Solstice Stollen (22 of 42)

So now we are into the second half of our Challenge.  Matt is so excited about starting the second half that he decided to dance for us:


Kicking off the second half of the Challenge is the Solstice Stollen.  I personally think you ought to finish one holiday before you start on the next, so I waited until AFTER Thanksgiving before baking for the Solstice.

We had Thanksgiving here.  This is my turkey

We had a Thanksgiving brunch to watch the parade, and I used some Pumpkin Pie Brioche from last episode, which I had frozen, to make the Pistachio Twist, only I made it as sweet rolls.  It was much easier and no explosion!

For Thanksgiving dinner I made some loaves of the Seeded Oatmeal Bread that Michelle made last time (we also had turkey and trimmings, to go with the bread).

Both were great.

With Thanksgiving behind us it was time for the Stollen.  This is my second go at Stollen, I made it last Solstice.   Stollen is a rich German sweet bread containing nuts, dried fruit, and such--it gets its name from Stollen, a wooden post or prop; so called from its shape. 

Last time I used almond paste, this time I used marzipan.  I also used some whole wheat flour I had freshly ground  instead of the white whole wheat the recipe called for.  I only made a half recipe, it was right after Thanksgiving, but I used the full amount of cardamom.  In addition, while looking for the cardamom I came across some dried orange peel, which I threw in as well.  I think it added a nice flavor.

Last year I noted that instead of baking your own, you could get a Stollen from Zingermans for $36, plus $8.99 shipping. You still can, or you can get one from Williams-Sonoma for only 29.95, plus shipping.  With the marzipan and the dried fruit I figured that I had about $4 invested in my half batch, or $2 per loaf.  

I rolled out the dough, formed a "rope" of marzipan, and "S" folded the dough over the marzipan.  I used my 1x2 couche to keep the loaf from spreading too much.

It baked up nicely, and the marzipan formed a nice, but still off-center, tunnel.  

We were also tasked with using the dough to make muffins.  I cut some pieces of marzipan and formed the muffins around them.  These worked out well too. 

We particularly enjoyed the Stollen toasted, which brought out the flavors nicely.  

So that completes the first assignment of the second half of the Challenge.  

All of us here wish all of you a safe and happy Solstice. 

Pumpkin Pie Brioche Redux All Over Again (21 of 42)

  
This post is both a milestone and a watershed!

It is a milestone because it has been 1 year since Michelle kicked this whole adventure off with the First (unofficial) HB in 5 Post, which was also Pumpkin Pie Brioche.  Kind of a nice symmetry.  Kudos Michelle.  (I looked back at  My First (ever) Post.   I notice that I was much more terse then.)

It is a watershed because, of the "official" posts, this is number 21 of 42--half way!  It is all down hill from here.

You know, the English language is a funny thing, and it is interesting to me  how easily simple words can be misunderstood.  Last post I had a contest for a Morgan Shepherd Special Edition Ben's Mustard jar.  It is funny how many people thought it would still have the mustard in it.  But I ate that a long time ago.

Anyway, the winner was Judy of Judy's Bakery and Test Kitchen, and I used my discretion to award Michelle a jar as a special Founder's Prize for getting and keeping this whole thing going.  The jars will make lovely decorative accents for their kitchens. 

On to the baking.  Once again we were to make the Pumpkin Pie Brioche, which was fine with me because not only is it tasty, it is seasonal.  I went old style on this one, and used an heirloom organic pie pumpkin I purchased at the Farmers' Market.  I roasted it and then ran it through my potato ricer.  It worked out fine.  We were to make two breads with this:  Pistachio Twist and Fruit-filled Pinwheels.  Now I am the kind of guy who likes to use a belt sander to do the finish sanding.  So these were a bit fussy for me.


I started with the Pistachio Twist, which required rose water.  Really.  Being in for a penny, I got an 8.8 ounce bottle of rose water.  The recipe called for 2 1/2 teaspoons. Now there are 6 teaspoons in an ounce, so there are 52.8 teaspoons in my bottle of rosewater, which means that I have 50.3 teaspoons of the stuff left--enough to make 20 more batches of this bread.  Who knows, by then I might get it right.  And at least the stuff is not unhealthy--it has no fat, no sodium, no cholesterol and no calories.  Speaking of calories, did you know that it takes about 2200 calories of energy to make a can of diet pop, which of course has no calories (and no nutritional value)? 

Anyway, I started out fine with my Twist.  I mixed up the filling, rolled out the dough, spread on the filling, and rolled it up.  So far, so good.





But then the fussy part.  I should have quit while I was ahead.

To make the twist it was necessary to stretch out the log, to make it longer so that it could be twisted.  Since the dough was rolled to 1/8 of an inch, with the stretching the dough got really thin, and in some places  the filling started to poke through.  I perservered, and got the thing twisted.  I tried to tuck the exposed bits inside the twist.  It rose fine. 

 

But when I baked it, it erupted--a pastry Mt Vesuvius. 

Aesthetics aside this was not an entirely bad thing because I trimmed off the oozed filling and ate it--it was really good.  And the loaf tasted very good, which is what is important.

I plan to make this again (20 times, to use up my rose water) but will make sweet rolls or a more typical swirl bread and not roll the dough so thin or play with it so much.

From that fiasco it was on to pinwheels!

I tried rolling and cutting the dough and then moving it to the parchment paper, but the dough was too tender, so I rolled it and cut it directly on the paper.  I used a pizza cutter and it did not cut the paper.   I made squares, then diagonal cuts at the corners.  They looked like Maltese Crosses.  I put some flavored (light) cream cheese and some apricot jam in the middle, and folded alternate corners to the center. 








I let them rise, then brushed them with egg wash and decorated with an almond.  After The Great Twist Explosion I was concerned about leakage.  I got some, but not too much.   They actually turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself, though some of them started to unfold a bit.  But I think that added a certain wabi-sabi (the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection) appeal. 









I had some left over pumpkin brioche, which I used to make English Muffins.  These were pretty easy to make, but I also could have just made a loaf of Brioche.  Anyway, it seems to me that if you take an English Muffin or a slice of brioche, put on a little schmear  and some jam, you have the same effect as the Pinwheel without the Strum und Drang.  Now I do not mean to be anti-aesthetic, but in the words of Albert Einstein,  "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."  See also, Occam's Razor ("the simplest explanation is more likely the correct one").   So while these were interesting to make, I think you can get to the same place by a shorter and more direct road.  But then, as Robert Frost noted, it can make all the difference to take the road less traveled.  Which is why I have 50.3 teaspoons of rose water. 

So that ends the first year and the first half of the Official Braid.  In the words of Winston Churchill "this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

Tabbouleh Bread with Parsley, Garlic and Bulgar and Pear Coffee Bread (20 of 42)

As some of you may have gleaned from previous posts, I like Ben's Hot and Sweet Mustard. A lot. Well, apparently the feeling is mutual. Ben's ran a contest this summer, and I won! I won a trip for 2 to be the guests of Morgan Shepherd Racing at Lowe's Motor Speedway. My daughter Katie and I got all access pit and garage passes.  (On the way we stopped at Cabo Fish Taco for lunch, a Triple D destination.  It was great.  Be sure to stop if you are ever in the area.) 

Morgan and the team were gracious hosts and it was really neat to get a "behind the scenes" look at a Nationwide race.

We even got to hang with Danica.




As anyone who knows NASCAR knows,  sponsorship drives the sport, and this was one of my favorite sponsors, Boudreaux's Butt Paste.

Which it's a Diaper Rash Ointment and Skin Protectant.

Once we got home from the race it was time to get baking.  The assignment for this time involved making Tabbouleh Bread with Parsley, Garlic and Bulgar and Pear Coffee Bread.  We really enjoyed both these breads.

The  Tabbouleh Bread includes lemon zest, in addition to the parsley, garlic and butter, and I was surprised at how much that hint of lemon shone through in the bread.  But then I thought back to the ingredients--there was almost no whole wheat flour in this bread--only 1/2 cup for the half batch I made.  (In fact, that is my only quibble with the recipe, the lack of whole wheat flour, though there was the bulgur, which for most intents and purposes is whole wheat, though up to 5% of the bran is removed in polishing.)  I baked a (rather free-form) boule, which we thought was wonderful.










With the rest of the dough I made pitas.  With all the stuff in the dough these did not puff, but they made great flatbread to go with grilled lamb. 

When I saw that we were to make Pear Coffee Bread I thought it was a bread to have with coffee, like a coffee cake.  But the bread has coffee in it!  This dough had even less whole wheat flour, and with the addition of the pureed pears made a very tender loaf.  I made both an oval loaf and a boule.

We thought this bread was was particularly good toasted. 

For my 'speriment this time, I decided to try Michelle's version of Volkornbrot with sauerkraut.  I am not quite sure why.  I do not like sauerkraut (except in rubens).   That is one of my (many) character flaws.  Pretty women can talk me into anything.  (I suspect I am not alone in this.)  That is how I ended up married.  With four  children (counting Marissa).  I got lured.  Anyway, this loaf did not turn out too well, and so I thought I would pass on my experience.  

Michelle drained her sauerkraut, but then bemoaned not using the liquid in the bread.  So I did use the liquid.  I treated the sauerkraut itself as liquid, since it is so wet, and for a half batch of bread dumped an 8 ounce can of sauerkraut with its liquid into a measuring cup and added water to get the total amount of liquid I needed.  I mixed the dough up.  Let it rise.  And---nothing.  I thought maybe it was a bit dry, so I added more liquid, and let it rise again.  I got some rise, but not much.  My suspicion is that the brine from the sauerkraut retarded the yeast growth.  I baked it anyway.  It was pretty dense, but tasted it good.  If you like sauerkraut.  Which I don't. 

And now it's time for Trick or Treat.  In honor of my Ben's Mustard junket, I am giving away a jar of  Morgan Shepherd Special Edition Ben's Mustard.  The trick is, that to get the treat you must be hanging in and still reading my post to know about the contest. (This may be a big mistake.  I may learn something I do not want to know about my readership.)  If you are still reading, and you want to enter, just post a comment and mention Ben's Mustard in it.  I can only ship to the US and if you turn up at my house for dinner fairly often you don't get to enter.  The winner will be selected based on my whim,  and in the complete discretion of the author duplicate prizes may, or may not, be awarded. 

So that is it for this time.  Check back on the ides of November for Pumpkin Pie Brioche Redux.   

Whole Wheat Bread (19 of 42)

This time around were were tasked with making Grissini, Pizza and Baguettes.  A nasty job, but somebody has got to do it.  As the basis for these breadstuffs Michelle gave us some options for the whole wheat dough we could use.  I chose the Master.   I did vary the recipe slightly, following a tip from Danielle at Cooking for My Peace of Mind who wrote about using Barley Malt Syrup.  Following her lead, I added 1/2 teaspoon per cup of flour.  For those of you keeping score at home, Barley Malt Syrup weighs 7 grams per teaspoon, 21 grams per tablespoon.  The bread rose well, but I did not notice a huge flavor difference, no doubt in part because the end products here were, themselves, fairly strongly flavored.  I will continue to use it.  Also, Carlyn at Baked With Luv suggested doubling the amount of vital gluten when using home milled flour.  I plan to try that too. 

I first made the Grissini (Olive Oil Bread Sticks).  I rolled the dough out to about an eighth of an inch, cut it into strips with my pizza cutter, sprayed them with olive oil spray, sprinkled them with salt and rosemary, and baked them for about 15 minutes.  They were great. 

Then it was on to Whole Grain Pizza on the Gas Grill (right on the grates).  I love cooking pizza this way.  We had quite a discussion in our Discussion Group about the best way to get the pizza onto the grill, with many good ideas.  I roll the crust out on parchment paper, using some flour so it does not stick too much.

I did not roll it quite as thin as I sometimes do, which makes it a bit easier to handle on the grill.  Then I trim closely around the crust, and flip it onto the grates paper side up.  The paper helps stabilize the dough. 



 Some folks do it paper side down, which is what I do in the oven, but it seems to me to be less likely to catch fire with the paper up.

After a few minutes I remove the crust from the grill, peel off the paper, flip it, top it, and slide it back onto the grates.  A few more minutes and its PIZZA. 



For this pizza, instead of using crushed tomatoes I used some of Michelle's Tomato  Jam. It went really well with the grilled crust.  I also added some sliced mushrooms and, of course, some mozzarella cheese.

The pizza is sitting on my RSVP 10" Oven Spatula, which is a really great size for getting loaves of bread into and out of the oven (or on and off the grill).  It is smaller and much handier than my large pizza peel.


The final assignment was 2 small loaves of Garlic Studded Baguette.  I formed my baguettes, let them rise in my 1x2 couche, and studded them with garlic from the garden. 


I used my Garlic Peeler gizmo to remove the peels, it is pretty handy when you have a lot of cloves to peel and you do not want to crush them. 




 I kept the loaves on the parchment paper when I put them in the oven, so I pulled them out 2/3 of the way through the cooking time to take them off the paper.  I noticed that some of the cloves had popped out, so I took the opportunity to tuck them back in,  it seemed to work pretty well. 

The roasted garlic was great, and we ate the bread without butter, just the garlic.  According to Garlic Central garlic has "a reputation in folklore for preventing everything from the common cold and flu to the Plague!  Raw garlic is used by some to treat the symptoms of acne and there is some evidence that it can assist in managing high cholesterol levels. It can even be effective as a natural mosquito repellent."   Of course, eaten to excess it can also be a means of birth control.  Did you know that the most effective birth control for lawyers is their personalities?

I still had some dough left, and when we made doughnuts last time Michelle baked hers in a mini-doughnut pan.   Sounded like a great idea, so I got one, but I got the one that makes 6 regular size doughnuts, rather than 12 mini doughnuts.  I mean, who are we kidding?  Who is going to eat just 1 mini doughnut?   I rolled out the dough and used my biscuit cutters just as I had to make the fried doughnuts.  I sprayed the pan and let the doughnuts rise about half an hour.

Then I baked them at 325 for about 20 minutes.  As soon as they came out I shook them in a paper bag with some sugar and pumpkin pie spice.  Although this was not an enriched dough, they were pretty darn good.

In my spare time, I decided to do a 'speriment I had been considering all summer--zucchini bread.  I used the Carrot Bread recipe from HB in 5, but substituted zucchini.  Since zucchini is so wet, I shredded it, tossed it with a little sugar to draw out the moisture, and let it drain in a colander.  Then I squeezed more moisture out using my potato ricer.  I saved the zucchini liquid and used it as some of the water in the dough.  Also, I meant to double the spices, which is what I did, for the full recipe, but since I only made a half recipe . . . .

Despite all my efforts  and good intentions the dough was still a bit wet, but that meant the result was a little more dense, more like a typical zucchini quick bread.  I am not sure I would change it. 


I used my smaller loaf pan, but a half recipe of the HB in 5 doughs is a bit larger than in AB in 5, and a regular loaf pan would have worked better, avoiding the overflow.

The result?  I think it was pretty good.  My old Zucchini Bread recipe had 3 eggs, 2 cups of sugar and a cup of oil in it.  In contrast, the half recipe of this bread I made had no eggs,  1/4 cup of brown sugar, and no oil. This version was way healthier, though obviously not as sweet or rich.  But that is a good thing in our healthy bread paradigm.  (Just keep saying that to yourself--over and over and over.) 

So that is it for this time.  Be sure to see what everyone else did at the Big Black Dog, and check back next time.