August 1, 2016 - 4:54pm
Challenge: Honey
This weekend's bake will have honey in it.
I've been looking at the Honeyed Spelt and Oats loaf from Dani3ll3 that's featured on the front page. One of Mrs. Murphy's friends at work gave her a jar of honey from her backyard hive in appreciation of the loaves Mrs. Murphy has been sharing.
This weekend, I'm going to use some of that honey in a loaf I'm going to bake. I'd love to see if others here can come up with ideas for honeyed bread in a theme of love, sharing, gifting, and backyard agriculture.
Murph
Share
It will be nice to come up with something. I haven't been baking lately due to the heat although what I call hot, I know that most of you would consider it downright cool.
That's a nice-looking loaf that you baked!
I'm ready to try add-ins for my next bread and seeing where your oats disappeared into the bread had me thinking your recipe would be an easy next step to use for Mrs. Murphy's honey.
Murph
This weekend's bake was honey whole wheat bread, using wildflower honey from my farm in northern Michigan. Simple and delicious.
Paul
Whole wheat and honey are a natural combination. I bet it tasted great with butter!
I've been wondering if honey could be rolled into a bread like a jelly roll. What a delight that would be!
Murph
What if you blended the honey and some nuts in the food processor and spread that before your final roll ?
Happy Baking, D. R
I was reading where the trick for preventing add-ins from falling to the bottom of a loaf is to dust them with flour. I was thinking maybe something similar would work with honey.
Flatten the dough, dust the surface, roll, and bake. Or, to play off your idea, make a paste to match the hydration of the dough given that honey is 17% water.
Murph
Only mentioning it because depending on how much honey is being used in a recipe the percentage could matter.
Bees cap honey cells when the moisture content reaches 18%. Except when we extract honey from the frames, oftentimes there is honey that hasn't been fully ripened by the bees that is also harvested, and can bump the moisture content up a bit. In Canada, and IIRC the US, the Honey Reg's allow the moisture content to be as a high as 20% depending on the the grade, and allowable moisture content will also vary depending on whether it was pasteurized or not.
I have a honey hefeweizen boule recipe that I try every so often when I want something with a hoppy taste, but I haven't found the right beer that works with it yet. With all the craft beers on the market it's been slow going for someone who doesn't like beer very much, except stout and Dixie.
It will probably take an experiment or three. One possibility is thickening the honey to a paste with dry mix-ins. Another is that the honey will simply be absorbed by the dough during baking, since it will become more fluid at higher temperatures. Or maybe it will drain to the bottom of the pan for the same reason. Or, or.
Paul
the YW and making jam. We will have to see what Lucy comes up with this week She got her summer shave today and is a bit more unruly than normal which means she is really ticked off in non PC verbiage. Today was the first day it didn't get o 100 F because it was monsoon cloudy and she looked cold - at least her eyes were.
...honey, Sugar daddy! :)
Murph
I love baking with honey, and I added 1 tblspoon of it to some sourdough rolls and substituted 1/4 cup of honey for the sugar I use in another recipe, making them officially honeybuns.
These were the sourdough buns. I gave it a chill overnight in the fridge, but then I got distracted so when I went to work with it was a gloppy mess, I managed to separate it and put it into pans.
I used several different pans for this . Here is the crumbshot. I should have put more seeds on the bottom of this cast iron pan because it was a challenge to clean afterwards.
Here is a picture of the dozen rolls honey brioche rolls that I made .
This dough had also been in the fridge for 48 hours , so I had to bake despite the weather. The zucchini was given to me by friends, and it is large.
Maybe that will be my next project.
I use honey in most of my breads that have sweetener in them. The Fig Nut 123 bread ended up with honey in it, as the first iteration needed that little touch of sweetness. The notable exception is my Oatmeal Raisin bread which is sweetened with maple syrup.
I like the rest of the theme though. I'm part of an urban farmer's group, and we do a lot of sharing and gifting of produce. I'm about to take a load of pears over to our local community kitchen, after having traded a bunch of them for eggs, apples and figs. Now you've got me thinking about what I could do with pears and honey in bread!
Here is my contribution to the honey challenge.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/48897/honey-pear-gorgonzola-bread
My honey challenge bread ended up as a recovery from something else that wasn't going well. And it ended up being something wonderful! Murph, to try and avoid the problems you had with a gooey honey mess (and I must say, your description of this adventure had me laughing so hard, the "tears ran down me legs" as my 91-year-old mother would say) I blended the honey with some cooked 10-grain cereal and some dried currants. Then I spread it as a filling and folded and rolled the dough. Check it out > http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/49003/oops-turned-yumm
Hi, Lazy Loafer!
Tears running down their legs? Yeah, I get that sometimes... you get used to it when you're me...
Just shoot me.
Murph