Baking With a Purpose II: Honey White Bread

As I wrote about in my last post, I recently started baking bread for communion at my church.  We do communion on the first Sunday of the month, so it is a pretty low-key commitment.  I make one loaf for the pulpit for the pastors to break apart ceremonially, and one for the congregation to actually eat.  I have done it twice so far, and learned a lot.

Most important being: the softer the better.

The first time I prepared bread for communion, I brought a sourdough.  Not only was it tough, the sourdough starter taste in miniature made it tasted stale.  

So the second time, I made Ina Garten's Honey White Bread from her book, Barefoot Contessa at Home.  I got this book as a Christmas present and even got it signed by the domestic goddess herself!  I love this bread and make it a lot because it is delicious and easy.

I doubled the recipe because I knew my family would be clamoring for some too.  

For two loaves, you will need:

 

• 1/2 cup warm water (110 degrees)
• 1 package dry yeast (Ina calls for two packages but that seems like WAY too much)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 1/2 cups warm whole milk (110 degrees)
• 6 tablespoons (3/4 stick, or 86g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1 1/2 tablespoons honey (I usually just eyeball this)
• 2 extra-large egg yolks (save one egg white to brush on top of each loaf before scoring and baking)
• 5 to 6 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, pour in the warm water and sprinkle the yeast and sugar on top.  Let sit for about five minutes until it is beginning to bloom and smells yeasty.

2. Add the milk, butter and honey and stir with the paddle attachment until blended.

 3. Add the eggs, three cups of the flour (one at a time), and the salt.

4. Once the three cups of flour are blended in, switch to a dough hook and add the next two cups of flour gradually.  You are looking for the dough to start pulling off the sides of the bowl.  This means the gluten is beginning to form and the dough wants to cling together.

5. Depending on the weather, you might need just five, or more than six cups of flour!  Be patient.

6.  Bingo.  Now let the mixer knead the dough for about eight minutes.  During this time you will want to pull out a large bowl and pour two tablespoons of olive oil.  Set aside.  Do some dishes or something.

7. Once your eight minutes are up, remove the dough from the stand mixer bowl and form a ball with your hands, wrapping the ends of the dough under so the top is  a smooth surface.

8.  Place in a large bowl with two tablespoons of olive oil and flip to coat the whole surface of the dough.  Cover with plastic wrap and a towel and put in a warm place to rise for an hour.

 

9.  When dough has doubled in size, weigh it and cut the loaf in half.  You don't have to necessarily use a kitchen scale, but it insures the loaves bake evenly because they are exactly the same size.

 

10. Let the dough rest for a few minutes while you butter two bread tins. 

 

 11.  Roll up the two dough halves like jelly rolls, pinch the ends closed, and place in the pans seam side down.  Cover with plastic wrap and let rise another 45 minutes.

 12. At some point during the second rise, you will want to preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  When the dough and the oven are ready, brush the egg white over the top of each loaf, then score it across the top with a sharp knife.  Place in the oven and bake for 40-45 minutes.

The circle loaves are for the pastor to hold up during the service, so I wanted them to be pretty.  The loaves baked in the bread pans will be either eaten by my family or the congregation.

 

The scoring pattern looks especially pretty because the bread is baked at a low temperature.  It doesn't explode open like a bread baked at, say, 450 degrees F.  This is going to look great on January 6.  Until then I will freeze it in a ziploc bag.

Thanks for looking and happy baking!

Baking with a purpose

 Most of the time, I bake bread for selfish reasons.  I bake for my family and friends primarily.

But not today.  I mean, ok, it is for friends, but it's more than that.

I'm baking communion bread for my church, Commonwealth Baptist Church.

Now, don't worry, this isn't going to be a super religious post.  I'm not really that religious anyway.  If you want to skip the next few paragraphs, scroll down past the line to get to the recipe.

But it is about gifts, spiritual and otherwise.

Right now at my church, I give a financial offering, I pick up and drop off one of the teens in our Sunday School program, and I help teach Sunday School.  These are things I do for the church, but I don't think of them as things I am naturally called to do.

The bible talks about gifts provided by the Holy Spirit.  In our church we believe that these spiritual gifts translate into natural abilities or interests, and that they can help guide church members to give back to the church in their own way.

I am not gifted financially (ha!).  I definitely don't feel like I have the gift of teaching.  I feel super awkward around kids, I don't know all the tricks to make kids listen to me, and often my lessons and activities fall flat.

And I'm not the best baker ever.  But I love it.  And this love has inspired me to keep baking through all the failures, to the point where I may not have "natural" ability, but I do have ability.  Baking calms me down, it makes me feel accomplished, and it's something that I can share with others.  When I couldn't bake, I really missed it. 

I inquired two years ago about baking bread for communion but was told that there was another church member who included among her many contributions providing communion bread and had done so for many years.  A few weeks ago, I got word that this member was getting tired of doing it, and had delegated to the other leaders in the church to alternate bringing bread each month.  I saw my chance and asked the pastors if I could take on this responsibility.

So for my first attempt, I decided to make a basic sourdough.

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This recipe is loosely based on the 1-2-3 sourdough method, although I didn't want to make it super sour.  I used commercial yeast and sourdough starter.

SOURDOUGH FOR COMMUNION BREAD

You will need:

375g of all-purpose and bread flour (about half and half of each)
250g of water, cold or lukewarm
1 tablespoon sourdough starter (optional)
1 teaspoon of commercial yeast
7g of salt

You will also need:
1 large bowl
a kitchen scale
a dutch oven with a lid
parchment paper

1. Mix everything together in a large bowl just until the flour and water are completely incorporated.  Let it sit for about 10 minutes, then gently form into a ball. 

2. Cover with plastic wrap and a towel and let sit overnight.

3. The next morning, you will find this:

4. Re-form into a ball by tucking the loose dough underneath so the top becomes a smooth surface.  You will notice that gluten has formed overnight, even though you didn't do any kneading whatsoever.

5. Cut one large square of parchment paper and set your loaf on top.  Cover with plastic wrap and a towel and let rise a second time, for about 45 minutes to an hour.

6. Preheat your oven to 450 F and put your dutch oven in the oven to warm up.

7. When the oven is ready, remove the plastic wrap from the dough and, using a sharp knife, score the top of the loaf.  Place the loaf and the parchment paper in the dutch oven, replace the lid, and bake in the oven for 25 minutes.

8.  After 25 minutes, remove the lid and bump the temperature down to 400.  Bake another 15 minutes or so, until the bread is hard and unyielding when you tap it with your fingernail.  Remove the bread from the dutch oven using the parchment paper and let it cool.

 9. Slice into tiny pieces and stick in a plastic zip-top bag.  Deliver to church on Sunday morning.

I will let you know how this goes!  I may try different breads like challah or honey wheat to mix it up.

Thanks for reading!

Banana Bread with Fresh Cherries

The farmers market in Del Ray has been wonderful for the past few weeks.  Tons of berries, gorgeous tomatoes, and beans!  I haven't been able to resist buying a few pepper plants, and gerber daisies to put in the garden as well. 

Cucumbers... from a long ago garden!

Little Bread Toddler helps me by picking the heads off the flowers and pulling up everything I've just planted.  But that's just the reality of life with a toddler.  That said, I can't help but melt when he runs over to the sugar snap pea plants and excitedly asks "peas? peas?" until I pick one off and give it to him.

Anyway, last Saturday I bought a ton of fresh cherries.  I had been thinking about what to do with some past-their-prime bananas, and I had the idea of making banana bread, and throwing in some cherries just to spruce it up a little. 

Did you know you can throw bananas in the freezer and they will keep? It's true.

I got this recipe from this website: http://www.ahastylife.com/2011/03/banana-bread-yes-it-is-low-calorie.html. 

However, I made a few changes, one of which was the addition of cherries.  I also used brown sugar instead of regular white sugar, and threw in a handful of rolled oats.

You will need:

1/4 cup sugar (white or brown)
2 Tbsp butter, melted
1 large egg, beaten
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce (a generous 1/4 cup)
1 cup ripe bananas, mashed (3 small)
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup cherries
3 tbls rolled oats

1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine melted butter, sugar, egg, and applesauce.

  3. Fold in the bananas.

4. Lightly spoon the all-purpose flour and whole wheat flour into dry measuring cups, and level with a knife. Combine the two flours, baking soda, and salt in a separate large bowl.

5. Add the flour mixture to the banana mixture, 1/2 cup at a time, mixing after each addition until moistened.  Add the oats and cherries right about now as well. 

6. Coat one loaf pan with cooking spray. Pour the batter into the loaf pan.

7. Bake at 350° for 50 minutes to 1 hour, or until a wooden pick inserted in center of the bread comes out clean.

8. Allow the bread to cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Remove the bread and cool completely on a wire rack.

 So, obviously this bread is not the prettiest thing out there.  If you did manage to swing by A Hasty Life, her results were much prettier.  But it IS tasty!

Little Bread Toddler approves.  I've been microwaving it and spreading butter on it for breakfast, but it's also great on its own.  A solid recipe!

Argentine Sopaipillas

 As part of her Global Burger series, my dear friend and food writer Joanna O'Leary asked me to help her come up with an Argentina-style burger.

Of course I jumped at the opportunity.

While it may be confusing, this does not mean a burger in the style Argentines typically eat, which looks like this:

Argentina hamburgers are typically served with a thin beef patty, soft bun, tomato, lettuce, cheese and a fried egg on top.  It is quite tasty.

But that's not what the assignment was.  The assignment was to create a hamburger that would represent more of the essence of Argentina's gastronomic culture. 

While you'll have to read Joanna's article to see the final product, I decided to devote a blog entry to the bread we chose as the bun:

The Argentine sopaipilla.


It was difficult for me to track down the origins of the sopaipilla because there are so many different varieties.  According to Wikipedia, the sopaipilla has a long etymological history but that it came with the Spanish to the Americas and quickly spread and diversified.

 Chilean sopaipillas

The Mexican version is sweet and crunchy, the Chilean version uses pumpkin puree, and even within Argentina it goes by several names: torta frita,  kreppel, etc.  The book I bought on Argentine cooking in 2000 calls them Fat Crackers.  It can be baked, pan-fried, or deep-fried.  In Mendoza it is the custom to make and eat sopaipillas when it rains, although I'm not sure why.

Well, as long as it's raining and we have sopaipillas, might as well pass around the yerba mate:

The town where I was an exchange student hosts an annual Festival de la Sopaipilla where they crown a queen of the festival, everyone stuffs themselves full of the pastries, and they dance all night long to traditional folklore music.

Here is a picture of me, probably AT the Festival de la Sopaipilla, with three friends who perform traditional folklore music. 

This is where I got my first taste of sopaipillas, and this taste guided me towards the recipe I wanted to use for the hamburger buns.  I didn't want just any sopaipillas, I wanted the ones I ate in Mendoza.

So after lots of research, wherein I found this cool blog, this cool blog, and this cute old lady (SLYT), I found this recipe for baked sopaipillas.  Don't worry, I'll translate the recipe for you.  But you really should be using weight measurements if you aren't already.

You will need:

700 grams all-purpose flour plus more for kneading
200 g. lard (preferably beef, but whatever works)
20 g. salt
400 ml water

I cobbled together a combination of duck fat, lard, and butter.  It worked out fine.

1.  Melt the lard and let it cool.

2. Whisk together the flour and salt in a big bowl.

3. Add the lard and the water to the flour and salt and knead for about ten minutes, until the dough is smooth.  This is super easy.

4. Once the dough is smooth, transfer it to a floured surface. 

5. Using a pastry cutter, cut into equal-sized balls (I measured the entire dough, divided that weight into 12, and made the balls each the same weight)

6. Cover the balls with plastic wrap and let sit for an hour.

7.  Take out a few baking sheets and either cover them with parchment paper or coat them in butter then dust them with flour.  I tried it both ways, and I found using parchment paper was just fine and less of a mess, but it's your call.

8.  With your fingers, stretch each ball of dough into a flat circle.  Place them on the parchment or floured baking sheets. Cover them with plastic wrap and let them rest while you preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

 

9.  Remove the plastic and with a sharp knife, cut two little slits into each piece of dough. 

10.  Pop them in the oven and let them bake for 15-20 minutes until they are just golden brown.  When they are done, take them out and let them rest on a cooling rack before either coating them with sugar or leaving them plain.

These are super yummy and exactly what I was looking for in terms of taste.  We'll see how they work as buns; most Argentines eat them as sweet pastries and serve them with jam or dulce de leche.  But they aren't sweet themselves, so I think they will work well.  

Since making these, I've been eating them for breakfast this week.  The fat in them makes them very satisfying.  And I do put jam on them and accompany them with a nice cafe con leche, in case you were wondering :)