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Bread Baking Day #05, hosted by Chelsea at Rolling in Dough . The theme is "Filled Breads": this is my entry: Kuchen Roll with a prune-cinnamon filling

Full recipe is Here

I remember a few years ago when I discovered the Fresh Loaf. I was overwhelmed with the wealth of information and friendly comments and created an account immediately. For the most part I've been silently watching from the sidelines, jealous of anyone making the time to try new things and post their foods. Oh how it looked like so much fun!

Inspired by many of the challenges people have given themselves, I've decided to challenge myself as well. My New Years resolution, and first one ever, is to try a new recipe every single day for the whole year of 2008. So far I'm off to a wonderful and fun start. I plan on baking on the weekends as that will be the only time I really have available to do serious baking and, of course, I plan to use many wonderful recipes from this site! Ones I've always wanted to try. I've had great success with the bagel and pizza recipe, I can't wait to try more.

If anyone is interested in following me on my journey, I'm posting all of my progress at www.reciperesolution.com. Any comments, critiques, suggestions, support or advice would be greatly appreciated. When I bake anything, I'll post that here too! I'm so glad to have a chance to do this. I hope I can do it!

-JT

I applied a bunch of system patches, did a server reboot, and upgraded to the latest version of Drupal today. The server took about 5 minutes to come back, which is longer than usual, and just long enough to make me worry that I was going to have to spend the rest of my day emailing back and forth with tech support. Happily, it looks like everything came back fine.

Please let me know if you run into any problems.

Happy New Year everyone!  Here's to a great 2008!

~TableBread

http://tablebread.blogspot.com 

I've been lurking on this site for awhile and decided to register so I can start keeping a log of what I make.  My husband loves when I make the Italian bread listed under the Favorite Recipes, so here's how my first batch came out.  I melted a little butter on the top after removing it from the oven.

Sorry about the poor picture quality.  I'm lazy and use my husband's camera phone so I can email the photos to flickr as soon as I take them.

I've been doing quite a bit of baking this weekend. In addition to the Grape Harvest Focaccia I've blogged about yesterday, today I made the potato pizza from Maggie Glezer's "Artisan Baking". The recipe calls for a very wet dough -- more water than flour, actually. You knead the dough using the paddle on your stand mixer for 20 whole minutes. In the process it miraculously transforms from this:

To this:

It really is a quite unbelievable transformation. However did anyone figure it out? This dough, albeit wet and sticky, passes the windowpane test:

 I liberally oiled (although, in retrospect, not liberally enough, as a bit of pizza stuck to the pan) a half-sheet pan, and shaped the wet dough onto it, carefully as to not burst any bubbles. I had to let the dough rest several times in order to stretch the dough to fit the entire pan. Each time, using some more olive oil. I added the potato-onion-rosemary topping (the potatoes were thinly sliced using a mandoline, and then salted and squeezed from the liquid before mixing with the onion and rosemary). I added some more olive oil on top of the topping. 

I put the pizza into a preheated oven for 40 minutes. Shortly after the pizza began baking, the house filled with a wonderful aroma of onions and potatoes. It really got those gut juices going! Halfway through the baking I took a peek to rotate the dough, so I used that occassion to take a picture of the partially baked pizza:

40 minutes later, the pizza was ready:

I removed it from the pan (as I said above, I didn't oil the pan well enough, so it stuck in a couple of places.) The crust rose nicely; here is a side view:

This was a fun baking project!  

Today I decided to bake the Grape Harvest Focaccia from Daniel Leader's new book, Local Breads.

Since I prefer my doughs to be lean where possible, I decided to make it without the 1/3 cup of olive oil in the dough that the recipe calls for. I only used about half a tablespoon of olive oil for spreading over the dough before baking. I also increased the amount of red grapes. The amount called for in the recipe didn't seem to be enough. 

I was very happy with the result. I don't miss the oil at all, and the focaccia is moist and flavorful. The rosemary gives a delightful taste (and fragrance) to the bread. This bread is recommended. 

I am including three pictures:

The whole focaccia, just out of the oven:

 Here is a close-up of the focaccia:

And here it is, sliced: 

A couple of recent things I baked

Some french bread I put together quickly for a pot of black bean soup. Not world class bread, but great for mopping up the soup.

My Christmas Stollen. I used the Peter Reinhart recipe. I changed a few things, like using Amaretto instead of Grand Marnier and dried cranberries instead of raisins. I was very pleased with the results.

First off I must admit something.  A little while back JMonkey asked me if I still had any of my old starters going, and I told him no, they had all been ditched.  Well, come to find out, that was not entirely true.  Lurking in the way back portions of the lower fridge a Cambro container of starter was found.  So off to the internet to see what month it was when I started it.  It appears to be from back in May.  Its a little grey (well maybe more than a little) , but its still sealed nicely.  Its got a bunch of hooch on top, so I go to my Crust and Crumb book to try to find out if Reinhart has an opinion on this.  He says hes had 'em work after 6 months in the fridge.  So I'm at about 7 so what they heck.  I stir it up.  Measure out 100grams, mix in another 200g. of water and 200g. ww flour.  And put it out on the counter for the night.  Sure enough this morning I have a revived starter.  I split it off into a white, a ww, and a rye.  And here they are back from a nice little 7 month slumber and perky in just a day and a half.

As for baking this weekend, my pumpernickel fom Bernard Clayton was a flop.  My Boules of french bread came out fine.  But my newest attempt, a healthier bagel (if there is such a thing).

These bagels were made from a sponge made with KA Sir Lanelot flour, but the final build flour was just a combination of Whole Wheat and Rye.

Its not a white bagel, but I started feeling a little guilty from eating so many white bagels over the last couple weeks.  I figure two or three of these and I should be good to go back to my white bagels right? ;-)

TT 

TT's Other Breads

Well, I have picked up where I left off and am having a great time.

I tried to make stollen. It was my first attempt, and I think it was ok, but I know what I will change for next year.

Toast the almonds, omit the mixed peel, add more Marzipan perhaps and change some of the fruit I put in. I used apple brandy to soak the fruit which was lovely but could have used more fruit.

I added half the required fruit amount and thought that it looked like a lot of fruit so I made another batch and aded the fruit to that, then once cooked, I realiused that the fruit was scarece. Which for my preference is good, but for my hubby.....not so good.

Also, my stollen seemed really crispy and too brown. I followed the recipe but I used strong bread flour not all purpose flour, so perhaps that was the reason.

I also decided against icing it and went with a brown sugar (muscovado sugar) glaze with shaved almonds. Perhaps I should have iced it.

Oh well, this is how we learn and become better bakers :)

Stollen shaped and ready to proof 

 Stollen a little over cooked I think.

I also made my first batch of ciabatta today. I began the poolish last night and I tell you I am so proud of myself!

I decided to improvise as I was shaping and threw in a heap of red onion, and lovely organic 10 year old cheddar (I dont know much about cheese except what I like)

and bot was it consumed by myself, my hubby and my 5 year old very soon after it came out of the oven!

YUMMO! That is most definitely a make again bread :)

I will post pics as soon as I remember what my flickr account details are! lol.

thegreenbaker