Saturday, October 3, 2009

Lavish Crackers

The Mise en place and surprise of surprises, I have all the ingredients this time. When I was combining the ingredients, I did use the measuring cup (I have a new small one that measures 1/4 a cup one tablespoon at a time.) with the oil first and then followed by the honey. It was a lot easier to clean up doing it this way.
After the dough was formed. I did knead it by hand. I think this is the first bread that I did this. I don't think that the dough hook would have worked on such a stiff dough. It was very easy to manipulate.
After the dough was kneaded, I rolled it out on the counter and then let it relax for 5 minutes and transferred it to the cookie sheet.
I used a combination of seeds and spices. From the left: Basil leaves, Mint flakes, Sesame seeds, ground coriander seeds, Poppy seeds, paprika, and celery seeds. No single cracker had all spices so the crackers all had their own unique tastes. I liked the crackers.
Would make them again. I can't wait until I take them to work to see what my coworkers think about them. I have found that as the hours have passed since I made them this afternoon, the crackers have hardened up quite a bit.
I would like to try my hand at this recipe but as a pita bread. I just have to figure out what to cut the bread with to be big enough for a hummus and lettuce sandwich with red bell peppers.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Kaiser Rolls

The theme of miss in place continues. I am missing two ingredients. The poppy seeds and the corn meal. Since I am using a silpath sheet and parchment paper, I have opted not to sprinkle the baking sheets with corn meal. I honestly, just forgot the poppy seeds in the picture. This dough taught me something about my ability to bake bread. I need to replace the battery in my food scale. Because the power is low, it shuts down at the most inopportune time. Like when I am weighing out 10 oz of flour. I stopped at 7 oz, it quit. I dumped out the flour and started remeasuring. I had it in my head that I needed 7 oz of flour, needless to say, the dough was very soft and sticky. Like the ciabatta dough should have been.
When I figured out that I was short 3 oz of flour, I almost, scraped the whole batch into the trash. Then I decided that I could play with it and get it to the proper thickness. I did that and I feel proud of being able to do that. I feel this is a lot of growth on my part.

I like this picture. You can see the egg and the barley malt. I added the malt with the wet ingredients because I was using the wet form.
Here is the dough at the proper consistency. Time to let it sit for 2 hours and expand.
After the first rise. I made equal balls of 2.3 oz of dough. I got not 9 balls but 16. This was a good surprise. This dough was easy to work with.
After the first rise, I took the dough between my two hands and shaped the ropes. Then I tied the loose knots and shaped the circles for the kaiser rolls. I think they look lovely. I got better the more that I shaped. I am looking forward to making these again. Easy and fun and very tasty all describe these rolls.
You can see how the shapes improved with the developing of technique.
Awaiting the second rise.
Both pans. As you can tell, I am not a perfectionist. The first attempts were simply allowed to rise next to their prettier sisters and brothers. The less formed rolls did taste yummy.
My dh(darling hubby) does not like seeds on his rolls. I do. So, this pan of rolls were for me.
This is my dh's pan of rolls. Next time, I'll divide the rolls evenly between the two of us.
After baking, they looked so pretty. I am looking forward to the next time that I make these beauties.
For the crumb shot, I couldn't resist showing off both the inside and outside of my buns.