Zaatar foccaccia

Ever since my bout with anemia last summer, making bread has become a chore. Because of this, gradually I have made less and less bread. But, today, with zaatar spices in hand, I wanted to make bread again.

Among my first summer entries, you can find a garden herb pesto/fresh tomato foccaccia that is a family favorite. I adapted this from a recipe from VegList, a veg*n email loop I belonged to in the dark ages before Yahoo groups.

Today, I have transformed that basic foccaccia into a zaatar and sunflower seed variation.

The DOUGH
About 1 teaspoon yeast
1.5 cups warm water
Mix and let rest 15 minutes.

Add:
1 pinch fresh ground salt
2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
1 cup unbleached white flour
2/3 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rye flour

Stir with a wooden spoon.

Add another cup white flour and a little wheat flour.
Add a handful of flax seeds
Add a handful of roasted sesame seeds

Kneed.

Coat with olive oil and let rise abot 1.5 hours until doubled.
Lightly oil and flour a big cookie sheet.
Press out the bread.
Brush with oil. Coat with liberal zaatar and sunfloer seeds.

Let rise another 45 minutes. Bake at 425 for 25 minutes.

Cinnamon Raisin Bread

I swear I've typed this recipe before but I feel like doing it again even so. I'm making American-style cinnamon-raisin bread. It's a good day for it, about 80 degrees and very humid.

So humid that I mixed some honey into the yeasty water, went downstairs to check the laundry and the yeast had puffed up and almost out of the measuring cup by the time I got back.

The original Betty Crocker 25th Anniversary Cookbook recipe for
Cinnamon Raisin Bread
- 6 to 7 cups unbleached or all purpose white flour
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 2 tablespoons shortening
- 2 packages regular or quick acting dry yeast
- 2 1/4 cups very warm water
- 1 cup raisins
- 1/4 cup sugar mixed with 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Mix 3.5 cups flour with the sugar, salt, shortening and yeast in large bowl. Add water. Beat on low one minute, scraping bowl frequently. Beat on medium speed one minute. Stir in remaining flour, one cup at a time, to make dough easy to handle. Stir in one cup raisins.

Turn dough onto lightly floured surface. Knead about ten minutes until smooth and elastic. Place in a greased bowl and turn greased side up. Cover and let rise 40 to 60 minutes until dough doubles. Dough is ready if indentation remains when touched.

Grease 2 loaf pans. Punch dough down and divide in half. Flatten dough and make a rectangle 18 x 9 inches.

Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar mixture over the rectangle. Flatten or roll into 9 x 9 square. Roll dough tightly, beginning at the open (unfolded) ends to form a loaf. Press with thumbs to seal after each turn. Press each end with side of hand to seal. Fold ends under loaf. Place seam down in pan. Brush loafs lightly with margarine. Cover and let rise in warm place 35 to 50 minutes until double.

Place oven rack in lowest position so that tops of pans will be in center of oven. Heat oven to 425. Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until loaves are deep golden brown and sound hollow when tapped.

Cool on wire rack.

My variations:

My ingredient list:
- 3 plus cups of unbleached white flour
- 3 plus cups of whole wheat flour
I used local honey instead of sugar

Instead of mixing the yeast into the dry ingredients, I put the yeast in 1 cup of the warm water, added the honey and then let it sit while I assembled the rest of the ingredients.

I used almost 2 tablespoons butter instead of shortening.

I could glaze with cornstarch and water instead of butter. I used a mixture of walnut oil and water. I glazed with this, coated with old fashioned oats, and coated again.

I used a mix of brown sugar (light and dark), cinnamon, maybe white sugar and nutmeg for the spice filling.

Tortillas

My daughter and I made tortillas this afternoon, using a recipe we found online. I used to have a different one, but I didn't feel like looking for it.

Ingredients:
- 2 cups flour
- 1.5 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 tsp salt (I used iodized sea salt)
- 2 tsp canola oil (many tortilla recipes use more traditional fats like shortening)
-3/4 cup warm water

Mix dry ingredients.

In separate container, mix wet ingredients.

Spoon wet ingredients into dry ingredients one tablespoon at a time, using a fork to stir into dry ingredients. Will form a pebbly dough.

Knead five minutes. Let rest 20, with a damp towel.

Break into pieces and roll into balls each the size of a golf ball. I got seven.

Let rest ten minutes. Roll into circles. Fry in dry cast iron skillet for 30 seconds on each side.

Multigrain Biscuits (experiment)

• almost one cup unbleached Wegmans all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup corn meal
• 2/3 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup rye flour
• 1/4 cup flax seed

(for a total of about three cups "flour")

• 1 generous tablespoon baking powder

mix thoroughly. Add:

• a tad more than 1/2 teaspoon iodized sea salt

fold in:

• 6 tablespoons butter

Add:

• one cup soy milk

Knead. Cut with bottom of glass once pressed thin. Mine made 19 biscuits. Bake at 400 degrees for 12-15 minutes.
based on:
http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/2009/06/brown-biscuits.html

Multigrain Dill Bread

I'm experimenting again. I've been debating whether or not to make bread and what pushed me over the edge was the realization that the fancy French butter I bought for the holidays isn't getting any younger.

When I went to Wegmans the other day, they had this huge bunch of fresh dill for $1.99. I bought it, used some for my crab egg rolls, and now used some for this bread. The rest I put in the freezer. Dill is one of my favorite herbs.

Okay, so the bread... Thus far mixed in one bowl:
(For a real recipe, click on bread and you'll see my previous efforts.)

• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 cup rye flour
• 1/2 cup cornmeal
• 1/2 cup flax seed
• 2 cups unbleached white flour
• 1 teaspoon iodized sea salt
• 1 heaping tablespoon fresh dill
  

In the other bowl:

• 2 cups warm water
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 1 tablespoon yeast

Mix about 3 cups of the flour mix into the yeast, stir with a wooden spoon and place in a warm draft free spot for about 3 hours until doubled in size...

More later...

It came out lovely, though I should have used more dill. Served with Italian Wedding Soup and French butter.

Cinnamon Raisin Bread

Today I'm making bread. I didn't intend to make bread, but it just kind of happened and I thought I'd experiment and make cinnamon raisin bread...

If you're looking for my previous entries on bread and different recipes, click on the label for bread at the bottom of the entry or follow this link:
http://angelfoodcooking.blogspot.com/search/label/bread

Now, my initial flour mix:

• 2 cups unbleached white flour
• 2 cups wheat flour
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 3/4 teaspoon nutmeg

In separate bowl:

• 2 cups warm water
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 tablespoon yeast

I mixed about 3 cups of the flour mix into the water bowl and made a dough. Then I added to the flour mixture bowl:

• 1 cup oats

Now, I placed the dough in the slightly warm oven to rise. It should be doubled and ready for step two in 2-3 hours.

Okay, a check at 10:30 reveals that the bread is ready for phase two.

I sprinkle half the oat/flour mix where I plan to knead the bread, then I add some white flour around the parameter and flour my hands. I knead the dough and add raisins, disappointed that I only have a 1/2 cup raisins in the house...

Now, leave it sit to double again. Should take an hour.

Bread, bread, bread

We need bread. Bread to eat (we have cream cheese and brie in the fridge), bread to freeze (Thanksgiving approaches) and bread to let get stale (homemade stuffing... Yeah, I make the bread and let it get stale for stuffing, which is more like make large loaves instead of small and let the family munch until it starts to get stale, then freeze until the day before Thanksgiving).

If you follow my link to my bread baking, it will take you to various shapes, sizes, experiments and successes. I base my bread on a recipe found on the internet, in the French style for its relative simplicity.

The ingredients as stated are simple:

• 4 cups flour
• 1 Tablespoon dry active yeast
• 1-2 tsp salt (I use iodized sea salt)
• 2 cups warm water
• Oil for the bowl

Now this morning, I have already attempted a HUGE batch. Step one is to mix the salt and the flour in a bowl. In one bowl I have:

• 4 cups unbleached white flour from Wegmans
• 1 tsp iodized sea salt

In bowl two, I have a multigrain sort of experiment going. This is a fun way to experiment because failures simply become Thanksgiving stuffing. This bowl contains:

• 2 cups unbleached white flour from Wegmans
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 cups rye flour
• 1.5 teaspoons sea salt
• about 1/2 cup sesame seeds, toasted
• about 1/2 cup flax seeds

Step two is to mix two cups warm water with the yeast and half the flour. I started a big bowl with 2 cups warm water, 1 tablespoon yeast, and 1 tablespoon honey. In a second bowl, I added 3 cups water, two tablespoons yeast, and 1.5 tablespoon honey and I'm letting it sit while I type this...

Now to add the flour. The recipe calls for mixing half the flour into the liquid and incorporating with your hands into a dough. Then, cover with a dish towel and set at room temperature for three hours. I always add more than half the flour mixture. Half the flour mixture seems to make soup. I add and stir with a wooden spoon until it starts to transform into more of a sponge, then a runny dough, and I stop there. This usually takes about 3/4 of the flour.

More in three hours...

Three hours later... I have four large bowls rising now. I had an incident with my multigrain batch. I had divided it in half because it was too big for the bowl and I forgot to incorporate the rest of the flour... Traditionally, you take the very wet dough and incorporate the rest of the flour and then some and need for ten minutes, aiming for not sticky, supple and elastic. But my last loaf, I got it perfect and then realized I had forgotten the last multigrain batch of flour. Adding some warm water allowed me to get this flour in, but now I worry that I handled it too much and it won't rise nicely.

Once you have some nice dough balls, you place them in a clean oiled bowl, cover them and return them to a nice warm spot to rise for an hour. I stick everything inside the oven to protect them from drafts.

In an hour, we'll do the final knead, shape, preheat the oven and do the final rise.

Time to shape... The knead at this point takes about five minutes, then you shape and put on cookie sheet, cover and let rest about 20 minutes while the oven preheats to 450 degrees. You also need to place a bowl of water in the oven to try and get the crust 'right.'

Now today I made all that dough and got not quite the yield I expected: 3 small loaves of multigrain, 1 not quite medium loaf of multigrain and 2 fairly nice sized medium white loaves. I even did a very diluted egg wash on them, more wash than egg (and cooked the remaining egg and water for the tortoise. So, we'll see how it all turns out.

You bake the bread for about 25 minutes, and you're supposed to remove the bowl of water after the first 15.

**This multigrain bread is as good as the bread I like from the bakery that I call 'magic bread.'