Kjknits's blog

I love how artisan bread gives you the opportunity to do something creative with your scoring. I think Santa is my favorite—he got the full glamour shot treatment! 🎅🏻 

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I’ve been enjoying baking with my King Arthur sourdough starter so much this fall! I’ve settled on a recipe that I love for my basic bread, the Taste of Artisan no-knead sourdough. It’s a 70% hydration recipe that works very well as an overnight room temp proof. I start the dough around 4-5pm, do several stretch and folds every 45 minutes until around 9pm, then let it sit on the counter until morning. Divide, shape, and place bannetons into the fridge for at least 2 hours. Score, and bake in preheated cast iron dutch ovens at 450 for 25 minutes covered, 10-15 minutes uncovered (internal temp is between 205-210). 

It’s been fun practicing my scoring technique and adding inclusions!

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I was watching random suggested videos on YouTube recently, and Lisa from Farmhouse on Boone popped up making sourdough puff pastry (recipe here). I’ve never made true puff pastry, with the butter envelope and all of that, instead being quite satisfied with King Arthur’s fast and easy puff pastry (It’s made like a biscuit dough; the butter is cut into the dry ingredients, then you add sour cream as the “liquid” and perform a few sets of folds…I always do more than the one fold they call for in the recipe).

At any rate, I was intrigued with the sourdough aspect of Lisa’s puff pastry, so I had to try it. It came out amazing! The recipe yields 2.5 lbs of dough. The first day I made four apple turnovers with half a pound of the dough. They were kind of goofy looking, because I forgot how to shape them (it’s been a while), but absolutely delicious and so, so flaky. 

The next day I used one pound to make a lattice crust for my go-to chicken pot pie recipe. I baked the crust on the filling…next time I’ll bake it separately on a baking sheet for maximum rise and flakiness, because the bottom of the dough stayed gummy on the filling and there wasn’t as much puff. No pics of that; we gobbled it up for dinner before I had a chance to take any. 

One pound is in the freezer and will probably make either a breakfast puff pastry “pizza” (you roll the dough out and put some cooked bacon or sausage on it, then scrambled eggs, then grated cheese and bake, like this recipe), or maybe some ham and cheese pinwheels for a fun “fancy” dinner. 

Posting my freshly-milled, 100% whole wheat sandwich bread recipe…this one is an adaptation of my everyday sandwich bread that I posted here way back in 2007. Unfortunately the photos in that post are broken, but it was a white bread with wheat bran added in for interest and nutrition. Once I got my KoMo Fidibus XL in 2014, I switched over to 100% whole wheat bread. My family never even minded, because the bread still came out soft, fluffy, and mild-tasting due to using white whole wheat. Make sure your wheat berries are golden and plump. I’ve had some bad berries that made dense, poorly-risen bread. Achieving a good elastic windowpane is key with this bread, as well. 

Makes four loaves, but recipe can be cut in half. We slice when cool and freeze until needed, removing slices and letting them thaw for a few minutes on the plate. 

3.5 lbs wheat berries (I like 1 lb kamut, then the rest in hard white wheat)

1 stick unsalted butter, melted

4 cups water (cold or room temp…I use cold filtered from the fridge dispenser)

2/3 cup sugar

2 tbsp instant yeast

4 tsp salt

Grind wheat berries. Put water, melted butter, sugar and yeast in bowl of stand mixer (I have a 7 qt Viking professional. If you’re using a smaller mixer, I recommend halving the recipe). Add a few cups of the flour and beat with the flat beater or dough hook at low to medium speed until well mixed. Add a few more cups of flour and the salt. Beat at low to medium speed until well mixed. Continue adding flour a cup or two at a time. If using the flat beater, switch to the dough hook when the dough gets thick. After the rest of the flour has been added, knead using the hook until the dough passes the windowpane test. Oil the bowl, cover and let proof for about 1 to 1.5 hours. Divide into four pieces (about 1.5 lbs each) and form each into a tight loaf. (I flatten, then roll up each piece, adding plenty of tension to the outside of the loaf as I’m rolling it.) Place in greased 9x5 pans, cover loosely, and proof for about 35 minutes. Preheat the oven to 375° while the loaves are rising. Bake for 28-32 minutes, or until internal temp of 195° is reached. Remove from pans and cool on wire rack, covered with a kitchen towel.

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These turned out great. I made them 3 oz each. The recipe is from Farmhouse on Boone, but I forgot the egg in the dough and my timeline wasn’t the same as hers. I made the dough with my active starter yesterday afternoon, let it sit on the counter until about 8pm, then put it in the fridge overnight. This morning, I took it out and let it sit on the counter. Around 1pm, I shaped the rolls, then let them sit until around 4pm. Baked for about 18 minutes at 400°. 

I’ll leave the egg out every time I make these in the future. They were the lightest, softest, but still sturdy buns of my baking dreams. So good!

These were pretty tasty. I used my KAB starter, KAB bread flour, and pretzel salt from Boise Salt Co. The recipe is from Little Spoon Farm. We have an all-time fave soft pretzel recipe from an Amish cookbook I bought at a craft fair, but that uses regular yeast and I wanted to use my new starter. These are equally good as our fave commercial yeast pretzels…maybe a little chewier? 

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I am LOVING my new sourdough starter from KAB (KAF for the old schoolers). I got it in the mail a week ago and have made English muffins, crackers, a lovely no-knead recipe from Taste of Artisan (my fave regular no-knead recipe is from there as well), some dinner rolls (not special enough to link to), and some fab waffles. I should’ve taken more pics, but here’s the no-knead from Taste of Artisan. 

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The crust is thin and crisp and flavorful, and the crumb is moist but not gummy at all. Makes great toast and hearty sandwiches! Streamside lunch spot is optional. ;)

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve been active on TFL, but I recently got a new starter and had to come look up my old English muffin recipe. I didn’t want to fool with starting my own starter this time, so I bought the one that King Arthur sells. It arrived Wednesday and I got to work feeding it. Yesterday it doubled in eight hours, so I decided to use the discard for these, since the recipe also uses baking soda and I figured there would be enough lift even from that. Not disappointed…they’re as fluffy and big and beautiful as they ever were! I’m excited to make bread with this new starter over the weekend. It should be fully ready by Sunday, I expect. 

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My family has recently embarked on a "less-is more" natural style of living. We're trying to do more things ourselves instead of relying on commercial offerings. We're also trying to get rid of the plastic in our house, which is easier said than done! But baking things I usually buy ready-made at the store, I can do.

One of the things I have switched over to making at home is flour tortillas. We love tacos and quesadillas, and flour tortillas seemed easy enough to make. I remembered seeing women make them in San Antonio when I was there several years ago. All they did was roll out a ball of dough and plop it onto a cast iron skillet for a few seconds on each side. Simple!

I found my keeper recipe at epicurious, which is one of my fave food sites. I haven't tried the wheat version yet, but the white flour tortillas are amazing.

I follow the recipe pretty much exactly, but I use my stand mixer to mix and knead the dough. And I divide the dough into 16 portions, then roll them out paper thin. This makes tortillas like the ones I'm used to buying at the store, about 8" in diameter and nice and flexible and thin. I would divide them into even smaller portions for tacos, though, because 8" is more like a burrito size. Then I just cook them one by one on a preheated cast iron skillet, no oil or anything necessary (my skillet is super-seasoned, thanks to our summer favorite, fried okra). I place the cooked tortillas in a big lidded Pyrex dish while they wait for the rest to get finished.

Next item on the commercial product hit-list: corn tortillas! Good thing we have a big Hispanic influence where we live...masa harina is on every grocery store shelf.

So, I haven't posted here in Quite A While, but I made some hamburger buns the other day and thought I would share my results. I have always wanted to make my own burger buns, but the last time I tried over a year ago, they were heavy and too bready for burgers. We couldn't even finish our burgers, the night I served them on those buns! So I sort of let that idea pass away. But then a few weeks ago, I found a recipe posted on King Arthur's baking blog. I was intrigued by the method of forming the buns cinnamon-roll style, and I loved the idea of the onion swirl! So I gave them a try.

Well, first of all, they turned out beautiful. How pretty are those? The egg wash and poppy seeds really dressed them up. And the onion flavor from the dried onion swirl was really nice. Subtle, but still tasty. I added a little too much flour to this batch, though, and so they were a little more dense and heavy than I wanted. I really want homemade taste, but supermarket fluff, in my hamburger buns. So I tried them again the next weekend, added less flour (PJ says the dough should be tacky like tape, not sticky like glue, and that description helped me a lot). They were much lighter with less flour. So, I think the key to these is to avoid adding too much flour. I might try adding some milk instead of water sometime, too. It makes super light and fluffy dinner rolls, so it might also work well in hamburger buns.

(No, we didn't have french fries with our burgers that night. Instead, we had fried okra, straight from the farmer's market! Yum.)