bread

Cranberry Cornbread

½ cup butter 3 Tbsp sugar 1 ¼ cup fresh or frozen cranberries 1 cup flour ½ cup applesauce ¼ cup honey ½ cup corn meal 1 tsp baking powder ½ tsp baking soda ½ tsp salt 2 eggs 1 Tbsp minced candied ginger, or ½ tsp ground ginger

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Melt ¼ cup butter in a pan over medium heat. Add the sugar, stirring to dissolve. Add cranberries. Let cook, stirring, until the cranberries are all cracked up. Pour this mixture into a greased bread loaf pan (5”x9”), distributing evenly over the bottom.

Stir together flour, corn meal, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and ginger.

Beat together the remaining butter, applesauce, and honey, until the butter is in small chunks. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Slowly beat in the flour mixture, until combined. Spoon into the pan over the cranberries, spreading evenly and smoothing the top.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Let cool for 15 minutes before inverting to remove from pan.

#applesauce #bakingpowder #bakingsoda #bread #butter #cake #candidedginger #cornmeal #cranberry #dessert #egg #ginger #honey #salt #side #sugar #vegetarian #wheatflour

Honey Bread

4 cups flour 2 cups warm water 1 Tbsp salt 2 tsp yeast ¼ cup honey

In a large mixing bowl, dissolve 2 tsp honey in the water. Stir in the yeast. When it is starting to foam, add 3 cups of flour, one cup at a time, mixing completely after each addition. On the third cup, add in the salt as well. Dump the fourth cup of flour onto the clean counter, then dump the dough on the flour and knead it. You may not need to knead in all of the flour, just until the dough is no longer sticky clumps. Knead the dough until it is smooth and stretchy. Coat the inside of the bowl with oil, coat the outside of the dough with oil, put it in the bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise for 30 minutes or until doubled.

Roll out the dough into a large rectangle between ½” and ¾” thick. Drop globs of honey randomly onto the dough. Don't spread it in an even layer. Roll up the dough into a log and form into a loaf. Grease the inside of the bread pan and put in the dough. Cut a slash along the top of the loaf. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for another 30 minutes.

Put the bread pan in the oven, then set the temperature for 350° F. Bake for 40-50 minutes until the top is a deep golden brown & the loaf sounds hollow when you tap the bottom.

#bread #dairyfree #honey #salt #vegetarian #wheatflour #yeast

Irish Soda Bread

2 cups flour 2 Tbsp sugar 2 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda ½ tsp salt ¼ cup butter 1 cup buttermilk 1 Tbsp melted butter

Preheat oven to 375° F. Lightly grease a small baking sheet or dust with coarse cornmeal.

In a large bowl, sift flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Cut in the butter with pastry blender or fork until mixture looks like fine crumbs. Add buttermilk. Mix with a fork until dry ingredients are moistened. Turn out on a lightly floured board and knead gently until smooth, about 1 minute.

Shape into a ball. Place on the prepared baking sheet. Flatten into a 7” circle. Dough will be about 1 ½” thick. Press a large knife into the loaf, almost cutting through to the bottom, dividing it into quarters.

Bake 30-40 minutes, or until the top is golden and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped. Remove to wire rack to cool. Brush top with melted butter.

#bakingpowder #bakingsoda #bread #butter #buttermilk #salt #sugar #vegetarian #wheatflour

Bread Knowledge

From a useful breadmaking class.

Acidity: Yeast loves acid. It grows well in acidic environments, and it actually creates acidic environments through its fermentation process. But once the environment becomes too acidic, the yeast dies and your bread dies. That is why you don't let it rise for too long. Also, if you add in acidic ingredients like onions or fruit juice, this will cause for problems with the bread going flat from the yeast dying.
Kneading: The baker told us to treat the dough like it's a living organism. So we must treat it gently. When stirring the ingredients, don't cut through it with your spoon. Instead scoop the ingredients together and they will form dough on their own. When kneading, don't push and pull so hard that the dough tears. Be gentle with it. That's the best way to get soft dough with big bubbles. After gently kneading for a few minutes (adding in flour as necessary), the dough will start to resist, no longer absorbing flour, and physically fighting back against your hands. It will also take on a sort of luster or sheen, and that's when you know it's time to let it rest and rise.
Sugar: Putting sugar in your dough is what causes the bread to come out browner. More sugar = browner, and sweeter sugar = browner. So ½ cup of honey will make a browner bread than ½ cup of cane sugar, because honey is much sweeter than cane sugar. The baker said that he only usually only uses a small amount of sugar to get the yeast going.
Salt and Sugar: Sugar and salt in the recipe need to be inversely proportionate. If you use more sugar, you need to use less salt. If you use less sugar, you need to use more salt.
Salt: Salt retards the ability of the yeast to ferment, so it's important to control how much salt you use, and/or when you add it to the dough.
Rising: You know it's risen enough if you poke it and the hole from your finger stays in the dough.
Fat: Fat is put in the bread for the sake of texture, not so much for flavor.
Interesting Historical Fact: In the middle ages, white flour was made by sifting and grinding the wheat over and over again. This means that it still retained most of its nutrients, and was basically just as nutritious as the darker flours. That's different from the white flour of today, which is chemically bleached, which destroys the natural nutrients in the wheat, so that vitamins and such are artificially added back into the flour.
Bread flour and all-purpose flour contain a good amount of gluten for making bread. Pastry flour and flour made from different grains, have less or no gluten, so they don't have the strength to stretch and hold the air, so they are not good for making yeast bread. They can be treated as add-ins for flavor, not used to create the structure of the bread.
The sponge method of making bread:

This is a method, not a recipe, so go find a recipe and use this method for it.

Start the yeast in a bit of water with a bit of sugar or flour. Mix together the water, sugar, half the flour, and the yeast mixture after it's become all foamy.

Let this rest for a long time. Overnight in a cold environment or a few hours in a warm environment. It needs to become rather large and blobby and sticky and bubbly.

After it's rested, add in the salt, oil/butter, and more flour. Stir it gently, not cutting through the dough, but bringing the flour down the sides and underneath with your spoon, like scooping it together. When it's mostly together, turn out to a floured board and knead more flour in until it's ready.

Let rise twice, once as a blob (oiled, in an oiled and covered bowl), and once in loaf form. These loaves don't take as long to bake because they're more airy, more like ½ hour.

Any desired additional ingredients, like fruit, vegetables, herbs, seeds, whole grains, cheese, etc, can be added. They can be added either at the beginning, when making the sponge, or later when you add the rest of the ingredients. Any acidic ingredients should be added at the later point, and any dried/dehydrated ingredients should be soaked in water before going into the dough, so they don't mess up the dough's hydration level.

#bread #honey #note #salt #sugar #wheatflour #yeast

Artisan Whole Wheat Bread

For 3 loaves of bread: 1 ½ cups lukewarm water 1 ½ cups lukewarm milk or evaporated milk 1 ½ Tbsp yeast 1 Tbsp + 1 tsp salt ½ cup honey 5 Tbsp oil 6 2/3 cup whole wheat flour

For 1 loaf of bread: ½ cup lukewarm water ½ cup milk or evaporated milk ½ Tbsp yeast ½ Tbsp salt 3 Tbsp honey 1 ½ Tbsp oil 2 ¼ cup whole wheat flour

In a very large bowl with a lid, or some other lidded container, mix together the water, milk, yeast, salt, honey and oil.

Stir in the flour (without kneading it).

Cover it (not airtight) and let it sit for 2-3 hours, until the dough has risen and fallen.

Either use it now, or refrigerate it (with the lid on, but not airtight) to make several loaves of dough throughout the week. It's easier to handle when it's cold.

When you want to bake it, scoop out about 1.5 lbs of dough (the size of a cantaloupe, or about 1/3 of the dough). Have your hands be wet with water to prevent the dough from sticking. Form the dough into a ball. Place the ball of dough into a greased loaf pan (it should fill the pan just over halfway). Let the dough rest/rise for 1 hour 40 minutes-2 hours.

Coat the top of the dough with flour and cut slashes into it. Preheat the oven to 350° F. Place the loaf into the middle of the oven, with another pan on the side with some hot water in it. Bake for 50-60 minutes, until very brown and firm.

Let cool completely before slicing, to prevent crumbling.

#bread #evaporatedmilk #honey #milk #oil #salt #vegetarian #wheatflour #yeast

Cornbread Stuffing

This is how my mom makes stuffing for Thanksgiving.

Ingredients: cornbread bread onions celery butter sage soup stock salt

Make a batch of cornbread. Cut into cubes after it's baked.

Gather different kinds of bread and rolls you have around. Stale bread is okay. Tear or cut the bread into cubes. Have an equal amount of cornbread and other bread.

Mix the cornbread and the other bread together in large bowl.

Saute chopped onions and chopped celery in butter.

Mix onions and celery into the breads.

Add a lot of ground sage to taste.

Add chicken/turkey broth or vegetable stock. Add enough to moisten the bread, especially if some is stale, but not so much that it turns into a gluey, soggy lump.

Add salt if the stock/broth you used was not salty.

At this point taste it and add more sage/salt/broth as necessary.

Spread it into a baking pan and warm it in the oven until it's warm all the way.

#bread #butter #celery #cornmeal #onion #sage #salt #side #soupstock #vegetarian

Soft Flowerbread

2 cups warm herbal tea ¼ cup honey 2 Tbsp yeast 4 cups white wheat flour 1 tsp salt 1-2 Tbsp edible flowers, dried or fresh

Dissolve the honey in the tea and sprinkle the yeast in. When the yeast is foamy, add it to 2 cups flour. Let rise until about doubled.

Add the rest of the flour, the salt, and the flowers. Knead for about 10 minutes, with more flour as necessary.

Coat the bowl and dough with a thin layer of oil and let rise, covered, in a warm place until about doubled again, but not for too long.

Form into a loaf. Spray the inside of your oven or put in a pan of water.

Put loaf in oven while it's preheating to 350° F, and bake for about 1 hour.

Some flowers, like lavender, are available as a culinary herb. Fresh edible flowers can sometimes be found at grocery stores in the refrigerated section with the fresh herbs. Also look for herbal teas that are made with flowers. Small, aromatic seeds such as fennel seeds are a good addition, or seeds from flowers like poppy seeds.

You can also harvest flowers and blossoms from your garden. Not all of them are sweet. I like chive flowers and squash flowers. Be sure you look up your flowers online to see if they are edible.

#bread #dairyfree #fairyfeast #flowers #honey #salt #tea #vegetarian #wheatflour #yeast

Oat Bread & Oat Nut Bread

2 tsp yeast 2 tsp sugar, brown sugar, honey, molasses, or maple syrup 1 cup warm water 1 cup warm milk or nut milk 4 Tbsp butter 1 ½ cups rolled oats ¾ cup chopped nuts (optional) 3 tsp salt 3 cups flour

In a large bowl, combine yeast, sugar, and warm water.

When the yeast becomes foamy, stir in the warm milk and butter. Stir in the oats, then the nuts if using, then the salt. Stir in the flour one cup at a time.

Knead the dough, using more flour as necessary, until the dough is relatively smooth, not sticky, and resistant. Coat the dough with oil, place in a large oiled bowl, and cover it with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm place for 30-40 minutes.

Knead the dough gently and form into a smooth loaf. Place in a bread pan. Coat the top of the dough with oil and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Let rise for 30-40 minutes. Preheat oven to 350° F. Bake for 1 hour.

#bread #brownsugar #butter #honey #maplesyrup #milk #molasses #nutmilk #nuts #oats #salt #sugar #vegetarian #wheatflour #yeast