11/18 Cranberry Orange Pecan and Apple Cinnamon breads

by | Nov 18, 2018 | Bread

Tis the season for quick breads with fresh cranberries and apples! Becky took Babs apple picking and they got a lot of good ones! We tried the Zojirushi recipe for Apple Cinnamon bread and it was pretty good but it contains buttermilk and that seems to create a greasy crust. Today we are trying another simple recipe that uses milk instead. I made some changes to the recipe, adding a bit more cinnamon, sugar and apple. It’s a yeast recipe and hopefully a good place to start …

  • 1 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 2 tbsp sugar (I did 3)
  • 1/2 tsp salt (I did 1)
  • 3 cups bread flour
  • 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon (I used 1 tbsp)
  • 2 1/2 tsp yeast (I used a packet of Red Star Active Dry Yeast)
  • 1 1/3 cups peeled and diced apples (I did 1 2/3)

We used the bread machine on setting “Course #1 White” with medium crust and added the apples at the beep (5 minutes before kneading finishes). Unfortunately as we’re learning with all our added ingredient recipes, the bread machine doesn’t quite get it done. So from now on we’ll use the Homemade course and set the time for 1.5 hours until we figure out the exact times.

We also made a quick bread today in the machine. We used this recipe from ChowHound.com

  • https://www.chowhound.com/recipes/cranberry-orange-quick-bread-29110
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup granulated sugar (next time we’ll use less, it was very sweet!)
  • Finely grated zest of 1 medium orange
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon fine salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 3/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice (from about 2 medium oranges) (we used orange juice)
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter (1/4 stick), melted and cooled slightly, plus more for coating the pan
  • 1 large egg, lightly beaten
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 1/2 cups cranberries, thawed if frozen and sliced in half (we used 2 cups of large fresh cranberries, cut in half)
  • 1/2 cup pecans, toasted and coarsely chopped (optional)

I tried using the “Cake” Course of the bread machine but it didn’t get done enough so I had to finish it off in the oven. Next time I’ll use the homemade cycle. It turned out really good although next time we’ll reduce the sugar a little.

 

11/11 Olive Sourdough, Apple Cinnamon and Chocolate Cherry Breads

by | Nov 11, 2018 | Bread, Favorites, Sourdough

photo: Chocolate Cherry (top), Olive Sourdough (bottom)

Today we made sourdough (prep’d yesterday, baking today) in the oven and two dessert breads in the bread machine. The first desert bread was Apple Cinnamon with the apples Barbara picked with Becky a couple days ago. I don’t think I used enough apples. Next time we’ll try two cups. Barbara thinks the sweetness is about right and I think it’s not sweet enough so it’s just right! 🙂

We tried the Cinnamon-Apple-Pecan Bread recipe from The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook by Beth Hensperger.

Cinnamon-Apple-Pecan Bread

For 1 1/2 lb loaf

  • 1 1/8 cups buttermilk
  • 2 tbsp walnut oil
  • 3 cups bread flour
  • 3 tbsp light brown sugar
  • 1  tbsp gluten
  • 1 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
  • 2 tsp SAF yeast or 2 1/2 tsp bread machine yeast

Added ingredients (add at beep)

  • 1/2 cup chopped dried apples (or pre-chopped apple nuggets)
  • 1/3 cup chopped pecans

We diced the enough apples for 1 cup but next time we’ll try 2 cups of cubed apples and a little more cinnamon. Maybe some extra brown sugar if I can sneak it in. It came out pretty good but the bread machine really needs help combining the extra ingredients (we add those at the buzzer, 5 minutes before kneading is complete).

Chocolate Cherry Bread

(from the Zojirushi Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus Recipe Book Chocolate Bread recipe)

  • 320 g milk
  • 1 large egg (beaten)
  • 2 1/2 tbsp unsalted butter
  • 545 g bread flour
  • 3 tbsp sugar
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 2 tsp Rapid Rise yeast

Extra Ingredients:

  • 90g (9 tbsp) chocolate chips
  • 1/2 cup chopped dried cherries

Course I (White)

We added 3/4 cup Ghirardelli Chocolate Chips and 1/2 cup of chopped dried cherries. It’s cooking now. I really had to help the bread machine fold in the extra ingredients (added at the buzzer). Otherwise it just beats them to death at the bottom of the pan. This is especially key for our olive bread but vital to the chocolate too to get them evenly mixed into the dough. It’s cooking now. I think it’ll be good!

Update: Turned out great! Maybe less cherries next time.

Bab’s House Olive Sourdough

  • 380g water
  • 320g starter
  • 600g white bread flour
  • 200g wheat flour
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp sugar
  • 1 1/3 cups sliced olives (thickly sliced)

The olive bread we made last night with the usual house recipe but with 1 1/3 cups of olives (we cut down after the disaster last time but that was actually due to a beatdown by the bread machine), we lowered the water to 380 grams which after mixing seemed about right. We left it in the fridge overnight and took it out this morning. By mid-day it was still cold so I punched it down and shaped it into two 8″ boules. We baked the first one at 425 F for 25 minutes with covered (this was an accident but a mistake we’ll repeat from now on when we have added ingredients, especially wet ones like olives which really slow things down and increase the chance of undercooking), and the usual 10 minutes uncovered to get the crust golden brown. We haven’t cut into it yet but you can see it at the top of this post. The second one is ready to go in the oven now. I think this one is going to be good.

11/10 Cheesy Jalapeno Sourdough

by | Nov 10, 2018 | Bread

Trying less water this time to make up for the oil and moisture in the cheese and jalapenos…

  • 380g water
  • 320g starter
  • 600g white bread flour
  • 200g wheat flour
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp sugar
  • 1 1/2 cups shredded strong cheddar cheese
  • 1 large jalapeno pepper de-seeded (leave ribs in for hotness) and diced

We’ll bake 1 round at 425F for about 35 minutes (cloched the first 20) and 1 loaf in the machine for 1 hour

Post bake update: The pan loaf turned out great although next time we’re going to try 2 1/2 cups of cheese, maybe some Parmesan and 2-3 jalapenos. The times on both seemed just right and produced brown and tasty crust. The less seemed good too (so far, we’ve only cut into the machine loaf). I think his is going to be a favorite, especially once we perfect the recipe.

11/3 Passion Fruit Kombucha

by | Nov 10, 2018 | Kombucha

We made passion fruit juice from crop of passion fruit from the vine in our backyard.  For the large batch used 1/3 cup passion fruit juice, 1 Tablespoon sugar.  For the small batch we did the usual house plain with 1/2 tablespoon of sugar.

10/25 Sourdough and Cranberry Walnut breads

by | Oct 25, 2018 | Bread

We made Sourdough with the 420/320/800 recipe, doing a 3 hour first rise and a 4 hour second rise. We also made the Cranberry Walnut bread from the Zojirushi cookbook. It didn’t have much sugar and just a few walnuts and dried cranberries but it was pretty good. The sourdough turned out great. 30 minutes for the round and 35 for the loaf as usual.