Bake! Ekmek, Turkish flatbread

Our next Bake! pick was chosen by Andrea, and she picked Ekmek, basic Turkish flat bread. This was made with NM's basic Middle Eastern flatbread dough (bread flour, salt, yeast, water, and olive oil). The dough was extremely wet and hard to handle, but once again proved to me the power of the stretch-and-fold. When it finished mixing, I had to basically pour it into the bowl. After twenty minutes, I scraped it onto a lightly-dusted counter and gave it a stretch-and-fold...instantly I could see and feel the dough strengthen.

Although NM says not to let the dough rise for too long, there was no way I could make the bread in one day with the teaching-coaching-momming schedule, so I stuck the basic dough in the fridge. This afternoon, I pulled it out and continued with the rest of the Ekmek recipe: preshape the loaf, let it rest, stretch it into a long oval, dimple it, and bake. It worked out perfectly, even with the overnight rest.

I served the bread with our favorite Indian-spiced chicken with tomato chutney, and I haven't seen a meal disappear off the table that quickly in a long time!

As a sidenote: I was a little confused because the basic dough recipe says "makes enough for several flatbreads," but the ekmek recipe says "use one batch of basic dough, makes one loaf." I ended up using a full batch of the basic recipe to make a large ekmek loaf, and the pictures look just like the book, so I think that I made the right choice!

Happy Halloween from Smaug the Dragon and Bob the Builder!

Triple chocolate scones (Modern Baker)

Hubby and I both had early morning meetings today, and nothing improves an early morning meeting like a shared breakfast treat!

As I always do when I need a quick and yummy breakfast treat, I turned to Nick Malgieri. Like all of the scone recipes in the Modern Baker, these came together in about 20 minutes using the food processor: chocolate, cocoa, sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, butter, an egg, and some milk. They baked in 15 minutes and the first tray was off to hubby's meeting. 15 minutes later, the kids and I packed up the second batch and headed out the door.

These chocolate scones were a huge hit, described by one coworker as chocolately without being too sweet. Hubby said, "They were a nice chocolate scone and then you got the burst of chocolate chunk which just made you say 'Ohhhh yeah!'"

FYI: The Modern Baker was just reissued in a beautiful paperback edition, available here. Nick Malgieri has been incredibly supportive of our Modern Baker Challenge, even commenting on some of our blog posts! Consider picking up a copy of this awesome book. :)

Mellow Bakers: Sunflower seed bread with paté fermentée

This was one of those clean-out-the-pantry recipes; I was short on a couple of ingredients, so I made a few changes.

Our final October Mellow Baker bread is sunflower seed bread with paté fermentée; I made the paté fermentée first thing in the morning so it would be ready when I wanted to mix up the bread in the evening.

For the soaker, JH calls for rye chops; I used the end of a bag of rye berries (chopped) and the end of a bag of cracked rye. Based on Joanna's comments that the four-hour soak didn't soften the rye chops enough, I used boiling water. This seemed to soften the rye perfectly.

The rest of the dough was made with bread flour, water, salt, instant yeast, malt syrup, and sunflower seeds. My second clean-out-the-pantry was for the seeds: I toasted the end of a bag of sunflower seeds, the end of a bag of pumpkin seeds, and flax seeds.

I made a third of the recipe, which made five large rolls. We really enjoyed them with butter; they reminded me of my favorite seeded dinner rolls at one of my favorite restaurants. A surprise win!

Sesame bread sticks (Mellow Bakers) and winter veggie soup

My second Mellow Bakers bread for October is a rarity in my bread baking books: the kids and I mixed up the dough for sesame bread sticks when we got home (about 3:00), and we ate the bread sticks for dinner at 5:30....talk about fast!

The dough is made from bread flour, salt, instant yeast, water, olive oil, and malt syrup, mixed together in the stand mixer for about four minutes. It rises for an hour, and then is scaled into 24 pieces weighing about 3/8 ounce each. These rest for 15 minutes and then comes the fun part; Natashya commented that little kids would love to help roll the "snakes," and she was absolutely right. My kids were thrilled to roll the pieces into long snakes, which I lengthened a bit, rolled on a wet cloth, and then rolled through a plate of sesame seeds. They're baked immediately for 20 - 25 minutes (ours were a little fat, so took a little longer).

These were a huge hit, and a perfect accompaniment to one of our new favorite soups. Next time, I'll probably skip the plain sesame seed topping. The kids made me scrape them off so they could eat the bread sticks plain, and the hubby and I preferred the "everything" version I made when I ran out of sesame seeds (sesame seeds, dried garlic, dried onion, and poppy seeds). I kept the sticks in a large zip baggie, and they were still good days later.

And now the soup! Several weeks ago, I was looking for a way to use up some leftover ham and a huge amount of CSA vegetables. I found this recipe, which I doctored based on what we needed to use up. Even if this soup wasn't delicious (which it is!), I would seriously make it just for the gorgeous array of colors in the bowl!

Winter veggie soup
adapted from Cooking Light

2 tsp olive oil
4 oz (125 g) chopped ham or turkey ham
1 large onion (125 g), chopped
2 tsp minced garlic
4 c (520 g) peeled, cubed acorn squash
2 c (315 g) peeled, chopped potatoes
1/2 c (80 g) carrot, chopped
1 tsp dried basil
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/8 tsp crushed red pepper
28 oz tomatoes (I've used cans of stewed, diced, whole, and even fresh), drained (or not)
4 - 5 c chicken broth
4 cups (130 g) chopped greens (my favorite combination is kale, spinach, and red cabbage)
15 oz can small white beans (I've used pinto, great Northern)

1. Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the ham and sauté for 3 minutes.
2. Add the onion and garlic and sauté for another 3 minutes.
3. Add the squash, potatoes, carrot, and spices, and cook for 4 minutes.
4. Add the tomatoes, and cook for 2 minutes.
5. Stir in the broth and bring soup to a boil. Simmer for 8 minutes.
6. Add greens, and simmer for 5 minutes.
7. Add beans, and cook for 4 minutes.
8. Serve.

makes about 8 servings (2 cups each)

Handmade loaves: Berne Brot Winston knot

My friend Di, host of the most excellent Virtual Cookie Exchange last winter and Sundae Sunday this past summer, decided that now that the weather is finally cooling off, it's time to bake bread! Her autumn event is dedicated to handmade loaves.

My first Mellow Bakers bread for October is Berne Brot, a Swiss challah-like braided bread. Unlike challah, Berne Brot uses butter and milk. This is a quick one-day bread; I started mixing the ingredients when I got home from work and baked the bread before bed. I couldn't decide on the type of braid to use, and almost went with a simple three or four strand braid. But as I was paging through the Bread chapter on braiding, I re-encountered the Winston Knot, a braid I had tried with challah...unsuccessfully. My biggest problem back then was that I didn't roll the strands long enough, so I ran out of dough before I was through.

This time, I followed the wonderfully clear instructions Celia offers in her Winston Knot tutorial...and it worked! Hurrah!

I made a half recipe, which made about 840 grams of dough; six balls of 140 g, rolled out to about 60 - 65 cm (24" or 25"). I tried to err on the side of too-long, so that I wouldn't run out like last time. My dough was a lot softer than challah; in his braiding section, JH suggests dusting the braid strands with the tiniest, lightest dusting of flour to help prevent softer dough strands from baking into each other; it seemed to work.

The taste was similar to challah or a less-buttery brioche, so as we always do with both of those, we made French toast.

Berne Brot
adapted from Jeffrey Hammelman's Bread

425 g bread flour
30 g vital wheat gluten
204 g milk, warmed
1 egg yolk
1 egg
61 g unsalted butter, softened
26 g sugar
9 g salt
3 g instant yeast

1. Stir together the flour, vital wheat gluten, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Whisk the yeast into the warmed milk, and then stir the milk, eggs, and butter into the dry ingredients. Stir (I used my dough whisk) until it all comes together in a large, shaggy mass.
2. Knead in a stand mixer or by hand for 3 or 4 minutes, until the dough has developed.
3. Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise for an hour. Stretch and fold the dough, recover the bowl, and let rise for another hour.
4. Split the dough into equal-sized balls, cover with plastic wrap, and let rest for 15 minutes. Then roll each ball into a long strand and proceed with braiding. If you're interested in trying the winston knot, I strongly recommend checking out Celia's tutorial.
5. Place the braid on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Cover with baker's linen and plastic wrap. Let rise for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. (JH warns against letting the braid rise fully before baking; he recommends letting it rise to about 85%.)
6. Thoroughly brush the loaf with an egg wash.
7. Bake at 375º for 35 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 200º.
8. Cool on a rack.

Head over to Di's blog later this week to see the handmade loaf round-up!

Wordless Wednesday: CSA squash, anyone?

Bake! Thin-crusted pizza

Our Bake! pick for this week is thin-crusted pizza, and it was picked by ME! :)

I actually picked this recipe because my dad loves pizza, but prefers thin-crust, and since none of my trusty pizza crust recipes are for thin-crust, I've never been able to share homemade pizza with him. But then we ended up having a bunch of people over for dinner, and we ate it all up! No fear, though: this recipe is super easy and super tasty, and I guarantee we'll make it again.

This morning, I made the dough, which only consisted of whisking flour with salt, yeast with water and oil, and then mixing the two together. The dough rises for an hour or until doubled (mine took a little longer), is folded over a few times to smooth it out, and divided. I divided mine into three 364 g portions (to fit on my 10x15 baking pans), floured the pieces, wrapped them in plastic, and stuck them in the fridge.

When we got home from our afternoon adventures, I pulled two pieces of dough out of the fridge, oiled two pans, and used my fingers to spread the dough out as much as possible.

I used NM's simple tomato sauce, and then topped the pizzas with a sprinkling of olives, pepperoni, mushrooms and onions. I ended with grated mozzarella and asiago. The pizzas baked for 9 minutes. Seriously, so quick and easy! A perfect meal for having friends over: both the crust and the sauce can be made ahead of time and the assembly was much easier than doing our usual individual pizzas.

The pizza got rave reviews from everyone. The crust was crispy and had great flavor. Check out Margaret's post for her beautiful margherita pizza!