Mellow Bakers: Oatmeal bread with cinnamon and raisins

Well, what do you know...I needed a cinnamon-raisin bread for a French toast recipe I'm trying out, and when I checked the Mellow Bakers' recipes for August, guess what was on the list? Oatmeal bread! (with the possible addition of cinnamon and raisins)

This bread should be a simple one-day bread; however, I'm single-parenting this week and life got in the way...twice, actually. So the bread got two rests in the fridge: one for the bulk fermentation and one just prior to baking. Also, since I only needed one loaf, I scaled the recipe (which makes three loaves) back.

The bread is made by mixing oatmeal (soaked briefly in the water to soften it), high gluten flour (I used bread flour and a little vital wheat gluten), whole wheat flour, milk, honey, oil (I used safflower), salt, instant yeast, and ground cinnamon. The raisins (which have also been soaked in water to prevent burning during baking) are added at the end. This is the first time that I've seen a cinnamon-raisin bread where the cinnamon and raisins are baked right in the main part of the dough, rather than done as a swirl.

JH says that a 1.5 pound loaf should fit in a 9x5 pan; my loaf was about 780 g (so a little over 1.5 pounds), but despite a really, really long rise, the pan still seemed too big. (My 9x5 has often given me problems; I think it's actually a little bigger than normal.) Next time, I'd use one of my bigger 8.5" loaf pans.

I brought this bread up to the cabin with me, and we had a little taste before assembling the French toast. I think we were all a little disappointed. The cinnamon and raisins were definitely both present, but, as my dad said, "There's just too much bread flavor getting in the way!" My stepmom added that, if she's going to eat cinnamon raisin bread, she wants the sugar in there, too! So I think we all agreed that cinnamon raisin bread needs to have the traditional cinnamon sugar swirl; I doubt I'll make this one again.

UPDATE: I take back my "meh" report...this made delicious toast (with a little butter) for breakfast this morning!

Cinnamon raisin bread turned into a baked French toast

Mellow Bakers: Three-stage 80% sourdough rye

It's flashback time for me. Let me take you back to January with the Mellow Bakers' three-stage sourdough rye. This bread has more time and temperature requirements than any other bread I've ever baked, and since most of the temperatures required are around 85º, I was not willing to try it in the midst of winter in the frozen tundra where we live.

The other day, however, my kitchen table maintained a pretty constant 85º all day long, so I was able to make this bread without stressing over creating the perfect bread environment.

I actually started almost a week ago by turning a bit of my normal starter (Austin) into a rye starter. Then I began the three-stage process:

1. Freshening: combining a teeny tiny bit of my rye starter with water and more rye flour to create a paste, which ripened for five hours.

2. Creating a basic sour: mixing the freshening paste with water and more rye flour to create a stiffer starter, which ripened for about 18 hours.

3. Creating a full sour: mixing the basic sour with water and more rye flour to create a stiffer than the first, looser than the second, paste that ripened for three hours.

4. And finally, mixing all of the other ingredients: full sour with more rye flour, bread flour, water, and salt. I heeded the other Mellow Bakers' advice and left out the optional commercial yeast.

The dough is very paste-like, so I used my wet hands to knead it briefly, and then let it rest for its short 20 minute bulk fermentation.

Because I'd only made a half-recipe, I didn't divide the dough. I just floured my board and shaped the dough into a round, which I placed in my round banneton. Following Joanna's advice, I ignored the instructions for an hour final fermentation, especially given the fail I'd had earlier in the day. I let the dough rise fully, for probably close to five or six hours in an 80º room, before docking the dough with a bamboo skewer and baking it at 480º for 10 minutes and 410º for 35 minutes.

The bread appeared to have very little, if any, oven spring, but I'm guessing it's because it had such a long rise time. As for the flavor? I don't know; I haven't tried it yet. =) My dad is the one who loves the dark ryes, and he was on his way to a cabin for a week when the bread came out of the oven. So I wrapped it in linen and sent it with him. His report after about 36 hours of waiting: "Bread  is less complex than some of the other dense breads you've made. No embedded grains, seeds, etc. Predominant flavor is sourdough, with a strong sour. I will certainly eat it all, in the morning, with butter,  but don't feel like you need to make this again soon." I'll have a chance to try it when I join him at the cabin on Wednesday.

It feels good to be caught up, finally! Here are the other Mellow Bakers' three-stage sourdough ryes.

Chocolate pudding pops!

Happy Sundae Sunday! My friend Di is hosting a virtual ice cream social today, similar to the cookie exchange she hosted last winter, to celebrate July being National Ice Cream Month.

I only recently purchased an ice cream maker, and while I've been using it a ton, I've gotten many of my recipes from other bloggers who are attending the social. My challenge: finding a recipe that someone in the group hadn't already posted. At first, I made a strawberry cheesecake light ice cream, which was pretty tasty. But I was desperately craving chocolate.... I read up on all sorts of unusual chocolate ice creams: ones with cayenne, coffee, cherries. But I was really in the mood for chocolate-chocolate.

And then I remembered my most recent issue of Cooking Light and a recipe for chocolate pudding pops. Score!

These taste exactly like the chocolate pudding pops we grew up with: a perfect tasty treat for a 95º afternoon!

Chocolate pudding pops
adapted from Cooking Light

590 mL (2 1/2 cups) 2% milk 
110 g (1/2 cup) sugar
50 g (1/2 cup) unsweetened cocoa, sifted
10 g (1 tbsp) cornstarch
pinch of salt
20-25 g egg yolk (from 1 egg)
4 g (1/2 tsp) vanilla extract
59 g (2 ounces) semisweet chocolate, cut into small chunks

1. Combine the milk, sugar, cocoa, cornstarch, salt, and egg yolk in a medium saucepan. Whisk continuously over medium heat for 8 minutes, or until the mixture is bubbling and has slightly thickened.
2. Off heat, add chocolate. Let rest 1 minute and then whisk in. Add vanilla.
3. Pour mixture into a bowl set inside a larger bowl filled with ice water. Stir occasionally until cooled.
4. Use a measuring cup with a spout, pour into popsicle molds and insert sticks. (Mine made 8 popsicles.)
5. Freeze completely.

Check here for the round-up of all of the Sundae Sunday tasty treats!

Bake! flashback: Tiger rolls

Being already overwhelmed with my commitments to The Modern Baker Challenge and Mellow Bakers, I was not eager to join a new baking group, so when Kayte and Phyl started baking through Nick Malgieri's Bake! I was happy to sit back and watch........Until the recipes they were baking and posting became more and more irresistible, as did the fun they were having with their Twitterbakes.

I am so happy that I caved and requested Bake! for my birthday, as it quickly became one of my very favorite cookbooks. But, because I joined in late, there were several recipes that I missed, and the group has decided to use the month of August to catch up.

My little guy saw me writing "soup" on our weekly dinner calendar and requested a bread: "white with flour on it." (He means something along the lines of ciabatta or baguettes.) I thought back to the first recipes the Bake! group made and realized that I'd never gotten around to tiger rolls; they seemed like a perfect accompaniment to soup.

This recipe uses NM's one-step bread dough, a bread made with bread flour (I subbed in some white whole wheat flour), salt, active yeast, water, and olive oil. The method is very similar to the unkneaded six-fold French bread that I just made: mix, stir, rest, stir, rest, fold, rest, fold, rise. It was very quick and easy.

After its rise, the bread is divided into twelve rolls (mine were about 64 g per roll), and then it's time to mix up the topping that gives tiger rolls their name. This is a Dutch crunch, as we made for the BBA's Vienna bread, although this time I actually went out and purchased rice flour. The topping is made from active yeast, water, sugar, salt, olive oil, and rice flour, all whisked together, allowed a brief rest, and painted on the rolls. The rolls rise for a bit and then are baked for 25 minutes.

This recipe was incredibly quick: 2:00 start time, 5:30 dinner time, and even allowed us a quick trip to the park. We all loved these rolls; with a little butter, they were perfect with our soup, crunchy crackly crust, fluffy inside. I planned to use the rest for sandwiches for lunch tomorrow, but my little guy asked, "Mom, can we have soup and tiger rolls for dinner again tomorrow?" so I guess it's leftover night at my house!

Here are Kayte's tiger rolls, Phyl's tiger (or giraffe) rolls, Andrea's tiger rolls.

Mellow Bakers: Olive levain (July)

Here's my last Mellow Bakers' bread for July: olive levain, the first fail I've had in a while.

The bread is made with a liquid levain (left out for 12 hours), bread flour, a little whole wheat flour, salt, and water, and then some olives are added at the very end of kneading. My kids love olives but aren't fans of sourdough, so I just made a tiny loaf again. It had a 2 1/2 hour bulk fermentation and then went into the fridge overnight. I tend to let pure sourdoughs (ie, without any extra added yeast) rise for much longer than JH specifies because I've had this problem before. However, I know from other breads in this book that the loaves can be baked straight from the fridge, so that's what I did. There was almost no oven spring, and when I cut it later, the texture was not good; it reminded me of one of my first-ever attempts at baking a basic sourdough. Although it reached an internal temperature of over 200º, it did not look cooked; the inside was doughy, gummy, yucky.

I think, despite the texture issue, that the bread tastes how it's supposed to: very strong sourdough flavor, clear salty olive taste. I'm sad that it didn't turn out, but given the flavor combination, I doubt I'll try it again.

Mellow Bakers: Sourdough rye with walnuts and raisins

Just could not get excited about this Mellow Bakers bread, so I scaled the recipe down and made one small loaf. Even my hubby, who normally looks forward to pretty much any new recipe I make, said, "You know, you can't just dump walnuts and raisins into a recipe and call it something different. This is just like all of the other sourdough ryes." I think we're both getting a little tired of this genre of bread, even with some that have been surprisingly good.

With a constant heat index of 110º F for the past three days, I couldn't bring myself to preheat the oven and my baking stone for an hour, so I decided to bake the bread at a lower temperature in a small loaf pan. It baked for 30 minutes at 350º F, and, with no steam, it was one of the most anemic-looking loaves I've ever made.

We tried it toasted, with a little butter; the sourdough, rye, raisin, and walnut flavors were all very distinct. It seemed a little weird to combine the sweetness of raisins with the strong sourdough rye flavor, and hubby called the walnuts "startling" (not in a good way). At any rate, it wasn't bad, but we were not big fans.

Bake! Golden sour cream layer cake with chocolate buttercream frosting

Our next recipe from Bake! is golden sour cream layer cake with chocolate buttercream frosting, chosen by Phyl for his birthday weekend. I'm not going to be around that weekend, however, and we were hosting a double birthday get-together today (for my stepdad and my nephew), so I decided I'd try out Phyl's cake...you know, just to make sure it was a good choice. =)

I cut the recipe in half, which made two perfect 6" cakes. It was an easy recipe, although because the milk and eggs in NM's butter cake recipe were replaced by sour cream and egg yolks, the batter was really, really thick. I checked mine after 20 minutes and the cakes still looked very light, so I continued to cook them for another seven minutes. I think they actually could've been taken out several minutes earlier...so note to future bakers: this is just a really light cake which never looks done, so use the poking the center test instead of color to judge doneness!

This morning, I made half of NM's basic buttercream, a recipe I've made many times before, always with great success. Even though I followed the recipe exactly, just as I always do, this frosting was much runnier than usual. It was the first time that I flavored it with chocolate, but I actually think that the bigger problem was the weather; I've only made this recipe in the winter, but today, it is hot and humid. I put the cake and the frosting in the fridge for an hour and then was able to frost the cake. Because it was so hot, I did end up keeping the cake in the fridge until it was time to eat.

The cake sliced so easily and perfectly that I was convinced that it was, in fact, overcooked. But when I took my first bite, I was happily surprised: the sour cream really kept the cake moist and gave the cake a rich, full flavor, much more interesting than a traditional yellow cake. The chocolate buttercream was a delicious accompaniment, as was the mint oreo ice cream that we served it with. This will be my go-to recipe for a basic yellow birthday cake from now on!