Raccoon and Lobster

Baking shenanigans experienced a lull of late because of the weather, but the lack of bread and bread-like foods in the house has hit unacceptable levels. I made a batch of flatbread, in large part because the idea of having to put on pants to go to the store seemed especially repugnant today. Once I mentally declare a pants-free day, I make every endeavor to stick to it.

Flatbread
makes 8 flatbreads about 7″ wide

13 oz bread flour
10 oz boiling water
1 tsp salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tsp instant yeast

Combine about 2/3 of the flour with the water, mix to combine and set aside until cool, about 20 minutes (the boiling water cooks the starch and makes the dough a lot easier to work with). Combine remaining ingredients and then work in cooled dough. Knead until smooth and uniform. Dough will be sticky to the touch. Cover and let rise about 1 hour.

Divide dough into 8 pieces and let rest for 20 minutes.  Roll into 7-8″ circles and cook over a medium heat skillet with no oil. Pop any especially large air bubbles that develop. Flip after about one minute. I like my flatbread with a little bit of crunch so I wait until there are just a smattering of black spots amidst the browning.

Submitted to Yeastspotting

To turn these into a meal, make a sandwich with some meat of your choice, whatever veggies you have hanging around, and an appropriate mixture of condiments. Remember that goal here is to avoid having to put on pants and go to the store.

I ended up with red peppers

chicken, guacamole and ranch dressing. A little skimpy.

Oh wait!

Tomatoes from the front yard!

Nice save.

So good I just ate right there in the kitchen. Without pants.

I got this “request” two days ago from a glutton friend

less computer, more kitchen!

and indeed, I had been slacking off of late. So much so that the boyfriend, starved for pastries, was forced to make his own sweet dough. Quelle horreur!

After making a few buns and rolls, he was finished and there was still a sizable quantity of sweet dough left. Two days later it was still there, so I did what any rational person would do and made it into cinnamon rolls.

This sweet dough is much easier to work with than the Rich Man’s Brioche because it has a much more reasonable flour:butter ratio. Sadly, this also makes it less fingerlicking rich.

Sweet Dough

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons whole milk, warm
1/2 oz fresh (cake) yeast or 1 (1/4-oz) package active dry yeast
1 lb 2 oz bread flour (about 3 3/4 cups)
1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened
3 tablespoons superfine granulated sugar
2 teaspoons salt
2 large eggs

Combine ingredients and work into a smooth, shiny dough ball using the french fold as shown in the video. Shape into a boule and let rest until doubled, about 1 hour.

Form into rolls or buns with desired fillings. A combination of cheese and deli meat makes a fantastic savory bun. I recommend salami and fourme d’Ambert.

Cinnamon Rolls

Roll dough into a flat sheet, approx 3/8″ thick. Pour on top and then dust very generously with sugar and cinnamon. Roll up into a tube and slice. Let rest 20 minutes and bake at 400°F until edges are golden but dough is still soft, about 10-12 minutes.

Cream Cheese Frosting

4 oz cream cheese, softened
1/2 stick butter, softened
sugar and vanilla to taste, I used about 4 heaping teaspons of sugar and just splashed in some vanilla.

Beat until smooth. Slather copiously over warm buns and serve immediately.

subbmitted to Yeastspotting

Ever since evil Stacy mixed up a batch of brioche dough and started her summer of brioche, I have been meaning to make my own sweet dough pastry.

My original plan was to do a blueberry cream cheese braid because it looks super fancy and I’m competitive like that.  I also decided to swap the dough used with the brioche dough from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice because it’s richer (and theoretically fancier than the recipe Stacy used, so I would win) Unfortunately, the BBA brioche dough was significantly stickier than the recommended dough for the braid due to its higher butter content so  I had to be content with making filled buns. They were delicious.

It took me several tries to perfect the bun forming, you have to keep the dough chilled and work fast or you will end up with a gooey, buttery mess. For a while, it was looking like they were more trouble than they were worth, but then I ate one and decided that they may be worth the trouble after all.

I had the best luck using just my hands. No rolling pins or cutting boards to stick to. Just flatten into a disk, dab in the two fillings and pinch closed. The shape will even out as it rises so don’t worry too much about it. For the 3″ buns that came out of the oven, I made golf ball sized buns.

Rich Man’s Brioche from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice:

Makes about 20 filled rolls

Sponge:

½ cup (2.25 oz)  unbleached bread or all-purpose flour
½ cup (4 oz)  lukewarm whole milk
2 teaspoons instant yeast

Stir until combined, cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 20 minutes.

Dough:

5 eggs
3 ½ cups (16 oz) bread flour
2 ½ tablespoons granulated sugar
1 ½ teaspoons salt
2 cups (4 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature (room temperature is key here)

Add the eggs to the sponge and beat until smooth. Combine flour, sugar and salt and then slowly add to the egg mixture, mixing until smooth, about 2 minutes. Let rest for 5 minutes for gluten development, then gradually work in the butter in small pieces. Allow each addition to be assimilated before adding more. Continue mixing for 5-6 minutes until the dough is smooth and soft. I think part of the difficulty I had with my dough was due to insufficient mixing at this stage. You will have to stop and scrape the bowl frequently and remove dough from the paddle if you are using a stand mixer.

Line a pan with parchment paper and fill it with the dough. Mist the top lightly with oil and cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight, or for a minimum of 4 hours.

Blueberry Filling
2 cups blueberries
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Combine into small sauce pan and heat until bubbling. Simmer for 2-3 minutes, then let cool.

Cream Cheese Filling
8 oz cream cheese, room temperature
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix until combined.

When the overnight proofing is done, work with the dough in small batches, leaving most of it in the fridge. If it softens too much, finish the step you are on and let it chill some more. This will get quite messy. To make loaves, you can just fill the dough into loaf pans and let them rise about 2 hours before baking. For filled buns, you want to take small chunks of dough, about the size of a golf ball and flatten them out with your palm or fingers to about 1/4″. Use your hand to form a small bowl for the dough circle to rest in and put in the filling and pinch the edges closed into a small pouch. Place it seam side down on parchment paper. Make sure to leave lots of room for them to expand. This is going to be sticky and goopy so just worry about getting the rough shape down and make sure the filling is sealed. You can use the stickiness of the dough to your advantage and tear off small pieces, warm it up in your fingers and apply as a patch to areas that need it.

Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, about 2 hours. Brush tops of buns lightly with an egg wash if desired. Bake at 400°F for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.

This is seriously the most fun I’ve had baking ever and the oven isn’t even on yet. If you have a Kitchen-Aid mixer, I don’t care how lazy you are, you NEED to do this.

The recipe is taken from a posting on The Fresh Loaf and it has very good directions, but what it will not tell you is how much naked glee you will experience watching the dough get the living crap kicked out of it.

Jason’s Quick Coccodrillo Ciabatta Bread

500g bread flour
475g (~2 cups) water
2 tsp. yeast
15g salt

The first thing you’ll notice is that this is a very very wet dough. At first there doesn’t seem like there is any hope that this is going to make anything more than batter. But have faith.

Combine ingredients and beat with paddle until combined. Let rest for 10 minutes. Then turn the paddle up to 6, which will seem like a ludicrous speed. I thought I had it on high when it turns out I just had the speed at 4. The dough is going to start climbing up the paddle after about 4 minutes, and that is when you switch to the hook. When you remove the dough it’s already going to be developing some gluten strands. In the third picture you can see my hastily scrawled notes while I’m mixing and it says “sneeze” in the bottom left corner. Folks, the consistency of the dough at this point is that of a sneeze. I’m sorry. It is. You’re going to touch it to get it off the paddle and go “Ew!” At least it’s not going to be as messy as most bread baking because the dough is so sticky it will cling together.

After a few more minutes of using the dough hook on 6, the dough is going to start cleaning the bowl and form an actual shape. Ten minutes in, everything is going to be spotless and you will catch your mixer trying to walk itself off the counter. It’s going to be loud and the noises it makes are going to be hilarious. You’re going to see the gluten developing and finally understand what those crazy bread bakers are talking about when they say gluten strands. There are going to be some seriously loud, wet whaps as dough gets flung onto the bowl and peels itself off. You’re gonna have to turn your shutter speed up to crazy levels just to get a motion blur picture.

After about 19-20 minutes of mixing, the dough is going to start climbing up the hook and will have completely peeled off the bottom. It looks like a well formed ball in motion but when you stop the mixer, it’s all gonna fall back into a wet sticky puddle again. As you remove it from the hook, it’s gonna be so wet and sticky and stretchy that it gets thin enough to see through.  Pouring it into a well oiled container means long white sheets of dough stretching the full height between the mixing bowl and the counter. I wish I had a picture for you, but somehow the boyfriend managed to sleep through the entire ruckus and it is impossible to do this and hold a camera at the same time. You’re just going to have to make this bread yourself and play with your food. I’m telling you, this is  cool.

Cover the dough and let it rise until tripled, about 2.5 hours. (Please see footnote, both times I have baked it today it has taken about 1.5 hours for the dough to triple.) That’s where I am in the recipe. Update to come in about 2 hours*.

95 minutes to triple today folks! You are gonna love the way this puffball dough falls out of the container. Empty on to a very well floured surface, cut into 4 pieces, spray with oil and flour very very well. Cover with a well floured cloth and let rest for 45 minutes. Now is the time to heat up your oven to 500°.

And batch #1 is in the oven! Due to the necessity of splitting up the baking, and the fact that the yeast is being so active today, the first batch is going in at 30 minutes, and the second will go in at 50 minutes. Splitting the difference as it were. Flip your dough upside onto parchment paper or a well floured peel, stretch it out to about 10″, and slide that sucker into the oven. See you in 20 minutes for the reveal…

Look at this ridiculous oven spring!!! Ye gods!

GOAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!

And here is batch #2 for comparison. I turned the heat down to 450° for the last 10 minutes.

So it took 4 people about an hour to devour all the loaves and I started making another batch tonight. I guess it’s safe to say that this recipe is a success. This will be submitted to the bread baking roundup at Yeastspotting.

*Of course, in matters of baking, it takes however long it takes. So updates to come whenever this dough has decided 2.5 hours has passed. Edit: On the second batch it’s taking a little over an hour for the tripling as well. So WATCH YOUR DOUGH to tell you when the right time has passed.

Today being National Doughnut Day, it seems an opportune time to post a culinary non-catastrophe from the recent pre-blog past: homemade raised doughnuts!

I used the recipe listed at Erin Cooks and they came out beautifully. I’m typically not one for doughnuts, but these were tasty enough to warrant several. One friend who overindulged has started accusing me of trying to fatten him up for nefarious purposes. 

Raised Doughnuts

5 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt

2 packages active dry yeast
1 3/4 cups very warm milk (120º to 130º)
1/3 cup shortening
2 eggs
Vegetable oil
Sugar

Mix 2 cups of flour and all dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add milk, shortening and eggs. Beat on low until combined, and then gradually mix in all remaining flour, scraping the bowl. Cover and place in a warm place for an hour until dough is doubled in size.

Turn out dough onto a heavily floured and roll out to 1/2 inch thickness. Cut with pastry cutters into appropriate sized doughnuts.  Cover again and let rise until doubled in size, about 30-40 minutes. Alton Brown notes that any leftover pieces should rest 20 minutes after combining before re-cutting and they will always be tougher than the original batch. I got sick of that and made negative space fried dough pieces which were just as delicious as the round shapes and had interesting corners that were extra crispy. 

Heat about 1 to 1.5 gallons of vegetable oil in a dutch oven to 365º. Slide in doughnuts one at a time, waiting a few seconds between doughnuts so that they won’t stick together if they do bump. Flip when the dough turns golden brown, about 1 minute, and cook the other side. Transfer to a cooling rack.

Sugarphobes can eat these straight or you can roll in cinammon sugar or dip in

Glaze

1/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups confectioner’s sugar

Combine milk and vanilla in saucepan and heat until warm. Whisk in sugar. Remove from heat and set over a pan of warm water while you dip in doughnuts. For best results, get out the burn cream and eat while warm.