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Even in the midst of moving, a family’s got to eat. And with the beautiful summer weather we’ve been having in New England (70 degrees F, sunny, low humidity – ah, New England, I’m gonna miss ya), I’ve been cooking an awful lot on the grill, and I finally got around to making grilled pizza. Of course, I did it with whole wheat.

I don’t have the recipe in front of me, but if there’s interest, I’ll add it in the comments sometime later. All I can say is, Peter Reinhart’s advice in American Pie is easy to follow, and makes a fantastic pie. It’s surprisingly simple to do.

To make the pie whole wheat, I simply increased the amount of water by about 2-3 Tbs per cup. I downsized the recipe to make just two pies, and smaller ones at that. A 12-15 inch pie would be too large to fit on one side of the grill, which was a necessity, since I was using the one-grill method.

The key, it seems to me, really is to rake almost all the coals to one side so that there’s a blazing hot side and relatively cool side. I shaped my pies in a rough oval, because they fit better that way, but they got deformed because, even though I slathered the back of my baking sheet with olive oil, it was still not an easy task getting the dough off the sheet and onto the grill.

I was a little too worried about burning the dough. I could have left the second pie on the grill a little bit longer and gotten a better crust. But who’s complaining? It was excellent! For cheese, I used a 50-50 mozzarella-parmesan blend, and then added dollops of goat cheese. Toppings were roasted tomatoes, roasted red bell peppers and dollops of basil pesto.



We’ll be making these again.

Friday night, I’d started refreshing Arthur, my whole wheat starter, at 1-5-5, and did so again on Saturday morning, so by Saturday night, I had about 550 grams of starter at 100%. I decided to set up three things:

• Whole wheat sourdough hearth bread: 88% hydration with 5% of the flour pre-fermented as starter
• Whole wheat sourdough sandwich bread: 85% hydration with 10% of the flour pre-fermented
• Sourdough whole wheat English Muffins: I used this recipe for Sourdugh English Muffins, substituting whole wheat flour for the AP flour and adding 2 Tbs more milk. I used only 2 cups flour for the entire recipe. Good Lord these are easy!

Hello, my name is RYan and I am a professional chef looking to become a professional boulanger. I am looking for someone with an intimate knowledge of regional european breads. I have many excellent books, but I am looking for some info on harder to find loaves. Does anyone know any one that may be able to help. I am about ready to start making international phone calls.

THanks,

Ryan

In spite of the crazy, rainy weather of the past week or two, farmers in Kansas and other Great Plains states are trying to get the wheat harvested whenever field conditions allow. On my way home from work this evening, I saw these guys making their way across a field:

As soon as I got home, I gathered up my camera and my 5-year old grandson and headed back to the field so that he could see what a combine looked like and what it did. And to grab these pics, too. Yes, those are office buildings in the background of the picture, above. Johnson County is home to a number of Kansas City suburbs and more farm land gets paved every year for subdivisions, shopping centers, office parks, etc. Hard to complain about it too much, since I'm part of the problem.

Here's a closer shot of the combine as it crossed our line of sight:

This last shot shows one of the two combines at work in the field stopping to unload into a waiting semi-truck trailer:

In this shot, you can see a traffic light and part of a house in the background.

My grandson was quite impressed by the big machinery, even though he didn't completely understand what was going on. I tried to explain how the kernels from the stalk of wheat that I plucked for him were the part of the wheat that was being harvested and that it would be milled into flour for breads, cookies, pies and so on. I know he understood the food end of it and he knows what flour is; I just don't think he has a concept of how something growing in a field could be turned into those things. It will come, eventually. At least he has had an introduction to one of the steps in the process.

Oh, and for the curious among you, it's winter wheat. It was planted in October or November of last year.

PMcCool

Makes 16.

A traditional bread recipe in Arabic gulf area, bakes in a special tanor build in the ground.

Serve in weddings, special occasions (Eid al adha), or the religion occasions, with coffee and dates.

This recipe is so healthy and full of nutrition.

For the dough:

5 1/2 cups all purpose flour.

1 1/2 cup wheat bran.

1 tablespoon yeast.

1/2 teaspoon baking soda.

1/4 cup sugar.

1/3 cup date molasses.

A pinch of saffron socked in 2 tablespoon of rose water.

1 cup pitted dates socked in 1 cup of boiling water (let it cool before use it).

3/4 cup water.

In a small bowel mix together:

2 tablespoons boiling water.

2 teaspoons sugar.

1/2 teaspoon baking soda.

 Toasted sesame seeds.

(dates)

(date molasses )

1)To make the dough mix the entire ingredient, knead the dough for 10 minutes. Place it in a bowl, cover, let rest for 1 hour.

2)Divide dough into 16 pieces,Shape each into a smooth ball.

3)Flat each to make a flat round square, then brush each with the (sugar and baking soda mixture), make indents with fingertips.

4)sprinkle with sesame seeds, Place on baking sheet, Cover let rise 30 minutes.

5)Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.or until it golden brown.

http://arabicbites.blogspot.com/

After a few disappointing efforts I have to report that yesterday the dough fairies were on duty. I really like the firm starter PR calls for, and as I dropped the pieces into my mixing bowl the flour flew! Next time I will be more careful. I mixed all together and left it alone for 45 minutes and then did a Mike Avery fold and left it again. The dough was already feeling good and I attempted a French fold which went pretty well. Not sure whether it is allowed to mix methods like that? Then I went out and planted some new perennials and watered eveything - MiniOven did tell me to do something else, and I now know that I haven't been letting things ferment long enough. After lunch I shaped the dough and used the TT rolled towel and parchment couche, and again went off and let things take care of themselves. Baked the loaves on my stone with steam and got terrific oven spring. Need to work on the scoring - I thought I had cut deep enough but didn't get any ears. Baked the loaves until good and dark and 205*, but the crust didn't stay crisp. I was so tickled I had to share all of this - the family get the glazed eye look when I rave on, so I thought the bread fanatics would understand. Thanks for listening, A

Started last week trying my hand at capturing the elusive wild yeast using an approximation of the method espoused by breadtopia.com, and it worked.

• Day 1 started with 3 Tbsp King Arthur unbleached bread flour (KAubf) and 1/4 cup pineapple juice (paj) in a tupperware container stirring until the flour was hydrated. The consistancy could best be described as"stringy" and the odor was distinctly flour and pineapple. Left on counter top with lid laying but not fastened. Ambient room temperature at 75F.

• Day 2 remembered to stir the experiment. Pre-stir looked pretty bad. Ever seen spoiled milk seperate into curd and whey? Very similar, but the smell was still raw flour and pineapple, with a bit of a sour odor. Continued ambient temp 75F on counter w/o lid snapped.

• Day 3 still no visible action, looking bad but smelling more like I remember my previous attempt. Added another 3 Tbsp of KAubf and 1/4 cup paj. Decided the environment might need an adjustment in pH to help any wild beasties in the neighborhood get more active, so I added 1/4 tsp of apple cider vinegar (acv).

• Day 4 looking fizzy and clumped. Definately have some yeast action. Now I really smelled what I felt to be the "right" smell. Thin crepe like consistancy with some minimal gluten strings. Added 3 Tbsp. more flour and tried to eyeball 1/4 cup of filtered water, but got a little over zealous and probably poured more like 1/2 cup. So to readjust I added another 3 Tbsp of flour.

• Day 5 woke early and was in the kitchen futzing around and remembered the capture experiment. Looked frothy! Disco! The starter had lost the "sour" smell from earlier and I decided to add another dose of half a cap of acv. I also felt that maybe a little honey, like 1 Tbsp, might give some results. You know give those hard working beasties a little easy food.

• Day 5 late afternoon and boy what a difference a few hours makes. Triple in volume very frothy and looking like all the pictures on the web. Decided I had enough of a head start to begin moving the from the Starter stage to bulking up to making bread. Took 200 g of the starter and added 200 g of KAubf and 200 g purified H20.
  

Hello,

There are a few of us living in San Diego. Susan (of upside down Pyrex bowl cloche fame) and I (of no particular fame that we can talk about here) have gotten together a couple of times. Last week, we did a field trip to a place called Lakeside Poultry that no longer sells poultry (???), but does sell restaurant supplies, including 50 pound bags of flour. Susan bought a bag of Gold Medal Harvest King, and I bought a bag of Eagle Mills organic bread flour (from ConAgra, not exactly your old time mill).

I have been using Bob's Red Mill flours for years, so I decided to do a side-by-side bakeoff, making one loaf of sourdough from Bob's (BRM) and one from the new Eagle Mills (EM) flour. BRM is organic unbleached flour with a protein percentage of 11.75. The EM flour has 11 percent. Neither is malted. I used the recipe I've posted earlier here, except I used all unbleached flour in the sponges. I started a sponge for each batch of dough with one teaspoon of my 100% hydration white starter, created from the BRM flour. Due to yet another brain lapse, I neglected to photograph the sponges. For the record, BRM looked a bit more robust, thicker, but both had very good bubble populations. Here are pics of the two doughs just after the initial mix (BRM is on the left):

I did four stretch and folds, with 45 minutes between each (and before the first one), for a total fermentation time of about four hours. Both doughs were a bit tacky, and the EM dough rose a little more throughout than the BRM. After the fourth S&F, the dough rested for about 25 minutes before shaping. The BRM dough looked and felt smoother after shaping, as seen here (BRM on the left):

The loaves rested 30 minutes after shaping, then went into the oven at 425F (convection). I poured boiling water into a cast iron pan at (well, almost) the same time. I wasn't happy with the look or feel of the BRM loaf; it didn't take the scoring well, and the knife just dragged through the dough. It was also flatter looking than the EM. But the oven spring fairies were on duty! Here's the BRM loaf:

And the EM loaf:

I haven't used that center slash before, and I think I like it better than 2 or 3 diagonal ones. Both loaves had very good oven spring and color. They had decently open crumb for a 65% hydration bread.

Here's the BRM crumb:

And the EM:

So I'm not seeing much difference so far, are you? The biggest difference is the price; I order the organic Bob's Red Mill flour online, and the shipping doubles the cost of the flour ($12.00 for 20 lb. of flour plus $14.00 shipping). The 50 pound bag of Eagle Mills cost just over $18.00. Duh...

After all this, how did they taste? Well, in a side by side tasting, the clear winner is...um, well I think I liked...er, uh, actually, they tasted very similar! And this is actually good news, because I don't have to spend so much on flour anymore.

It was a fun experiment, and I was even able to keep track of which dough blob was which throughout the whole thing.

Sue

milk mixture:

1 cup milk.

1 tablespoon olive oil .

450 g Feta Cheese .

chopped fresh mint.

1 teaspoon sumac.

1/2 teaspoon olive oil .

 *mix the Filling ingredients.

For dough :

2 1/8 cups white flour.

1 cup whole wheat flour.

1 1/4 cups warm water.

1 tablespoon dried mint.

1/4 teaspoon sugar.

1/2 teaspoon salt.

1/4 cup olive oil .

1)place all ingredients in the bowl of mixer ,beat 10 minutes to make a soft dough.

2)Cover and let rise for 30 minutes.

3)Divide dough into 8 pieces.

4)shape each piece into a ball.

5)Roll each piece through pasta machine set on thickest setting,fold dough in half,roll through machine,repeat rolling several times,dusting dough with extra flour when necessary.

6)Roll dough through machine ,adjusting setting so dough becomes thinner with each roll,dust with extra flour,when necessary.roll to second thinnest setting (1 mm thick),making sure dough is at least 12 cm wide.

 7)Cut into 2 pieces.

8)Brush it with milk mixture.

 9)Place 1 tablespoon of Cheese mixture,roll pastry over filling.

Video

 10)Brush the top with milk mixture.Cover and let rise for 20 minutes.

6)Bake at 400 for 20 minutes.

zainab

http://arabicbites.blogspot.com/

Sunday I finally got a real baking day in. It was the first time in... 2 months? 3 months? A very long time.

I started with the Sourdough English Muffin recipe that Kjknits posted a month or so ago.

They were *amazing*. There wasn't a terribly interesting smell or anything, but when I bit into one it was just one of those "Oh, wow" moments. I will definitely be baking them again.

Pretty nice crumb inside.

I don't have cutter or tins, I just used a mason jar lid. The ones I was happiest with I left about 1/3 inch tall when cutting and then squashed a bit wider and thinner before cooking.

I also make something like a cross between my standard pain sur poolish and the famous no knead bread.

The hydration on this was quite high, probably in the 70-75% range. It spread a little more than I would have liked, but the crumb was very nice (though slightly underbaked). Particularly nice since I'd run out of bread flour and was just baking with store brand AP flour.

I also made three sourdough loaves...

...and experimented a little with the scoring.

I thought it looked like a yin-yang, but my wife says it looks more like the Safeway Logo.

This recipe from the Middle East, we eat it especially in Ramadan or any time of the year, cause it's so tasty.

For the dough:

2 cups all purpose flour

1/4 cup whole wheat flour

1 1/2 teaspoon yeast

1 1/2 teaspoon sugar

1 1/2 cup fat free milk

1 1/2 cup water

For the filling (ashta):

2 cups fat free milk

7 1/2 tablespoons corn starch

1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon sugar

2 to 3 tablespoons thick cream (qaimar which is an Iraqi cream) but you can use the regular thick cream 

2 tablespoons rose water

1 teaspoon vanilla

Chopped pistachio

To make the dough:

1-Mix the entire ingredient and let it rest about 40 minutes.

2- Cook about 2 tablespoon of the dough mixture in a hot pan until it bubble (just cook one side).

After finishing let them cool then fold half round then fill them with the filling (Using pastry bag) then dip them in the chopped pistachios.

To make the filling:

Mix corn starch with milk and sugar then bring it to boil in a medium pan, stir until thickens, then add the rest of the ingredient.

Spoon mixture into a bowel, refrigerate until cold.

Pastry bag:

Qaimar (Iraqi cream):

Serve with honey or syrup:

Visit my blog: 

 http://arabicbites.blogspot.com/

meedo