We Knead to Bake - 8 - 1 Crunchy Hard Pretzels

Having skipped a few months in between and making up for those meant that I had a set breakfast idea for Monday mornings. I scheduled all those baking experiments for the week end when I assigned some jobs to the rest of the members at home. Thus I had baked the Torcettini di Saint Vincent and the Bialys baked, though yet to be posted in this blog.
The advantage of baking with this group is that you get to read a lot of discussion focused on the given bread of the month. You come across unexpected tips that may help you. Most importantly, we are introduced to baking breads that I have never come across nor have the patience to look for.  Also Aparna, our group's mentor, shares a lot of information about the history of the bread, the origin and such.
During the month, when a fair number of members have attempted the baking, we start nagging for a glimpse into the next one. We play guessing games and have our fun. Repeatedly, members were showing interest in Pretzels. Hence Aparna decided that we bake them this August, the eighth bread of the year.

She had given us the recipe for these hard pretzels, while giving us an option of trying soft pretzels from an earlier post in her blog. Pretzels were something, I have only had at an Auntie Anne's Pretzels outlets and the hard salty pretzel sticks that used to be sold like biscuits. So I approached baking them with a lot of misgivings initially. I did not have to, for they turned out great in taste while the shape could have been done with some patience. Not to be discouraged, I baked them again, this time shaping them better while having the taste just as great.
The soft pretzels will follow today's post, in a day, not to crowd two recipes in one post.
The recipe I am sharing here is as Aparna had given. I reduced the proportions to bake fewer in number.

Crunchy/ Hard Pretzels
(Adapted from Alton Brown's recipe)
Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups of warm water (40 Degrees C/ 110 degrees F)
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
4 1/2 cups all purpose flour ( and a little more, if necessary)
2 teaspoons salt ( you may want to decrease if you are planning to add pretzel salt or coarse salt while baking)

For the soda bath:
6 cups water
2 tablespoons baking soda/ sodium bi carbonate

Eggwash (1 yolk added to 2 tablespoon water and whisked) ( optional)
Pretzel salt or coarse salt crystals

Method:

Add the warm water to the yeast and sugar. Leave aside for a few minutes until the yeast is frothy indicating that it is active.

Add salt to the flour and to this add the yeast mixture.

Knead until you have a soft elastic dough that is smooth, slightly sticky to touch, but pulls away from the sides of the bowl. If the dough is very sticky, add a few more teaspoons of flour only.

Shape the dough in a ball and place in an oil coated bowl, turning the dough around so as to coat it slightly with the oil. This helps in the dough not drying on the surface.
Cover the bowl and allow the dough to double in volume. This might take about an hour or so.

Take the dough out and deflate it knocking all the air out.

Dust the working surface lightly with flour. roll the dough out in a 12"X12" square. Using a pizza cutter, divide the dough into 36 smaller square pieces. It is easier dividing thus, than pinching out exact portions.

Oil your palms very lightly to prepare to work on the bits of dough. Work only as many as you will be able to bake in one batch, keeping the rest of the dough covered.Also use oil in frugal quantities, or else you will not be able to roll them well.

Working on one square piece, flatten it a bit and tightly roll it into  a cylinder thinner than a pencil.

Roll this out in a 15"long rope. Make a U shape with tapering ends. Bring the two ends to cross at about 4 inches from the ends forming a circular shape with 4" long arms.Cross the lower arm over the upper and flip them on top of the circular base. This will resemble the chest area of a person who has crossed arms to touch the opposite shoulders.

Place the shaped dough on a greased tray leaving 1/2 an inch space between them.

When you are ready with your batch of shaped dough, cover the tray with a damp cloth to prevent them from drying.

Now prepare the baking trays first before doing the soda bath.

Line the trays with baking sheets. Lightly smear oil on the lining.

Place a large non-aluminium  utensil filled with six cups of water on the stove. when the water boils, add 2 tablespoons sodium bi carbonate. Allow the mixture to froth and when it is done, lower the heat to simmer.

Carefully slide a pretzel into this soda solution. Allow it to cook on one side just for 10 seconds and turn it over. cook again this side for 10 seconds only. Remove this from the water with a slotted spoon and place it on a tray.

Repeat this with the rest of the shaped pretzels.The pretzels will cook in the water and swell.

Do not allow them to stay in the water for longer for you will end up with a slimy dough.

Arrange the pretzels in the baking tray.

Give the egg wash if you are doing so. 

You mat add the salt crystals to them at this point too.

Pre-heat the oven to 180 Degrees C and bake the pretzels for 40 to 50 minutes until they are crunchy brown.

You may instead make pretzel sticks. For this, at the stage for rolling, use lesser dough and roll out very thin sticks of required length and bake them for a lesser time at the same temperature.

You may also make pretzel bites. In this case, do not roll out the 12" sided square. divide the dough in four porions and roll each portion into a rope of 1" diameter. Cut each rope into 1 1/2" bits. Proceed with the soda bath and then bake. Again the baking time has to be adjusted whilethe temperature is 180 degrees in this case also.

Stay tuned for the next post on Soft pretzels.
Please check Aparna's post where the other members have also shared their links with their Pretzel baking experiments.

We Knead to Bake - 6 Baked yeasted Doughnuts

This may be a bit confusing that I posted a bread few days ago and numbered it ‘We knead to Bake 7’ while this has been numbered 6. I had missed a few breads that the members of the group had done. Now I am trying to bake those and post them too.
The first Friday of June has been marked in the US of A as National doughnut Day. The first National doughnut Day dates back to 1938, to raise funds for the Salvation Army. It was that during 1917, the First World War, the Salvation Army volunteers made them for the homesick American soldiers who were then serving in France. They were so popular that later a day had been marked to celebrate them.

 

Aparna had suggested we bake doughnuts in June. I was able to bake them much later and post them only now.

There was a time that to me bread meant only the regular sandwich ones or buns. Even if I were to spot anything other than those, I may not have tried them. Only when we moved to Malaysia and during the initial days of hotel accommodation, I ventured to try the varieties that came in our breakfast bread basket. I was particularly fond of the sugar dusted doughnuts. Later, my friend warned me that they were fried stuff which led me to approach them with caution. 

I have, in my books, a recipe for the fried doughnuts. This month's is not; I cannot claim that these are healthier and such. But they were sure better tasting and stayed soft for a day longer. I set aside a Saturday and my husband and daughter were around to do a few errands. So we baked a few, glazed, jam filled and pops. This is a recipe that I might use often for we liked them much.

Recipe adapted from Lara Ferroni's Doughnuts.

 

Ingredients:

1/4 cup superfine sugar

1 cup warm milk (45C/115F)

3/4 tablespoon instant yeast (or 1 tablespoon active dry yeast)

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups cake flour (or all-purpose flour) divided, plus more for kneading

100gm butter, cut into 1 inch cubes 

For the topping:

75 to 100 grams butter, melted

1 cup superfine sugar and 2 tablespoons cinnamon (more or less, depending on your taste), mixed together

And

Glaze of choice - Maple syrup and heavy cream

And 

Jam to be piped in

Method:

I used the processor to knead but you can do this by hand also.

Place sugar, milk, yeast, salt and vanilla in the processor bowl and pulse to mix well. 

Add the cake flour and 1 cup of all-purpose flour. Process this adding a little more of the flour as necessary till the dough is thick and pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

Add the butter pieces one at a time and process till there no large chunks of butter are left in the bottom of the bowl. 

Now add a little more flour until your have a soft, pliable and elastic dough that is most but not overly sticky.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead gently until the dough no longer sticks to your hands. 

Shape the dough into a ball and place in a lightly greased large mixing bowl. Turn the dough around to coat well with the oil. 

Cover with a damp cloth and leave it rise till double in volume, say for about an hour.

Punch the dough down, roll out to a 1/2" thick somewhat circular disc. 

Cut out doughnuts using a doughnut cutter of 3” diameter and 1” diameter holes.

If you’re making doughnuts to fill with jam, do not cut out the holes.

Place the doughnuts and the holes on parchment lined or lightly greased baking sheets, leaving at least 1” space between them.

Re-roll the scraps and cut out more doughnuts. 

I used the last scraps of dough by pinching off bits, rolling them into balls and baking them as pops.

Let them rise for about 20 minutes or till almost double in size.

Pre heat the oven to 200 Degrees Centigrade.

Bake the doughnuts at 200 C  for about 5 to 10 minutes till they are done and golden brown. Do not over bake them.

Take them out of the oven and immediately brush them with the melted butter and then dip them into the cinnamon sugar mixture. 

For  jam filled the doughnuts, allow them  to cool. 

Place the jam into a piping bag with a writing nozzle/ tip and press into the doughnut from the side and gently press out the jam into the doughnut till it starts oozing out. Jam doughnuts do not need too much jam to fill them.

For glazed doughnuts, let them cool completely.

Prepare the glaze of choice and then dip one side of the doughnut in the glaze and  set.

To make the Maple syrup glaze, I mixed 1 cup of icing sugar with 1/3 cup heavy cream and mixing in enough Maple syrup to achieve a slightly thick mixture that set quickly in a thick glaze.

For some interesting facts about doughnuts check out this post and there you may also find links to other members' posts. 

Green gram and oats dosa

Sometimes planning for breakfast on lazy weekends when I have no clue where to start with makes it a task I can do without. I ask my husband if he had something specific in mind and then I can go about it. But the usual reply will be "whatever you think is good enough".  That is some help I was hoping for. I also want to get away from the regular on the menu dishes only when I have time on hand. There is not much I do when it is just the two of us. Now that my daughter is here, she comes up with her wishlist and my husband has no option but to go with it. Thus, when she asked me why I had not posted this dosai with whole green gram on the blog so far, I had the Saturday's breakfast set.

I usually adapt the recipe from Ms. Mallika Badrinath given in the book 100 Tiffin Varieties. This time I put my own proportions and varied the ingredients. I had some white oats on hand that needed to be used up quickly. So, I soaked the green gram overnight, the oats was given a thorough wash and left to keep the moisture for a few minutes before grinding. Since this is one dosai that does not require fermentation, I put the ingredients to grind in the morning and let the batter sit until only I made the side dish. the green chillis and the whole gram gave the dosai a nice green colour. The oats gave it some softness and it was perfect for us.

Susan's My Legume Love Affair is now an event taken up by Lisa's Kitchen. This month's Edition 61 is being hosted by Aparna. I would love this recipe to be featured there.

Ingredients:
Makes 10 slightly thick Dosais
1 & 1/2 cups whole green gram/ mung beans
1/2 cup white or quick cooking oats
5 green chillis (adjust according to heat and required spice level)
2 tablespoons horse gram (optional)
Salt to taste
Few teaspoons cooking oil

Method:
Wash the green gram and the horse gram giving a few rinses. Drain and soak them together in sufficient water for a few hours. I soak them overnight.
About half an hour prior to grinding, wash the oats clean and drain allowing it to retain some moisture.
Run the soaked legumes along with the green chillis. Once they have been ground coarsely, add the oats and run the machine for a few minutes more to achieve a batter that is not very fine.
Remove the batter from the jar of the machine and add the salt. Give a few brisk stirs to mix the salt.
Heat the gridle/ non stick pan. Drop a ladle full of the batter and spread in circular dosai.
Drizzle some oil over the batter.
Flip it over and when both sides are done remove from the pan.
Serve hot with chutney of choice.

You may adjust the texture of the batter according to the thickness you desire for the dosai. I usually have it thick and like to pat it around the pan with my palm. It is also easy to spread like regular rice and dhal ground dosais.
You may chop onions and add to the batter or spread them over while cooking the dosai.
Though fermentation is not required, there is no harm making the batter ahead for later use.
I have served them here with tomato-onion gojju and milagai podi.
Enjoy them with your choice of side dishes.

We Knead to Bake - Savoury Kugekhopf

It has been very quiet here for the past few months. We had relocated to a new country and thus the lull. It seems to me that this once it has taken longer than usual to be fully settled and be back in routine.
I have had to miss baking along with the group, guided by Aparna for the last three breads. Those, I am soon baking and will also share the recipes. This month's chosen bread was a savoury Kugelhopf. Kugelhopf is a sweet cake baked with yeast. Regarding the origin and related history of this cake please read them in Aparna's  post. Also that it is baked in a specific pan thus giving it a rounded and risen shape. It is baked in many regions not just as an everyday dish, but also to mark special occasions.

We trod away from the traditional sweet version and tried the lesser known spiced savoury bread for this month. However, I did not have the right type of pan and had to bake it in the normal loaf tin. We liked the spices and the texture of this slightly heavy bread. It pairs well as a side for soup or even with tea. It also makes for a good breakfast, which we enjoyed.

This bread had eggs in the list of ingredients which I have substituted with flax seed powder. The given quantity of ingredients were sufficient to bake one big loaf in the regular size pan. If you are using a bundt pan or the kugelhopf pan it will require an 8" diameter pan.

Ingredients:
3 to 3&1/2cups of all purpose flour
2 teaspoons instant yeast
1 teaspoon salt ( or more as per individual's taste)
75 grams butter at room temperature
3/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons flax seed powder mixed with 6 tablespoons warm water ( this is substitute for 2 eggs lightly beaten)
1 teaspoon oil
1/3 cup chopped green bell peppers
1/3 cup firm tomatoes, seeds and pulp removed and chopped fine
1 cup onions finely chopped
1/2 cup any sharp cheese diced
1/3 cups coarsely chopped walnuts
1 1/2 teaspoon coarsely crushed black pepper
1 teaspoon dried thyme

Method:
Put 3 cups of flour, yeast, and salt in the bowl of the processor. 
Pulse a couple of times to mix. Then add the butter in small parts, and process till well incorporated. 
Warm the milk slightly. Add this to the above and process till mixed. 
Add the flax seed water mixture to this and process till mixed. The resultant will be a soft and sticky dough. Knead some more, adding more flour, a little at a time and just enough till the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Do not add more flour than absolutely necessary. 
This dough will be very soft, elastic and just short of sticky. Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl, cover and keep aside to rise until double in volume. This can take from 1 1/2 hours to 2 1/2 hours.
Meanwhile, heat 1/2 a teaspoon oil in a pan. Add the chopped green bell pepper, the tomato and a pinch of salt and stir-fry till the raw smell disappears but the vegetables are still crisp and crunchy. Remove and keep aside. 

In the same pan, add the remaining 1/2 teaspoon oil and sauté the onions with a pinch of salt till they turn golden brown. Remove and mix them with the tomatoes and bell peppers and keep aside.
Oil the walls and floor of the pan. Place some of the chopped walnuts in the bottom of the mould. If  using a loaf tin, keep aside some walnuts to press on top of the dough after the second rise, just before baking. 
Once the dough has risen, deflate it. Then work the cheese, stir-fried onions, bell pepper and tomato, the remaining walnuts, black pepper and thyme into the dough.Roll the dough out and spread the above mixture over the surface, fold the dough over and then knead it. This will ensure uniform incorporation of the “filling”. The dough will be a bit sticky, so it is recommended to use a scraper to help with the kneading. do not add more flour.

If using a kugelhopf mould or a circular bundt pan, roll the dough into a long log enough to fit into the mould comfortably. Lift the “log” of dough and place it in the mould in a circular fashion and pinch the two ends together to close the “circle” of dough. Cover and let the dough rise for about an hour or so, until it reaches the edge/ rim of the mould.
I had to just roll it well in a cylinder and fit into my loaf tin. I pressed the walnuts kept aside earlier on the top of this before the second rise.
Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees C. Bake the kugelhopf at 200 degrees C for about 35 to 40 minutes until the top is golden brown and sounds hollow when it is tapped. 

When done, allow to cool slightly and remove from the pan/ mould. Let it cool on a rack. Slice and serve. 
This Kugelhopf should serve about 10 people and is also good for breakfast, as a snack or served with a simple soup.

 

What I am leaving behind - Black and White Wednesdays

This is the last week for us in Lagos. Just saw the last of my packages loaded on to the movers' truck for stuffing and shipping last weekend. It is a back breaking task I do once every few years, that now my friends think I am a pro at it.
The home that was, is back to a shell of a house, but my small pots are blooming with their plants. Some sprouts are also showing promises of lush, only I will leave them with hopes of someone would care.
There will be a new home to set up and newer plants will bloom in the garden, yet it is not easy letting go and allow them to die.

 

Aparna is hosting this 78th week's Black and White Wednesdays, a culinary and food related photo event.
The event is the brainchild of Susan of The Well seasoned Cook and is currently being put together by Cinzia of Cindystar
My entry to the week is titled "The street vendor". There is this man who brings on his push cart his wares ranging from plastic trash bins to aluminium cooking utensils and some small stainless steel stuff in my home town.