New Information and Some I Forgot

The Bread Baking Babes will have their third anniversary in February... and we need your help.

Dream your biggest, bestest dream of what bread you would like us to bake in February...and send it by December 29th to the Babe for that month, our dear Tanna of My Kitchen in Half Cups. Just e-mail the recipe or suggestion (including recipe is best) to her. One per person.
Remember thats DECEMBER 29th...coming soon. Actually you can send a suggestion up through January 7th!! Please do...we would love to bake YOUR suggestion!

Here is what Tanna said (includes her address):

"February is our BBB three years.
We’d love to have you pick the BBB bread to bake for that month.
If you will send me your recipe suggestions - only one per person please -
send to:
comments my kitchen at mac dot com
you know to leave out spaces and about the dot
put February Anniversary Bread in the subject line
by December 29 ."

The 'I forgot' part is that when I posted my cute taralli for the December Bread Baking Babes post, I forgot to include the invitiation to be a Buddy and bake them too. The recipe is on my blog and at our kitchen of the month for December, Ilva of Lucullian Delights. Again, you have until DECEMBER 29th to bake the taralli, post about them and send an e-mail to ILVA
(luculliandelights AT gmail DOT com, please write Bread Baking Buddy in the subject line)

so she can send you a Buddy badge and include you in the round-up of the Buddies.

Since the dates are the same, you could be a Buddy AND help us celebrate THREE years of BBB wonderfulness! Aren't you excited? GO big dear reader.

Babes in Harvestland

Fall is in full swing...lots of brightly colored leaves and cobalt skies...the final tomatoes harvested and old plants pulled up in the garden...planning for the holidays begun...the smell of woodsmoke on chilly mornings.

This is the time of year that many of us celebrate the harvest. Mother Nature has had a busy summer and early fall and has blessed parts of the world with fruits and veggies and grains galore. A traditional icon of this abundance is the cornucopia, spilling out the harvested goodies. Since grains are part of the bounty, it is very appropriate that Susan of Wild Yeast, our Kitchen of the Month hostess, has given the Babes the delightful challenge of making a bread dough cornucopia!

Although the available time and energy this month to do the challenge were limited, I'm really glad that I tried it. It was a sort of arts and crafts project requiring poster board, aluminum foil, tape, and ropes and ropes of a special bread dough.

Although the drying time is long, the actual making time is fairly short because you don't retard the dough at all...it's mix and sculpt! Here is how my cone looked at the beginning. Later it was covered with foil, filled with scrunched up foil and I stapled parchment paper over the opening to keep that foil inside, then sprayed the foil with baking spray and set it, point up, on a Silpat lined baking sheet.

The chocolate dough didn't seem to hold it's shape as well as the plain which meant that the textured piece I started with sort of spread under the weight of all the plain dough on top and lost any texture it began with. The light dough was rolled into long, thin ropes

and then wrapped, round and round the cone, until the cone was covered and there was a bit beyond the cone to twist into the tail.

Once I laid the cornucopia on its side I jazzed up that droopy rim of dark dough with some twisted ropes of dark and light, spaced around the rim. It still looks a bit like a grade school art project, but once the cornucopia has baked and dried and is filled with seasonal fruits and veggies, it is impressive.

I'll bet yours will look even nicer than mine...and you can be a Buddy by getting the recipe from Susan's blog (link below), baking it and posting about it by November 26, then letting her know about your post. There will be a Bread Baking Buddy round up shortly after. You know you want to be a Buddy and create your own Harvest Bread Cornucopia!

Be sure to visit the other Babes to see their cornucopia creations! Links are at the right of this blog.

Don't forget, details will be coming soon regarding our Third Anniversary request for recipes. I'll get them up as soon as I have them. In the meantime, scour you archives, cookbooks, binders, etc. for a bread recipe that you think the Babes should make to honor three years of baking bread!

Now on to the cornucopia:
Recipe can be found at Susan's blog Wild Yeast. Thank you Susan for an enjoyable bread project, and one which I most likely would not have attempted. Awesome choice! This post will be sent over to Susan for the wonderland of yeast recipes that is her weekly Yeastspotting event. There may even be some additional photos in the next few days when I'm able to stop running around like a chicken with it's head cut off....we'll see.

XO Elle

Babes Broa for Bread Baking Day 2010

Soft and Savory Broa

The October bread for the Bread Baking Babes is a yeasted corn bread. Kitchen of the Month Blogging from OUR Kitchen hostess Elizabeth piqued my interest by describing the Portuguese Broa that she remembered having when she first moved to her new neighborhood years ago. In hopes of making it as authentic I tried to hunt down white corn flour and meal. Unfortunately all I could find was yellow corn flour and we had some polenta style corn meal in the pantry, so I went with that.

Right from the start it seemed like I was baking a different bread than Elizabeth had, not even including the white vs yellow corn component. Polenta is usually cooked in three times the water as the volume of the corn meal. The recipe called for equal amounts so I ended up using my hands to combine the cooled polenta with the whole wheat and yellow corn flours, plus the amount of white flour we were to start with. When I started mixing that with the ½ cup of water that I’d used to reactivate the dry yeast it was clear that this was a very stiff, not slack, dough…the exact opposite of what Elizabeth had described.

What to do? Well I decided to go for broke and added and additional ½ cup of water, kneading everything together on the board using my hands and the bench scraper. I was having so much fun that I neglected to find out when to add the salt, so I ended up with no slat in the dough so I glazed the finished loaf and sprinkled it with sea salt so that there was some salt on the bread if not in it. I followed along with the recipe until the part where you allow it to rise for 1 – 4 hours. By then (I started the bread after work) I was ready to go to bed. The dough, plate on top, was retarded in the fridge overnight.

After that, except for the egg glaze and sea salt, I followed the recipe and ended up with a moist loaf with a nice salty, crunchy crust, and plenty of corn flavor. The crumb included some texture from the polenta and it was fairly loose without any major air holes, and the loaf was a bit on the flat side but we liked that. Sweetie and Straightshooter really seemed to enjoy it and half the loaf was gone pretty quickly even though we had sliced it thinly. I served it with chili and a salad when it was barely warm. The next day thin slices went into the toaster and came out even crunchier and more delicious, if that is possible.

Thank you Elizabeth, for choosing a bread I might never have tried to make. Very glad that this was our Babes October challenge! Now, about World Bread Day...see below.

If you would like to be a Buddy, bake this flavorful moist bread and post about it by October 29th and let Elizabeth know so that she can send you her badge. Head on around to the other Babes’ sites and you will probably see this bread as it is supposed to be made, not my poor attempt. The links are on the sidebar toward the top.

Last, but not least, next month we will be asking for suggestions for the third Anniversary celebration bread. Somehow between Thanksgiving, Harvest, Christmas and New Years the Babes will figure out the bread for February and we are counting on our friends and Buddies and lurkers to challenge us with great bread ideas. Check back around the middle of November for specifics on how to get those ideas to the Babes. I know, dear reader, that you will surprise and delight us!

This bread goes over to Susan at Wild Yeast for the weekly Yeastspotting event, plus it is my bread for World Bread Day…which, by happy coincidence, is TODAY!..., hosted by Zorra at 1x umruhrem bitte. Last year there was a great deal of participation in World Bread Day so it is likely that this year it will be even more popular as people around the globe reconnect with the older rhythms and rituals that connect us, like baking bread, that are now being recognized as an essential part of our humanity. HAPPY BREAD BAKING DAY!

Head over HERE for Yeastspotting and HERE for World Bread Day and HERE for the Broa recipe.

BBBs Go Long

No, we're not playing football. We're baking the gorgeous long loaves of Brunkans långa.

Gorel from Grain Doe has given the Bread Baking Babes an excellent challenge this month…from scratch graham flour sourdough. It was pretty painless and produced a bread that is out-of-this-world wonderful! You can really taste the wheat flavor, it is slightly sweet, chewy, has a great crust, open crumb


and makes fantastic toast, but is perfect to eat plain, without any adornments. This recipe makes a LOT of bread…two long loaves.

I enjoyed the first loaves so much that I made a half of the recipe using a sourdough graham starter that is a combination of the regular graham starter and my own starter (see end of recipe). It was SOOO good that I baked the half recipe two more times after that with the combo graham starter. The first time I just made one loaf using the dough as it spilled out of the container after it's night in the fridge, then shaping it lightly so that it was a long loaf...but only one long loaf! Two was way too much bread for Sweetie and I to manage and it is so delicious that we found it hard to not eat it all.

The second time I made two baguette shaped loaves, cutting the single long loaf in half and pulling the edges under.

The third time I made two pans of rolls,

glazed with an egg yolk wash.

Unfortunately I think the yeast I was using was too old, so this batch wasn’t as light as the other three, but still delicious if a bit more leaden than I would have liked.

As you can see I really, really like this bread. It has a wonderful, rich wheaten flavor that is hard to resist. Thank you Gorel!

Before we get into the specifics of this great recipe, I would invite you to visit the other Bread Baking Babes to see how they fared with the long loaves. Links are to the right at the top of this blog.

I also want to remind you that you, dear reader, are invited to help the Babes pick their Anniversary challenge for February 2011! We are hoping that in November you will send in suggestions and requests for a bread that you think we should bake to celebrate another year of great Babe bread. So scour your recipe books, check those magazine piles, print outs and bookmarked blogs to find the perfect bread recipe. Details will be provided in November on where to send them. So many breads....so little time!

Since this has the the bread I've been baking, over and over, for the last few weeks, I'm finally sending this to Susan at Wild Yeast for her weekly Yeastspotting event. This is where you will find a weekly collection of bread baking delight and inspiration. Ohhh...great place to get ideas for the Anniversary challenge. She has an archive of bread links that will amaze and delight! Susan also recently posted a video for the most fascinating way to shape a baguette to make rolls that are hooked together...check out the dragon tail shaping...it's way cool.

My bad, I forgot to mention that you can be a Buddy by making this yummy bread, posting it and sending the URL, etc. to Gorel, our delightful kitchen hostess of the month. DO become a Buddy! You have until September 29th.

A little bit of backstory: Brunkan is a nick name for Brunkebergs bageri (the bakery of Brunkeberg, situated in Stockholm), and ”långa” means ”the long one”. When they bake this bread at the Brunkeberg bakery, it is more than two feet long – hence the name. This bread is from the book ”Bröd” (Bread) that Heléne Johansson published last year and which contains the most popular breads in her line.


Brunkans långa

Graham flour* sourdough:

Day 1, morning:
Mix 60g/100 ml/0,42 cups graham flour
with 120 g/120 ml/0,5 cups water.
Cover with cling film and leave at room temp.

Day 1, evening:
Add 60g/100 ml/0,42 cups graham flour and
60 g/60 ml/0,25 cups water.
Mix, cover with cling film and leave at room temp.

Day 2, morning:
Add 60g/100 ml/0,42 cups graham flour and
60 g/60 ml/0,25 cups water.
Mix. By now, the sourdough should be a little active (bubbly). If not, add a teaspoon of honey, some freshly grated apple or a teaspoon of natural yoghurt. Leave at room temp.

Day 3, morning:
Feed the sourdough with 60g/100 ml/0,42 cups graham flour and
60 g/60 ml/0,25 cups water.
Mix, cover with cling film and put in fridge.

Day 4
By now, the sourdough should be ready to use. If you don’t want to use it right away, you can keep in the fridge if you feed it as above a couple of times/week.

*Graham flour can’t be found everywhere. If you want to recreate an exact substitute, here’s what to do, according to Wikipedia:

Graham flour is not available in all countries. A fully correct substitute for it would be a mix of white flour, wheat bran, and wheat germ in the ratio found in whole wheat. Wheat comprises approximately 83% endosperm, 14.5% bran, and 2.5% germ by mass. For sifted all-purpose white flour, wheat bran, and wheat germ having densities of 125, 50, and 80 grams/cup, respectively, one cup of graham flour is approximately equivalent to 84 g (~2/3 cup) white flour, 15 g (slightly less than 1/3 cup) wheat bran, and 2.5 g (1.5 teaspoons) wheat germ.


Brunkans långa
The tall loaf of Brunkebergs bageri
2 large loaves

Ingredients
300 g / 600 g/600 ml/2,5 cups water
562 g / 1125 g/2,48 lb high-protein wheat flour (for 1 loaf: 300 g bread flour, 262 g whole wheat flour)
188 g / 375 g/13,2 oz graham sourdough (see above)
6 g / 20 g/0,7 oz fresh yeast
75 g / 150 g/5,3 oz dark muscovado sugar
13 g / 25 g/0,88 oz honey
15 g / 30 g/1 oz sea salt

Day 1
Mix all wet ingredients in a stand mixer bowl. Whisk together all the dry ingredients in another bowl. With the dough hook attached, add the dry ingredients to the wet, keeping the mixer on a low setting. Work the dough in a stand mixer for 10 minutes. Put the dough in a oiled, plastic box and put the lid on. Leave the dough for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes: fold one side of the dough against the centre of the dough, then fold the other end inwards, finally turn the whole dough so that the bottom side is facing down. Put the plastic box with the dough in the fridge and let it rise over night.

Day 2
Set the oven temp to 250 C/480 F. Leave the baking stone in if you use one.

Pour out the dough on a floured table top and divide it lengthwise with a sharp knife. Put the dough halves on a sheet covered with parchment paper and place another parchment paper or a towel on top. I dusted them with some flour at this point.

When the oven is ready, put in the sheet or shove the parchment paper with the loaves onto the baking stone. Put a small tin with 3-4 ice cubes at the bottom of the oven. (The water releases slowly which is supposed to be better.) Lower the oven temperature to 175 C/350 F immediately after you have put in the loaves.

After 20 minutes, open the oven door and let out excess steam.

Bake for 35 minutes or until the loaves have reached an inner temp of 98 C/208 F.
Let cool on wire.


Second time: Used 1 cup plain flour sourdough starter and added the graham flour/water mixture to it. Each successive day was done just like the recipe. When I made the loaf, I measured out the starter by weight for the first thing into the bowl. There is still a lot of the starter left because I had to feed it twice more than called for…until I had time to bake again. I’ll happily make more of this delicious, versatile bread using the rest of the starter.

Note: the first ingredients listed (not in bold) are the ones I used for the sourdough graham starter (above) which I used for making one loaf. After the dough had risen overnight in a round container with lid I poured it out onto a large, floured board, gathered the ends under to shape it into a long loaf, put the loaf on a baking sheet lined with a silicon mat, sprinkled with a bit of flour, covered it with a tea towel and continued with the recipe as written. It was just as good as the first, but not any better.