Obviously as a someone who is trying to learn the in’s and out’s of bread making, a blog called “Wild Yeast” is going to be something I’m going to love. My favorite part of this site is the weekly bread related round-up they do called Yeast Spotting – a great recap of the best bread related posts from different blogs. It’s a great place to find some inspiration, especially for weekend bread guys like me. Anyway, you can check out this weeks version here. Top of my list, besides finally diving into sourdough, is to make the Polish Sweet Bread for the large Polish contingent in the house and see if it lives up to the old world version.

We’ve always drawn a line between bread baking and desserts on this blog, but it’s a pretty gray line. When I saw the picture of the Portuguese bread treat called a Malasada made at Leonard’s Bakery in Honolulu, there was no way it wasn’t making the cut! I mean, look at this thing:

[Photograph: Robyn Lee]

You can check out the whole story here as well as find out all the info on this awesome little nugget. I spent a lot of time in Honolulu as a kid and wished I knew about this place, although I can understand why it wasn’t on my retired grandparents radar. Since I know I will be in Hawaii again someday, this will be on the top of my list.

I’m all about easy here, since time is precious (as you can tell from the lack of posts in the past few weeks), so this recipe for “The Simplest White Bread Ever” from Serious Eats caught my eye. I haven’t made it yet, but will do is this weekend instead of of the usual loaf I make for the kids lunches for the week.

I really contemplated trying to do the Pain à l’Ancienne since I pretty much screwed the pooch the first time I tried it, but I’m just not quite ready to jump into the deep end again. So this time I decided to try to the Poolish Baguettes.

I’ve baked with a poolish before, which is a pre-fermentation of yeast, flour, and water, in the consistency of a thick pancake batter, that you combine the night before, and let ferment overnight.

The next morning I added the remaining ingredients, mixed them all together, and kneaded it with the dough hook in the mixer. I’ve gotten pretty lazy about using the food mixer (even though the recipe gives me permission) and I am hoping to start kneading by hand, but when you’re chasing around two kids, it’s easy to drop the mixture in the mixer and turn it on. The dough came out looking good, so I was feeling pretty confident at this point.

I got the dough rolled into a ball and placed it in a lightly oiled bowl to rise for about 2 hours until it doubled in size.

At this point, I was ready to try what I thought would be the hardest part, which is rolling the baguette shape. Of course the book makes it look so easy, and it actually was, considering the end result. You basically create a crease down the middle of the stretched out dough, fold it over itself and roll it out a bit. The end result looked like it could potentially take on baguette form.

The tough part of this recipe is that after you let the dough rise, then shape it, you have to let it sit again for another 90 minutes for a second rise. Patience is not my strong suit. Finally, after the second rise and some quality time in a super hot oven, baguettes made their inaugural appearance at the Jackson house!

In the end, I think I got pretty close with these. They were by no means perfect, and there was definitely zero consistency from a size and shape perspective, but dammit, they tasted pretty good, so back off! This is one I do want to try to make again – the baguette is the bread of choice for us, the tough thing is the time commitment. Planning my families weekend day around proofing and baking bread is not really going over well, so we will have to see. I am pretty sure if I can convince my 16 month old it is in his best interests for the long term, we’ll be golden.

When we started Bread Guys, we put donuts in a gray area, but sweet fried bread sounds good to me, and especially this recipe from Serious Eats for Sopapillas. I’m adding this to the list!

Making some kick ass loaves that emulate some of the great breads I’ve had, both in taste and look, at home, is one of the main reasons I wanted to start learning how to make bread, but the other was just to make a simple sandwich loaf that I could use everyday to make sandwiches for me and the kids. Enter Reinhart’s Light Whole Wheat Loaf from the Bread Bakers Apprentice. It’s a simple, easy, straight forward recipe and it can all be done in one day.

It’s “light wheat” because it is only about 1/3 whole wheat flour – not sure the little dudes would appreciate the 100% loaf yet, and I want them to eat this stuff. One way I found to get the 3 year old to finally eat sandwiches was to get him to help me – he referred to it as “his bread” from that point on and ate all his sandwiches. I also added little bit of honey to it (recommended in the recipe), and overall I was pretty happy with it. I was a little unhappy when I went online and saw other peoples finished loaves that looked about a hundred times better, but I guess practice makes perfect. I will master you Light Whole Wheat Loaf! You will be mine!

Ingredients in the mixer and ready to go:

All mixed up and ready to rise:

Shaped into a loaf:

The risen loaf ready to be baked, though I am learning i need to let it rise more:

The finished loaf, dented, but good!

It’s my birthday today and I think if it comes down to wishing for world peace or finally making a great baguette, at this point I would choose the baguette. I tried to make Pain à l’Ancienne last weekend (see the recipe here) and while it tasted fantastic, it was flat and dense, not all light and airy like the baguettes I am used to. I am struggling with what went wrong, and after eating all them in a short time, I am still not sure…the wife thinks more experimentation is necessary and I tend to agree.

This is one of those two days recipes, but out of most of those types of recipes, this requires little to no work, and introduces the concept developed by Philippe Gosselin of making the dough with ice water and immediately putting it in your refrigerator overnight to retard. Apparently, this is where all the great flavors are developed, and the I won’t lie, the flavors were damn good. Usually bread dough is made with room temperature or warm water, and allowed to sit out and rise at room temperature, so for a novice bread guy like me, this sounded interesting.

I messed up somewhere along the way and didn’t get the nice fluffy baguette I wanted, but I am pretty sure that Zeke took all the good bread karma with his pretzels (which I tasted and were awesome!). So if anything it is his fault. Thanks Zeke.

Here are some of the photos of the delicious but flat bread:

The dough mixed and ready to go in the refrigerator the night before:

Straight out of the refrigerator in the morning:

The dough out after it doubled – I think it needed to rise more and I don’t it was as sticky as it needed to be:

The dough cut into the first batch of three (there were two batches of three total) with some pretty poor scoring (again, not as sticky as it should be):

Fresh out of the oven:

Cooling (and shows you how flat they were):

Ok, round two starts tonight – wish me luck!

Let me start this week by offering a bit of an apology. We’ve been slacking on the content these last couple of days…it’s just been a tough stretch to find those extra few moments to put a post together. We’ll get better about it…or maybe we won’t. I guess you can consider Brendan and I to be enigmas.

Anyway, I played a road game this week and decided to do some baking at my in-laws house on Sunday. We were celebrating their wedding anniversary (Happy Anniversary Bruce & Becky!) and had an opportunity to relax, watch the NCAA tourney and make some pretzels for in-game munchies. (BTW…my bracket, probably much like the rest of the country, is better served as an origami future telling device)
Anyway, the plan was to have the pretzels ready to go by the start of the second game. Didn’t really go as planned though…these pretzels take a LONG time to make. I’d say start to finish, it was about 3 hours…so plan accordingly when you go to make them.

Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups warm (110 to 115 degrees F) water
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1 package instant dry yeast
- 4 ½ cups of bread flour
- ½ stick of butter, melted
- Vegetable oil, for pan
- 10 cups water
- 2/3 cup baking soda
- 1 large egg yolk beaten with 1 tablespoon water
- Pretzel salt (I used Kosher salt…it worked out well because the salt didn’t end up “flaking off” and making a mess when eaten)
- Shortening (Crisco)

Directions
Combine the water, sugar and kosher salt in the bowl of a stand mixer and sprinkle the yeast on top. Allow to sit for 5 minutes or until the mixture begins to foam.

Add the flour and butter and, using the dough hook attachment, mix on low speed until well combined. Change to medium speed and knead until the dough is smooth and pulls away from the side of the bowl, approximately 4 to 5 minutes.

Remove the dough from the bowl, clean the bowl and then oil it well with vegetable oil. Return the dough to the bowl, cover with plastic wrap and sit in a warm place for approximately 50 to 55 minutes or until the dough has doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Grease 2 baking sheets well using the shortening. Set aside.

Bring the 10 cups of water and the baking soda to a rolling boil in an 8-quart saucepan or roasting pan.

In the meantime, turn the dough out onto a slightly floured work surface and divide into 8 equal pieces.

8 equal sections

I guess this is about 2 feet long

Here is the pre-boil pretzel

Place onto the baking sheets.

Place the pretzels into the boiling water, 1 by 1, for 30 seconds. Remove them from the water using a large flat spatula. Return to the half sheet pan, brush the top of each pretzel with the beaten egg yolk and water mixture and sprinkle with the pretzel salt.

The pretzel post-boil and with the egg wash and salt added

Bake until dark golden brown in color, approximately 12 to 14 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack for at least 5 minutes before serving.

Pretzels!

Serve with mustard or nacho cheese.

My attempt at being a food stylist...

So after all that work, the pretzels were REALLY good…but I’d be lying if I didn’t say you have to REALLY LOVE pretzels to make this recipe. It takes quite a bit of time to make.

That’s all for now…look for a couple of posts from Brendan in the coming days. I thought I heard him say something about wheat bread…

And finally, don’t forget to become a fan of The Bread Guys on Facebook. Just go to facebook.com/breadguys and you’ll get notification of the posts as soon as they go live. Just don’t go too far…

I’ve started making my way through the Bread Bakers Apprentice and I guess there is no better place to start than the beginning. As a bonus, the first recipe is for a loaf, called Anadama which is a loaf from the Northeast that has cornmeal and molasses. The recipe itself intrigued me, and the idea of making some loaves of bread that we could use throughout the week for toast, sandwiches, etc., is something I’d been thinking about doing too. I figured it made sense to spend my time making something useful for the whole family versus something the wife and I would devour in a few days with dinner!

This was a two day process, but the beginning soak was pretty easy – cornmeal (I used some from my package of Polenta) and water combined and allowed to sit overnight. After that is the addition of some flour and yeast to get is all going. Here’s what is looked with all the good looking yeasty bubbles:

The next step was to combine the rest of the ingredients, including the remaining flower and molasses, and get it into a nice mixed batter.

I’ll make a full confession here – I decided to use the Kitchen Aid mixer for this project. In the Bread Bakers Apprentice it talks about using a mixer versus your hands for mixing and kneading, and makes a good point about learning how the dough feels and what a big part of the learning process this is, but that a mixer is just as good. I totally agree with this assessment, but in a house with two little kids running around, devoting a full 12 minutes to kneading is sometimes not an option, so I used the mixer this time.

After mixing it, I let it sit for a few hours to let it double in size. Here it is after letting it sit:

The next step was the kneading which I did in the mixer, then divide into two equal pieces, shape into the proper shape for a loaf, add to a greased loaf pan, and spray with some oil.

Finally, the last step before cooking, is letting it proof (rise) in the pan until it crests the top of the pan:

Now we are ready for baking! Bake for about 40 minutes, turning once, and we are good to go!

I was pretty happy with how it turned out – a little darker than some of the pictures I saw online – but to have fresh, home cooked loaves to use for the week is pretty cool. Oh, it tasted pretty good too!

(Just a heads up…I started writing this post on Sunday night…but couldn’t finish it until tonight. That might help to explain the intro…)

As another weekend rolls to a close, I find myself happy that I don’t lament the fact that I’ll need to return to work tomorrow…I actually am one of the lucky ones that enjoys their job.

That said, I do lament the fact that I didn’t have more of a chance to cook this weekend. Schedules just didn’t permit. My wife (Erica) and I are in the process of trying to sell our house. Whatever time that should be spent napping (or maybe cooking) on weekends, is typically spent working on our 110-year old “fixer-upper,” discovering new real estate laws that allow us to call an “extra” room a bedroom…simply because it has a new closet in it (that I just installed…ohh…I’m so much more than just bread.)

So Erica and I FINALLY had the chance to go visit good friends of ours that are celebrating the birth of their first child. (Beautiful boy by the way…AND has the first name of “Bryan” which is my REAL first name…spelled the cool way of course.). I was incredibly excited to help our friends in any way possible…the best way a lot of times is providing food for couples with a brand new baby. So I’d made them some homemade calzones…easily “freeze-able” for a later easy meal if you just don’t feel like cooking.

Well we brought our friends 4 calzones that I’d made for them for future meals…and I thought when handing the ‘zones over “I should definitely make these tonight…I haven’t eaten a good calzone in a while.”

So without further ado…the “recipe guy” brings you another option for making home made “something” tonight.

Ingredients:
- 1.5 Tbsp honey
- 2.25 tsps active dry yeast
- 1.5 cups warm water
- 2 tsps salt
- 4.5 cups bread flour
- 1 frozen spinach (chopped)
- 3 cloves garlic, finely minced
- ¾ cup of chopped red onion
- 2 Tbsp butter
- 1.5 lbs. ricotta cheese
- 2 cups packed shredded mozzarella cheese
- ½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
- 1 egg
- Salt & Pepper

Directions:
- Combine warm water, honey and yeast and let sit for 5-10 minutes (until yeast starts to get “frothy”)
- Combine flour and salt in bowl and mix well with a fork
- Pour water/yeast mixture into flour mixture and mix in electric mixer (you can add more flour or water if needed to get a better balance in the dough…in all honesty, I typically end up adding an additional ½ cup of water (slowly) to get to the proper mixture) Transfer dough to another bowl that’s been LIGHTLY coated in olive oil. Cover the dough (with a tea towel) and let it sit for at least an hour (until it doubles in size)

Here's the dough before rising...

...and after rising.

- While dough is rising, cook spinach (as described on the package…make sure it’s properly drained and squeezed of all water)
- Cook chopped onions & garlic in a frying pan (about medium heat) for about 6-8 minutes (until onions are translucent)
- Combine cheese, spinach, onions/garlic mixture and the egg (salt & pepper to taste) – set mixture aside
- Once dough has risen for an hour, ‘punch’ down and cut into 6 equal-sized pieces
- Take a piece of the dough and flop each side on a lightly floured surface. Spread the dough between your hands (mainly thumbs and first two fingers) until you get between a 10-16 inch “circle” (I put circle in quotes because good luck with getting a perfect circle. Don’t be afraid if it’s too thin, it will always rise and become thicker once you bake it.)

The hand is there for scale...not sure how helpful it is.

- Spoon cheese/spinach mixture on to one side of the dough circle. Fold the empty side over the mixture and fuse it shut by “crimping” it with a fork.

It's about 3 1/2 heaping tablespoons of filler

- Take a sharp pearing knife and cut three slits in the top to allow breathing while baking it.

Is that not the prettiest calzone you've ever seen?

Make sure to get a good cross way crimp with the fork...or everything will leak out when you bake them

- Grease some baking sheets (Crisco always works best for me) and bake the calzones for 15-20 minutes at 450 degrees.

The finished product

**Serve it with tomato sauce, Alfredo sauce…whatever. It’s a calzone…there’s not much you can put on top of it that wouldn’t be good.

**Also, these are great for freezing. Just wrap them a couple of times with saran wrap (to keep the freezer burn out). When you’re ready to eat, just preheat the oven and put them in (no need to defrost…just let them cook an extra 5-7 minutes depending on your oven).

That’s all I got…I hope you enjoy it!