Category: StewsCatBakes

Back at it!

Hello!!  It’s definitely been awhile since I last posted.  Now that the weather has settled down (aka it is no longer super hot), I have jumped back into bread making.  The hot weather of summer discouraged me from turning the oven on.  We’ve actually had some good rains the last few weeks of October.  This is much appreciated from Mother Nature given that we’re still in a drought.  It also benefited the new plantings we put in our front yard.

On with the bread making.

Ingredients

  • 300g 100% whole wheat flour
  • 295g bread flour
  • 145g rice drink (“milk”)
  • 300g water
  • 16g salt
  • 35g honey
  • 8g active dry yeast
  • 1/4 stick of butter cut up – half melted, half in chunks

I had made some bread the week before the above recipe with poor results.  I think I rushed the whole process.  I didn’t knead the dough long enough and also didn’t let it rise/ferment the proper amount.  This was all because I didn’t realize I had to make bread until later in the day and the one thing about bread is you can’t rush the yeast.  This bread came out much more to my liking.  This time I kneaded the dough for at least 15 minutes and could feel a big difference in how the dough formed up and became much more cohesive (I didn’t feel this with the dough the previous week).  I also allowed for more time doing stretch and folds with 45 minute rests (total of 3 of these).  As you can tell from the pictures, I was able to get a nice rise on the bread before baking.  Overall I was happy with another loaf of sandwich bread for our lunches.

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And the crumb

-StewsCat

Random cooking / running

Made it out for 7 miles today.  I decided to go a different way on the bike trail.  Ran near Cal Expo (the big expo in Sacramento that holds the annual state fair).  There is a lot of dry grass and such behind cal expo between the fairgrounds and the river.  A lot of fires break out in this area, some suspect due to transients.  On today’s run I went towards this area and saw the aftermath of one of the recent fires.  On my way back I headed towards Sac State.  Near the big pedestrian/bike bridge (Guy West Bridge) next to the school I saw a cool sight.  There were two young adult deer just grazing in the grass between the river and the berm.  I ran about 20 feet from them on the bike trail and they didn’t even spook.  One of them looked up at me warily as I ran past but the other one just kept right on munching on the dry grass.  Given that there is a lot of foot/bike traffic in this area, these guys must be so used to people that they know nothing bad is going to happen.

Sometimes I wish that I still ran with my phone since I could catch pictures of these interesting things I see.  I definitely enjoy not running with a running belt, but I know that I should carry my phone on my runs more often.

For lunch I didn’t have much around the kitchen so decided to make a quick bread.  I combined some AP flour with greek yogurt, garlic powder, salt, baking powder, chopped jalapenos from our raised vegetable bed, and water.  I let it sit for 20 minutes then baked it at 425 F after rolling it out flat.  I bake it for around 30 minutes.

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I also sliced up some zucchini and coated it with olive oil and mixed in some chili powder, garlic powder, salt, and bread crumbs.  This I also baked at 425 F.  I then heated up some pastrami with mozzarella and topped the bread with it.

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A little dry but not too bad.

-StewsCat

 

 

Last Day of July

I thought I’d jot down a few things.

I again hit my 70 mile goal for the month, this time on the very last day of the month.  I only needed about 1.5 miles but ended up going 3 because I couldn’t just bring myself to run that short.  I managed to get out of the house early and was able to run in comfortable weather (mid to high 60s).  I am also happy that I’ve surpassed 500 miles for the year already.  So far so good on the running without injury (*knock on wood*).  Total miles in July: 71.56.  I’m a little apprehensive about August because I won’t have as many days to run since I’m working extra days to cover another person who has taken pretty much the entire month of August off of work.  It only means I am working an extra day per week but that is typically my long run day (Friday) so I’ll have to figure something else out.

I felt relatively efficient today.  Before lunch I had fit into my run, gone to a nice breakfast, did our grocery shopping, and weeded the front yard all before lunchtime.  The afternoon involved making bread and relaxing.

We had planted two different kind of heirloom tomatoes a few months ago.  I’m not good at tending to it and after setting up the drip system to auto-water it, I haven’t done much to it.  Slowly we have had tomatoes start to develop and only recently have they started to get some color and maybe we’ll be able to harvest them soon.  I was happy to see one of the tomatoes starting to turn from green to orange/red.

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Starting to color

I decided to make a loaf of bread for our lunches this week.  The past several weeks I’ve been doing tortillas because it has been triple digit heat and I didn’t want to turn the oven on.  I haven’t been doing much baking or even pizza making because of the heat.  We had 8 straight days of 100+ F weather and 3 of consecutive over 105 F.  Luckily it cooled off a bit and only hit 95 F.

  • 300g whole wheat flour
  • 295g bread flour
  • 145g rice milk
  • 300g water
  • 18g salt
  • 35g honey
  • 1/4 c. olive oil
  • 8g active dry yeast

I mixed the above ingredients, let it auto-lyse for about an hour then did the slap & fold kneading for 15 minutes.  I let it proof for about an hour (it doubled) and did 2 stretch & folds (envelope folds) along with degassing.  Then I formed it and placed it in a well-greased (butter) loaf pan (9″ x 5″).  I let it rise for about an hour and then baked it at 425 F (using my water sprayer to mist the bread as it went into the oven.  After 10 minutes, I dropped the temperature to 375 F and misted again and baked for 27 more minutes.  I took the bread out of the pan and let it sit in the oven at 375 F for another 4 minutes then removed it and let it cool.  Overall looks good, haven’t tried it yet so can’t comment on its taste.

I am happy with how the crumb looks.  Tight enough that it will be able to hold the meat of the sandwiches.

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Crumb

-StewsCat

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Stews found the little bit of light coming into the kitchen through the skylight

Sourdough pizza dough

Sourdough pizza dough

This is a bit out-of-order.  After returning back from Portland a few weekends ago, I had July 4th off from work and decided to make some pizza for the holiday.  I also had to feed my sourdough starter so figured I’d make sourdough pizza dough with the discard.  I used the below recipe:

  • Sourdough starter – 80 g (~50% hydration)
  • AP flour – 350 g
  • Water – 230 g
  • Salt – 8 g
  • Yeast – 2 g

I mixed all the ingredients (above), let it sit for 40 minutes to auto-lyse and then kneaded it for about 15 minutes (slap and fold).  I put it in a large mixing bowl and let it bulk ferment for about 50 minutes.  It was fairly warm in the kitchen/house so I didn’t have to let it rise as long.  I then did 3 stretch and folds separated by 30 minutes.  After this I divided the dough into 2 (these ended up being larger balls than I typically work with in the past) and put them individual bowls to proof.

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Proofed

As can be seen above, the dough rose greatly.  Since I was making pizza, I wasn’t as concerned if it went slightly over since I was flattening the dough out anyway to make the pizza.  I topped the dough with some homemade tomato sauce (I just use canned San Marzano Whole tomatoes that I crush and heat with some basil and garlic), mozzarella, and mushrooms/prosciutto.

Overall I got some good rise in the crust and it did have a slight sourdough taste to it.

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Good rise

I may have to try incorporating more sourdough starter to see if I can’t get more of the sourdough taste to it.

-StewsCat