Baking Bread and then Breaking Bread

From the City...

 A tiny kitchen that is, amazingly, still big enough for bread making.  Note the pink kitchen aid which did all the bread making dirty work.  And yes, that is an apron with naked cowboys on it.    

 The dough.  Before it's first rising.  One of the best tips in this recipe is to make sure that your yeast, sugar and water mixture is good and frothy before you add the flour to it.  

 I turned my oven for 20 seconds at about 350 degrees and then turned the oven off and stuck the dough in for about an hour and voila, it came out like this.  At least doubled in size.

 Divided into two loaves and put back in the oven for another 30 minutes to rise again.  This pic is after the second rising.  Egg wash and sprinkled with sesame seeds.  

Baked for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.  

For dinner we had slabs of bread with raspberry jam and farm eggs with goat cheese, 

it was like my dream evening.  

Here is the actual recipe.  

It's really great and super foolproof.  

My changes are as follows (which I did the second time around):

only 2 tbsp sugar 

(I wanted sandwich bread but I would add the full amount of sugar if you plan on making raisin bread or sticky buns or something incredibly delicious like that)

2 cups whole wheat flour and 4 cups white bread flour 

(the original recipe is a bit too cakey but would be PERFECT for french toast)

I also found the loaves way too big.  

For a special occasion, sure, have the extra large slabs but on a day to day, we like our bread regular sized and toaster friendly, because of this, I made three loaves as opposed to two. 

Cheat, use your kitchen aid. 

Proof your yeast, water and sugar in the bowl of your mixer.  Add your oil and salt and mix, with the dough hook, on low for a couple of minutes.  Then add your flour a cup at a time.  Crank it up to medium and let it knead for 5 minutes.  

happy breadmaking!

-ab

Our Blueberry Harvest

From the City (temporarily in a small town)...

So we made our annual trip to the blueberry patch yesterday: kids, babies, buckets and all. It was hot but there was a pretty nice breeze which kept our endurance up long enough to pick about 50 litres of blueberries.

I'm in the process of freezing the majority (laid out flat on a baking sheet over night and then bagged in the morning) but I'm also thinking of baking a batch of muffins. Here's my standby recipe that I'll probably use : Bran Muffins but there is also a great recipe that I came across that might help you use up some of those zucchini's you have kicking around:

• 
  
• Zucchini Blueberry Bread
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cups white sugar
• 2 cups shredded zucchini
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1 pint fresh blueberries

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease 4 mini-loaf pans.
• In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, oil, applesauce, vanilla, and sugar. Fold in the zucchini. Beat in the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon. Gently fold in the blueberries. Transfer to the prepared mini-loaf pans.
• Bake 50 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a knife inserted in the center of a loaf comes out clean. Cool 20 minutes in pans, then turn out onto wire racks to cool completely.

Black Sesame Sunflower Bread

From the City...

So i've been trying out new recipes lately and came across this raw bread recipe. I thought it was pretty interesting and decided to give it whirl. I know very little about raw food aside from the obvious, the foods must be all served...raw, needless to say I was a little intrigued about the whole mess.

A rule is that foods cannot be considered raw if they're cooked above 104 degrees. Ideally you want to use a food dehydrator to make the bread but I don't have one. So instead I set my oven real low and baked them on and off for about 4-5 hrs. I must admit, it's definitely more of a cracker than a bread, don't expect fluffy layers of heaven or anything.

Here's the recipe, it's pretty great and I'm really happy with the results. If you have some sort of gluten allergy or you wanna try out raw foods, this bread really is ideal and very easy to make.

1 cup ground flaxseed

1/3 cup whole flaxseed

1/2 tsp sea salt

1 clove garlic, minced

1 1/3 cup water

2/3 sunflower seeds

1/4 sesame seeds (I only had white sesame seeds, not black, and it seemed to work out fine)

Lightly grease a baking sheet. Mix all seven ingredients together until you get a thick paste. Pour the paste out onto the greased baking sheet making sure to get all four corners.

Bake long and low for about 4 to 5 hrs. Flip the bread in one large piece at about the 3 hr mark so that you get a nice crunchy crust.

The final product...

Try them for yourself. Serve with jam, peanut butter, hummus, goat cheese or avocados....

Enjoy!

Feels a little like Sunday...

From the City...

For me, there is nothing better than the weekend and even more, there is nothing better than Sundays. Last weekend L was in Toronto staying with Simon, Ruby and I. In true Toronto fashion, we went out for dinner at our favorite spot in China town, took in a $5 Sunday morning yoga class and after had an unbelievably delicious brunch.

So here's the breakdown of what we had:

L brought these unbelievably cute, blue poulet eggs and a hunk of really good ham. I made a loaf of whole wheat bread, a la sullivan street bakery recipe (recipe to follow) , a hunk of really good ontario cheese from the local cheese store and these adorable sprouts that L grows herself and sells at the Green Barns Saturday morning market at St.Clair and Christie.

Here's the very famous Sullivan Street Bakery Bread Recipe that is so good, so easy but requires just a little time and planning.

Formula:

3 cups (400g) flour

1½ cups (300g or 12 oz) water

¼ teaspoon (1g) yeast

1¼ teaspoons (8g) salt

olive oil (for coating)

extra flour

Equipment:

Two medium mixing bowls

6-8 qt. pot (Pyrex glass, Le Creuset cast iron, or ceramic)

Wooden spoon or spatula (optional)

Plastic wrap

Cotton dish towels (not terrycloth), 2 or 3

Process:

Mix all of the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Add water and incorporate by hand or with a wooden spoon or spatuala for 30 sec. to 1 min. Lightly coat the inside of second medium bowl with olive oil and place the dough in the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rest 12 hrs. at room temperature (approx. 65-72'F).

Remove the dough from the bowl and fold once or twice. Let the dough rest 15 min. in the bowl or on the work surface. Next, shape the dough into ball. Generously coat a cotton towel with flour, wheat bran, or commeal; place the dough seam side down on the towel and dust with flour. Cover the dough with a cotton towel and let rise 1-2 hrs. at room temperature, until more than doubled in size.

Preheat oven to 450-500'F. Place the pot in the oven at leat ½ hr. Prior to baking to preheat. Once the dough has more than doubled in volume, remove the pot from the oven and place the dough in the pot steam side up. Cover with the lid and bake 30 min. Then, remove the lid and back 15-30min. uncovered.

Have a good weekend everyone!