Outback Bread

Rye and Molasses "Outback" Bread

Outback Bread

 

Last night's bread was a repeat experiment with a little tweaking.  B made the bread from Outback Steakhouse (the thing people eat while they keep an eye out for their Bloomin' Onion).  It's a rye and molasses loaf.  He made it several years ago but wanted to test it again with overnight proofing: his new favorite thing.  We enjoyed it with a wonderful roast that B had cooking all day, making the house smell amazing.  It was St. Patty's day, and the whole meal was close enough to Irish stew with soda bread, that I'm going to say it counts as Irish.  We enjoyed it along with a little red wine while we watched VCU put up a good fight against Indiana in the NCAA tournament.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roast with rye

Here are some notes:  First, as you can see in the pictures, the bottom stuck to the pan and fell off.  B used olive oil to grease the pan and says he should've used something more like butter or shortening.  Of course, stuff like that never messes with the taste.  He also says he would've steamed the bread while cooking (put a pan of water on the lower rack while cooking in the oven).  That's because the crust was a little harder than what you get at Outback.  He also would've added honey and lessened the molasses, skewing to honey for a sweeter taste.  I liked the molasses, though.  Recipe below.

He adapted from this "Chef Pablo" recipe.  (recipe below includes tweaks mentioned above)

Ingredients

• 2 packages instant yeast
• 1 1/2 cup warm water
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1/4 cup dark molasses
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cups rye flour
• 2 1/2 -3 cups King Arthur all-purpose flour
• Butter to grease pan
• cornmeal to sprinkle on pan and on top

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
2. Mix yeast with dry ingredients.
3. In large mixing bowl combine dry ingredients with warm water, molasses, honey, salt, olive oil and rye flour.
4. Mix this until smooth.
5. Knead the dough for a few minutes and then let it rise overnight in a greased bowl, covering with a towel.
6. Punch the dough down and shape into 2 large round loaves
7. Place the loaves a few inches apart on a buttered and cornmeal-dusted loaf pan. Sprinkle a bit of the cornmeal over the top of the loaves as well.
8. Let shaped loaves rise about an hour (should double in size).
9. Place pan of water underneath in oven to steam while cooking.
10. Bake loaves at 375 for about 35-40 minutes or until the crust makes hollow sound when tapped.

 Enjoy!  Happy baking.

Picadillo Pockets in Homemade Baguettes

A long time ago, when B was first getting into bread making, I came home one Wednesday to the announcement that Wednesdays were "bread days."  Wednesdays became my favorite day of the week (well, after Friday, Saturday and Sunday).  Now B does most of his bread making on the weekends, but today was a revisit of that lovely tradition.

B went for Cuban-inspired picadillo pockets in homemade baguettes.  The recipe for the filling was from Food Network.  It was a delicious blend of ground beef, cinnamon, raisins, tomatoes, olives and other yumminess.  The recipe called for frozen pizza dough, but B, of course made his own.  All in all, it's a grown-up and way-better-tasting Hot Pocket, with no worry of mouth burns.

 

For the bread, B followed a traditional baguette recipe, but left it overnight in the fridge to proof (his new secret to amazingly fluffy bread). It made for a delicious meal and enough for tomorrow night, too. 

Baguette "Pocket" Recipe

3 3/4 cups of flour
1 2/3 cups of water
1/4 tsp yeast
2 tsp salt


Mix ingredients in mixer
Knead by hand for around 10 minutes
Fold every 20 minutes for next hour
Refrigerate overnight (about 24 hours)
Roll out, leave for an hour, then fill two pockets with ingredients and shape an additional loaf
Makes 2 pockets and one more traditional baguette loaf
Bake pockets at 425 for around 15 minutes, then bake baguette for 20 minutes

Double bread day

Biscuits and Rye Pitas

Biscuits

Today we enjoyed not one, but two, of B's bread creations, and I've finally come out of my bread coma enough to talk about them.  First we had BN over for a little Sunday brunch and had to add the Tupelo Honey biscuits into the mix.  BN brought mimosa fixings and a delicious pineapple and berry mix, and B also fixed french omelets, groats and grits.  I set the table and fixed the coffee, so as not to be a total loafer.  Thankfully neither BN or B seem to mind my culinary shortcomings.  The food and the company was so delightful that we sat there for a couple of hours until I'd enjoyed two big biscuits and most of my wonderfully over-sized mimosa (who said huge red wine glasses aren't for mimosas?!).  Back to the bread, though, B shaped the biscuits a little rounder this time - last time they were almost english-muffin shaped, and I think I like the english-muffin shaped ones a little bit more, but it feels like blasphemy to say such a thing because amazing biscuits are amazing biscuits.

The brunch spread

Somehow by this evening we were ready and able to eat again.  B had left a rye dough in the fridge overnight and made rye pitas to go with a vegetable gumbo.  He was happy to find that leaving the dough overnight really increases the thickness and sponginess of the pita bread.  They still popped in the middle, but were almost like a roll inside.  It was delicious, again, pairing the rye with goat cheese.  Recipe for rye pitas is below.

Pitas, pre-oven

Rye Pitas

Rye Pita with Vegetable Gumbo

   

Here's B's recipe for Rye Pitas

Ingredients:
2 cups white flour mixed with 1 cup of rye
1 3/4 cup water
1.5 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon honey
2 Tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons standard yeast

Directions:
Mix ingredients into dough using mixer
Let it rise and punch down
Proof 24 hours in refrigerator
Preheat oven to 500-degrees
Shape into 8 pitas (about 4 inches), rolling into shape with rolling pin
Pop into oven at high heat (500-degrees) 4:30 minutes each (B uses a flipped over cookie sheet to cook)
Remove and let cool

Goat Cheese Potato Rolls

Goad Cheese Potato Rolls

Last night's experiment created these lovely little rolls that would be good with a soup, or really any dinner.  Because B. baked while I was out for a rare girls' night, I had one as a late-night snack (um, okay, two). 

As far as rolls go these were really tasty (but they can't compete with last week's biscuits or some other cheese breads we've tried recently).  Because they have a lot of flour and not much salt, it makes them taste mild and hearty, like a bagel. That's why they would be really good with soup or something light.  B. says if he makes them again, he'll add more salt.  There was just a hint of the goat cheese in the taste.

Today, he's going to use the leftover dough to make pitas.  Yay!

Here's the recipe:

Goat Cheese Potato Rolls

1 lb red potatoes, peeled and boiled until tender
5 oz whole milk
3.5 oz goat cheese
5 cups white bread flour
1 T sea salt (that's B's suggested amount, bumped up from the recipe he followed)
1 oz fresh yeast
15 oz water, body temp.

(same dough, but proofed overnight, punched down, and ready for pita making)

Mash the boiled potatoes with whole milk and goat cheese.  Sift flour into bowl with salt and make a well in the center.  Dissolve yeast in 2 T of water and add to well in the flour.  Add potato mixture and slowly mix in remaining water until you have a soft dough.

Place dough onto lightly floured surface and knead for about 15 minutes (until dough is smooth and elastic).  Let it rise in a slightly oiled bowl, covering with damp dish towel until x 2 in size.

Preheat oven to 425.

Punch down dough and knead again for 2 - 3 minutes.  Shape into 30 small, round rolls.  Place them on baking sheet and dust with flour.  Cover and let proof for about 20 minutes.

Bake rolls for 10 minutes at 425, and then turn oven down to 375 and bake for 15 additional minutes.  Rolls should come out golden and sound hollow when thumped.  Cool and enjoy with soup or other light entree.

OMB! Tupelo Honey Biscuits, Fresh out of MY Oven

Oh my biscuit goodness!  Last weekend, we went to Asheville and hit our (and, okay, everybody's) favorite Asheville restaurant, Tupelo Honey Cafe.  As always, the biscuits that they serve before the meal were melt-in-your-mouth amazing. I dare anyone to say anything disparaging about the South with a mouthful of these biscuits!

Last Christmas, I'd bought B the Tupelo Honey Cafe cookbook. (Definitely one of those semi-selfish gifts.) Case in point: Inspired by our recent visit, last night he looked up the recipe for the biscuits and about an hour later, the most amazing biscuits were coming out of our very own oven. I always gush over B's final product, because it's always gush-worthy, but these biscuits were absolutely amazing.  Maybe it's just because I was enjoying them on my own couch in my pajamas with a big spoonful of apple butter, but these were even better than in the restaurant.  In fact, they were definitely in my top two biscuit experiences of all time.  And that's saying a lot, because S.H.'s moms homemade biscuits with honey still stick in my mind from 1991! Since eating those biscuits, every biscuit experience in my life has fallen short until this one.  If I could put those biscuits side by side for comparison, I would gladly do it.

The biscuits were equal parts moist and crumbly, with the perfect amount of saltiness.  I had one as an appetizer and ended up only having half of my dinner so I could have another one.  Even though our oven turned them just a tad brown, it didn't mess with the taste.

Dear friends, I'm holding promise of these biscuits out as a carrot to come visit!

B. says one of the secrets is the frozen butter.  Also, the recipe called for 1.5 t salt, but only told what do do with the half teaspoon.  He didn't put the rest in, and (obviously) I didn't miss it.

Poolish Experiment #1

Poolish Loaf

B decided to do a weekend experiment with a poolish ciabatta, an Italian rustic loaf. Although it didn't turn out the way he wanted, I see more poolish bread in our future.

He started the "sponge" on Friday, but the recipe he'd been following was off (a mix-up in metric to imperial conversions), and it didn't rise properly.  He fixed it by readjusting the water and we (sigh) waited another 12 hours for it to rise.

Waiting, waiting

By Sunday evening, it was ready to go in the oven.

It came out late Sunday night, after I'd gone to bed. But the promise of poolish bread for breakfast helped me get out of bed at an ungodly hour for my 7am flight. I was a little disappointed when I saw it sitting on the counter. It was certainly "rustic," but our oven (which loves to char things), had done what it does best. However when I sliced it, I was pleasantly surprised.  It looked delicious on the inside.

Unfortunately, with the picture snapping for the blog and my lack of coffee, I forgot to actually take a slice with me.  That might've been for the best, though.  Even though it looked nice on the inside, it's not B's typical type of bread (where, all you need is a knife and a little privacy, and you could theoretically and easily slice and eat your way through the whole thing in one sitting). This bread wasn't much on its own, but when paired with a little salt and olive oil, wow! (Which is exactly how I enjoyed it when I got home on Tuesday.)

A little black on the outside

Perfect on the inside

I'm eagerly awaiting poolish experiment #2.

Pita Picked a Pat of...Goat Cheese

Second during the week of rye, B took on a rye pita.  He's become a master pita chef, in general. They're so fun to watch pop in the oven and he cooks them so they stay all puffy.  We usually have them for appetizers with hummus.  But this time, B decided to add in rye flower to his regular white flower and substitute honey for the sugar. We weren't sure how they would taste, but (thankfully) we happened to have some goat cheese in the fridge.  Talk about amazing-tasting serendipity! I'm pretty sure that rye pita and goat cheese were made for each other. The slight bitterness of the rye with the smooth bite of the goat cheese is amazing.  And the pocket holds it perfectly and warms and softens it just slightly when just out of the oven.  I'm in love with that pairing.

Rye Pitas Proofing

Rye Pitas Popping

Out of the Oven

Rye Pita with Goat Cheese