We'll be celebrating Thanksgiving with a group of about 25 relatives, and we've volunteered to bring the breads.
So far, we're leaning towards a celebration Challah (two layer) plus an assortment of dinner rolls (probably some Parker House rolls plus some whole wheat and/or rye ones) and maybe some breadsticks. And for any gluten-free people, probably a batch of Brazilian Cheese Rolls. I can make a number of these ahead of time and freeze them. The Brazilian Cheese Rolls really need to be fresh, so I'll probably time those so that they're out of the oven shortly before we need to leave.
If I had a Kaiser roll stamp I might include some smaller Kaiser rolls, but in order for hand-folding to work they really need to be on the large side.
I'd like to find a recipe for the kind of breadsticks that are made with two different types of dough that are laid out side by side and then twisted together, but I don't really know what they're called. I'm also looking for other breads that you might find in a bread basket at a fancy restaurant, maybe a cheese fougasse (ladder bread). I've dug through my cookbooks and I have Carol Field's recipe for grissini (thin bread sticks) but that's pretty much it for 'bread basket' items. Any suggestions where else to look?
The last time we went to this group dinner, we brought some home-made marshmallow to put on sweet potatoes, and wound up using most of it to make an impromptu batch of Rice Crispy Treats. The younger kids had never had them with from-scratch marshmallow, which is so much different than either the stuff in a jar or a package. My wife thinks if we don't show up with a pan of them, there will be a lot of disappointed people, not all of them young.
There used to be a video out on Youtube of an older baker folding Kaiser rolls by hand. (Not the knot method.) I can't find it today but I'll keep looking.
In the mean time, here's another video that shows hand folding of Kaiser rolls:
Folding Kaiser Rolls
On Saturday afternoon, I made another try at the “3 Grain Bread,” recipe from Breads, Breads, & More Breads (#37), a Pillsbury cook booklet from the 1980s. (The bread is misnamed, as it counts AP flour as a different grain from whole wheat.) The adaptation I did the week of October 13 did not rise well and was dense. This time, I again used the additional whole wheat and rye. I decided to do half medium and half dark rye, in part because the medium rye is more expensive, and I want to save it for another recipe. I replaced the 3 Tbs. butter with 2 ½ Tbs. olive oil, since I like how the olive oil works in Len’s famous Whole Wheat/Rye/Semolina bread. I replaced ¼ cup bran with ¼ cup flax meal, and I again used 2 cups buttermilk. The additional ¼ cup of water, and another ½ cup bread flour, as well as a bit more honey and 4 ½ tsp. yeast resulted in two beautiful loaves of bread now cooling on a rack on my counter. Both rises were long: the first one as 80 minutes and the second an hour. I don’t know if that is the dough or due to a cooler house. I did the rises on the dining room table, as the heat from the wood stove wafts up, so it is around 71F there. I tried a different shaping technique, based on the discussions at Nebraska Kitchen. After pre-shaping, I did not fold the dough but pressed it down just a bit, then tucked it around all the edges, being sure to seal the seam on the bottom. It worked on these loaves, which baked in 9x5 bread pans. I look forward to slicing a loaf for lunch tomorrow.
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This reply was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by
BakerAunt. Reason: changed "flour" to "grain"
Thanks for sharing the video, Len. Those pumpkin-shaped rolls are cute. Now I'm wondering if I could use my Nordic Ware pumpkin muffin pan or the fall items muffin pan and make rolls in it--maybe use Ellen's (Moomie's ) recipe? I may give that a try and see if I can make it work in time to use it for Thanksgiving dinner when we will host some friends.
I actually have a pumpkin mold--made like the famous lamb mold that comes out at Easter--that I bought from King Arthur years ago. The one time I tried baking bread in it, using their recommended recipe, it did not fill the mold, and so only had the shape on one side. I need to look at it and figure out its volume....
See what you started? 🙂
To go with leftover stroganoff, I stir-fried a half bag of some fresh vegetables that the store had on sale (broccoli, diagonally sliced carrots, and a couple of snow peas) in a bit of olive oil.
Last night I made easy stuffed peppers (sliced a pepper down the middle and popped a frozen meatball in each and baked it). Had it with sauce from my tomatoes, pasta and peas.
I won't get it baked this week, but I'm planning to do Jeffrey Hamelman's raisin water bread, from the 2nd edition of his book. I have the first edition, but the recipe (Swiss Farmerhouse Bread) was printed in the BBGA newsletter a few years ago and is also available online here. (It takes 5-7 days just to make the raisin water, which is the only yeast used.)
I haven't decided if I'm going to follow his recipe completely or maybe leave out the walnuts and fold in some cinnamon.
It isn't on that list, but I just ordered Apollonia Poilâne's The Secrets of the World-Famous Bread Bakery. She is the third generation of the Poilâne family to run the bakery, having had to take over rather abruptly after her father's untimely death.
We ordered a miche (their signature bread) from the Poilâne bakery a few years ago, it arrived via Fedex from Paris in less than 48 hours and was excellent!
I'm enjoying the bread discussion and making notes.
I baked my version of Whole Grain Pumpkin Bread (on Nebraska Kitchen site) on Friday afternoon. I used two 9x5 inch Nordic Ware loaf pans with pumpkin design. However, one pan has a darker finish than the other, and it overbaked—not badly, but since I hope to give one of the loaves as a gift, it will be the one we keep. The design did not come out particularly sharp on either, possibly because I had to use old-fashioned oats, as I am out of quick oats. I should have ground them a bit. The breads did release nicely from the pan, thanks to The Grease.
I own two of them, but my attempt to bake a recipe from The Cake Bible did not go well, no doubt due to my ignorance about cakes at that time.
According to the latest issue of Sift, which listed five new cookbooks, it seems that Bernard Clayton's Small Breads (1998) may be being reissued, as it was listed with four other cookbooks from 2018 and 2019.
There are a couple of trade magazines for pastry chefs, they're quite expensive but the photography is incredible.
I ran across this article on books recommended by professional bakers and pastry chefs
8 cookbooks
I have 5 of the 8. (I have volumes 1 and 3 of the Tartine series but not volume 2.) One of the books listed is by Michel Suas, the founder of SFBI and a James Beard award winner for one of his bakery ventures. I bought his book when I was taking the pastry course at SFBI. I also have the CIA bakery textbook (by Gisslen), Cass sent it to me when he was downsizing apartments and I think of him every time I open it.
If you take a ball of dough that has rested after scaling, flatten it into a circle, tri-fold that together (top and bottom to the center) and then fold that again along the center and seal the top, you get a pretty good pre-shape for both batards and baguettes. I let that rest seam side down another 5-10 minutes, but that's optional.
The formulas on the BBGA website are all in baker's math format, so they're easy to size up or down as needed. (A lot of them default to 5-10 kg of dough per batch, which is a moderate sized batch for a commercial kitchen.)
The think the secret to making batards and baguettes is to have the right technique for pre-shaping, so that when you start to roll it out it naturally rolls into the desired shape. I also find that if you divide the dough, pre-shape it and let it rest for 10-15 minutes, the final shaping is easier and a lot more consistent. (A rest after dividing and pre-shaping is one of the 12 steps in Jeffrey Hamelman's book.) I find for baguettes and batards I want an oval pre-shape and for boules I want a round one.
When I took my pastry class at SFBI, one lunch break they were making baguettes in the production kitchen, and they invited me to roll out a few. I had hoped to take the weekend baguette class at SFBI but it was cancelled due to low registrations, so I jumped at the chance to roll out some baguettes.
I was pleased that mine came out very much like theirs, enough so that they went onto the rack for baking. Back when I was testing recipes for Peter Reinhart, I made several baguettes every day for about three weeks, so I probably had that technique down pat. When I make Vienna bread, my goal is a loaf that has uniformly sized slices for most of its length, except at the ends.
Which of these fruit juices is the strongest acid (has the lowest pH)?
[See the full post at: Daily Quiz for November 1, 2019]
Thursday night's dinner was salmon and couscous with Penzey's Mural seasoning. I had the last few green beans from our garden, and my husband had the little bit of broccoli that he managed to save after the two caterpillar attacks.
Halloween has also brought us our first snow, a wet one, so it isn't sticking. The wood stove (and new insulation in the house) is keeping us cozy.
