Cranberry Challah

I finally got the Whole Grain Cranberry Challah made today. I only made half the recipe. It seemed to me the dough was a little dry. Or maybe I should say drier than the usual no knead Master dough.

Since my husband isn't a big fan of whole wheat breads anyway, I used more AP unbleached flour than whole wheat (flipped it from the recipe). That could have been part of the reason for drier dough. Some flours need more or less water. I also, decided to throw in a half cup of chopped walnuts and leave off the orange in the topping.

I've never made a braided bread before so I opted for the simple 3 strand braid. Unbelievably, it was very simple and easy to do. Hooray for YouTube videos. The tips from the HBin5 also was good for the description even without a video.

It looks great and tastes good........although this really isn't a sweet bread. If you toast it, butter it and put a little honey or preserves for breakfast...YUM!

I think I might make a roll with a filling with the rest of the dough tomorrow or Friday.

French Bread

Finally, got a chance to make the HealthyBread in Five Master bread dough. I decided to make French baguettes with my new Chicago Cutlery perforated baguette pan.

My results look okay here...but they sure aren't very large like the pan could hold.
In my case with only the two of us here...that is a good thing.

That butter is all ready to be used after I wait a time for the loaf to cool down.

Cinnamon Rolls and Loaf

After making the Whole Wheat Brioche dough I needed to make something else. My husband always has liked cinnamon rolls so I decided at first to make the Cinnamon Crescents...needless to say, they tasted okay but my abilities at shaping the dough into presentable crescents since it is fairly wet were not great. No Pic on this one.

Then next I decided that my time was running out so .......USE up the rest of the dough. This time I rolled out the dough like for the cinnamon crescents but instead of making crescents, I just sprinkled the dough with as much cinnamon and brown sugar as it needed for the size of the dough you rolled out. Then (with lots more flour on the board this time), I took out my dough scraper (heavenly tool that scraper)....and rolled it up using the scraper when needed. I divided the dough in to twelve rolls. They were kinda large so I just put 6 on the parchment paper this time and got out a large loaf pan. I sprayed the loaf pan and then lined it with large strips going both ways with parchment. Then I put the other 6 dough slices side by side in the pan using the ends for the ends of the loaf.

I baked the rolls 20 minutes at 350 and the loaf about 30 minutes at 350. Simple confectioners sugar was drizzled on for the finish.

We really liked both of these.

Start of my baking with HBin5 journey

This is the Whole Wheat Brioche I made before I finally got my book in the mail from Amazon. I think I will really like this particular dough as it is rich, and slightly sweet like my husband will like. Hey...good way to not eat it all myself!