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.

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.