Whole wheat

Made a whole wheat bread last night, contains all whole wheat, some brown rice and sweetened with honey.  Took the directions from Crust and Crumb and it turned out pretty well!

Last post today, I swear!

Last Saturday I made my first loaf of bread! Not earth shattering, complicated, or even wheat, but still, my first attempt. The important thing is, it was good! Very encouraging. I did use some quick rise recipe, which involved the bread rising just for a couple of hours in its pan. Which was perfect as I had a lot of Fable to play and couldn't really take a lot of breaks just for some silly bread.

Getting eggy

Last Sunday I took a break from my waffle journey and made some french toast instead. It turned out to be not too far really from my forays into waffles, as I was determined to make the eggiest french toast ever. I read up on some recipes, and decided to sort of try this recipe of Baked French Toast, off of Epicurious.com. Reviews and descriptions of the recipe described it as an extremely rich, custurdy, bread pudding sort of thing, but I wanted bread fried in eggs (who doesn't!) and I also wanted to amp up the spice, and cut down on the sugar (smother the bread in marmelade? really?) Anyway, with some sausages and fruit it turned out perfect: eggy spicy bread brightened up with citrus.


Halfway depleted pan of bread marinating in eggs. I added lots of orange zest and let the bread sit for half an hour in the mixture, turning the pieces occasionally to get them good and soppy.



I think my recipe went something sort of like this:
5 Pieces of a hearty rustic white bread (I used Grand Central's Como)
1 1/3 cup milk (approx)
3 egg yolks
1 egg with white
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 Tb cardamom
orange zest from 1.5 large oranges

Topping:
orange slices
maple syrup
fresh ginger

Mix all the liquid and spices. Cut bread in half and spread in deep dish and allow to soak in liquid for half an hour. I was worried I didn't have enough liquid and added some more milk (hence my "approx" above.) Turn bread slices occasionally to keep soaking. Fry up in butter.

I sliced up the oranges and grated tons of fresh ginger into them and let them sit for a while too. I added just a tiny bit of maple syrup to try to justify this as a breakfast, but it totally wasn't needed. The oranges on top of the bread added some extra nice sweet, spicy juiciness to the whole mess. Oh, and of course, you can just fry up those unused egg whites for some scrambled eggs. Lucky you; egg whites are a healthy choice! har har har

Making a sourdough bread starter: Day 2

Day 2 of my sourdough, there is not supposed to be any change, so I figured I would mention some of the interesting things I have been reading about bread.

Imagine in the old days, before fridges, and instant packaged yeast, how people got their bread to rise. They would use a starter, much like I am trying to grow right now for my sourdough. I think it is interesting, because it is almost like livestock. People would painstakingly grow a yeast culture until it was healthy, then tear off a bit to make their bread rise, and let the starter continue to grow for next time. Like any animal it needs to be fed; you could give your neighbor some of your starter so they could grow their own, famous businesses would guard their strain as a trade secret, you could have different strains for different type of bread... Instant yeast is great, but there is something nice about this idea.

Astute readers may have noticed that my sourdough starter does not actually contain any yeast. That is because I am trying to cultivate wild yeast, which is a different type than what is normally in packaged yeast, and wild yeast is found of most ground grains, particularly rye. that is why I used organic rye flour, because I wanted all these natural "contaminants" that are normally found in rye flour. Compared to a teaspoon of packaged yeast, there is very little wild yeast to be found, and it needs to be coddled, which is why everything needed to be sterile and unchlorinated water had to be used.

Also this wild yeast does not eat sugar, unlike packaged yeast. This is why Lactobacillus can live with it, eating the sugar, and producing lactic acid, which makes it sour. I could be mistaken but I think Lactobacillus is a bacteria that already lives in the human body, it is not dangerous to us at all, but the books I have warned that if the starter gets streaks of color, than it is contaminated with some other bacteria, and needs to be thrown out.

Once again I referenced the books: The Bread Baker's Apprentice, and The Bread Bible as well as various places online. I have found a new interest.

Making a sourdough bread starter: Day 1

Lately I have been reading up on bread making, and some of the processes are quite fascinating. When I was younger I used to make some simple bread quite often, but reading up on these other techniques made me want to try my hand at making sourdough bread. To start I need to cultivate a colony of yeast and certain bacteria, and to let it grow for about a week. This colony dough will then constitute 15 to 40 percent of the final bread dough, depending on how sour you wish to make it.

To start you need very very clean equipment, so you don't contaminate with undesired bacteria. I ran all my tools under boiling water to sterilize them. You could perform surgery with these bowls and spoons.

To start you take:

1 cup or 120 grams or Organic Rye flour

1/2 cup or 120 grams of unchlorinated water

Mix these together until you have a thick dough, and place this dough in a container and seal the top tightly with plastic wrap. I used a quart canning jar:

Place this jar in a cool place (about 65 degrees) for 48 hours. I will update as this develops!

To learn about this process I referenced the books: The Bread Baker's Apprentice, and The Bread Bible and it is from the latter that I am taking these steps.

Wish me luck!