Olive Spelt Loaf

I got so busy I never even posted the last bread Healthy Bread in Five I made. I even took pictures but the time slipped away and I forgot what was happening in the kitchen at that time and didn't post.

I was hoping not to let this Olive-Spelt Bread slip away from me like that. I've never baked with Spelt before. I really like this bread and would want to make it again. I still have half a recipe so I will figure out later what to make of it. For the first baking I made the boule loaf basic version with a little difference from the recipe. I used half Kalamata olives and half Spanish green olives. Yum... and I still had some homemade yogurt...just enough for this recipe halved.

This dough mixed together well with my new handy dandy Danish Dough whisk from Breadtopia a friend so graciously gave me. I still had to mix in a little more water using my clean hand but I think that is due to having a square mixing container. I left it to rise 3 hours as my kitchen is cool and it appeared to need more time.. I baked without refrigerating this first loaf and it turned out great.

I don't know about you, but I hate putting plastic wrap over my dough to rise and it's a waste and it also sticks if you don't grease the plastic, etc. SO, I decided to just place a large bowl over the top and no muss, no fuss, it appears to work well this way.

Good thing I took the pictures right away as the loaf is half gone now. I WILL make this bread again.

Grissini and Feta/Olive loaf

This morning I wanted to use up the remainder of my whole wheat olive oil bread dough from the Healthy Bread in 5 book. I'd been eying the recipe for Grissini (thin little bread sticks) for some time and this is one of the doughs that is supposed to be good for it. It seemed that when I weighed the dough I had twice as much as I needed (about 1/2 lb is all that is needed). So now I needed to make two things to round out our March 1 bread braid from the book. (I know...I am veering off the schedule here).

So I rolled the dough out about 1/8" or so thick and about 8 x 12" rectangle and used my pizza wheel to make approximate 1/4" or thinner cuts in the dough. It makes 24 according to the recipe so I divided accordingly. I place them all on a Silpat on my baking sheet and dabbed on the olive oil, sprinkled half with kosher salt and rosemary and the other half with kosher salt and Herbs de Provence.

I popped them in a 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes or until brown. They turned out great and even better tasted great. I will make these again........especially when I have a small amount of dough left over from the basic un-enriched doughs.

 

Since I had some more dough left...about the same as before ... I just improvised by rolling it out on a pastry cloth, added drained and blotted Spanish olives w/ pimento, feta cheese crumbles and some turkey bacon from a package in the fridge. I rolled it up and popped it in a loaf pan with a piece of parchment under it. I brushed with the remaining olive oil from the brushing on of the grissini and left covered for about a hour and a half. It didn't rise much. I had been warned by others in the bread group their bread didn't rise much either. I think my loaf pan was also too large. I baked until it was over 200 degrees but I think it could have baked a little longer. The crumb is dense and it could be browner....but I LOVE the savory ingredients in this bread.

While all this was going on I figured I should make a pot of lentils with Canadian bacon and veggies..

Yum Yum good...lentils and home-made breads.

 

Southwestern Foccacia w/ Roasted Corn and Goat Cheese

I'm back to baking some more with the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes bread braid. I was just too busy last braid.
I can only make 1/2 the recipe of Whole Wheat Olive Oil bread this time as I have limited time and mostly limited amount of calories I can consume. This dough has to be prepared into something within 7 days.

The first recipe of the braid sounded good to me.... Southwestern Foccacia w/Roasted Corn and Goat Cheese. Since I live in TX that seemed like a natural. Looked through the cabinets and found , first...no roasted corn or corn to roast so that was the first of my substitutions... I used drained  1/4 cup of Niblets. I, also, don't keep poblano peppers since my husband doesn't care for hot/spicy foods. However, I do, so I have diced jalepenos to substitute. I used diced, seeded plum tomatoes instead of canned ones, and yellow bell pepper. I used white whole wheat. Hum....looks like I made up my whole recipe from substitutions for one reason or another.

Some people in our group seemed to be having problems with this dough. Mine seems fine but I'm not making the plain loaf either so maybe that was their problem

I haven't received my digital scale in the mail yet so I estimated about a grapefruit sized piece of dough and started rolling it out (with fingers) on to a piece of parchment paper. It seems like it will be pretty thin like a pizza to me if I make something 10-12 inches. AND, does look like a pizza to me. (Other Foccacias I've made are much thicker and baked in jelly roll pan thickness.)

 

While the dough rested for about 20 minutes, I preheated the oven to 425. I didn't prick the crust as it didn't say to for this recipe like is usual for pizza.

I placed about a TBS of olive oil in a skillet, chopped one onion, a few tablespoons of yellow bell pepper, and diced up the tomatoes. I used diced, drained jalapenos..about 2 TBS. I cooked the onion until translucent, added the peppers, 1 1/2 tsp chili powder, 1 tsp cumin, and 1 TBS kosher salt when I added the tomatoes. I cooked for a few more minutes and removed from heat.

I sprayed a little oil on the crust to seal it and arranged the topping previously prepared on the dough. I used about two ounces of Goat Cheese dotted all over the top. I could have gotten away with less and saved a few calories I think.

 

I baked for about 25 minutes and sprayed the oven with a water mister instead of the broiler pan. I think I could have left it a tad longer but it turned out good........Tasted really good but I forgot to add the cilantro to the top with more salt. Good thing about the salt as it certainly did not need any more with this version. Maybe it could have if I'd used a can of tomatoes instead of the substitution. Oh yeah... I was supposed to scatter the corn on top but I didn't note that until too late since I added it to my saute.

Here's the finished foccacia/pizza.....YUM!

Soft Whole Wheat Burger Buns

Busy, busy today but I needed to make the last recipe in this HBinFive Braid. My last dough was used to make Hamburger buns. I've never made homemade hamburger buns before...this this turned out pretty easy. I think they look good, too.

Yes.. I know, I got two of them a bit smaller than the others. That's what I call the homemade look.

Since I have a trip to make, I suppose they will have to go in the freezer and wait for my return. However, I think this is something I will make again in the future.

They look pretty good if I say so myself.

Apple Strudel Loaf

I've been trying to a get a head start on the next Healthy Bread in Five bread braid coming up. Our challenge this time is to use the Soft Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread recipe in the book this time in several ways.

I chose to make the Apple Strudel Loaf for my first with this recipe in hopes my husband who doesn't care for whole wheat would help eat this one up.

I made the Soft Whole Wheat recipe with a little change.... KA White Whole Wheat flour instead of plain Whole Wheat flour...oops, two changes, I accidentally bought KA bread flour last time instead of unbleached AP. SO this recipe has a little more gluten with the bread flour in it. That's okay with me as I have a little trouble with rise sometimes with my breads.

This recipe is SO lovely...think I'll keep the white whole wheat and the Bread flour. It, also, has honey and eggs....yum. It almost overflowed my big 6 liter bread container.

In this one picture you will see that one end looks a little like it is deflated...it is, some of the filling leaked out. Next time...a little less filling I think is in order to facilitate the rolling up of the dough.

In the version for the strudel loaf, I believe I could have used half the apples though as there was so much filling I could barely fold it over and plop it in the pan much less try to actually roll it up. It also made it a little messy to cut and serve. However, we persevered :>)

Hubby did like it and ate quite a bit........that helped me contain myself from eating too much.

Spicy Chili Whole Grain Snack Crackers

For the third recipe from the Master Dough January Bread Braid, I made the Spicy Chili Whole Grain Crackers.

I don't think I've  ever made crackers but one time in the past. Although they were good, they didn't bake quite as crispy as I would have liked.  (the before crackers, not these....)

Some of the other bread braid participants made theirs earlier and reported that they could just cut them out on parchment and there was no real need to separate them. I followed their example and it made it much easier to make on the parchment and then transfer the whole thing in one fell swoop onto the baking sheet to cook.

These are topped with a chili powder and kosher salt blend after being brushed with olive oil. Yum...but think I  could also top them with any other kind of spice and salt as well.

Too bad my husband thought the brown stuff was cinnamon sugar...he got a big surprise.  Hum...guess you could do that though for people with a sweet tooth.

I think these are good all by themselves or with cheese.

More HBin5 Master Dough

I decided that I would make some more of the Whole Wheat Master Dough yesterday.......only this time put it in a loaf pan and add some crunch.

I was going to roll it out like a cinnamon roll dough and put in walnuts but seems I had run out of walnuts, so I chopped some pecans. I rolled it all up, tucked in the ends and put it in a greased large loaf pan and set out to rise on "proof" in the oven.

When it rose sufficiently...... I baked it at 375 in the convection oven starting with 30 minutes. When that time came it needed about 10-13 minutes longer. This will depend on how large the loaf is... I had just cut off a hunk of the dough. Enough to fill the loaf pan about 2/3 to 3/4 full.  I took it out when it reached about 200 or so degrees with the instant read thermometer. That thing has really helped me as I had a lot of loaves that 'looked' done but were not. I have to make myself wait for it to cool about 15 minutes before turning it out of the pan onto a cooling rack to finish cooling. This first waiting really helps the bread not stick to the pan...........and the last cooling helps keep the bread from being gummy.

It turned out pretty good. This is NOT a sweet bread but seems like it if you drizzle a little honey on it.......or leave as is and serve any other way your imagination tells you might work for you.

Healthy Bread in Five Master Dough

I'm starting out 2010 with the google group HBin5. Our first braid challenge is making the basic Master dough from the book.

I made the full batch which makes 3-4 loaves of bread depending on what you do with it. This dough has a large amount of whole wheat flour. I added a lot of sesame seeds to the first loaf I made..some on the inside while shaping and a lot on the outside. Generally we don't care for some whole wheat breads (hubby more than me) so I hesitated to make it with this much whole wheat. BUT...decided to just go with it anyway.

So this morning I made the loaf and left it to cool while I went off to my studio to paint. I came back and saw an uneven hunk out of the end. I asked what/who and he said, "I needed to make a sandwich and couldn't find any bread". ha ha...this might be the way to introduce him to eating something good for him instead of the regular old white smushy stuff you buy at the store. Nah....said he didn't really like it but was hungry.  Here's the site for this bread.

So I decided to make me some bruschetta for dinner. Why not for dinner as I ate a lot instead of an appetizer portion and had a glass of Cabernet. Yum!

SO, the pictures, As explained I didn't get a pic until it was torn into by the kitchen marauder hubby but I did take another pic of the bruschetta I made with some tomatoes, olive oil, a few green onions, garlic, and some basil and other seasonings thrown in. Grated all that wonderful Pecorino on top and then toasted in the broiler again.