmeal or grits gives makes for the perfect amount of extra chewiness -- I use a little in most breads now. A little bit of oatmeal is good. And I play around with flax seeds, poppy seeds, and sunflower seeds. So far I haven't tried amaranth or barley or any of the myriad other grains out there, but I intend to.

Here's a typical recipe:

Mix 1 1/2 cups bread flour, 1/4 teaspoon yeast, and 1 cup water in medium bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and set in fridge for 1 day.

Add 1 1/2 cups bread flour and 1 cup water. Mix and return to fridge for a day.

Bring to room temperature. Add the following, mix, and knead thoroughly:

- 1/2 cup coarse cornmeal or grits
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/4 teaspoon yeast
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 2 teaspoons salt
- Water. Start with 3/4 cup and add more. I like very wet doughs.

You shouldn't have to knead all that much -- plenty of gluten should have developed over the first several days in the fridge.

Work in 1/4 cup flax seeds at end of kneading.

Refrigerate for one more day. Bring to room temperature again, gently shape into loaf, let rise, score, sprinkle with kosher salt, and bake at 450-500 degrees for 30 to 45 minutes. Baking stones are good. Baking in a preheated cast iron Dutch oven a
la Jeffrey Steingarten's explanation of Mark Bittman's explanation of Jim Lahey's technique is good. The important thing is to bake it as long as you can stand without burning it. It'll come out of the oven rock hard but will soften as it cools.

I have procured some white whole wheat flour; I'll report on my experiments and their reception.