He Stole My Marbled Rye!

How could I not quote that famous Seinfeld episode? I was anxious to make this bread as it calls for a little more artistic flare than the standard wheat bread. Well, not too artistic, but I did have to make two separate doughs and combine them together to form the spiral.

The rye has a great smell, and even better taste with the caraway seeds. I’m thinking that when I make my corned beef I’ll have to make a couple loaves of this bread to go with it. In this session of bread making I had to ensure that both doughs were of the same consistency and texture. I suppose I should have read more details on this bread, as it seems it could have gone wrong.

I did mix it for the 4 minutes it suggested, but I have been known to go longer. With rye flour, the type of gums in the flour interferes with gluten development. With a slight overmixing (if I had done, but I didn’t) the dough would have gummed up and become too tough to rise. It was good then I let it be a slight bit tacky when it was done.In order to get the dark coloring for the dark rye, the recipe called for either caramel coloring or cocoa powder. Since I could not find any coloring, I went with the powder. I was a little skeptical since the cocoa made the bread smell, well, like cocoa. But after baking, I couldn’t tell it was there, and it photographed very nicely.

Kaiser Rolls and a Light Wheat

So this weekend I got my Kaiser roll stamp. It's exactly what you're thinking of, a playdough looking think to cut a swirly pattern into the dough.

I have no idea why the rolls are formed that way, but only with the pattern are they known as Kaiser rolls. Supposedly without the pattern they are known as "weck." The Beef and Weck is a sammich that came from England and also gained popularity in Buffalo, where we get the Buffalo Wild Wings and Weck from.

Either way, I had the opportunity to actually make some shredded Italian Beef and use it on the rolls. Even better I was able to share all of this with out neighbors.

Later this weekend, in fact, this morning. I decided to start the adventure of creating bread loaves for everyday use around here. Lo and behold the bread this week was a light wheat bread. I cannot describe how excited I was when this bread turned out. I got to use my knew loaf pans, and the bread turned out perfectly. There has always been a little bit of reservation on my part with using whole wheat flour. I can never seem to make the loaf work. However, it was explained to me in this passage that whole wheat uses a 1/3 to 2/3 of whole wheat to white bread flour for a 100% flour weight. I think this was the combination I may use. Some of the food sites I read say I can substitute 100% of the whole wheat flour, but I not sure. This bread was beautiful.

This is the one I'm bringing in to work tomorrow. Enjoy everyone. Next week...Marbled Rye.
Also..I made more crackers this weekend. A book I read gave a rule for eating.."Eat all of the junk food you can make." So I made some.

Lavash? Must be Eye-talian

So, I’ve been negligent in posting for the last couple of weeks, but now I’m back on the band wagon. I did a foccica about three weeks ago, but that was a remake of something I did while I had my wisdom teeth removed. Now I’ve moved on to the Italian loaf. This was one loaf I was familiar with. Like the French, Italian is the other basic loaf that I make a lot. I say basic in only that it’s not a complicate recipe. It’s essentially the same as the French, but with the addition of a fat, in this case, olive oil. And I don’t mean Popeye’s girlfriend. Italian is a softer loaf because of the fat, and because of this, I tend to make buns or rolls using this recipe. In my case this week however, I believe I added too much water, and as you can see, that didn’t help with the shape.

Since there was so much hydration the dough spread out, instead of up. It tasted great, and with the use of a pre-ferment biga, I was able to draw out a lot of flavor. I just didn’t get the torpedo shape that I wanted. Next time I do this, I have made notes and I will incorporate either more flour, or less water to firm up the dough.

This week brings us to Kaiser Rolls. Alas my search for a Kaiser Roll stamp was fruitless and I was relegated to ordering it from Amazon. So, we move on to another recipe for this week, Lavash Crackers.

Lavash crackers seemed kind of weird. After all, this is a bread blog. I should be making bread. But, it’s in the book, so of course I’m doing it. Lavash is also called Aremenia flatbread, has Iranian roots and eaten throughout the middle-east.

The recipe is the same, but the oven it’s cooked in or how flat it’s rolled might be dictated by the culture you are from. The key to this crisp cracker is to roll it out paper thin. It would seem that I didn’t roll it out thin enough as some of the pieces are kind of doughy. Well, it was fun to put the toppings on and now I have a new cracker to use on my friends for our party.

Party on Wayne, Party on Garth.

Next week, Light Wheat bread.