Too Much Food » caraway seeds

Caraway Bread, Cubed.

Pinjing — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:43:38 +0000

I finally baked a perfectly cubed-shaped loaf! I had purchased a square pullman tin while I was in Taiwan last summer and only got around to using it recently. My previous attempts all yielded loaves that were too short and never filled the top. Seems like half a pound of dough seems like the right amount to fill this 4.5″ x 4.5″ x 4.5″ tin.

This caraway bread is based off of Smitten Kitchen’s recent New York Deli Rye post. I increased the hydration of the dough slightly so that I could get a more airy crumb. Baking it in the tin allowed for a soft crust (which my parents prefer) and a light color. You can get six good slices out of this small tin, perfect for our sometimes-bread eating small family. Feel free to quadruple the recipe for a regular sized loaf of bread.

Caraway Bread
Makes one 1/2 lb. loaf, approximately a 4.5″ cube
Based of of Smitten Kitchen’s New York Deli Rye Bread

What you’ll need:
For the sponge:

30g bread flour
24g whole wheat flour
1/8 teaspoon instant yeast
4g sugar
3g honey
104g warm water

For the flour mixture:

88g bread flour
1/8 teaspoon instant yeast
0.5 Tablespoons caraway seeds, whole or ground as to your preference
1/4 teaspoon fine-grained sea salt

For kneading and finishing the dough:

1/2 teaspoon oil

The procedure:
Mix together the ingredients for the sponge in a large bowl, whipping it if you can to aerate the mixture. Set it aside while you prepare the flour mixture.

Mix together the ingredients for the flour mixture, whisking it together to make sure the ingredients are incorporated fully and spoon over the sponge. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rest for one to four hours; or, until you see the sponge bubbling up through the flour mixture. Since it’s wintertime where I live, I waited about four hours before proceeding with the rest of the recipe.

After you can observe the sponge bubbling up through the flour mixture, add the oil and mix the dough together, either with a stand mixer or by hand. I did this by hand as the amount of dough was so small. Mix until the dough is smooth and homogenous looking; as the hydration of the dough is higher than your standard sandwich loaf, it will feel tacky and sticky. This is fine. Continue kneading the dough until you achieve good gluten structure and the dough passes the windowpane test. This took me about ten minutes by hand.

Place the dough in a lightly-oiled bowl and let it rise until doubled, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. After this first rise, take the dough out and degas it, you can do a couple of stretch-and-folds to give it better structure, then place it back into the bowl and let it rise again for 45 minutes.

After 45 minutes have elapsed, take the dough and degas it gently and shape it (you can do a small boule or shape it sandwich style if planning to bake in a loaf pan). Place the dough in your chosen baking receptacle and let it rise a third time until doubled, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Half an hour before you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 400 F.

When ready to bake, place the loaf into the oven, steam (if not baking in a pullman tin) and lower the temperature to 375 F and bake for 25 minutes. Check to see if the bread is done by inserting a thermometer into the center of the loaf and making sure it reads at least 190 F. Invert the bread onto a cooling rack and let it cool for at least 4 hours before slicing to enjoy.

Next time, I’m going to bake the bread artisan-style on my pizza stone to get that crispy, dark crust I enjoy so much, but this bread is delicious in its own right. It’s pillowy and stays soft and pliable for several days, stored in an airtight container on the countertop. I’ve been eating it lately with homemade tomato jam (based on Mark Bittman’s recipe), but I imagine it’d be great in a grilled cheese sandwich.

Sending this recipe over to Susan at Wild Yeast for this week’s YeastSpotting (my first and hopefully not my last!).

Red Wine Biscotti

Pinjing — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:39:23 +0000

As some of you may know, my blog was recently hacked; I had several recipes pre-written, ready for publishing when I discovered that the hacker had completely wiped out my wordpress database, deleting all my posts, recipes and comments. I was devastated . . .

Needless to say, I have learned my lesson: always keep backups of EVERYTHING. I am so guilty of just being lazy and putting off this simple act of backing up data, thinking “Oh, I’ll just do it tomorrow . . . or next week . . . or later . . .” But you say this every week and when you really do need your backups, it’s too late.

Anyway, I know better now. In a way it was a blessing in disguise; it gave me a chance to breathe new life into the blog. I completely reworked the design of the blog and thought about how to better organize its contents. Hopefully you find the new changes welcome too. I hope to post not only more recipes but restaurant reviews and more thoughts on food in general. Because if you know me, I think about food. A LOT.

Ok! Off my soapbox and back to the food. I’ve always been intrigued with cooking with wine, and when I came across this recipe at Lisa’s Kitchen, I knew I had to try it. I don’t know about you, but I prefer my biscotti to be earth-shatteringly crispy and crunchy . . . not so much a fan of the tender version (wouldn’t it just be a gussied-up long, skinny version of a cookie?) I prefer bake my biscotti in my convection oven, making sure all traces of moisture have been zapped away . . . but if you’re in the tender-biscotti camp, by all means, bake them to your desired preference.

These biscotti were delicious, full of umami with a hint of sweetness in the end. Not only that, they’re super easy to make and vegan as well. By the way, this is a recipe that I had written before my site was hacked; it was a bit difficult to remember the exact measurements for the ingredients listed; for those who do give it a try, leave a comment and let me know how your results turn out.

Savory Red Wine Biscotti
Adapted from Lisa’s Kitchen
Makes about 14 biscotti

What you’ll need:

1 1/2 cups (180g) whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons (22.5g) of sugar
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1/8 teaspoon of sea salt
1/2 teaspoon of freshly cracked black pepper
1 tablespoon caraway seeds (I love this stuff)
2 sundried tomatoes, cut into small pieces and soaked in hot water for 20 minutes
1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons red wine
1/4 cup fruity extra-virgin olive oil

The procedure:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, baking powder, sea salt, black pepper and caraway seeds. Whisk the dry ingredients together to make sure they are thoroughly combined.

Drain the sundried tomatoes of their soaking water and add to dry ingredients. Stir in the red wine and olive oil until well combined.

Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper. Scoop dough onto the baking sheet and roughly form into a log about 10 inches long and 3 inches wide (there’s no need to be perfect here). Place sheet in preheated oven and bake for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes have elapsed, remove the biscotti log from the oven and let it cool slightly, about 5-10 minutes (or until your hands can handle touching it). Reduce the oven to 200 degrees F (if you have a convection oven, using the convection function is quite useful here in ensuring crispy, crunchy biscotti). Using a long serrated knife, cut the log into 1/2 inch slices (either on the diagonal or straight across, whichever you prefer). Place the slices, cut side up, back on the baking sheet and bake until desired crispness. My batch took about 30 minutes, with a rotating of the sheet and flipping over the slices halfway in between.

I also made a lime-cilantro-roasted peanut version, substituting beer for the wine, roasted peanuts for the caraway seeds, and throwing in a bunch of lime zest and home-dried cilantro. It smelled delicious while it was baking but the end result lacked the zesty punch I was going for. I’ll have to work on this one a bit more, so I’m not going to put up the recipe yet.

Yeah, I did too (another Irish Soda Bread post).

Pinjing — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:45:06 +0000

As it’s St. Patrick’s Day, I felt the need to bake a soda bread. Googling will take you to a bunch of results for recipes, I based mine off of a traditional version; here the gist of what I did.

Whole-Wheat Mini Irish Soda Bread
Makes 1 mini-round.

Preheated oven to 400 degrees F. 1/4 cup almond milk and 1 teaspoon white vinegar mixed to make “buttermilk” and set it aside for 5 minutes. Whisked 60 g coarse-ground whole wheat flour and 30 g whole wheat pastry flour, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon baking soda, 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar, 1 teaspoon raw sugar and a pinch of caraway seeds. Made a well in the center of the dry mixture and poured in all buttermilk at once, mixed quickly with a fork until it just came together, then mounded it in a mini 6.5″ cast iron skillet, scored it into quarters with a serrated knife, into the oven for 25 minutes (tapped on the bottom to make sure it was done).

It’s good, but not extraordinary. Using the whole wheat flour gives it a nutty taste, was just sweet enough (but not too sweet and the caraway seeds give off a nice anise flavor. I had a quarter of the loaf this morning for breakfast, with a thin layer of Marmite (love it? hate it?) spread on top.

I also had another quarter toasted with some tamarind toor dal that I had made the day before; it was the epitome of comfort food.