Whole Wheat Brioche or Pumpkin Pie Brioche (18 of 42)

OK.  Michelle, our fearless leader does a great job.  She is the best.  We all love her to bits.  And I know it is after Labor Day, so for many, but not all of us (e.g. Carolyn in Australia), Speedo/bikini season is behind us and our white shoes and belts (known locally as the "full Cleveland") are put away for the winter.  But......DAMN!  She put a Pear Tart, Sweet Rolls, AND Doughnuts all in the same assignment!  That just hurts the team--to say nothing of our figures.  Well, mine is not to reason why, mine is but to do and die[t].

We could make either Whole Wheat Brioche or Pumpkin Pie Brioche.  I made both.  I made the Whole Wheat Brioche because I had not yet made it and I wanted to try it.  I made the Pumpkin Pie Brioche because I HAD made it, in our first pre-season bake, and wanted to make it again.  Also, I thought the regular Brioche might work better with the pear tart[e] than the Pumpkin Brioche, which I thought would be particularly good with the sweet rolls and doughnuts.

Before I get to the cooking, I would like to share a new initiative related to that subject: The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.  According to their website, the Alliance "is a public-private initiative to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and combat climate change by creating a thriving global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions."  The Alliance notes that

Exposure to smoke from traditional cookstoves and open fires—the primary means of cooking and heating for nearly three billion people in the developing world—causes 1.9 million premature deaths annually, with women and young children the most affected. Reliance on biomass for cooking and heating forces women and children to spend many hours each week collecting wood. Women face severe personal security risks as they forage for fuel, especially from refugee camps and in conflict zones. Cookstoves also increase pressures on local environmental resources (e.g., forests, habitat) and contribute to climate change at the regional and global levels.

For more information go to GLOBAL ALLIANCE FOR CLEAN COOKSTOVES.

For the  Pear Tarte Tatin with Brioche I made half a recipe of the Whole Wheat Brioche, using egg substitute and Land of Lakes Light Butter.  I used 1/2 pound for the  Pear Tarte Tatin.  I cooked the pears (I could only fit 4 pears in my 10" cast iron skillet) in butter and brown sugar with some star anise and cinnamon sticks.  I eschewed the optional cardamom rather than risk using to much, which I find off-putting.  Then I  topped the pears with rolled out brioche, and baked it.

It came out well.  I managed to hit the plate rather than the counter or the floor while  inverting it, and it was good with a scoop of vanilla fro-yo.  

I think that some ground cinnamon in the caramel, to give it a little more spice, might be worth trying.

With the rest of the dough I christened my new brioche pan.  This bread was outstanding.

Next, I made a full batch of the Pumpkin Pie Brioche, again using egg substitute and light butter.  Also, using  trick I saw on America's Test Kitchen for a more pumpkiny pumpkin pie, I used some drained candied yams along with the pumpkin.  (Both from cans not from scratch.)   ATK suggests 1 cup of drained yams to 1 can of pumpkin, but I did half and half, a can of each, and then used 15 ounces in the bread.  I also doubled the spices, which most of us who made this dough before thought was a good idea.  Once risen and rested I commenced to make the Honey Caramel Sticky Nut Buns.

I wanted to have them pretty early in the morning, so  made these the night before.  I rolled the dough, stretching the corners gently to make more of a rectangle.  For the gooey stuff, I reduced the honey, butter and brown sugar each from 1/2 cup to 1/3 cup.  I think I still had plenty.  I kept the amount of nuts and raisins the same, but used craisins to go with the pumpkin.  I rolled it up, cut it into 12 slices and smooshed them into the pan. 

 I do not think that letting them rise the whole time in the fridge gives as good a rise, so I let them rise for an hour and then put them in the fridge.  They deflated some in the cold, wouldn't you, but not much.  Then I took them out and let them sit while the oven pre-heated.  They baked up fine, but I gave them an extra 5 minutes.  I did not want to overbake, but another 5 might not have been a bad idea,  perhaps because the dough had been in the fridge overnight. 

I baked them on a foil lined sheet to catch ooze.

My saintly wife and I each had one, then, for self preservation, we sent the rest to work with one of our daughters who is not only prefect but has red hair.   She stops on her way to work to drop off her Miniature Irish Wolfhound Chloe.   

Zoe(y) and I provide daycare.

The final diet-buster was Indian Spiced Whole Grain Doughnuts.  I made 6 instead of 12, thereby cutting the calories in half!  I rolled out the dough, cut the doughnuts with biscuit cutters, and then deep fried them.








I combined the sugar and spices in a paper bag, dropped in the warm doughnuts, and shook gently.  Viola!

 I put the leftover sugar/spice mixture into a shaker bottle to sprinkle on toast.

Since I had made a whole batch of dough I decided to do something a bit special with the rest, in honor of my sister-in-law Susan's 60th (yes, Sixtieth) Birthday. 

 Susan

(Not a recent picture.) 

 I made a Brioche à Tête.

I was concerned that the "tête" would just sink into the brioche during the long rise, so I put it into a silicone egg poacher sprayed with cooking spray to rise separately.  Then, when I turned on the oven to preheat I plopped the tête onto the top of the loaf.  I let them get acquainted for about half an hour, then baked it.  

With the onset of fall (at least here in the northern hemisphere) I thought I would close with a couple of garden tips.  I went to an herb seminar by Jim Long, of Long Creek Herbs, and he had a guy's way of drying herbs.  Take a couple of handfuls and stick them in a brown paper bag.  Clip the bag closed (or use duct tape).  Then, throw the bag in the trunk of your car, or in the back seat.  Every couple of days, shake the bag.   When the herbs are dry and crisp (maybe a week, more or less) they are done.  (The bag absorbs moisture and keeps the herbs dark, the car is warm, at least if it is sitting outside in the sun.) 

Also, I grew a variety of cilantro called Caribe that I got from Pinetree Garden Seeds.  It was touted as being slow to bolt.  Some of  mine have not bolted yet, and those that did stood a long time before doing so.  (Your results may vary.) 

Well, that's it for this time.  Be sure to check out Big Black Dog to see what everyone else did with these breads.

Maple Oatmeal Bread and Quinoa Bread (17 of 42)

Tip du jour:  If you have too many cookbooks, or at least too many to keep track of, you may want to check out Eat Your Books.  You can enter your cookbooks and it will let you search them for ingredients and provide you with a list of recipes (but not the recipes themselves) in the books you own.  It is a search engine for your personal cookbook collection.  Both 5 Minute Bread books are available and indexed.  There is a 30 day free trial, so you might want to play around with this.

Do you ever get really excited to see a movie, have high expectations for it, can't wait for it to come out, and then feel slightly disappointed after you have seen it.  That is the way I felt about the Maple Oatmeal Bread.   I thought I would really, really like this, so I made a full batch instead of a half.

I made a loaf

and I made English Muffins. 

The bread baked up fine, my saintly wife liked it, but there was just something about the flavor profile that I did not care for.  Perhaps I expected it to be sweeter or maybe it had to do with the buttermilk.   Anyway, it just did not live up to my expectations. But now I know.

On a related oatmeal bread note, we love oatmeal made with steel cut oats.  I do it in the rice cooker.  Some time ago I adapted a no-knead steel cut oat bread recipe to the AB in 5 format:

5 Minute Steel Cut Oats No Knead Bread
Makes 2 1-pound loaves, keeps 14 days
1/2 cup whole wheat flour         65g
1/2 cup steel cut oats                 80g
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour         315g
1 1/2 cups water                            338g
3/4 TBS instant yeast                         
  2 tsp salt                                                

Follow usual AB in 5 protocol--form and let rise 40 minutes, slash top, bake at
450 for 30 minutes using water for steam. 

The next loaf was Quinoa bread.  According to Wikipedia Quinoa is  "a species of goosefoot (Chenopodium)" that is "a grain-like crop grown primarily for its edible seeds."  It is not a true cereal or grain "as it is not a member of the grass family." It is "closely related to species such as beets, spinach, and tumbleweeds."   The article notes that "Quinoa originated in the Andean region of South America, where it has been an important food for 6,000 years. Its name is the Spanish spelling of the Quechua name.  The Incas, who held the crop to be sacred, referred to quinoa as chisaya mama or mother of all grains, and it was the Inca emperor who would traditionally sow the first seeds of the season using 'golden implements.'" For our purposes--healthy baking--"[u]nlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), and like oats, quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete protein source among plant foods. It is a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten-free and considered easy to digest. Because of all these characteristics, quinoa is being considered a possible crop in NASA's Controlled Ecological Life Support System for long-duration manned spaceflights."

Gee, how could we ever eat anything else.  

I formed the dough into a boule, and put it into my Duct Tape Couche to rise. Then I baked it in my flame orange pot. 

It came out right purty.

With a nice crumb.

My saintly wife and I both liked this bread a lot.

Since Quinoa is from the Andes I decided to run with the"indigenous to the Americas" theme, and to go with our Quinoa Bread I made a Chili Verde with tomatillos (from Becca's and Marissa's garden), poblano peppers (from my garden) and turkey (from the freezer).

With some of the dough I had left I made flatbreads on the grill to hold some chicken sausages.

They worked and tasted great, especially with some Ben's Sweet and Hot Mustard.   

I used the rest of the dough to make a pizza.

Tha-tha-tha-that's all folks.  Tune in next time and be sure to check out what everyone else did with these breads at Big Black Dog.

100% Whole Wheat, Plain and Simple (16 of 42)

For this  assignment we were to make a full batch of the 100% Whole Wheat Plain and Simple dough.  It is a gift to be simple.  So I guess I am gifted.  This is not to be confused with ignorance being bliss, though if that is true I often wonder why there are not a whole lot more blissful people around.

As its name suggests, this dough is 100% whole wheat, and it is plain and simple--whole wheat, vital gluten, water, salt and yeast.  A nice benefit of baking your own bread is that you know exactly what is in it.   I like this dough a lot.

For the compulsory portion of this assignment we were to use this dough to make three variations.  Once again, this demonstrates the variety of ways you can use the same dough to make different breads.

First up was a plain and simple loaf.  As we know, since these doughs are fairly well hydrated (wet) they can like to spread as they rise.  Often I use 1x2s to help contain the dough so that it tends to rise more up than out.  Last blog I showed a picture of this with some baguettes and Clarice at Hearth Arts said that I had made my own couche.  As far as I know a couche is what I sit on to watch footballe, and I did not make mine, I bought it at the shoppe.  Anyway, I wanted this bread to be low and wide, so I formed it that way and let it spread to its heart's content. 

 I then sliced the loaf horizontally, added some lettuce, some home-smoked chicken breast, some grilled Capicola and a tomato from the garden.  It was wonderful. 

I used a Pine- apple tom- ato.  Isn't is pretty?  If you are interested in heirloom tomatoes you should check out The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table: Recipes, Portraits, and History of the World's Most Beautiful Fruit by Amy Goldman.  Not only are the pictures great, but she offers a description of each variety including her assessment of the flavor, its best uses, how well it grows, and its yield.  This is particularly helpful since seed catalogs tend to wax eloquent about all their products.  Also, re: tomatoes, Cooks Illustrated has concluded that tomatoes store better if stored stem scar down.  They noted "that the scar left on the tomato skin where the stem once grew provides both an escape for moisture and an entry point for mold and bacteria. Placing a tomato stem-end down blocks air from entering and moisture from exiting the scar."

Back to the issue of controlling dough spread, Ezzie at Brewing & Baking wrote about some of her techniques (and was kind enough to refer to my 1x2 approach).  These work fine for baguettes and other long or oval loaves.

Now, as a world premiere, and special lagniappe, or perhaps a mitzvah, for the HB in 5ers, I would like to offer what, in my humble opinion, is THE definitive approach to controlling the spread of a boule.  It is definitive for one simple reason--it uses DUCT TAPE! 
I wanted to make Mary Ann Esposito's Calabrian Pitta, and I needed a nice tall boule.

To corral the dough I made a strip of several layers of duct tape and used a paperclip to hold it in a circle of the diameter I wanted.  (It is adjustable!) 

Then, I lined the form with parchment paper, taking some time to carefully fold and fit the parchment paper so that there were no big wrinkles. 

I let the dough rise, removed the duct tape, and used the parchment paper to deposit the loaf, parchment paper and all, into a pre-heated Le Creuset Number 22 pot and baked it at 450 for 15 minutes with the lid on and 15 minutes with the lid off.  (Using the pot eliminates the need for a baking stone and water pan.)

I tried this pot while on vacation and liked it much better than my dutch ovens--it was smaller, more suited to the size of the boules, and the handle on the lid made it much easier to remove with pot holders, since the lid was very hot from pre-heating.  I found myself an old one on eBay, as you can see from the color.  As they say, no gear, no hobby.  The bread turned out beautifully, if I do say so myself. 

I holl- owed it out, spread on some of Al’s Giardiniera (Mary Ann's Olive salad would not have played well with some of my peeps) and then layered meats and cheese and another layer of the giardiniera.  Then I wrapped it and refrigerated it for several hours.

And now, for the big reveal--TA-DA!

My self-congratulatory tangent completed, its back to the second compulsory exercise with the 100% Whole Wheat Bread: Zucchini Flatbread.

OK. They call this a flatbread.  But to me if it looks like a pizza, walks like a pizza, swims like a pizza and quacks like a pizza, its a pizza. I pretty much followed the recipe except I added some leftover corn I cut off the cob and I used toasted slivered almonds instead of pine nuts. I also cut back a bit on the Parmigiano-Reggiano. And I used corn meal instead of flour to roll out the crust. I often do this with pizza crust, I saw it on an episode of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. The corn meal gets worked into the crust and gives it a sturdy, chewy/crunchy texture. Also, since the weather was nice, I cooked it on the grill instead of in the oven. Other than that I followed the recipe exactly.

I rolled out the dough and threw it directly on the grate to grill the first side. Then I took it off the grill, flipped it grilled side up, topped it, and put it back on the grill to grill the bottom. It was very, very good.

The final compulsory exercise was Msemmen (Algerian Flatbread).  Since this did not have toppings, in my world it really was a flatbread not a pizza.  If you Google Msemmen (sometimes transliterated as M'semmen) most of the entries characterize it as Moroccan rather than Algerian.  The two are Saharan neighbors.  It appears that the Moroccan variety is often served with honey, so it is sweet, while the Algerian version is more savory, with spices.  Ours is the latter. If you would like to know how to pronounce Msemmen check out this video.
The first step is to make an oil/spice mixture.   Sir Isaac Newton said that "If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."  So too, here.  In our discussion group Carolyn noted that she found the oil/spice mixture too runny and suggested adding the oil to the spices slowly, until it was spreadable.  Standing on her shoulders, that is what I did.


The spice mixture is spread on the rolled out dough.   The dough is then rolled up jelly-roll style and coiled around itself.  Then it, and you, rest for 5 minutes.   

Finally, the "coil" is rolled flat again, and cooked in in some oil in a large frying pan on the stove.  This made a very interesting and tasty bread.  I would think it would also be good cooked on the grill.

 
 I still had some dough left, so for the freestyle portion of the exercise I made a  Capicola Bread. 

I rolled out the dough, put on some Capicola and some mozzarella, rolled it up and let it rise (using my 1x2s).








Then I baked it, sliced it, and ate it (with a little help from my friends).  

 








That concludes this fortnight's adventure.  Tune in next time and be sure to check out what everyone else did with these breads at Big Black Dog.