Strecca - no knead stick bread

Several months ago one of the food bloggers I follow, stresscake, posted a recipe for no-knead strecca. I've been wanting to try the no -knead method for a while, but lack the dutch oven that most recipes seem to call for. Here was an opportunity to try the no-knead method w/ shaped loaves that just call out to be slathered with brie, camembert, and a few olives on the side.

The basic idea is that the slow rise produces the gluten action that regular kneading does. After a 12-18 hour rise, you do some dough flopping, followed by another 1-2 hour rise, shaping and baking. (Please go to the link above for the full recipe, I don't have permissions to post it and am trying to be better about using other people's work!)

Step one was to mix the flour, water, salt, sugar, and yeast, cover it, and leave it be for 12-18 hours.

In retrospect, you can see that 18 hours in our warm temps is a bit over-proofed. In future I'll move onto the second step after 12 hours, or do the long rise in the fridge. The taste turned out fine, but I didn't get as much rise in the final loafs due to over proofing.

Step two was to pour the dough onto a floured surface, fold over a few time, cover with olive oil, drape w/ a well-floured tea towel, and let rise 1-2 hours.

Note: this is way too much flour. I had globs of olive oil soaked flour stuck to my loaves and had to cut them out. 

In the future, I'm ditching the tea towel and scratching the flour. This dough would have done much better in the 2nd rise if just places in a well-oiled bowl with plastic wrap over the top. Using the towel, I lost dough to the towel and I lost dough that mingled badly with the flour and olive oil.

Also, I had to let my second rise last 3 hours and could have gone longer if we weren't starving.

Step 3: stretch out into long sticks (I did 3 instead of 4), bush with olive oil, top with sea salt, pepper and desired toppings. I did sliced tomatoes, olives, and minced garlic.

After 15 min in the oven - Ta-da!

The flavor of the bread was fantastic. It really needs the final dose of olive oil, and generous salt and peppering - don't scrimp on that step. The flavor was a slight tang from the long rise and the texture of both the crust and the interior was just divine. I now want to buy the book and make more of these recipes.

Fall Pumpkin Bread

When Garett over at Vanilla Garlic posted a recipe for Maple Pumpkin Bread earlier in the month, I clipped it to my Evernote cookbook with a note saying, "Make when weather drops below 85". Well, it's below 85. In fact, we've had highs int he mid 60s for most of the week and Sunday was a proper rainy fall day. Which meant I wasn't going to die if I turned on the oven and heated up the house for a bit. I had a sugar pie pumpkin that needed cooking and this recipe that needed making.

As with most of my cooking, I used the recipe for a guideline and added my own tweaks. I know what flavors I like in cooking and most of the time and play around with spices recipes. I've only had one really bad experience in which I added too many cloves to gingerbread cookies and everyone's mouth went numb . Oops.

In general, when baking, and especially when baking quick breads, there are simple ways to make "up" the "health" quotient. You can replace up to 1/2 of the called for oil with equal parts pumpkin, banana, or apple sauce. I keep frozen bananas on hand for this very purpose. Banana  and applesauce more or less disappear as far as taste goes, although I think banana gives a better texture. Pumpkin to replace oil can add interesting depth to blueberry muffins or zucchini bread.

Similarly, you can easily replace 1/2 -2/3 of white flour with whole wheat or whole wheat pastry (my preference). The crumb will be a little more dense, but when you add extra fiber and protein,  I'm happy to make the exchange. WW pastry flour will produce a lighter softer crumb, very similar to all purpose.

As far as the spices, I really wing it. I love nutmeg and allspice - much more than cinnamon. AndI find clove and ginger give pumpkin breads a lightness. A bit of orange or lemon zest is also good.

The cranberries on the bottom is borrowed from a ginger cranberry cake recipe from the book Sweet. The flavor is fantastic - tart little bits of cranberry - and the color just scream "fall".

Using the recipe as a guideline, here are my tweaks:
-Roasted one sugar pie pumpkin at 350F for 90 min. Used roasted flesh instead of canned pumpkin

-1.5 c flour  to .5 c. all purpose and 1 c. whole wheat pastry flour

-.5 c oil to .25 c. oil and 1 mashed banana

pureed in my handy, dandy food processor

-added chopped crystalized ginger

-lined the bottom of my tin with cranberries

-added dashes of nutmeg, allspice, ginger, and clove (I was careful with the clove). Maybe 1/8 tsp each?

All prepped and ready to go in the oven!

Yum

 The final cake is absolutely wonderful and will be my go-to pumpkin cake/bread recipe. The crystalized ginger adds a little kick, and the cranberries burst with tartness.

In future, I'd reduce the amount of sugar by 1/4 c. With the maple syrup and banana, you don't need the full cup of sugar.

Happy Fall.

Apple Honey Challah

A few weeks ago I made this recipe for Apple Honey Challah from Two Blue Lemons. For those who don't know, challah is a Jewish egg bread. It is generally served at shabbat dinner (Friday night). In my opinion, they key to a good challah is the texture: the dough should be stringy, chewy, and slightly moist. It can be made savory with sesame or poppy seeds, or sweet (my preference) with a bit of honey or sugar. A sweet, round, "turban" loaf is traditional for Rosh Hashanah. Challah is close to a brioche, but in my opinion, much easier to make and more eggy than buttery. If you're following kosher you want to be careful with the fat (use oil for fleisch and butter for parve or vegetarian meals).

Dough rising

The dough is a bit wet - i had to add more flour as I kneaded until it felt right - and I took forever to rise. I kept poking it, telling L I ruined it, and then letting it rise some more. So give this one long rises (at least 2 hours). I also found that using olive oil on my hands helped with the kneading process and kept me from adding too much flour. It's a handful once you add the apples, but the end result is amazing. Parchment paper in a springform pan made baking a cinch. I could have eaten the entire loaf all by myself. I've hear challah is fantastic as french toast, but honestly, I love the regular loaf so much that it never lasts long enough to get stale.

Finished loaf

As the story goes you are not supposed to a knife to challah, because doing so is doing violence to the bread, but are supposed to tear it. I decided to go for slices b/c if I didn't I'd have torn off half the loaf. To make an easily tearable challah, go for a 5 strand braid, or divid the dough into smaller dough balls and stick them together in a loaf pan.