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Bread Oven

February 15, 2009 by greg Leave a Comment

My wife knows I always love to get cooking related gifts. And with all the bread making we’ve been doing lately she went out and got a great gift for my birthday a couple weeks ago. This is something I have been wanting for a long time but haven’t taken the time to go out and get. I’m talking about unglazed quarry tiles to make a bread oven!

These tiles came from a local flooring store in town. It is important to use unglazed tiles to avoid any offgassing of various chemicals used in the glaze during heating. The store even looked up the MSDS (material safety data sheet) on these tiles to make sure there was nothing toxic in them.

Of course I tried out some of our 5 minute bread dough as soon as I could. The tiles worked perfectly!


One of the reasons I wanted the tiles to replace my standard pizza stone was the size. The tile lined oven has enough room to bake more than one loaf at a time. And the pizza stone was too small to bake a large pizza like the one shown here.

Believe it or not, the
Roasted red peppers and kalamata olives were great together.


See how nicely it fits int he oven?


The 5 minute dough makes great pizza crust!

Filed Under: bread, Pizza Tagged With: 5 minute bread, oven

My forray into 5-minute bread

February 15, 2009 by greg 1 Comment

I’m sure you’ve heard about the book ‘Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day‘ by Zöe Francois and Jeff Hertzberg. There methods have some similarity to the no-knead bread method – like no kneading – but there are some significant difference. A high hydration dough is made simply by mixing the ingredients and storing the dough in the fridge for up to two weeks. Actually waiting a few days before baking improves the flavor immensely and it makes for quick work to make all kinds of bread creations. I’ve been playing around with the basic recipe (1.5 T yeast, 1.5 T salt, 3 C water, 6.5 C all purpose flour) and having some fun making breads and more.

The dough you see on the peel below was made with the basic recipe but I used 1.5 C whole wheat flour and only 5 C of all purpose flour. I cut off a pound or so of the dough and pulled it into a ball forming a skin on top by stretching the dough underneath.

After raising for a couple of hours, the boule was dusted with flour and scored in a scallop shape.

Here’s the result after about 25 minutes in a 500 °F oven on my pizza stone.

I was very pleased with the texture. The crust was chewy and not too hard and the inside was moist and tender. There was a distinct flavor of the whole wheat flour but it was not tough at all when used in this small proportion.

Here’s another one in a batard shape. This dough had 2.5 C of whole wheat flour and 4 C of all purpose flour.

It baked up nice. It still maintained a pretty tender texture inside but it was more wheaty than the prior batch of dough.

You can do all kinds of things with this dough. Here is a flatbread I made with the whole wheat dough. I just stretched it out, brushed it with extra virgin olive oil and topped it with some good Bulgarian feta cheese and kalamata olives.

It didn’t last long!

Please stay tuned for more bread escapades.

Filed Under: bread Tagged With: 5 minute bread

Homemade Pita

January 10, 2009 by greg 2 Comments

If you love pocket bread as much as I do you will probably try to make it at some point. It’s really not hard and it’s magical to watch. The dough puffs up in the oven when it bakes to create the pocket inside.

This pita is made with a dough from the wonderful Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. The recipe makes a wonderfully soft dough that works perfectly for pita or pizza. Here is her recipe.

Unbleached all purpose flour – 3 cups plus 1/4 cup (16 oz, 454 g)
salt – 2 tsp (0.5 oz, 13.2 g)
instant yeast – 2 tsp (6.4 g)
olive oil – 2 tbsp (1 oz, 27 g)
water – 1 1/4 cups (10.4 oz, 295 g)

The dough should be kneaded very well. We used a kitchen aid with the dough hook and kneaded it for 10 minutes. Key to getting wonderful flavor is to let the dough rise long and slow in the fridge. Once kneaded the dough is covered to keep the air out and placed in the fridge. Let it rise slowly. After one night we let the dough rise on the counter then put it back in the fridge for another day. You can keep the dough for up to 3 days chilled. If you have the time the long slow fermentation creates a wonderful flavor.

After the dough has risen as long as you like, divide the dough into 12 equal balls and flatten them slightly. Cover them with plastic wrap and let them rest for 20 minutes. The dough will relax and make it easy to roll out.

Roll out your dough into rounds about 1/4 inch thick. If you like a thicker, more bready pita roll them thicker. I found using my pasta roller machine makes the pita with a consistent thickness. I rolled them up to setting 4 on my machine. Once rolled out let the dough rest for another 10 minutes before baking.

You must have a pizza stone or a cast iron skillet to make the pita. You can do it on top of the stove but I have found best results using a stone in a 475 °F oven. Preheat your stone for about an hour before baking. Slap the dough onto the stone being careful not to let it fold or have air pockets underneath. To get a consistent puff you want the entire bottom of the dough round to be in contact with the hot stone. See how the pop up after a minute or so? The steam insides puffs them. Bake for about 3 minutes or until you just start to see them begin to brown. I bake two at a time and place them on top of each other under a towel as they come out of the oven. After they have cooled for a couple of minutes I gently press them down to flatten them. They probably would flatten by themselves though. Be careful not to burn yourself from the steam inside.

See how nice they turned out?



A wonderful pocket inside.

Talk about a clash of cultures. How about a middle eastern pita with kimchee inside?

Filed Under: bread Tagged With: Bread Bible, flatbread, pita

Whole Wheat Onion Sourdough

May 29, 2008 by greg 1 Comment

I felt in the mood to bake some bread. This was very similar to the whole wheat onion sourdough no-knead bread I made last fall. The proportions were probably a little bit different. It rose better this time and came out with a very nice texture. The crust was PERFECT baked in my Le Creuset iron pot. I split it quite deeply right down the middle just before baking and it sprang open just beautifully.

Filed Under: bread Tagged With: sourdough, whole wheat

Whole Grain Sourdough goes perfect with Chicken Soup

February 3, 2008 by greg 3 Comments

On a cold winter day there’s not much better than a hot bowl of chicken soup and a big hunk of homemade bread. More about the soup later. Let’s talk bread. I haven’t made any in quite a while and I was missing it. My sourdough starter has been sitting in the fridge neglected for a while. Earlier this week I got some out and started feeding it with whole wheat flour. As you saw in my last pizza post, the starter was going great after only a day or so. Power to the yeast! Those buggers really are hard to kill.

I like to make a pretty wet preferment before I actually add all of the flour for the bread. I don’t really know why I do this but it works. I add most of my flour at first and let it ferment for at least an overnight stint if not longer. Then I mix in a bit more flour to get to the dough consistency I want. I believe this gives the yeast a fresh boost of food for the dough to rise. I wanted to make a 100% whole wheat bread with whole grains. This is a challenge because 100% whole wheat breads usually don’t rise that well and end up being very dense. Again, this is because there is less gluten and the sharp edges of the whole wheat chaff cuts the gluten strands that do develop in the dough. That’s why commercial whole wheat breads are usually made with at least 50% white flour. Anyway, here is my preferment after sitting for 12 hours overnight. It was made from about 1 cup of my sourdough starter, 2 cups of whole wheat flour, 2 cups of water, 1/2 cup each of whole kamut grains, whole spelt grains, and steel cut oats. This was just mixed well together, covered with plastic and allowed to ferment.

The next morning I added 1.5 cups more whole wheat flour and 1 tbsp of salt. I always add my salt after the preferment so as not to inhibit the yeast. After the first ferment there’s a good healthy colony growing and it is much less likely to be inhibited by salt. This dough was kneaded by hand gently for about 5 minutes until the newly added flour and salt were well incorporated. The dough was shaped into a ball and placed in a bowl covered with plastic until almost doubled. I let it sit for about 2.5 hours. It could have risen more, certainly. The dough was shaped into a wide oblong shape and allowed to rise for another 1.5 hours. Here is the dough ready to go in the oven. I have scored the top. I was a little impatient. This could have risen even more. The dough is still a bit on the wet side.

I like to bake my bread using a covered iron pot like all of the no-knead recipes suggest. This helps keep the steam in. So, I let the dough rise on a piece of parchment paper and then it’s easy to lift and place directly in the heated pot without deflating the dough. It was baked at 500F for 30 minutes with the cover, then an additional 15 minutes at 450F without the cover. Here’s the result just out of the oven. It is a nicely shaped loaf. You can tell it has much less oven spring than a white flour bread. I think next time I’ll let it rise even more before baking.

The crust is perfectly browned and crisp.

Here’s the inside. I was pretty happy with this. It was not big and airy. As a matter of fact it was kind of dense but certainly not a brick! Inside it was soft and moist. The whole grains were crunchy. It had a very nice whole wheat taste – more intense than a commercial whole wheat bread. It was perfect dunked into the chicken soup.

Ok, so much for the bread. I know you’re interested in my soup as well. For this soup I used 6 chicken leg quarters. I cooked the chicken and made the broth in my trusty pressure cooker. All I did was take about 2 quarts of water, a good amount of salt, the chicken, and lots of seasonings. I threw in bay leaves, cracked black pepper, a cinnamon stick, dried oregano, dried thyme, some sezchuan peppercorns, a couple of cut up carrots and some celery stalks and leaves. I always keep a bag of celery trimmings in my freezer just for this. This was brought up to pressure and cooked for about 20 minutes. After cooling the broth was strained out and the chicken was deboned. I defatted the broth. To make the soup I softened some onion, carrots, and brussel sprouts in a big pot. I added a cup or so of frozen peas. The broth was added along with the chicken pieces. This was simmered for about 10 minutes just until everything was cooked and all the flavors integrated. Some more salt and pepper to season to taste and it was ready. By the way, the very subtle hint of cinnamon from the broth was wonderful with this.

Filed Under: bread Tagged With: chicken soup, sourdough, whole grain
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