October’s Artisan Bread Baker’s BOM (Bread of the Month) was Pumpkin Knotted Dinner Rolls. These rolls were so amazing, that I’ll be adding them to my Thanksgiving menu. The name says pumpkin, but they do not actually taste like pumpkin. Instead of pumpkin flavor, the pumpkin adds a wonderful amount of moistness. Perfect rolls for soaking up some good Thanksgiving gravy! The recipe is from here. You can even change the serving size on the recipe site. I made 24 and I wouldn’t recommend any less. Trust me, they are that good. I individually wrapped the extra rolls with plastic wrap, put them in a freezer bag, and froze them. They held up great. If I knew I was going to want some for dinner, I just took them out in the morning and let them defrost on the counter. Of course, there were the times I wanted one right then and there, so I would just put one in the microwave for 15 seconds. Microwaving frozen bread isn’t my preferred choice, but it worked fine with these rolls.

Ingredients (for 24 rolls):
1/2 ounce active dry yeast
1 cup warm 2% low-fat milk (110-115 degrees F)
* I didn’t have 2% milk, so I used half non-fat milk and half – half & half.
1/3 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin puree
2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
5 1/2-6 cups flour, divided
EGG WASH
1 tablespoon cold water
1 egg

I prefer bread recipes that are measured by weight. So, my next batch I’m going to weigh the dry ingredients. I’ll be sure to add the weight for my fellow bread baking snobs. Measuring dry ingredients by weight not only gives consistent results, it’s also quicker. If I’m going to be mixing several dry ingredients together, I just weigh each ingredient one after the other in the same bowl. Much faster than measuring cups, and less to clean!

Now for a trick of the trade moment. Is ‘trick’ the right word? *Scratches head* My chef husband taught me there is a correct way to measure dry ingredients when not measuring by weight. I call it…..scoop, pour, and scrape, but I’m sure this isn’t technically correct. You should never use the measuring cup to scoop from the bag. Instead use a spoon to scoop the dry ingredients, pour a heaping amount into the measuring cup, and with the back of a knife, scrape across the top of the cup. Do not tap the cup. This will cause the ingredient to pack and will give you too much of the ingredient. [Unless the recipe calls for the dry ingredient to be packed.] Why does it matter you ask? While the dry ingredients are sitting in the pantry, the ingredients settle into the package causing it to become more dense. So, when you scoop the ingredient directly from the bag with the measuring cup, you are actually getting too much of the ingredient.

I know to some this may seem a bit too picky, but I’m a picky baker and like to get consistent results. It’s this pickiness (or if you prefer…OCD tendencies) that makes me happy I married a chef. He gets it. Not to mention, I get to learn what the pros do. Many times I get to ‘learn’ even when I don’t ask….but hey, that’s for a different post, or maybe even for a different blog all together.

Directions (taken directly from the recipe source here):
1. In a large mixing bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm milk. Add butter, sugar, pumpkin, 2 eggs, salt, and 3 cups flour. Stir in enough of remaining flour to form a soft dough. Turn onto a lightly floured surface—-knead until smooth and elastic-like (should take about 5-7 minutes). Place in a large greased bowl and turn once to grease top. Cover with a clean towel or paper towels and let rise in a warm place until doubled—takes about 1 hour. Punch dough down; turn onto lightly floured surface; divide in half. Shape each portion into 12 balls (so you’ll have 24 balls total). Roll each ball into about a 10″ rope; tie into a knot and tuck ends under. Place 2 inches apart on greased baking sheets. Cover again with towels and let rise until doubled—takes about 30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk together water and 1 remaining egg. When rolls are done doubling again, brush them with the egg wash. Bake at 350 for about 15-16 minutes or until lightly golden brown. Remove and serve or place on wire racks to cool slightly. Serve warm or cooled with butter or honey butter.

I put a post-it on my proofing container to mark where the dough started. This makes it easier to tell if the dough has doubled. You could also use tape, but sometimes it’s hard to get the tape off.

I even weighed the rolls. Before tying them in knots of course. Yes, I’m that much of a nerd. There is reason behind my madness though. It helps ensure even baking if the rolls weigh the same, or pretty close to the same.

These rolls are not only delicious, they look beautiful. Now is everyone ready to go make these? You really should! If you have children, they would have a lot of fun tying the knots.

On another note, my blog is getting a make-over! I’ve been working on a fresh new look. I will hopefully have it completed by the end of next week if all goes as planned. I am also moving this blog over to blogger, but I’ll post all that info once everything is done. Here’s a peek at the new look, of course this could change.

WOW it has been a long time since I posted! I’m still cooking and baking. I’ve even taking a lot of pictures, but for some reason the sitting down to write a post seems to bog me down. I’m starting to wonder if I should just make this a photo blog. (Not really.) I still have a goal of 36 breads this year and I’ve officially fallen behind, but I’m determined to still make it happen. I’ve added the breads I’ve made so far to the sidebar and will need to catch up on the posts for them sometime this year (maybe).

Earlier this year I joined a group Artisan Bread Bakers on Facebook in hopes to do their monthly challenge. Well….here it is July and I finally did a monthly challenge. I’m so glad I did! July’s monthly challenge was Cinnamon Pull Apart bread and it was divine! Definitely not the bread to have around the house while on a healthy diet. It didn’t make it past 2 days in our house, and there’s only two of us.

You can get the recipe here. The recipe itself is fairly easy. The assembly may seem daunting, but is actually easier and not as time consuming as it may seem. I’ve included a few tips here that may be helpful.

Dough Ingredients: all-purpose flour, sugar, yeast, salt, unsalted butter, milk, water, vanilla extract and eggs.

The recipe says to combine the flour, sugar, yeast and salt, but I first mixed the yeast with the flour and then added the sugar and salt.  If the yeast comes in direct contact with the salt, it will kill the yeast.  I’m sure it’ll come out just fine following the recipe instructions, this is just a tip I’ve learned and it’s become a habit.

Pretty dough.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, I let dough rise on top of the refrigerator due to it usually being a bit warmer in this area.

I forgot to take a picture of the beautiful rise, but here it is outside of the proofing container.

Filling: sugar, ground cinnamon, grated nutmeg, unsalted butter

I used a shaker for the mixture for easier sprinkling.

The mixture is far too delicious to let any go to waste, so I used a pastry brush to sweep up the spill over and sprinkled on top.

Yes, I measured perfectly.

The stacking is a bit challenging since the dough is so soft. I used a palate knife (cake frosting spreader) to lift the strips which was very helpful. I then slid the pile closer to the next strip after each layer was stacked. A little sweep-up of the filling mixture that fell off and add back on top after each layer.

Disaster almost happened. Be sure to have your loaf pan ready to go and within arms reach. I didn’t! I tried to get creative making sure my stacked pieces didn’t tumble over…..it didn’t work. No pieces fell to the flour and all was saved though. *whew*

Simply divine!!! I’ll be making this bread again (and again)!

Bread 2 of 36, Pugliese Bread. Pugliese bread is an Italian bread from Puglia and is almost identical to ciabatta bread, but is heavier and has smaller holes. (My husband has been asking me to make ciabatta bread since the beginning of my bread baking, so this bread will be coming very soon.)

Pugliese bread is a very wet dough which can be a bit difficult to work with. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the results.

Recipe from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum

The Dough Starter (Biga) Ingredients: unbleached all-purpose flour, instant yeast, water.

Mix ingredients with a wooden spoon, cover, and let rise till tripled in size (about 6 hours).

I don’t really think it trippled, but I decided to proceed. (Room temperature can make a significant difference in the rise. Our thermostat is usually set at 64 degrees, and for bread rise, the ideal room temperature should be around 70ish. I think this made a difference. I did actually mean to bring up the temperature, but forgot. oops!) Once it’s tripled in size, you can also refrigerate it up to 3 days. I refrigerated it overnight since I read this helps with the flavor development.

Dough ingredients: unbleached all-purpose flour, durum flour, instant yeast, salt, water and the biga.

A business letter fold. Oh the terms I’m learning! Trying to explain is a much bigger challenge. (I’m also now realizing I should of used a different angle for this picture to help with the explanation.) A business letter fold: stretch the dough into a rectangle and then fold in thirds, like a business letter. Hopefully that makes a bit of sense. This gets done three times with a 30 minute rest after the first two folds, and a 2 hour rest after the third fold.

Shaping and final rise. Round the dough and place seam side up in a banneton, or in my case a colander with a heavily floured towel.  If the towel is not flowered enough, the dough will stick. Let rise till it has increased about 1 1/2 times (about 1  1/2 hours).

I’ve been discovering a lot of bread baking tools I’d like to have, one being a banneton which is a dough rising basket. A colander can be used here instead. The banneton (or colander) is used to help give the dough support during the final rise since this is a very wet dough and will spread, (There are several types of bannetons used for different purposes. Another type of banneton is used for decorative purposes. I hope to get one of these soon to try. )

Getting the dough out of the colander was a bit tricky. I’m really glad I followed the suggestion in the book. It’s very important not to deflate the bread at this point. The book suggests if the colander is too tall, to cut a piece of cardboard into a circle slightly smaller than the colander. Before flipping the bread over, hold the cardboard directly above the dough as close as possible without actually touching the dough. Then flip the dough over. The dough will fall nicely on the cardboard without deflating. Then you just transfer it from the cardboard. (This is when I wish my husband was around to take pictures so you could actually see what I mean. Hopefully you get the picture.)

The bread! The crust came out wonderful. How does one get a beautiful crusty crust? Steam (at least that’s what the pro’s seem to be saying). I’ve read several steaming techniques. Of course you could buy a really (really) expensive oven that has a steaming devise, but being just a home baker…..well, need I say more. I decided to go with what seamed to be the safest technique. Some of the techniques had severe warnings about the possibility of getting your face burned. (No thank you.) I use a sheet pan and ice. I place a sheet pan on the lowest shelf while the the oven is preheating. (Let me digress for a moment. I also have the baking stone in the oven during preheat and I preheat the oven for at least an hour.) Once the bread is ready to bake, the next two steps have to be done as quick as possible to not let out too much heat from the oven. I first transfer the bread to the baking stone, and then throw 1/2 – 1 cup of ice in the sheet pan and quickly close the oven door. That’s it. Done. Now I was expecting to actually see steam. I got worried it wasn’t working when I didn’t see any, but it works.

Only 2 breads (well, as of yesterday 3), and I can’t believe how much I’m learning. And on the flip side, I can’t believe how much there is to learn. Bread baking is truly an exciting and challenging  journey.

*****

Completely off topic, I really enjoy the blogging world. I had a bit of a disheartening situation that caused me to step back, and almost reconsider this blog. It was through reading other blogs that I realized what a shame that would be if I allowed someone else’s opinion to stop me from doing something I enjoy. The blogging world is a bit of a community, and I’ve meet some wonderful people through blogging. I really enjoy reading what others are sewing, crafting, taking pictures of, cooking, baking, etc. And so many people have inspired me through their blogs. I don’t really feel what I blog is very inspiring, but I truly enjoy it. This has also been a fantastic learning tool for myself. When I look at the pictures and try to describe what was happening, or what technique I used, the information actually sticks in my brain! 

So thank you my fellow bloggers for sharing pieces of your life with the rest of the world!

Bread 1 of 36, Pita Bread! I hadn’t planned on making pita bread the first bread of the year, but I was craving hummus and hummus is just not the same without pita chips. I can’t say enough how happy I am that pita bread was the first bread of my 36. It was really easy to make and pretty exciting to watch bake. Starting out the year with a successful bread is very encouraging.

Recipe from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum

Ingredients: Unbleached all-purpose flour, salt, instant yeast, olive oil, water. Prep: about 15 minutes which includes 10 minutes for kneading in the mixer. Rise: Easy as could be. Transfer dough to a covered proofing bowl and put in the refrigerator. Watch the dough for the first 4 hours and lightly press down dough if it starts to rise. The dough can then be left in the refrigerator up to 3 days. *See note at bottom of post. (Refrigerating the dough overnight improves the flavor of the bread.)

When ready to bake, cut the dough into 8-12 pieces. They don’t have to be the same size pieces, as long as they are rolled out to about the same height (about 1/4 inch), they will bake even. The most tedious part was the rolling and it really wasn’t that bad. This would be a great bread to bake with kids. They will especially enjoy watching the bread bake. I know I did.

Each batch took 3 minutes.

Wah-lah….pita bread! The flavor, the texture, absolutely wonderful. The author of the book wrote that once you try fresh pita bread you will be hooked, she was right. I’m hooked and am really glad it is so easy to make. I will be attempting wheat pita bread in the future to make it a bit healthier.

Smoked paparika hummus, yum! (Recipe from: Cooks Illustrated)

Pita chips: Cut pita bread into bite sized pieces. Spray sheet pan with cooking oil and place pita pieces on pan. Spray both sides of pita pieces with cooking oil and sprinkle with salt. Bake at 350 degrees until crisp (about 5-10 minutes).

*(A few notes from a non-expert, me) I researched some other recipes and some do suggest letting the dough rise 1-2 hours at room temperature and then either bake, or transfer the dough to the refrigerator. (Be sure to de-gas the dough before transferring to the refrigerator by pushing down on the dough.) I transferred the dough immediately to the refrigerator and baked it the following day. Either way, I would recommend refrigerating overnight, the flavor results will be worth it. Also, make sure the dough has doubled in size before baking. You can mark the proofing bowl where it should rise to help determine if the dough has doubled.