Little Red Hen

Molasses, Whole Wheat and Focaccia Part II

Happy Holidays!

Thanks to a snowy day here at home in Philadelphia I’ve returned to the blogosphere to share some of my latest bread baking adventures. I’m actually in the middle of making a basic rosemary focaccia. After eating so many sweets and with lots of Italian cheeses, meats and some roasted peppers left over from Christmas celebrations, a nice warm focaccia drizzled with a good quality olive oil felt perfect for this snow day. A bread machine makes this recipe even easier. The machine mixes, kneads and helps with the first rise. After about 1 1/2 hours the bread is shaped and left to rise again before baking in the oven for 30 minutes or so. Delicious!

But before the holidays, during my last few weeks of the fall semester, I actualliy moved away from the bread machine and tried my hand at a molasses whole wheat quick bread and a more intensive whole wheat loaf from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. 

The molasses whole wheat quick bread is from Mark Bittman over at The New York Times. As the title suggests, the bread is super easy and both hearty and wholesome. I’ve made the bread twice now, the second time using less molasses since the flavor was a bit overpowering in the first. You can also look at the bottom of the recipe for a lighter variation that uses honey instead of molasses. While I was mostly using the bread for lunchtime peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I found myself liking it best when I covered a thick slice with a substantial smear of butter. Where I found myself frustrated with bread machine breads drying out too quickly, this loaf maintained its moist crumb even when frozen and thawed.

              Molasses Whole Wheat Quick Bread

The second bread wasn’t quick, but surprisingly, not too difficult to make. A traditional whole wheat loaf (p. 270), this bread required some planning ahead to prepare a sponge. Also, since I don’t have a stand-up mixer, I chose a weekend when the schoolwork load was light and I could spend a morning kneading and shaping the dough. Reinhart’s book is very intensive and at first, appears overwhelming. But for an amateur baker with little bread-baking experience I was happy to have the extra hand holding and in-depth descriptions of when the bread. I was very concerned about over-kneading the bread, although Reinhart assures that this is pretty much impossible when doing it by hand.

The recipe yielded two loaves and overall, I was really pleased. Nice crunchy crust and great wheat crumb. Good for sandwiches and snacking; substantial enough to accompany soups and dinner. The ends made delicious croutons too!

  Two whole wheat loaves cooling after coming out of the oven.

Firecracker Cornbread

Yes, yes I know, it’s been too long. And don’t worry, I have plenty of excuses about why I have posted in almost three months. But, the good news is that although I haven’t been writing about bread, I have been making it! Finding the time to make bread hasn’t actually been hard. Well, that is when you can use a bread machine. Some people might consider that I’m “cheating” myself of the wonders of artisan-type bread, however I would argue that I’m simply taking an alternative road to enjoying homemade bread.

My bread machine is a hand-me-down from my grandmother and even with a broken display it works almost perfectly. The real champion in this endeavor has been the cookbook I use. Another gift from the grandmother, this cookbook has recipes adapted to just about bread machine you can find and a great variety of bread types. I’ve grown partial to the honey wheat breads with my favorite probably being the health nut loaf (sunflower seeds are involved!).

Outside of my bread machine experimenting I have been making some other breads. In early October I decided to make some chili, which naturally led me in search of a cornbread recipe. The chili was ok, but the cornbread was unbelievable. I used the Firecracker Cornbread recipe from the site www.101cookbooks.com.  The food journal/blog is run by Heidi Swanson who also wrote the cookbook, Super Natural Cooking. Her recipes are all vegetarian and mostly use natural ingredients. She’ll be coming out with a new cookbook, Super Natural Every Day, soon, but in the meantime I’d highly recommend checking out her site. It’s one of the first places I’ll use when searching for meal inspiration.

Just a couple notes…definitely don’t skip out on the “firecracker” part of this recipe. I’m fairly spicy intolerant and was a bit light-handed with the red pepper flakes, but they added a great flavor dimension to the bread. I did however substitute unbleached all-purpose flour for the whole wheat pastry flour like Heidi suggests you can and there were no problems. As for the dish to bake the bread I again lucked out with another hand-me-down from my grandmother—a great enameled pie dish that was perfect for this recipe.

Sorry, no photos, I honestly was so excited about eating it that I forgot. I did freeze some so hopefully I’ll snap a few shots when I enjoy the cornbread next!

The first attempt: Honey Focaccia with Apple, Figs and Ricotta

The inaugural bread recipe for this site was one I’d come across about a month ago in a search for an easy, straightforward focaccia bread that wouldn’t take all day to make. Originally, printed in the November 2003 issue of FOOD, I found the recipe while searching the New York Times “Dining and Wine” section. When a visit to my grandmother’s last weekend led to picking fresh figs off my grandfather’s tree in the backyard, I thought this was an ideal time to try this recipe.

Focaccia is a flat, Italian bread, oven-baked and often flecked with herbs and salt and drizzled with olive oil. Some versions are a bit heartier and topped with meats, onions or cheeses, or even covered in sauce and toppings to make a pizza. My favorite version has always been a warm wedge of rosemary focaccia to compliment a winter soup or summer salad. So what I really liked about this recipe is that it was a twist on a traditional favorite and something that could stand alone as an afternoon snack or fancy bread for a dinner or lunch.

Below is a photo of the bread just before it went into the oven. Better quality (and more) photos to follow in future posts!

At first read, the recipe is fairly straightforward, but as I’m discovering, there are multiple variables that can eliminate the simplicity from any bread making. Some notes on the recipe:

Since baking in a non-air conditioned kitchen during a summer afternoon doesn’t lend itself to an ideal bread-rising environment, I used a bread machine for the mixing and rising steps. Focaccia breads requires two rounds of rising, the first of which happens after mixing the initial ingredients; the second happens after the bread is shaped. I used the dough function on my bread machine, then shaped the dough and let it rise again outside the machine. I didn’t see much of a difference between the first and second rise, which didn’t seem to matter a whole lot since the bread increased substantially in size in the oven.

Unfortunately, I found the oven temperature and time were not very accurate. If I were to bake the bread again, I’d follow the baking instructions I have for a recipe book for a bread machine—preheat the oven to 450 and then reduce it to 375 when the bread is put into the oven, leaving it in for closer to 20 minutes.

Also, I used barely a cup of ricotta and later realized I could’ve been a bit more heavy handed. Using the best ingredients you can (particularly topping-wise) will really help this bread to shine. As I mentioned earlier, the figs were from my grandfather’s trees—trees that had remained fairly untouched except from fruit picking the past few years. I used honey that I had picked up from a farmers market in Cambridge, MA and the citrus olive oil I used for drizzling was a blood orange variety from the Dry Creek Olive Co. in California (my parents receive olive oil from the company every few months). Unfortunately apple season isn’t quite here yet so the Gala wasn’t local or seasonal and I didn’t use organic white flour since I didn’t feel like making a trip out to the store. The ricotta was store bought as well, but if you think ahead enough, a batch could be made earlier that day (or a day before).

The focaccia was best straight from the oven, still warm, but still great the rest of the day. The next day, not so much. The flavors of the honey, apple and fig though really melded well and the touches of ricotta gave the focaccia a creamy texture that the more traditional versions don’t have. As had been my initial goal, the recipe didn’t take all day and was fairly easy and even better, brought some sweetness to a summer afternoon!