Over the blizzard break, I had some time on my hands, so I decided to make the latest recipe for my bread making club.  The “formula” was for Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread and was surprisingly easy and delish.   One of the nice things about the recipe is that it doesn’t call for a bunch of unusual or hard-to-find ingredients – I had everything I needed, already in my house, except for the buttermilk, which I faked.  Here’s the recipe:

Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread

from Peter Reinhart’s “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice”
makes two 1 1/2 lb loaves

3 1/2 cups unbleached bread flour
4 tsp granulated sugar
1 1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp instant yeast (I used 2.5 tsp active dry yeast)
1 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 large egg, slightly beaten
2 Tbsp shortening, melted or at room temp
1/2 cup buttermilk or whole milk, at room temp
3/4 cup water, at room temp
1 1/2 cups raisins, rinsed and drained (I patted them dry with a paper towel to remove excess moisture)
1 cup chopped walnuts (I skipped these)

Cinnamon Swirl Mixture (optional)
Sift or mix together:
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 Tbsp ground cinnamon

Steps

Note:  I didn’t have any buttermilk or whole milk, so I faked my buttermilk using the vinegar method.  If you buy buttermilk and are wondering what to do with the rest, freeze it in 1 cup increments – you can use it in pancakes and other recipes.

1. Stir dry ingredients together: flour, sugar, salt, yeast and cinnamon in bowl of electric mixer.  Add egg, shortening, buttermilk, and water.  Stir together (or mix on low) until the ingredients come together and form a ball.  Adjust with flour or water as necessary if dough is too sticky or dry.
2. Knead the bread – use the dough hook on the mixer (~6 to 8 min), or knead by hand (~10 min) on a floured surface.  Dough should be soft and pliable, tacky, but not sticky.  I found I had to add more flour — I had measured my flour by weight (16oz), but my other ingredient by dry measure, so that may have been my problem.   Sprinkle in the raisins and walnuts in the final 2 minutes.   I followed Reinhart’s advice and took my dough out of the mixer and kneaded by hand to get the raisins properly distributed.  Dough should pass the window pane test – mine did, but I think I’m getting more and more liberal with the definition of “passing”.   Lightly oil a large bowl and transfer dough, rolling it to coat it with oil.  Cover bowl with plastic wrap.
3. Let dough rest at room temperature for ~2 hours, or until dough doubles in size.
4. Divide dough into two equal pieces (I used my handy dandy food scale) and form them into loaves.
   Note – if you are doing the cinnamon swirl mixture, sprinkle it onto your bread before you roll it up. (I forgot!)
   Reinhart’s technique for making sandwiches loaves is hard to explain — I’ll do my best.  Basically, flatten the dough into an even-sided rectangle, ~5″ wide by 6 to 8″ long.  Roll the dough up on the SHORT side, pinching the crease as you rotate to strengthen surface tension.  The loaf will get longer as your work, closer to 8 to 9″.  Pinch the final seam closed and place in pan, seam side down.  I always have a hard time with shaping, so I looked online, and found this helpful example – not quite the same, but gives an idea of how it works.Place each loaf into a lightly oiled 8.5″ x 4.5″ pan, mist tops with spray oil and over loosely with plastic wrap.
5. Proof loaves at room temp for 60 to 90 minutes, or until dough crests above lips of pan and is nearly doubled in size.  For once, this only took about an hour for me (usually it seems I have to proof everything longer).
6. Preheat oven to 350 with oven rack on middle shelf.  Place loaves on a sheet pan making sure they don’t touch (I didn’t use a pan, I just put them on the rack).
7. Bake loaves for 20 minutes. Rotate pans 180 degrees and continue baking for another 20 to 30 minutes.  Finished breads should register 190F in the center and be golden brown on top and lightly golden on the sides and bottom.
8. Immediately remove bread from their pans and cool on a rack for at least 1 hour, before slicing or serving.

Even though I don’t consider myself a huge fan of raisin bread, it was quite delicious!  Since I forgot to add the cinnamon swirl, I did a trick Reinhart suggests:  when the bread comes out of the oven, brush the top with butter and then roll them in cinnamon sugar (I just sprinkled some on top).  We sliced it and had cinnamon toast – yum!

“Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.” — Mark Twain

Like many people, after the gluttony of the holidays, I resolved to eat better and exercise more.  But on the second day of 2010, I decided to make cinnamon buns for my bread baking club.

They were supposed to be baked in December, so really, I was just upholding an outstanding resolution.  Right?  Does this mean I’ve already broken my new year’s resolution?  Perhaps.  But I think I’ll just redefine “eat better” to mean eat quality, homemade foods lovingly prepared.  Sounds good to me.. anywho, let’s see how it went, shall we?

As a reminder, we are working through Peter Reinhart’s book, “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice”.  In this section, the formula is for cinnamon buns and sticky buns – I opted to make the cinnamon buns (the complete recipe I used is as the bottom of this post).

The first step was to combine the dough ingredients and let them rise.  I was excited to use my new handy dandy measuring cup to see when my dough had doubled.   We were headed out for evening church, so I hastily made my dough, threw it in my measuring bucket, where it sat at around 32 oz.   We left for church and returned to our chilly home two hours later.  When I went to inspect my dough, this is what it looked like:

Overall, they were a hit.  We actually have a couple of cinnamon roll recipes we like (one is the Pioneer Woman’s rolls) – so it’s hard to say if these are the best we’ve ever had.  Nonetheless, it was a sweet treat to enjoy.

Now for the other half of my new year’s resolution?  I’m off to the gym!

Peter Reinhart’s Cinnamon Buns

From his formula in the “The Break Baker’s Apprentice”

Cinnamon Buns:

6 1/2 Tbsp granulated sugar
1 tsp salt
5 1/2 Tbsp unsalted butter, at room temp
1 large egg, slightly beaten
1 tsp lemon extract or grated lemon zest (I used lemon zest)
3 1/2 unbleached bread (or all purpose) flour
2 tsp instant yeast or 2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
1 1/8 to 1 1/4 cups whole milk or buttermilk, at room temp (I used whole milk)
1/2 cup cinnamon sugar (6 1/2 tbsp granulated sugar plus 1 1/2 tbsp ground cinnamon) (I used what I had on hand)

Fondant Glaze:

4 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp lemon, orange, or vanilla extract (I used I Tbsp vanilla bean paste)
6 Tbsp to 1/2 cup warm milk

Steps

1. Cream together sugar, salt and shortening on medium-high in an electric mixer with paddle attachment.
   1. Whip in the egg and lemon until smooth.
   2. Then add flour, yeast, and milk.
   3. Mix on low speed until dough forms a ball.
   4. Switch to the dough hook and increase speed to medium, mixing for approximately 10 minutes.
      Dough should be silky and supple, tacky but not sticky.  If needed, add water or flour to achieve this texture.  Dough should pass the windowpane test.
   5. Lightly oil a large bowl and transfer dough to bowl, rolling it around to coat doug with oil.
   6. Cover bowl with plastic wrap.
2. Ferment at room temperature for approximately 2 hours, or until dough doubles in size.
3. Mist the counter with spray oil and transfer dough to counter and shape buns:
   1. Roll out dough with rolling pin in to a rectangle, about 2/3 ” thick and 14″ by 12″ wide for larger buns or 18″ by 9″ for smaller buns
   2. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar over surface of dough.
   3. Roll up dough along the long side into cigar shaped log.
   4. With seam side down, cut dough into 8 to 12 pieces (1 3/4″ thick) for larger buns or 12 to 16 pieces (1 1/4″ thick) for smaller buns.
4. Prepare the baking sheet for cinnamon buns:
   1. Line baking sheet with parchment paper, or spray with oil.
   2. Place buns ~ 1/2 inch apart, so they aren’t touching, but are close to one another.
5. Proof at room temperature for 75 to 90 minutes, or until buns are touching and nearly doubled in size.
   At this point, you can retard the buns in the fridge for up to two days, but pull the pan out of the fridge 3 to 4 hours before baking to allow buns to proof.
6. Preheat oven to 350 with the oven rack on the middle shelf.
7. Bake cinnamon buns for 20 to 3o minutes, or until golden brown.
8. Make fondant glaze:
   1. Sift 4 cups powdered sugar into a bowl.
   2. Add extract (I used vanilla).
   3. Add milk slowly, briskly whisking until all the sugar is dissolved — use only as much milk as needed to make a thick, smooth paste.
9. Cool buns in the pan for about 10 minutes, then streak glaze acrosss tops while buns are warm, but not too hot.
10. Remove buns from pan and place on cooling rack.
11. Wait at least 20 minutes before serving (yeah right!).

The bloggy baking club I’m in, The Half-Baked Beauties, is working its way through The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.  I was excited to see that our next challenge was bagels.   I love bagels!    As I read about our challenge, I learned that two of the ingredients can be hard to find.   In typical TMM fashion, I decided I MUST acquire the exact right ingredients so as to increase the odds of bagel-icious-ness.

The two tricky ingredients are unbleached  high-gluten flour and malt powder.  These can be found and ordered from the King Arthur Flour Company, but I wasn’t in the mood to wait or pay shipping.  So I called around, consulted my local listserv, and eventually located the items locally.  For my local friends, the place I found is called Healthway Natural Foods.  They have multiple locations — I went to the Annandale store and found everything I needed.    I bought “gluten wheat flour” from their bulk bin, but also saw they had “Organic Spring Wheat Sprouted Flour”, in a 2lb package, which I interpreted as the “unbleached hard spring wheat flour” option mentioned in the book.  The also had both malt powder and malt syrup – I choose the powder.

For a quick cost comparison – the bulk flour was $4.25/lb and the packaged flour was $4.18/lb.  The KA version is  $2.32/lb but you have to buy 3 lbs, and factor in shipping.  The malt powder I got was $8 for 24oz ($5.30/lb) and the KA version of non-diastic malt powder is $5.25/lb.   If anyone wants some malt powder – I’m happy to share some of mine!

In other ingredient news, I noticed this recipe calls for instant yeast, but I only had active yeast.   Luckily, I found this  conversion rate on p. 60:

40 to 50% active dry yeast = 33% instant yeast

Assuming my math is good (and you know what they say about assumptions) I came up with 1.5 tsp active yeast for the sponge and  .75 tsp active yeast for the dough.  For the rest of my measurements, I found using a food scale really helpful (and I scoffed when hubby bought it… ) — it  was quicker to measure out the dry goods on the scale than to scoop and level with measuring cups.

I made my sponge Friday morning, and then went out, letting it rise for about 4 hours.   When I came home, I went to work on the dough.  My Kitchen Aid had a hard time,  it seemed, getting everything mixed well.  At some point, I gave up on the mixer and went straight to kneading by hand.  I worked it for about 15 minutes, doing some back reading in the cookbook while I worked.  After I while, I decided it was suitably “satiny (?) and pliable but not tacky”.    And lo and behold, I may have even passed the windowpane test.   Maybe?  What do you think?

On to Step 4.   I divided my dough into  4.5oz pieces, once again, thanks to my handy food scale.   I perfectly measured each one to 4.5 oz and my last remaining piece was 4.75oz, so I was pretty pleased with how my amounts worked out.   Forming the balls was a bit tricky for me.  I tried following the steps on p. 82 but wasn’t sure I was doing it right.   Once I figured out to keep my hand cupped and not smash my ball, it went better.

Step 5 – the rolls were covered and rested for ~30 minutes.   Step 6 was shaping the bagels.  There were two ways to do it, so I did half one way, and the other half the other.   Here’s what my bagels looked like after I shaped them by poking a hole in the middle:

And here’s what they looked like when I rolled them out and wrapped them:

The second option seemed to create taller, fatter bagels, and I think I preferred it.   It really wasn’t much harder.  Then I covered the bagels and let them rest again, ~40 minutes this time, then checked to see if my bagels were ready to be “retarded” by performing the “float test”.

Lo and behold, it floated the first time I tried.  Yay me!  I covered everything and stuck in the fridge for the night.   I went to bed dreaming of bagels for breakfast :).

I woke up this morning and got the water boiling.   I thought this part of the process was pretty fun.   No need to fill your pot super full, just need to add enough water for bagels to float, allowing that some water may evaporate in the process.  The baking soda makes everything fizzy and fun.

The book suggest boiling for one minute per side, and up to two minutes if you prefer chewier bagels.  I did my first bagel for one minute each and decided it looked a little flat, so I did the rest of them at 1.5 min per side or slightly longer.   For toppings, I did a few with sesame seeds and salt, some plain, and some with onion powder, and some with garlic salt.   In hindsight, I think I was a little too generous with the salt and should have used less.

Here’s the bagels after cooking.   The left sheet was the flatter bagels created using the “thumb poke” method of shaping and the right sheet (barely visible) was the fatter, rolled bagels.

Overall, there wasn’t a whole lot of difference in taste.   I initially thought I liked the flatter bagels better, but everything tasted delish and I stopped paying attention to the nuances of each bagel.

I was not the only fan of the bagels.   They got a thumbs up from all the family members.   Son #1 gobbled his up.

And Son #2 had to be monitored because every time I turned around, he was up on the stool grabbing bagels off the counter.

Another HBB commented that this recipe was super messy.  I am pleased to report that this was my least messy endeavor so far.  Maybe I’m getting better?  I’ve definitely gotten savvyier about how add my dry goods to the mix.   This recipe was definitely was a lot of work, but the end result was yummy and I could see myself making them again (especially since I have approximately 94 tsp of malt powder left over).

To read about more adventures in bagel making (and other yeasty delights) head on over to the Half-Baked Beauties baking blog.

I posted my second bread-making review over at Half-Baked Beauties.

Hop on over if you want to hear about my attempt at making “Greek Celebration Bread“.