New What?

So you know how I had all those hopes and aspirations a few days ago?
Well, its only January 3rd and I'm already having a tough time with them.
First of all, I hate exercise. I know everyone does, but I triple hate it, and it doesn't get any better form the moment I start to the moment I'm done and then have to think about having to it again the next day or the day after that.
Ugh!
And then there's the fact that I'm kinda on edge. After all, I do have two papers to write over this two week break, and this writer is having a hard time with them.
And then there's the fact that I feel bad I can't drive or do something that would actually help my family get things done right now, aside from feeding them.
Which is exactly what I've been doing today. With some family matters to take care of, the end of my vacation is quickly going down hill, so I exhausted myself with chocolate tweed angel food cake, rich chocolate cheesecake that, even though it's not vegan, I couldn't help but take a tiny taste- yum! And then some surprisingly delicious non-meat loaf and broccoli mac and cheese (I knew that would be good, thanks to this recipe on Vegan D.a.d.).
How did I manage to do all this, work out, and write 2 pages of a boring economics paper and a very jumbled page of vegan history?
I'm not sure. Though I did have a good breakfast!
Coconut Raspberry Bran muffins.

That's right. Bran muffins. But these aren't your ordinary, dense, diet-food muffins. These have no Raisin Bran or any boxed cereal. These have coarse, mealy bran, oatmeal, tons of sweet, nutty, toasted coconut, and a handful of frozen raspberries to freshen things up.

And they're mini. So I can pop 3 or 4 of them without a speck of guilt.

Good thing, too, cause there are still not-so-petite petit fours in the drawer and a plethora of ideas to feed my sweet tooth tomorrow. Gotta have something healthy.

Mix some up for yourself- they're a cinch. The hardest part is dissolving the agar. Yes, I said agar. Thanks to Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, I learned that agar makes a more tender, unified crumb in cake-like baked goods (well, or so I assumed; what applies to a cupcake should apply to a soft, billowy muffin). Anyway, after that, all you have to do it mix everything together, pop them in the oven, and you'll have fresh-baked muffins in a matter of minutes.

Tropical Blush Bran Muffins

1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut

1/2 cup unsweetened coconut flakes or shreds

539 g. coconut milk or your favorite non-dairy milk
2 tbsp. agar flakes
1/2 cup Miller's Bran
1/2 cup oatmeal

2 tbsp. flax seed meal

200 g. raw sugar

150 g. oil

1/2 fresh grated ginger (ground is okay in a pinch)

1 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
130 g. all purpose flour
130 g. whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup frozen raspberries

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Toast both kinds of coconut while the oven is preheating, until all coconut is golden.
2. Line muffin tins with paper liners. The recipe makes about 30 mini muffins, or 10-12 regular size muffins.
3. In a saucepan, combine coconut milk and agar flakes. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 10 minutes, or until agar dissolves. Remove from heat and add bran and oatmeal.
4. Cool oat mixture to room temperature, then add flax seed meal, sugar, oil, ginger and vanilla. Mix well to emulsify oil.
5. Combine all dry ingredients. Fold into the oat mixture.
6. Fold in the raspberries, being as gentle as possible so as to not squish the berries.
7. Scoop into prepared muffin tins, filling 3/4 of the way full. Bake in preheated oven until set and golden. For mini muffins, this will take about 11-13 minutes. For regular size, it will probably tkae 20-25 minutes.
8. Cool completely, then store in an airtight container or serve.

Having these in the house is a reason to go to bed- just to wake up and have a delicious breakfast! That, and the fact that these words are blurring before my sleepy eyes ;)

Holiday Madness

Our Daring Bakers Host for December 2011 was Jessica of My Recipe Project and she showed us how fun it is to create Sour Dough bread in our own kitchens! She provided us with Sour Dough recipes from Bread Matters by AndrewWhitley as well as delicious recipes to use our Sour Dough bread in from Tonia George’s Things on Toast and Canteen’s Great British Food!


Last month, I finally decided to sign up for Daring Bakers. I miss the challenges like Cupcake Hero, and I need something else to feed my inspiration, since I still haven't won the jackpot and can't open a bakery yet. 


What a time to sign up!


Amidst cookie swaps, trips home to roll a couple thousand cookies for our annual cookie count and giveaway to friends, several new ideas to try out, and crocheting for hours to get my Christmas presents done and attempt to get in the holiday spirit, I made sourdough; this month's challenge recipe.


I've made sourdough-based bread a couple times before; but I get impatient with the starter or decide that there isn't really room for it in our shrinking apartment fridge, so I usually give up on it. But, with this challenge and the holidays around the corner, I decided to give it another shot and maybe come up with some creative alternatives.


Like Pomegranate Swirl Bread.


Five days.... no, maybe it was six, seven.... eight days of waiting and the business of going to school, and i finally got to making the bread. Only the starter seemed really dry. Ooops. Guess I thought I was wrong to think I could just add the same amount of flour and water each day.


And impatient not to let my pomegranate filling cool before rushing to fill my bread with it.


So, Alas, I had dense bread. But the flavor was pretty good. And now i have more starter, with which I am today trying something completely bizarre; baked sourdough doughnuts. 


Don't give me that look- I just found a baked doughnut recipe... couldn't tell you where because I look at like a thousand recipes a week... and saw Unique Sweets on Cooking Channel (which by the way no one should have to pay extra for), where one fancy baker baked all her doughnuts and used some molecular gastronomy to turn olive oil into a powder to replace powdered sugar on her doughnuts.


Oh how the wheels turn.


Oh yes, stay tuned. Doughnuts are in our future. Sorry, you can't have any, just the recipe. And maybe the recipe for some delicious madelines and pistachio coconut cake I made recently. If you're lucky.


But not now. Right now you get this bread recipe. The French Country Bread that Jessica provided for this month's challenge; that I didn't quite follow (but not on purpose); plus a rough method for pomegranate cinnamon filling.


Fill up before the New Year strikes! It's still Christmas after all, isn't it? I mean it all goes too fast!

French Country Bread
Servings: 1 large loaf plus extra wheat starter for further baking

Wheat Starter - Day 1:
Ingredients
4 1/2 tablespoons (70 ml) (40 gm/1 ½ oz) stoneground breadmaking whole-wheat or graham flour
3 tablespoons (45 ml) water
Total scant ½ cup (115 ml) (3 oz/85 gm)

Directions:
1. In a Tupperware or plastic container, mix the flour and water into a paste.
2. Set the lid on top gently, cover with a plastic bag, to prevent messes in case it grows more than expected!
3. Set somewhere warm (around 86 F if possible). I sometimes put mine on a windowsill near a radiator, but even if it’s not that warm, you’ll still get a starter going – it might just take longer.

Wheat Starter - Day 2:
Ingredients
4 1/2 tablespoons (70 ml) (40 gm/1 ½ oz) stoneground breadmaking whole-wheat or graham flour
3 tablespoons (45 ml) water
scant 1/2 cup (115 ml) (3 oz/85 gm) starter from Day 1
Total scant cup (230 ml) (6 oz/170 gm)

Directions:
1. Stir the flour and water into the mixture from Day 1, cover, and return to its warm place.

Wheat Starter - Day 3:
Ingredients
4 1/2 tablespoons (70 ml) (40 gm/1 ½ oz) stoneground breadmaking whole-wheat or graham flour
4 teaspoons (20 ml) water
scant 1 cup (230 ml) (6 oz/170 gm) starter from Day 2
Total 1⅓ cup (320 ml) (230 gm/8-1/10 oz)

Directions:
1. Stir the flour and water into the mixture from Day 2, cover, and return to its warm place.

Wheat Starter - Day 4:
Ingredients
3/4 cup plus 1½ tablespoons (205 ml) (120 gm/4 ¼ oz) unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup less 4 teaspoons (100 ml) water
1⅓ cup (320 ml) (230 gm/8 oz) starter from Day 3
Total scant 2⅔ cup (625 ml) (440 gm/15½ oz)

Directions:
1. Stir the flour and water into the mixture from Day 3, cover, and return to its warm place. At this point it should be bubbling and smell yeasty. If not, repeat this process for a further day or so until it is!

French Country Bread
Stage 1: Refreshing the leaven
Ingredients
1 cup less 1 tablespoon (225 ml) (160 gm/5 ⅔ oz) wheat Leaven Starter
6 tablespoons less 1 teaspoon (85 ml) (50 gm/1¾ oz) stoneground bread making whole-wheat or graham flour
1 cup plus 2 teaspoons (250 ml) (150 gm/5 ⅓ oz) unbleached all purpose flour
1/2 cup (120 ml) water
Production Leaven Total 2¾ cups plus 4 teaspoons (680 ml) (480 gm /1 lb 1 oz)

Directions:
1. Mix everything into a sloppy dough. It may be fairly stiff at this stage. Cover and set aside for 4 hours, until bubbling and expanded slightly.

Pomegranate Filling

(make at some point before shaping your dough so that it has time to cool/set)

1. In a saucepan on medium heat, bring a cup or so of pomegranate juice to a boil. Reduce heat slightly and allow juice to reduce by half. Let cool to room temperature.

Add about 1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon and enough brown sugar to make a thick paste. Set aside to allow the sugar to absorb the pomegranate juice.

French Country Bread
Stage 2: Making the final dough
Ingredients
3/4 cup less 1 teaspoon (175 ml) (100 gm/3 ½ oz) stoneground breadmaking whole-wheat or graham flour, plus more for dusting
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons (510 ml) (300gm/10 ½ oz) unbleached all-purpose flour
1¼ teaspoons (7½ ml) (7 gm/¼ oz) sea salt or ⅔ teaspoon (3⅓ ml) (3 gm/⅛ oz) table salt
1 ¼ cups (300 ml) water
1 ¾ cups (425 ml) (300 gm/10 ½ oz) production leaven – this should leave some (1 cup) for your next loaf.
Total 6 cups less 2 tablespoons 1415 ml (1007 gm/35 ½ oz/2 lb 3½ oz)

Directions:

1. Mix the dough with all the ingredients except the production leaven. It will be a soft dough.
2. Knead on an UNFLOURED (I had to use some flour becuase it was far too sticky to knead) surface for about 8-10 minutes, getting the tips of your fingers wet if you need to. You can use dough scrapers to stretch and fold the dough at this stage, or air knead if you prefer. Basically, you want to stretch the dough and fold it over itself repeatedly until you have a smoother, more elastic dough.
See my demonstration here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqS3raEGdwk
3. Smooth your dough into a circle, then scoop your production leaven into the centre. You want to fold the edges of the dough up to incorporate the leaven, but this might be a messy process. Knead for a couple minutes until the leaven is fully incorporated in the dough. See my demonstration here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPO97R4iO4U
4. Spread some water on a clean bit of your work surface and lay the dough on top. Cover with an upturned bowl, lining the rim of the bowl with a bit of water. Leave for an hour, so that the gluten can develop and the yeasts can begin to aerate the dough.
5. Once your dough has rested, you can begin to stretch and fold it. First, spread your pomegranate filling in a thin layer all over the surface of the slightly-flattened sough, being careful not to go too close to the edges.Using wet hands and a dough scraper, stretch the dough away from you as far as you can without breaking it and fold it back in on itself. Repeat this in each direction, to the right, towards you, and to the left. This will help create a more ‘vertical’ dough, ready for proofing. See my demonstration here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDoJRCMfclE
6. Heavily flour a banneton/proofing basket with whole wheat flour and rest your dough, seam side up, in the basket. Put the basket in a large plastic bag, inflate it, and seal it. Set aside somewhere warm for 3-5 hours, or until it has expanded a fair bit. It is ready to bake when the dough responds to a gently poke by slowly pressing back to shape.
7. Preheat the oven to hot 425°F/220°C/gas mark 7. Line a baking sheet with parchment, then carefully invert the dough onto the sheet. I like to put the baking sheet on top of the basket, then gently flip it over so as to disturb the dough as little as possible. Make 2-3 cuts on top of the loaf and bake for 40-50 minutes, reducing the temperature to moderately hot 400°F/200°C/gas mark 6 after 10 minutes.
8. Cool on a cooling rack.

Oh, and one final note: I baked mine in a dutch oven. I preheated in a 500 degree own, lowered the temp to 435, then put my proofed bread in it, covered the pan, and baked it as directed. The pot traps steam and helps the bread rise better :)

Bread Withdrawls

Today I'd like to talk about bread. And snowstorms. And power outages.

How are these all related? Well, if you are one of the unlucky people (i.e. me) who live in the Northeast Connecticut, you know that we had a freak Halloween snow storm last weekend. As in 10 days ago. As in still in October (not that it would have been any better in November or December or January of February or ever)! And if you are further still one of the unlucky people who lives in Farmington Connecticut, you'd know that we are mostly still without power.

Yes, 10 days without power.

Though I must say I am lucky in that respect; I'm not a high-school student anymore, so I don't have to be sitting home without power while my April vacation days get used up because we have no school. Instead I get to be in a nice college apartment, feeling rather weird as I talk to my parents on my cell phones since cable and phone services are also still out.

So I have power here at school. And power... well.. gives me power. The power to do so many things. Delicious things. Like baking bread. And then scarfing down the whole loaf of said bread in a matter of... 4 days?

Yeah, it's that good.

Actually, that makes the second great thing that came out of a power outage. Because there was a previous loaf of said bread, which started last Saturday morning, as the first flakes of winter snow were falling, along with a few precious branches of our new pear tree. Of course, me being me could not decide what to bake, except that I knew I needed to bake something for breakfast. Fast. Like before I couldn't any more.

The recipe I chose, called Amanda Bread (from America's Test Kitchen Baking book), needed to rise for a total of 3 hours. Add to that the time it was going to take me to veganize (and just generally Carinaize) it, and the 10 minutes of mixing, 40 minutes of baking... you get the point... kind of a risk under a time crunch.

So the power went off at minute 20 during baking.

Thanks to the bread goddesses, I kept the door closed on my bread and the oven finished its baking magic, creating a not-quite-brown but still delicious bread.

Fast forward 24 hours, the power still out, the loaf half gone, and my mom decides we should try getting me back to school. So we hurriedly get all my books and food together and head off. One thing we left behind- my delicious bread!

Withdrawals!!!! So much for the delicious toast I was looking forward to starting my week with!

Five long days later, I finally had some time to make more bread. And so my weekend started off with a great breakfast once again. Not quite as delicious as the first one (maybe the power outage is the secret to great bread after all? Or maybe it's just that I like cranberries and hazelnuts together better than almond and ginger? Idk). Now all that's left is 1" chunk; just enough for breakfast. Hence the bad picture. Trust me, it's delicious you won't be able to wait long enough for a proper photo!

Crazy Amanda Bread
(based off a recipe from America's Test Kitchen)

227 g. almond milk (or any other non-dairy milk, but almond provides the best flavor)
57 g. oil
78 g. coarse cornmeal
425 g. whole wheat flour (hey if you're going to eat so much of it, might as well get some fiber in!)
33 g. vital wheat gluten
2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground cardamom (optional)
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
76 g. lukewarm water
2 1/4 tsp. instant yeast
1 tbsp molasses
4 tbsp honey (or 2 tbsp. each agave and brown rice syrup to make it completely vegan)
1 heaping cup total add-ins (my favorite is equal parts toasted, chopped hazelnuts and plumped, dried cranberries)

1. Microwave milk and oil until simmering. Stir in cornmeal, then microwave 15 more seconds, or until the cornmeal has absorbed the milk. Let cool to room temperature.
2. Combine flour, vital wheat gluten, salt and spices in a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook.
3. Combine water yeast, honey and molasses in a measuring cup.
4. Add cooled cornmeal mixture to the flour mixture and mix on low speed for about 1 minute, or until combined.
5. Still on low speed, slowly add the liquid mixture.
6. Once all liquid is Incorporated, increase to medium speed and mix for 5 minutes.
7. Add plumped fruit and/or nuts. Mix for an additional 6 minutes.
8. Form the dough into a ball, then place in a lightly oiled bowl. Cover with plastic wrap. Place in a slightly warm oven and let rise for 1 1/2 hours, or until doubled.
9. Remove dough form bowl onto a very lightly floured surface. Flatten slightly into a rough rectangle. Fold the top edge of the rectangle towards you, gently pressing into the center. Press the other side in as well so you have one, fat loaf.
10. Place loaf in a greased loaf pan. Cover and proof for another 1 1/2 hours.
11. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Heat a pan of water in the oven to simmering.
12. Once proofed, you can brush the bread with more oil and sprinkle with cornmeal or nuts, if desired. Bake, with steam bath in place, for 40-45 minutes, or until the top of the bread is lightly browned.
13. Let cool in pan until cool enough to handle, then remove form pan to cool completely (you can keep it in the pan, but the bottom gets a bit soggy- but not enough to really bother me! Yum!!!

The end is near!

8 days until school is done and I get to go home! Yay!
i mean, let's face it, culinary school can be very tough. Sure, it can be fun, like the class I'm in now, where all we do is experiment with healthy ingredients in ordinary products. There, it doesn't matter if the products we make come out well. We taste it, take our notes, and move on, hoping that the next product will be better and will be something we can use in the future.
Then there are the classes that just want to throw you off balance. The chocolate, petit fours, and cakes. If only we all like our cake unfrosted, uncut, and undecorated. "Frost your own cake" should be a store, don't you think? Cake frosting and decorating is an art; from start to finish. Making the cake, deciding on the flavors to be used for the filling and frosting, and pairing the components is easy and definitely my forte. When it comes to the assembly... well, let's just say it still isn't a piece of cake.
What does pastry school teach you? Sure you find out how to make cookies, pies, cakes, puff pastries, viennoiserie, ice cream, chocolates, breads, sugar and plating. More important than that though, it makes you realize your strengths and weaknesses, finds you new people, and test your boundaries. During every day I've been in school this year, that's what has happened. There's been surprises, uncertainty, shocking introductions to reality, and some unforgettable lessons and memories.
But now, I'm ready for summer! Maybe I'll have time for some more posts then!

Ok. I can't believe that it's only been a week since I was happily baking in my own kitchen at home and enjoying spring break. Two days before that I was falling in love with a little place known as Charlotte, North Carolina. Now, I'm back in he dorm room and while I'd definitely take this over high school, where I'd be taking a bunch of worthless classes and be bored and sad with no friends. So I'm very glad, thank you, to have just finished my high school requirements and to officially be a college freshmen. Plus, I'm in the new culinary arts building, and the state of the arts chocolates lab for my Chocolates and Confections class. And I have no extra classes. Done for the day at 1:00. But I'm usually exhausted. Dehydrated, frustrated, excited, hungry, exhausted. After a day of cutting peanut and mocha squares that have to be cut in 13/16" squares and make my mouth water, I'm so glad it's the weekend. Wish I had more andy to enjoy, but unfortunately we can't take much home. So, instead I'm filling my time looking at recipes I can't make right now. I mean RIGHT NOW! I want to step into my own kitchen and have my own agenda making things I can keep. And eat as much as I want without any guilt, exercise or whatnot. Anyone with me? Well, if you are, take a step into dreamland, and take a look at one of my favorite recipe destinations. Tastespotting.com. all It's a place that gathers information from countless food blogs and depicts a glorious, mouth-watering array of pictures for your clicking fancy. I'll try to make that help me this weekend, but... why is it that dorms in culinary school don't have kitchens? Enough for now.