BBA Slow & Steady: Lavash Roundup

Although many of the bakers from he BBA Challenge are actually finished baking every single bread in Peter Reinhart's book The Bread Baker's Apprentice, those of us in the Slow & Steady subgroup are baking slowly, but somewhat sporadically, on. This is our 17th bread, Lavash Crackers. Let's see how the S&S bakers enjoyed this one.


Margaret of Tea and Scones (that's her lavash in the photo, above) took note that Peter Reinhart suggested we use several different types of toppings on the lavash: "poppy, sesame, caraway seeds. Kosher salt. So I did. I also used some Italian seasoning (NOT a good choice) on part of the sheet. But the pieces with just salt were the best." Here's her post: Slow and Steady BBA - Lavash

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Jessica of The Singleton in the Kitchen baked her lavash in a wonderful black and white mode (black and white sesame seeds, poppy seeds and sea salt.) She formed crackers, and the whole effect is quite chic. Jessica gives a helpful analogy of lavash to fashion that you won't want to miss, so read her whole post: BBA S&S: Lavash

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Kayte of Grandma's Kitchen Table is always up for learning a new technique, so she really enjoyed making lavash. Her family really enjoyed eating it, so she will doubtless get practice rolling her lavash even thinner next time. Her post: BBA Challenge: Lavash

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Leslie of Lethally Delicious enjoys making flat breads, having a favorite crisp rosemary flatbread recipe she got from blogger Tracey of Tracey's Culinary Adventures. For Reinhart's version of crackers, Leslie used her pasta roller to get the dough thinner-than-paper, which she later found to be too thin, as the bread baked almost instantaneously. In the end, although she liked the lavash, it was "just too high maintenance" and Leslie will probably stick to her standby recipe. Here's Leslie's post: BBA - Lavash Crackers

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Wendy of Pink Stripes took a different direction with this recipe. Peter Reinhart gives the option of baking this dough as pita bread rather than crispy crackers. Wendy baked six 2 ounce pitas, which was not enough because she found these pitas "fluffy and light," not dry like store-bought ones. Read more here: {bba} not lavash crackers

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I topped my lavash with coarse salt and found that this recipe turned out surprisingly delicious saltine crackers! (I'm not sure why, after nearly a year baking from this book I'm surprised at how good the bread turns out) So delicious, in fact, that my husband and I ate them - plain - for dessert every evening until the crackers were gone. Here's my post: Lavash {bba}

Lavash {bba}

The next bread for me to bake from Peter Reinhart's book The Bread Baker's Apprentice as part of The BBA Challenge is Lavash, which Wikipedia explains is a cracker bread of Armenian origin, and very popular in surrounding countries as well. In his recipe, Peter Reinhart gives the option of baking the same dough into pita bread, that soft hollow flat bread that makes a great vehicle for sandwich fillings and salads.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- I substituted fresh yeast for the instant yeast in my dough.

- The recipe called for honey; I used honey crystals which I thought would be a good balance for the extra liquid in the fresh yeast.

- The type of vegetable oil in my lavash was olive oil.

- It turned out that I was low on bread flour, so I filled in with a bit of high-gluten flour.

- I rolled my dough so thin that it was almost transparent.

- In Peter Reinhart's hands Lavash is covered with a variety of seeds such as poppy seeds and sesame seeds. Most of the seed options are not favorites in this house, so I decided to go with coarse salt, for my own version of saltine crackers.

- After baking, the bread is broken into shards, which make quite appealing-looking crackers.


the verdict:

The lavash baked up to be crispy and delicate, and I was shocked at how good simple crackers could taste. They just about melted in my mouth! Around our house the favorite way to enjoy this flat bread was unaccompanied; in fact we loved it so much that we ate lavash for dessert for several days in a row until there was none left. Just the crackers, plain - absolutely perfect!

I'm sending this fabulous flat bread to Yeastspotting, the weekly roundup of all things yeast-y. Stop by on Friday to see what clever bakers worldwide have been baking this week.

BBA Slow & Steady: Kaiser Rolls Roundup

The lead bakers in the BBA Challenge have been posting the final bread in the book The Bread Baker's Apprentice but we in the Slow & Steady subgroup continue to bake in our own deliberate pace, and are about halfway through the book. The current bread for us: Kaiser Rolls. This bread turned out to be a universal hit with the S&S bakers. Read on for details.

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Leslie of Lethally Delicious is always learning from the BBA! This week she learned that a roll stamp doesn't make as good swirls in the top of kaiser rolls as the handmade knots would have, and the water spray didn't make the rolls as shiny (or the seeds stick as well) as an egg wash would have. She also found that the recipe made just enough rolls to enjoy without needing to share them! Click to read Leslie's post: BBA - Kaiser Rolls

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Margaret of Tea and Scones loves rolls, and of all the rolls, sheloves making kaisers most of all because it's so much fun to knot the dough! Her rolls look just like the ones in the book - see from her picture, above? Here's her post: Slow and Steady BBA - Kaiser Rolls

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Jessica of The Singleton in the Kitchen has had a long history with "cute" kaiser rolls - the ones from the grocery store that are shiny and covered with seeds and full of promise but when you get them home turn out to be chewy and dry disappointment, but now she can add a new chapter: her very own cute shiny seed covered kaiser rolls that are not dry but rather a perfect hearth bread - kind of a cross between French and Italian bread (but with an egg) - crusty on the outside and soft inside. Read more here: BBA S&S: Kaiser Rolls

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Di of Di's Kitchen Notebook isn't able to buy true kaiser rolls in her neck of the woods - the ones she finds are soft, so she was excited to bake this bread recipe. So excited, in fact, that she baked a double batch, adding a bit of whole grain flour to her dough. (Truth be told, Di might have had a bit of a difficult time sharing her rolls.) The story is here: On a roll

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Karen, of the blog Shortbread loved her kaiser rolls, saying,

"They’re like a ray of sunshine, a light from above. The best thing about them is that they start out as a humble dough of just a few ingredients, and then somehow miraculously turn into gorgeous rolls with an intense depth of flavor."

Check out her post, It's a Dream Kaiser Rolls, to read about her dream and see more photos of her terrific rolls.

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Over in Italy, Natalia of Gatti, Fili e Farina used her sourdough starter in place of the recipe's preferment dough and turned out beautiful kaiser rolls. She knotted the dough because she doesn't have a roll stamp. She coated some with poppy seeds and others with sesame seeds - so pretty! Here's her post: BBA Slow & Steady: Kaiser Rolls

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Coming across a two-day recipe in The Bread Baker's Apprentice, such as the Kaiser Rolls, no longer intimidates Kayte of Grandma's Kitchen Table. Even though these rolls take a bit of attending to the rising and shaping steps, the delicious results are well worth the extra work, and overall, the rolls were "downright fun to make." Check out her post: BBA: Kaiser Rolls

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Leave it to Wendy of Pink Stripes to make mini 1-ounce kaiser rolls (just think of those tiny dough knots!) and make them into "sammiches" for a party, filled with goat cheese, pesto, and roasted red peppers. Hmmm, my invite must have gotten lost in cyberspace! Find her report here: {bba} mini-kaiser rolls

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As much as I've always liked kaiser rolls, I never expected that this recipe would bowl us over the way it did. It's my husband's favorite bread from the BBA (although it is VERY hard to choose). I made Beef on Weck sandwiches with some of my rolls, but my husband refused to put anything - other than butter or olive oil - on his rolls because he didn't want to "ruin" them! I experimented with three different ways to form the rolls, and I found that the roll stamp (center, in the picture above) didn't make a lasting impression (pun intended!) My kaiser post: Kaiser Rolls {bba}

Spiced Stout Hot Cross Buns

Hot-cross buns! Hot-cross buns!
One a penny, two a penny,
Hot-cross buns!
If you have no daughters,
Give them to your sons,
One a penny, two a penny,
Hot-cross buns!
But if you have none of these little elves,
Then you may eat them all yourselves.

So goes the nursery song, describing the traditional English spiced buns that were eaten on Good Friday. (For a bit more history, check out my last year's hot cross buns post here.) Reading between the lines, it appears that if you have any hot cross buns, you are supposed to give them away. The preferred recipients appear to be any daughters that you might have. Failing that, hand the buns over to your sons. No children? You get to eat the buns yourself!

I baked a big batch of buns this year, and by chance my daughters were visting home this week! I sent most of the buns home with my older daughter to share with her Easter weekend guests.


n.o.e.'s notes:

- Hot cross buns are a kind of celebration bread, filled with fruit and spices. The smell of this dough reminded me of some of the celebration breads that I've baked in from The Bread Baker's Apprentice.

- The recipe for these hot cross buns is from Dan Lepard, part of his "How To Bake" weekly series for The Guardian. I love to check the site each Satuday to see what Dan is baking up. Ingredients for these buns include stout, tea, raisins, spices, and candied citrus peel. It sounded like an intriguing combination of ingredients, so I was very eager to see how the buns would turn out.

- This is the first time that I've followed a Dan Lepard recipe that employs an overnight pre-ferment; in this case stout, yeast, some of the flour, and the spices are mixed together, covered and put aside overnight.

- In a separate bowl, the raisins and peel soak in black tea for the same length of time. I ran out of regular raisins, so I measured out a combination of raisins, golden raisins, and currants.

- A big bag of homemade candied citrus peel (lemon,lime, tangerine, orange) was resting in my freezer and I was very excited to find a great use for it. (I posted about the candied peel recipe that I use here)

- The next day, the dough is mixed in typical Dan Lepard style: combine all ingredients, rest briefly, knead for 10 seconds every 10 minutes (3 cycles) then shape, rise, bake.

- I had run out of bread flour (it happens, even to bread bakers!), so I combined 2/3 all purpose flour with 1/3 high gluten flour (approximately).

- I measured out 100g for each bun, and ended up with 20 1/2. If I'd been a little more thoughtful when I was working, I could have avoided that half roll, but warm from the oven the little bun made for a great taste test for my daughter.

- Last year's buns featured a piped cross made from icing, but the crosses on these buns are a flour and water paste. After the buns come out of the oven they are brushed with a sugar glaze.

- I'm submitting these buns for Bread Baking Day #28. The theme this month is "Bread Buns" and is hosted by Rachel of Tangerine's Kitchen. Rachel will be posting a roundup, so be sure to check back to see the wonderful bun-ny bread!

The happy little half-bun, in bad artificial light!

the verdict:

After the rolls had mostly cooled, my daughter ALE tasted the little half roll. Here's her reaction: "yum. That's good. (pause) That's really good." After a few more bites, she gave a more complete assessment: "I like the glaze. I can taste the stout. I usually don't like fruit in breads, but I'm dealing with it. That candied peel is good."

She shared the buns with her friends, and reported that they made a big hit. Her boyfriend loved the peel and the complex variety of flavors.


Wishing a blessed Easter to all who observe the holy day.

Kaiser Rolls {bba}

I'm sure that I ate hard rolls in my early years, but my clearest - and fondest - association with kaiser rolls is from the wonderful trip my husband and I took to Austria in 1983. We'd been working for 2 1/2 years with no vacation time aside from the odd long weekend, and were sorely due for a break. It was my first time abroad and we spent 2 weeks hopping trains and buses around Austria, visiting big cities (where we sat in cafes and drank coffee and hot chocolate) and tiny towns (where we spent our time cross county skiing). We stayed at bed-and-breakfast type accommodations, and breakfast was, invariably, kaiser rolls, butter, and jam with coffee and tea.

Ever since that time I've had a soft spot in my heart for a Continental breakfast! I can say that I never dreamed that I'd ever tackle homemade kaiser rolls, but the next installment of the BBA Challenge found me baking the Kaiser Rolls from Peter Reinhart's book The Bread Baker's Apprentice.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- This recipe uses pâte fermentée, a type of pre-ferment that is the same percentage of ingredients as the finished dough, but made in advance so the flavors develop. After a day or so in the fridge, the pâte fermentée is mixed with additional fresh ingredients to make the final dough. As usual, I mixed the dough for this bread in the food processor. Although I don't reproduce the BBA recipes, you can find the recipe for this bread here.

- A batch of kaiser roll dough makes nine 3-ounce rolls.

- I shaped my rolls three different ways, shown above. The first was knotting the dough (roll on the left in the picture above), which was a bit tricky, but gets easier with practice. I also used a roll stamp, but even though I pressed very hard to make as deep an impression with the stamp as I could, the pattern turned out very faint (see middle roll, above). The third technique I used was folding or pleating the edges of circle of dough into the center (see the roll on the right, above).

- I baked some of my rolls with salt and seeds to make Kummelweck rolls (famous in Buffalo, NY as the base of the local specialty, Beef on Weck sandwiches. I made the sandwiches, which are posted on my other blog)


the verdict:

I'd assumed I would make this classic bread, taste it for nostalgia's sake, and that would be it before moving on to something more exotic and delicious. But I ought to know by now that the BBA breads will always exceed my expectations, especially when I'm not expecting anything spectacular. This bread happens to be our favorite bread so far - the only one that my husband asked me to bake again the minute that the last roll was eaten.

Whether you eat these rolls with butter and jam for breakfast, or with roast beef and horseradish for dinner, I highly recommend them!

Rye and Seed Crackers

I've spent so much time baking bread from Peter Reinhart's book The Bread Baker's Apprentice as part of the the BBA Challenge that I've had little time to explore the bread in his new book, Artisan Breads Every Day, although I've had a copy since it it first came out last Fall. (I also have his Whole Grain Breads book which is fabulous.) When my friend Di of Di's Kitchen Notebook asked me if I wanted to bake the Crispy Rye and Seed Crackers from the new book I jumped at the chance to join her. As circumstances would have it, we couldn't find a convenient time to bake at the same time, and I think Di might not have ended up making the crackers.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- I won my copy of Reinhart's new book in a giveaway sponsored by Jude of the blog Apple Pie, Patis, and Pate. Thanks, Jude! Although his blog has been on hiatus for several months, check the archives for some beautiful bread and other foods.

- You can find the recipe for these crackers here. There is no leaven at all in this recipe, but I'm including it on my bread blog because it came out of Reinhart's bread book. Makes sense to me.

- The cracker dough has several kinds of seeds, which are combined with rye flour. I ground the sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds in my spice blender. Instead of grinding flax seeds, I used flax meal that I had in the fridge (it keeps much longer there).

- I mixed my dough in the food processor (surprise!). It was a bit sticky, so I added more rye flour, about a tablespoon or 2.

- Instead of a floured counter, I kneaded the dough on an oiled counter.

- Using a straight edge for a guide I cut half of my crackers into diamond shapes, as Reinhart does in the book - and as NPR did in the recipe link above. (I gave away all of the diamond-shaped ones and later realized that I forgot to take any photos of them.) The other half I cut with a dinosaur-shaped cookie cutter. Why dinosaurs? Why not??

- I topped my crackers with salt for garnish. I was a little too exuberant with the salt, but luckily it was quite easy to brush off the excess after the crackers were baked.

- The crackers that turned out the best were the ones that I rolled very thin and then baked until they were browned and crisp.


the verdict:

These made a surprisingly big splash at my book group meeting. They tasted a lot like Wheat Thins, but in a rye-ish kind of way. All in all, a nice savory cracker and a very cool way to incorporate whole grains.

BBA Slow & Steady #15: Italian Bread roundup

Peter Reinhart's book The Bread Baker's Apprentice continues to delight the Slow & Steady bakers, as we make our way from beginning to end as (very slow) participants in the BBA Challenge. We're approaching the middle of the book; right now we're on Italian Bread, another classic hearth bread that we'd all love to master. Read on to see how we did (hint: as a group we were far more successful than with the previous recipe, French Bread).

This week I'd like to welcome a new member of the Slow & Steady group, Wendy of the blog Pink Stripes. She began the BBA Challenge at a quicker pace, but decided to stop and smell the roses and finish the book with us!

Wendy baked the Italian Bread as torpedo rolls - pictured above - to accompany her (not quite) vegetarian Christmas Eve dinner. They were a hit, especially with her mother, who always advises that good bread, good conversation and good wine are the keys to a good dinner party - smart mom (aren't they always?!) Read more on her full post: {bba} italian bread torpedo rolls

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Although the two day process for baking the bread is a bit time consuming, Karen, of the blog Shortbread found the taste of her Italian bread rolls "fantastic" and the time investment "so worth it." She suggests that the rolls would be a great base for sub sandwiches. Read her post: Super Bowl Subs Italian Bread Rolls

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I love the way Jessica of The Singleton in the Kitchen introduced her bread: "Next up is Italian bread, the softer, more versatile friend of French bread. It's still a hearth bread, but this time with feeling. Italian bread gets its wonderful personality from a biga starter and the addition of some barley malt. ...If you know anything about Italian bread, you know it likes to party. Italian bread is great on its own, but it's also a great base for things like garlic bread and sandwiches." For more hearth bread insight, check out Jessica's post: More Globetrotting Breads! BBA French Bread & Italian Bread

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Kayte of Grandma's Kitchen Table found this bread "less fussy" than the French bread was. The texture and flavor were wonderful and Kayte's husband loved this bread for his sandwiches. Sounds like she will be busy baking this bread from now on! Read more: BBA: Italian Bread

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Thanks to Natalia of Gatti, Fili e Farina we learn that because of the added fat in its ingredient list, the bread that we call "Italian" bread is softer than the breads in Italy usually are, and she calls this kind of bread "Corean [Korean] or Indian" bread. Whatever it's called, this bread looks pretty spectacular and I'll bet it tasted just as delicious! More about this stunning bread at: BBA Slow and Steady: Italian Bread

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A newly-self-professed "bread snob," Leslie of Lethally Delicious now bakes, rather than buys her daily bread. The Italian bread came together smoothly, and her verdict: "I thought it was pretty great, especially in a sandwich." Here's Leslie's post: BBA - Italian Bread

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Di of Di's Kitchen Notebook showed her bread-baking expertise on this week's recipe. She has baked the BBA Italian Bread several times previously, so she decided to experiment this time around and used her sourdough starter as the main leavening agent in her bread's biga pre-ferment. She baked one large loaf and it turned out perfectly! When the rest of us are ready to start baking with sourdough starters, thank goodness Di will be able to guide us. Her post: Italian Bread

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Sarah of Blue Ridge Baker had a bit of an adventure while her Italian bread was baking. One step to getting fabulous crust on hearth breads is to pour hot water into a pan on the floor of the oven as you place your dough in to bake. Unbeknownst to Sarah, the water extinguished her oven's pilot light! Even though the oven had cooled a bit, her bread baked perfectly - as if nothing in the world was wrong. Sarah liked the fact that this bread had a softer crust than the French bread, as it was easier for her little ones to chew. Read about her bread here: BBA Challenge: Italian Bread

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Although her bread spread a bit more than she would have liked, Margaret of Tea and Scones thought that her Italian bread was a perfect accompaniment to some stew. Looks perfect to me! Here's her post:: Slow and Steady BBA - French and Italian Bread

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I can't say that I have the shaping of Italian loaves figured out, but my bread turned out pretty well in spite of me, and we absolutely loved the taste. My post: Italian Bread {bba}

We will continue our streak of crusty white breads with Kaiser Rolls. Stay tuned!