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Posts Tagged ‘breadmaking’

Carrot Bread

September 11th, 2009 SpiderFarmer No comments
Carrot Bread

Carrot Bread

This experiment turned out so well!

Ingredients:

  • 2.25 tsp dry yeast (1 cake yeast)
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 3.5 cups bread flour (500 grams)
  • .5 pound grated carrots (250 grams)
  • 1 tablespoon melted butter (cooled to room temp)

Directions:

Sprinkle the yeast, then the sugar into .5 cup of water and let proof for 10 minutes.  Stir to dissolve.

Mix the flour and the salt in a large bowl.  Make a well in the center and pour in the dissolved yeast, then add carrots, then add butter.  Mix in the flour from the sides of the well.

Add water, as needed to form a moist (sticky) dough.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured work surface.  Flour your hands, and knead for 10 minutes.  This dough is super sticky, and you may need to add a tablespoon of flour now and then to hands and surface, but try to not add very much, to avoid a dense bread. The dough will still be sticky at the end of your kneading time…that’s ok.

Put the dough in a lightly buttered/greased bowl and cover with a linen towel.  Let it rise until doubled in size…about 1.5 hours.  Punch down, and let rest for 5-10 minutes.

Shape the dough into a round loaf and place on either a floured baking tray or a parchment lined baking tray.  Cover with a linen towel and let proof until doubled in size…about 45 minutes.

It should look like this:

Carrot bread dough - 2nd rise

Carrot bread dough - 2nd rise

Bake in a preheated 400 degree oven (200 degree C).  Steam is optional, but I think it made the crust nicer.  You can add steam either by adding icecubes in a baking pan below the bread, or do what I do, which is to spritz the oven (careful to avoid electrical elements) right after I put the bread in.

Bread should be golden and hollow sounding when tapped underneath.

Cool on an elevated wire rack.

Enjoy!

Categories: Make Your Own, Recipes, Reviews, baking, cooking Tags: , , ,

Making Yummy soft pretzels

June 29th, 2009 SpiderFarmer No comments

We followed a recipe from Alton Brown that we adapted a tiny bit, mostly because I didn’t have pretzel salt on hand. But the recipe was easy enough that Igor got to do a whole lot of the actual recipe.  He didn’t get to do the boiling part, and he didn’t get to put the trays in or out of the 450 degree oven, but other than that, he was able to do most of the recipe.  He’s turning into quite the little 6 year-old sous chef.

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups warm (110 to 115 degrees F) water
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 2 teaspoons kosher salt
  • 1 package active dry yeast
  • 22 ounces all-purpose flour, approximately 4 1/2 cups
  • 2 ounces unsalted butter, melted
  • Vegetable oil, for pan
  • 10 cups water
  • 2/3 cup baking soda
  • 1 large egg yolk beaten with 1 tablespoon water
  • Pretzel salt

pretzels02

Directions

Combine the water, sugar and kosher salt in the bowl of a stand mixer and sprinkle the yeast on top. Allow to sit for 5 minutes or until the mixture begins to foam.

Add the flour and butter and, using the dough hook attachment, mix on low speed until well combined.

Change to medium speed and knead until the dough is smooth and pulls away from the side of the bowl, approximately 4 to 5 minutes.

Remove the dough from the bowl, clean the bowl and then oil it well with vegetable oil. Return the dough to the bowl, cover with plastic wrap and sit in a warm place for approximately 50 to 55 minutes or until the dough has doubled in size. pretzels01

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Line 2 half-sheet pans with parchment paper and lightly brush with the vegetable oil. Set aside.

Bring the 10 cups of water and the baking soda to a rolling boil in an 8-quart saucepan or roasting pan.

In the meantime, turn the dough out onto a slightly oiled work surface and divide into 8 equal pieces.

Roll out each piece of dough into a 24-inch rope. Make a U-shape with the rope, holding the ends of the rope, cross them over each other and press onto the bottom of the U in order to form the shape of a pretzel. Place onto the parchment-lined half sheet pan.

Place the pretzels into the boiling water, 1 by 1, for 30 seconds. Remove them from the water using a large flat spatula.

Return to the half sheet pan, brush the top of each pretzel with the beaten egg yolk and water mixture and sprinkle with the pretzel salt. (I used Kosher salt.)

Bake until dark golden brown in color, approximately 12 to 14 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack for at least 5 minutes before serving.  (I used a convection oven, which turned them a little darker than I would have liked.  I think it’s possible that with a convection oven, one could skip the egg wash, or use an egg-white wash instead, and get the color I wanted.  I’ll have to try it and find out.)

Categories: Make Your Own, Recipes, cooking Tags: , , , , , ,

Mmmm…bread

May 28th, 2009 SpiderFarmer 1 comment

So, I’ve been working on teaching myself how to bake different artisan breads without using any machines or complicated tools (other than the oven, naturally) …but today for a picnic, I just wanted some plain French baguettes. Which are so yummy.

I figured as long as I was making them, I’d do an instructable on them.

So, in case anyone else is carb starved and must have easy to make bread, I give you:

How to make traditional baguettes by hand.

pain_baguette 007

Here’s a slideshow of how to do it from my flickr stream. :)

Categories: Home Stuff, Instructions, Make Your Own, Recipes Tags: , , ,