Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Challah!

May’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge was pretty twisted – Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to make challah! Using recipes from all over, and tips from “A Taste of Challah,” by Tamar Ansh, she encouraged us to bake beautifully braided breads.

Yet again, the Daring Kitchen forces me to cross another item off of my list! Making challah was on there because braiding dough seemed like it would be somewhat tricky, but this was totally not the case. Way easier than French-braiding your own hair, that’s for sure.

Ruth provided a few recipes with the challenge, and I went with the first which was for a wheat challah. The dough seemed strange: it was almost cookie dough-like and kept sticking to everything! Since I had never made challah, I didn’t know if this was normal or if it was an issue with the yeast or measurements (used my scale), but persisted. I ended up adding what seemed to be quite a lot of flour, but maybe it wasn’t more than 1 cup. For the first rise, I put the bowl of dough on the front porch in hopes that the almost 90F heat would encourage it to rise. It did!

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Armenian Nazook!

The Daring Bakers’ April 2012 challenge, hosted by Jason at Daily Candor, were two Armenian standards: nazook and nutmeg cake. Nazook is a layered yeasted dough pastry with a sweet filling, and nutmeg cake is a fragrant, nutty coffee-style cake.

So Jason said we could make the nazook and/or the nutmeg cake for this challenge, and when given the choice of yeasty vs. cakey, I will always go with yeast. The nazook also had a fun name, though it kept making me think of the Nazgûl from Lord of the Rings. These are the Ringwraiths, or the nine semi-dead/alive king servants of Sauron, also known as Dementors in Harry Potter. (For all of the hardcore LotR and HP fans, that was a joke.)

Making the nazook was much like making cinnamon rolls, only they’re baked on their sides aren’t topped with icing in the end. Mine also did not have cinnamon, but some of the other bakers included it in the filling.

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Dutch Crunch Bread!

Sara and Erica of Baking JDs were our March 2012 Daring Baker hostesses! Sara & Erica challenged us to make Dutch Crunch bread, a delicious sandwich bread with a unique, crunchy topping. Sara and Erica also challenged us to create a one of a kind sandwich with our bread!

rice flour-based topping

Sara and Erica told us that they chose this challenge because they live in San Francisco where Dutch crunch bread (or Tijgerbrood/Tiger bread) is a popular item in bakeries and sandwich shops. For those of you like me  who hadn’t heard of this type of bread, it’s basically a soft loaf that is topped with a yeasty rice flour mixture right before going into the oven. While baking, the topping cracks and browns, giving it the tiger-like appearance. I think giraffe-like might be more precise.

Sourdough Follow-Up: Second Spawn of Brutus

So my first attempt at sourdough (AKA the December Daring Bakers’ Challenge) was a bust, but I persevered! That night I started feeding Brutus the Starter again from Day 1. He developed a voracious appetite and grew so much more than in the first week!

After reading through all of the posts in the challenge reveal thread of the DB forum, I felt better knowing that others had some related problems. A few things were different this time around: I used my scale to measure everything while making the dough, and resisted the temptation to over-knead. The production leaven was definitely bigger and more bubbly, and the dough itself was more wet than last time, which is supposed to be a characteristic of sourdough. There were also a couple differences due to being in my kitchen rather than my parents’: this loaf is round (different proofing vessel!) and it was a whole new oven and slightly different climate.

I also crossed my fingers while the dough was resting.

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Sourdough!

Our Daring Bakers Host for December 2011 was Jessica of My Recipe Project and she showed us how fun it is to create Sour Dough bread in our own kitchens! She provided us with Sour Dough recipes from Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley as well as delicious recipes to use our Sour Dough bread in from Tonia George’s Things on Toast and Canteen’s Great British Food!

I like to think that I have pretty good luck with bread. The fear of yeast has never been something I’ve understood because every loaf I’ve made has magically turned out with minimal fussing. Keywords: luck, magically. There’s a lot I have to learn about bread.

Sourdough and starters had never entered my little yeast-perfect bubble of bread-baking. Truthfully, I didn’t know much about them, so this challenge definitely piqued my interest. Not being a fan of rye, I went for the French Country Loaf even though the host had rated the difficulty of the recipe as medium to hard. I got this…I’m good with bread!

Famous last thoughts.

Sayonara, Summer…

Yep, I know it’s been fall for a week.  In south Texas, though, it will feel like summer for probably another month or so, but with shorter days.  After that, the weather gets really awkward.  Way back in the day, I remember checking the forecast every morning before going to school.  The temperatures could span 30 degrees in one day, so I needed to know whether or not to bring a hoodie.  (These are Important Matters.)  Then it’s like the heat becomes slightly dormant until March or April, when summer resumes its sweaty dictatorship.

Regardless of the endless summer here, tomorrow is October.  We’ll have peaches and tomatoes galore at least until November, but it feels awkward to blog about summery things while friends are starting to post pictures of snow (!) on facebook.

With a few hours of September left, I’ll share a couple yummy recipes I made this week that err a little more on the summer side.  

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Croissants!

The Daring Bakers go retro this month!  Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!

YUSSS!  I’ve been wanting to make croissants for a long time but needed something to get me motivated to do so.  This is a perfect example of procrastination paying off: “make puff pastry” has been on my list of things to do before turning 30, but that hadn’t even been enough to make me do it yet. Croissant dough is technically puff pastry with yeast and sugar, by the way, so this totally counts.

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake!

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast.  Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

I have to admit that I’ve been feeling a little meh about blogging lately.  Mainly it’s that I don’t particularly like to write/am not a great writer which hasn’t stopped me in the past.  As mentioned quite a few times, I’m terribly slow in the kitchen, but sometimes it feels like it takes even longer to write a post.  If I try to make and post something on the same day, it can become an all day affair, so I usually try to post on the next day.  Maybe I need to get ahead of blogging…as in, be a few completed recipes ahead of blog posts.  If that makes sense, do any of you do that?

Anyway, there’s nothing like a Daring Kitchen challenge to pull me out of a blogging rut.    This month with the Daring Bakers involved yeast and resulted in something that looked suspiciously like Stollen.  The taste and texture was quite different though, especially with the fillings.  Speaking of the fillings, meringue inside bread was totally foreign to me.  Let’s just say I was pleasantly surprised! 

Honey Whole Wheat Bread

Dear peoples of the internets:

I will redeem my Groupon for a two month membership at the Y tomorrow (Friday).  Shortly thereafter, I will get in the pool and swim.

Pinky swear,
Jessica

Yes, this is a little pathetic, but I’ve had said Groupon for a couple weeks now and keep meaning to use it “tomorrow”.    And you know what else?  I really haven’t tackled much of my list yet, and this is a prerequisite for achieving #9.

Olive Focaccia Bread

Last post of the year!  Got any resolutions planned?  I don’t usually partake in this ritual, but might give it a shot this year.  Maybe I should try introducing one each month instead of trying to do all at once and failing.

Very much related: I have this problem of being overly ambitious in my mind, and then not quite being able to live up to my plans.  Baking for holidays is no excuse: there were about three more things I wanted to make for Christmas, which is laughable now that I look back at it.  In addition to Stollen and cupcakes, I made focaccia bread…only things didn’t go quite as I had hoped.

I had never made focaccia bread, but wanted to do so because my aunt and uncle were having lasagna for our Christmas Eve lunch.  While looking up recipes, I found Pioneer Woman‘s Olive Focaccia which sounded simple (no kneading!) and yummy (bread with olives in it, yo).  Another incentive was that she said the dough could be refrigerated until needed.

My plan then was to mix it up, pop it in the fridge overnight, then shape, rise, and bake in the morning as I did with these rolls.  Wellll…I (thought I) had a bit of a fail.  But then it turned out to be the most delicious bread I’ve ever made.  I’ll explain what I did below in case you’re wondering how to make overnight focaccia.