One of the things I love most from the Whole Foods bakery is their “Seeduction” bread. It’s dark, hearty, super sweet, moist and has hints of crunch.

It’s also nearly $5 a loaf, and the closest Whole Foods is clear across town. We only go near it when we’re picking up our CSA once a week (Hey, like those red okra in the background?!), so it’s not especially convenient, either. For that reason I decided to try my hand at coming up with something that would be a close approximation.

Until now, it seemed like just about everyone was using a recipe that had been posted by Robin Damstra Salant of Caviar and Codfish. While I’m sure her bread is quite tasty, I wanted to stick to the grains that Whole Foods lists in their video. I also wanted to start with a wild yeast (sourdough) starter rather than instant yeast, if only because I realized the jar I have is old and didn’t want to kill a bread with this many ingredients. This was especially true after having had to make two stops to find millet.

What I came up with is not as sweet as the Whole Foods version. If you want a sweeter bread, use more honey and adjust your liquids accordingly. My version also uses whole wheat instead of white flour for a healthier bread.

Ingredients

Starter:

• 9oz elaborated whole wheat starter (126g white whole wheat, 126g water)

Soaker:

• 100g King Arthur Whole White Wheat Flour
• 2g salt
• 60g water

Biga:

Day 1

Mix all of the soaker ingredients. Allow to sit at room temperature 2-4 hours (longer if time allows), loosely covered. Refrigerate overnight.

In a separate bowl, mix all biga ingredients. Allow to sit at room temperature 2-4 hours (longer if time allows), loosely covered. Refrigerate overnight.

Feed 3 oz of unelaborated starter 3oz of white wheat flour and 3oz of water. Allow to sit, covered, until ripe (About 4-8 hours, depending on room temperature.) I fed my starter last thing, just before going to bed.

Day 2

Remove all components from the refrigerator at least 1-2 hours prior to making final dough. Chop into small pieces to facilitate warming.

Place starter and soaker into the bowl of a stand mixer. Using the dough hook, begin mixing on the lowest setting. Begin adding small bits of the biga and mix until incorporated. Turn mixer to “2″ (On a Kitchenaid) and knead dough for about 10 minutes, adding more flour or water as needed to reach  the proper consistency. Dough should be somewhat tacky but not overly sticky and have enough gluten to almost pass the windowpane test. A windowpane test will be difficult on this dough due to the amount of seeds wanting to shred the dough when it is pulled. Do not over knead.

Transfer to an oiled bowl and turn the dough to coat. Allow dough to ferment for about 3-4 hours at room temperature until it has doubled. Divide dough in half and shape into boules or batards. I shaped mine into batards and let them rise in a floured banneton, thus the grooves and dusting of flour on my bread. They will take about 3-4 hours to double a second time.

When your dough is close to having doubled, preheat your oven to 400F and place a baking stone on the center rack. Bake loaves one at a time (unless you have a very big stone) for about 30 minutes, until the bread reaches an internal temperature of 200F.

While it’s a bit late, hopefully this will go into next week’s Yeast Spotting over at Wild Yeast.

Don't let their pretty metallic good looks fool you...

It’s been slow in coming this year, but the first glimmer of the itch to begin my Christmas baking has finally hit. I’d gone to Williams-Sonoma several days ago and purchased a set of very pretty snowflake cookie cutters. In my mind I saw them iced with pure white icing and glistening with a combination of clear dusting sugar and metallic dragees.

Some of you may well be wondering, “What in the world is a dragee?” While the name might ring any bells you’re sure to remember them – those hard, silver balls so popular in Christmas cookie decoration, be they for the buttons of snowmen or the ringers of bells, or simply glistening tips on snowflakes and stars. I was confounded when I tried to find them, having opted not to purchase them at Williams-Sonoma. I found a single brand at my local grocery store and the jar was on the very top shelf, nestled between the boxes of specialty extracts and colored dusting sugars. The price alone nearly blew me out of the water at $10.99 a jar, but I was determined that I was going to make beautiful, magazine-picture worthy cookies and coupled with how hard we’d looked for them I just went ahead and bought them.

One can certainly imagine my confusion when I got home and turned the jar around to find a label warning “FOR DECORATION ONLY.” Of course they’re for decoration! What else is one going to do? Snort them? Shoot them out of pellet guns? The other side read “India Tree Silver Dragees add an elegant touch to cakes and cookies.” Well, duh. That’s why I bought them!

In a moment of naughty, nostalgic self-indulgence I cracked the jar open and pried out one of the precious metal balls (at this price, they’ve got to be made with real silver, right?!) and slid it between my teeth. A quiet crack, that first blush of sugary bliss and then…

Unlike a Tootsie pop, not a chewy, chocolate center...

. . .

. . . PLASTIC?

That’s right, folks. These “FOR DECORATION ONLY” dragees, the only I’ve been able to find on the shelf, which were stuck right-smack in the middle of the other edible decorations and ingredients are, literally, for decoration ONLY. While I’d assume that consuming one or two wouldn’t kill someone, I can’t imagine that they’ll do wonders for anyone’s teeth and the texture of hard plastic pellets does leave something to be desired. What in the world is one really to do with these things – decorate their cookies and then warn the recipients to remove them? Should my cookies be given wrapped in a brass spittoon? It is a general rule, last I checked, that anything non-edible on a plate should be clearly unmistakable as such. It’s why chefs go to such great pains to make sure that they don’t serve whole chunks of cinnamon bark, bay leaves, or star anise in their food!

Thankfully the local grocery manager was just as shocked as I was to learn that these things aren’t edible. She said she was going to look at some as soon as she hung up with me, and I have a feeling that they will be moved over with the candles and other inedible baking decor. She also stated that despite having opened my jar, I am free to return them for a full refund. While I may be out of pretty-as-a-magazine sparkle, at least I won’t be out $11.

So wrong... but so darn funny.

My husband found an article about these cookie cutters while roving about the intertubes the other day. I can’t remember where – most likely boingboing.net or neatorama.com knowing him. I got a peek at them over his shoulder and burst out laughing. They’re so, so, terribly wrong – and yet so very right! While some might be appalled, I know I have many friends who would split a wide grin upon seeing these cookies. Like almost everything else, it turns out that they’re available on Amazon and I just had to add them to my Amazon aStore.

The irony, of course, is in the ingredients in the pizza itself. Oh, sure, the dough rises by itself! But… what bout the rest?
Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Tomatoes (Water, Tomato Paste), Low Moisture Part Skim Mozzarella Cheese (Cultured Pasteurized Part Skim Milk, Salt, Enzymes), White Cheddar Cheese (Pasteurized Milk, Cheese Cultures, Salt, Enzymes), Yeast, Provolone Cheese (Pasteurized Milk, Cheese Cultures, Salt, Enzymes), Contains 2% Or Less of Cornmeal, Parmesan Cheese (Pasteurized Cultured Part-Skim Milk, Salt, Enzymes), Vegetable Shortening (Palm Oil, Soy Lecithin, Butter Flavor), Salt, Sugar, Butter Flavored Oil With Garlic (Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Natural Garlic Flavor, Salt, Artificial Flavor, Soy Lecithin, Beta Carotene [Color], Vitamin A Palmitate), Spices, Datem, Malt (Malted Barley Flour, Wheat Flour, Dextrose), Wheat Gluten, Dextrose, Guar Gum, Garlic, Soy Lecithin, Ascorbic Acid. Contains Milk, Soy, and Wheat.

Yeah. I think I’ll stick with plain flour, water, yeast and salt. Seriously… good pizza dough only takes an hour or so of ACTUAL work (though you do need time for fermentation), and can be made ahead and frozen for later use. One fresh veggie pizza, hold the butter flavored trans fatty acid, coming up!

This week’s bread was challah, a traditional Jewish bread, though I don’t know how traditional what I ended up turning out actually was. Other than pretzels this is the first shaped bread I have done, and I found the process very interesting. I really liked how well my finished bread turned out. The contrast between the golden bumps and the paler crevices and the dusting of poppy seeds all made for a stunning visual impact, as if the double-layered braid was not enough. I do seem to always choose the more seemingly difficult options out of those presented by Reinhart for each category. It all plays to my over-achiever nature, I suppose.

The prospect of an only very slightly enriched bread was a very welcome one after the brioche and the casatiello. While I truly loved the casatiello, there was still the matter of the debate with my waistline. Challah has only a very little oil in it instead of pounds and pounds of butter. It does still have four egg yolks in it, but that’s still a step down from the number in the casatiello if I remember correctly, and it also doesn’t have all the salami and cheese in it. This bread is light and soft, the texture almost feathery inside a just-barely crisp crust that softens after a bit.

The recipe for Reinhart’s challah can be found on pg 133 of the “Bread Baker’s Apprentice.” It is a straight forward dough, moderately hydrated and easy to handle. The details are in the shaping itself. It is unique of the breads made so far in the BBA Challenge in that it has a triple rise. The dough is mixed and allowed to ferment and rise for one hour, then degassed and allowed to ferment and rise for an additional hour before the shaping process is begun.

After the second rise the dough is divided. For a double-braid loaf, divide it into two sections, one being 2/3rds of the dough and one being 1/3rd of the dough.

Divide each of these into three sections and roll out into ropes. I’ve learned that the easiest way to do this is to initially roll from the center out. At some point the dough may slip and slide across your counter or pastry cloth rather than rolling. When this happens switch to holding one end down and roll with the other, working away from the pinned end so that you are stretching and rolling at the same time.

When all sections have been rolled into ropes lay the three larger so that they are crossed at the center. Braid one end and then turn your dough and braid the other. This is a bit tricky if you are not used to doing this as it will require braiding one end “under” instead of “over” in your typical braiding motion. When you reach the ends tuck them under neatly. Repeat with the smaller sections and then lay the second braid atop of the first.

Brush the braided loaf with egg wash and then mist with spray oil and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Allow it to rise, about one hour, until it has risen to 1 1/2 times its original size. Preheat the oven to 350F. Once the oven is hot, brush again with egg wash and then sprinkle with poppy seeds.

Bake for 20 minutes then rotate pan and bake an additional 20-30 minutes until the bread reaches an internal temperature of about 200F. Remove from oven and allow to cool thoroughly before slicing.

As usual, this yeasty baked goodness has been submitted to Susan over at WildYeast for this week’s YeastSpotting.

According to Odd Info, 82% of children list pizza as their favorite food and the average American family spends $411.52 on pizza each year. Personally I’m not even sure that those figures include college students! AIB International reports that Americans bought 662,601,614 pizzas from just the top ten frozen pizza manufacturers in 2007. That number doesn’t include delivery pizza. An article in the Ann Arbor Biz News quoted Domino’s as reporting a net income of $23.8 MILLION dollars for the first quarter of this year. Folks, that’s a lot of pizza, and a lot of it is BAD pizza.

Homemade pizza is simple, and compared to delivery pizza it is actually quite affordable after the initial investment for a good pizza pan or pizza stone. Which you’ll need will of course depend upon what kind of pizza you want to make, be it thin crust, hand tossed, deep dish or Chicago style. Once you have your pan a pizza made with high-quality ingredients can cost you as little as $5!

Now, my own personal favorite is what is known as a Roman crust. This is a super-thin, crisp crust. Unlike Papa John’s or Pizza Hut there is no added grease or oil, and so it is significantly healthier as well as better. The recipe I use comes from Peter Reinhart’s “American Pie” on page 110.

Roman Pizza Dough

5C (22.25 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour
.5C (1oz) semolina flour
3.25t Kosher salt OR 1.75t regular table salt
1t instant yeast
1.75C+2T cool water

The directions are very simple:

Mix all ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer, using the dough hook, until combined, about 4 minutes.

Let dough rest 5 minutes.

Knead on for an additional 2 minutes or until the dough forms a good ball and clears the bowl.

If you’re doing this by hand, combine the ingredients with a large spoon, dough whisk, or your hands and then knead for an additional 2-3 minutes after the five minute rest.

Form the dough into a ball, set it in an oiled bowl and turn to coat. Cove the bowl and it to sit at room temperature for 30 minutes, or for a full 2 hours if you’ll be making pizza that night. At the end of 30 minutes put the entire bowl in the refrigerator overnight.

The next day take the dough out about 2 hours before you want to make pizza. Divide the dough into six equal portions and wrap any that you will not be using in plastic wrap and place in a freezer bag. Place the extra in the freezer. To use frozen dough, take it out of the freezer the night before and allow it to thaw in the refrigerator overnight. Remove the dough balls from the refrigerator 1-2 hours prior to use. Frozen dough will be good for up to 3 months, so you can make a big batch of dough balls to save time.

Roll your portion of dough into a round ball and then flatten with your hands into a disc. Gently stretch it as thin as you can, just short of tearing. Start at the center and work your way out to the edges. If the dough springs back, allow it to rest for five minutes and try again. This is not dough you can “toss” and rolling with a rolling pin doesn’t offer much success, either. I have found that the best technique is to hold it up and turn, letting gravity do the work. Once it is almost as big as I think I can get it I lay it on an un-oiled, non-stick perforated pizza pan and then work the edges out.

Topping Your Roman Dough

Being such a thin crust, the Roman-style pizza dough can’t handle a lot of liquid. I make my pizza sauce with tomato sauce that I have reduced by a long simmering. I put in a lot of freshly minced garlic, and fresh pistou basil and oregano from my herb garden. Dry, shredded mozzarella works better than the fresh. The dough also cooks very quickly – in under 10 minutes at about 450F, so toppings should be kept small and thin for even cooking. Rather than purchasing my pepperoni in bags I stop by the deli and get large rounds that have been cut paper thin which helps cut down on the grease and allows the pepperoni to get crisp in the short amount of time that the pizza will cook.

I couldn’t tell you how this is left over as we never have any! Each recipe of Roman Pizza Dough makes six roughly 14″ pizzas.

Nutritional Info
(Per dough ball):
Calories: 402, Fat: 2g, Carbohydrate: 80g, Fiber: 3g

In addition to Bread Baking Day #21, I’m submitting this yeasty-but-flat bit of crunchy goodness over to Wild Yeast for the weekly Yeastspotting roundup.

Alas, things have been hectic around here and so I did not take photos as I went. But really, how many photos of ingredients in the bowl of a KitchenAid Professional 600 6-quart stand mixer can you see before becoming bored? The recipe comes of course from Peter Reinhart’s “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice” and can be found on page 129. As I often do, I made just a few changes to this recipe. I omitted the sugar entirely and did not substitute any replacement. While I’m sure it was there to help feed the yeast, the small amount didn’t seem significant and I was out. Additionally I replaced eight of the 16 ounces of bread flour with King Arthur Flour’s White Whole Wheat and increased the amount of water used by three tablespoons. The cheese was reduced from six ounces to four.

As usual, I also stink at planning far enough ahead, though in this case it was not entirely my fault. My milk had gotten pushed to the back of the refrigerator and had frozen solid. Oops! I stuck it in the microwave just long enough to thaw out the majority of it, coming up with a scant eight ounces which then got mixed with the initial two and one-quarter ounces of flour and a tablespoon of yeast for the sponge. Of course the milk was not yet fully warm enough and so my sponge took an extra 15 minutes to become bubbly enough to use. When I first began baking I was a slave to the directions, following each recipe to the exact gram and degree to the best of my ability. I have since learned that, at least when it comes to temperature of ingredients, the only real consequence most of the time is that it will take my bread longer to rise. Well, I figure I might as well spend that same 15 minutes waiting for my sponge to bubble as I would waiting for the milk to come to room temperature!

Butter, on the other hand, I have learned to soften, and so the six ounces of it that the recipe calls for were set out along with the two eggs while my sponge was bubbling away. The consequences of butter at the wrong temperature are much more dire: too cold and it will not mix into your dough, too warm and your dough will become a runny, greasy mess. The first results in a great deal more work, the latter can be corrected by placing your dough into the refrigerator for about 10-20 minutes in most cases.

While the sponge ripened the cheese was grated and the salami cut into small bits and pan fried to render off the fat. In retrospect I probably could have gone smaller with the salami to spread it more evenly throughout the Casatiello. The butter was cut into chunks per the direction and the main bulk of the flour, 16 ounces, was mixed with the salt. Once the sponge was ready the two lightly beaten eggs were added and then the dry ingredients.

Like it’s French cousin, the brioche, this dough has a resting period after the initial mixing. Once all ingredients have been mixed together, Reinhart instructs to allow it to rest for 10 minutes. This resting period is essential, and cannot be rushed! Butter, oil, or fat in bread will coat the flour if it is added too early and will prevent the development of gluten so it must be allowed to form, in this case by a 10 minute autolyse, before being added. Adding the butter was interesting as, for the most part, it wanted to coat the bowl of the stand mixer rather than working itself into the dough. This resulted in the dough sliding around without actually being kneaded. My solution was to stop the mixer, spread the dough out some and drop butter into the center. After folding some of the dough over the butter I restarted the mixer and all went well.

Having decided that this bread would make a great sandwich I went ahead and made loaves rather than boules. The two loaves were baked in the oven in metal loaf pans for about 35 minutes at 350F until the internal temperature was almost 200F. Reinhart says that it is done when the internal temperature is 190F, but I usually find that, for me, this means the bread is just slightly underdone.

I think I can definitely say I’m proud of this bread and I shall be submitting it to Susan over at Wild Yeast for this week’s Yeastspotting. Thankfully, after this, we go back to unenriched breads for a couple of sessions with challah and the ciabatta next up on the list.

Now, for the truly bad news (other than that my husband isn’t bringing any to work!). The nutrition information:
The recipe makes roughly 2 lbs. 13oz of bread. Per 1oz:
Calories: 191, Fat: 11g, Carbohydrate: 18g, Fiber: 2g

The June Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar.They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart… er… pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800′s in England.

To make a Bakewell Tart you’ll need a shortbread crust and frangipane filling. The instructions for both of these can be found at a Confessions of a Cardamom Addict. To make the cherry Bakewell Tart shown, you’ll also need some cherry pan jam. You can of course use store-bought preserves, but really, if you’re going through all the effort of making a Bakewell Tart, what’s a few more minutes spent on pan jam? The amount of fruit preserve filling is very small as it is to be spread in a very thin layer along the shortbread crust.

As the smallest of nods to health-mindedness I substituted 4 ounces of the all-purpose flour in the crust with King Arthur Flour’s White Whole Wheat, which also required me to double the water in the crust, and substituted Splenda for the sugar in both the crust and the frangipane. Much like brioche, the idea of healthy eating goes right out the window, but that doesn’t mean we can’t attempt to fool ourselves!

Rather than making one large tart I made five 4.75″ diameter tartlets. If there is one thing that rolling out so many crusts taught me, it is how to make a shortbread crust. Shortbread crust is much like a regular pie crust, but with twice the butter. The same rules for making a pie crust apply, but in spades.

First, cut your butter into your flour. I prefer a pastry cutter to grating it. While it is often said that you can use two knives to cut in your butter if you do not own a pastry cutter, the small investment for a pastry cutter is well worth it. The goal is to get the butter into very tiny pieces without letting it get too warm and soft and the two-knife method just takes far too long.

The real trick in making a super-flakey and tender crust comes during the incorporation of water. You want to use as little as you can. Sprinkle a spoonful at a time into your butter/flour mixture and then “fluff” it with a fork. Scoot any small blobs of dough that form off to the side and then repeat until all of your flour is moistened. Scooting your dough around like this will help minimize how much water you add.

When rolling out dough most people start with a big, unevenly shaped lump of dough and then have problems getting an even circle when they are done. A simple way to help alleviate this problem is to roll your dough into a squat cylinder and then flatten it into a round disk before you start to roll. Do not roll back and forth! Roll from the center out to the edge in each cardinal direction and then again into the “corners.” By doing this you should get a crust that is almost perfectly round.

As mentioned, Bakewell Tarts put healthy eating right out the window. As you can see below, butter literally baked right out of the crust and frangipane and made a puddle on the pan below! I did the only thing I could think of to salvage things – I sent them to my husband’s office where each tart got shared, except for the one that Bernie got all to himself for his birthday. Happy birthday, Bernie (Just don’t send me the angioplasty bill, OK?)

Painting by Lisa Orgler
@ The Lunchbox Project

In the meantime, however, I’ve been noticed! Lisa Orgler over at The Lunchbox Project uses the food photos of others as inspiration for her artwork. She paints on the backs of playing cards, so each unique piece of artwork fits in the palm of your hand. Her palette is one of mostly pastels and her style is very fun and illustrative, reminiscent of a modernized “folk” feel or children’s book illustrations. Even in such small work you can see the brush techniques being used. I’m very pleased to have been chosen as an inspiration. You should go check out the rest of what she’s done.

The recipe can be found in Peter Reinhart’s “Bread Baker’s Apprentice” starting on page 125. Upon looking at the recipe, my heart clenched in sympathetic pre-cardiact arrest warning. The ratio of butter is around 40-50% for the “Middle Class” and “Rich Man’s” Brioche and the majority of the liquid in the dough comes from whole milk with a bit more from the five whole eggs. I immediately thought of the episode of Paula Deen’s show where a group of muscle-bound “Butter Wranglers” brought out a bust of her that had been sculpted in butter.

Paula and the Butter Boys at PoeTV

From the very beginning, I just really wasn’t into this bread, and it showed in how sloppy my work was. I forgot to take my butter and milk out ahead of time and added both to the dough cold from the back of the fridge. In the case of the butter, this was probably a good thing but it meant that my sponge took an extra 20 minutes to become bubbly and foamy. Due to the way Reinhart lays out his recipe, giving the main instructions once, and then breaking down different proportions for the “Rich Man’s” and “Middle Class” Brioche, I actually ended up using a bit too much flour for the amount of butter I was using.

Whenever you are working with a buttery dough, time and temperature are not on your side. It’s summer here, and even with the A/C running the house is 80F. Once you get your hands on the dough the clock starts ticking before it starts to melt into a sticky, gooey mass that won’t hold its shape at all. Thankfully the method I chose for shaping my brioche was simple: divide into equal portions, roll into balls, then use one finger to almost divide the dough by rolling a “neck” so that there is a large ball and a smaller one that will nest on top. It actually ends up looking a little like Gleep from Hannah-Barbera’s “The Herculoids.” I admit, I was tempted to put on a couple of seeds for eyes.

Once you have all of the brioche shaped, they rise in their special pans until they’ve nearly doubled in size. If you are lucky, they don’t become indistinct blobs and the tops don’t roll off to one side. IF you’re lucky. Others have taken the easier route and simply made loaves of brioche or turned them into monkey bread.

Overall, I was utterly underwhelmed by brioche. The flavor isn’t too much different, to me, than a biscuit with a LOT of butter, sort of like those canned biscuits you can buy with the extra butter baked right in. I was so absolutely underwhelmed, in fact, that I only baked half of my dough the first time through and forgot to take pictures, so I had to bake the rest today so I could post! If I’m going to have something with this much butter in it, give me a croissant.

Nutritional Info for Peter Reinhart’s petites brioches a téte (24 per batch)
Calories: 158, Fat: 9g Carbohydrate: 15g Fiber: .5g Cholesterol: 62mg