Whole Wheat 'Burger' Buns, and a Healthier New Year.

A brand new year, and a fresh blank page: it seems that with each passing year, that happens more and more quickly. I remember this daily now as I think back to when I was the same age as the Kiddo and Christmas hung in the air for what felt like 6 months. The anticipation of Christmas Eve, when our Mexican Feast filled my Gram's little red log home to capacity, was the crown jewel of my year. The week between Christmas and New Year's Eve where we were pretty much free to do whatever and stay up as late as we liked was the best micro-climate of my youth . Even as I got older, I still held Christmas week sacred, using up what vacation time I had to take off most of the time between the 24th and the 31st, to just relax and not do anything related to my normal, routine life.

My week this year did not disappoint. I spent it in the company of some of my favorite people, my Parents. We ate frequently and too much, I whined about my sugar consumption, and made my first vow to lay off it for real. We took naps and watched movies. I did my Amish errands to pick up my egg, flour, and sugar staples, and I even ate lunch with my old boss and some long lost 90-year-old friends. I relaxed so much I didn't even have to feed my sourdough starter, since I had fed it and put it into my fridge the day before I left.

It's only been a few times now that I haven't traveled with my starter, and it still feels a bit like I'm leaving something behind. When I have that living thing on my counter every day, it's a good reminder that "if I take care of you, you'll take care of me". I really do love sourdough baking, and since I have ready access to well fed starter, it's become almost easy to calculate exactly how long until a wild bread can pop out of my oven. But every once in a while, it's so exciting to have the versatility of commercial yeast at my fingertips...

My Mom and I went to a thrift store over the break where I found a copy of Lukas Volger's Veggie Burgers Every Which Way. I read the whole thing cover to cover before I even got back home, and did so even though I was so full during most of my reading that the tempting combinations didn't even pique my appetite. I read a lot of cookbooks, and I haven't been this infatuated with almost everything in a book I've read in quite a while. I want to make everything! The man has a beet and brown rice burger! (And, a cauliflower burger!) It's infinitely inspiring I tell you, and all of it is healthy. While you are waiting for your copy to arrive, you can check out Lukas' equally inspiring website, like I did for a good chunk of my morning...

After a few new days of austere eating (and I've been without sugar now for 3 whole days - outside of a few bites of cream soda creme brulee on New Year's Day), I actually am rewarded with ravenous hunger and appropriate appetite, and those recipes are now completely dogging my every step. When I had only a heel of hybrid sourdough left from two days ago and needed an accompaniment for our soup dinner tonight, I decided to give one of Lukas' burger buns a go - and I am not sorry I did. His headnote states that he's "happy to eat them without anything sandwiched inside", and I would full-heartedly agree. So would both of my picky boys, who ate them and asked for seconds. I made them with the express purpose of having some leftovers for some veggie burgers for tomorrow, but they ended up fueling my excitement for non-wild yeasts!

my first loaf of 2012: hybrid sourdough - but I baked this one in cast iron...

My problem with baking now is that I sometimes don't pay close enough attention to what I'm doing. I was mixing up this dough intending to use whole wheat (strong) flour and bread flour and accidentally opened the jar of AP flour. To a gorgeous caramel colored slurry of water, milk, molasses and a hint of maple syrup, I added 1 cup each bread flour and AP flour, and then added in all of the whole wheat flour as I mixed. My dough was the color of unbaked light gingerbread, and smelled wheaty and slightly sweet - a scent that with 3 days of sugar-freedom I was highly aware of. The recipe below has the flours as written with very few changes from me. Just be careful not to add too much flour, and these should be some of the softest burger buns you've ever had.

Lukas Volger's Whole Wheat 'Burger' Buns (very slightly adapted)
yield 10 buns

• 1 c. warm water (less than 115 degrees F)
• 3 T. warm milk (I used cold milk, and slightly hotter water to warm it up
  
• 1 T. maple syrup
• 2 T. molasses
• 2 T. olive oil, plus additional for coating the bowl
• 2 1/4 t. active dry yeast
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 c. bread flour
• 1 1/4 c. whole wheat flour (I used a high protein whole wheat)
• 2 1/4 t. kosher salt
• 1 egg beaten with 1 T. water or milk for eggwash (I used egg whites, since I had a number leftover from the creme brulee), optional
  
• mixed seeds for garnish (I used poppy, sesame, rolled oats, wheat bran, and chia)
  

In a small bowl, combine water, milk, maple syrup, molasses and olive oil, and stir well to mix. Stir in yeast, and let stand for 5 minutes, until the yeast looks foamy and activated.

In a large bowl, or the bowl of a stand mixer, stir to combine 1 c. of the bread flour, 1 c. of the whole wheat flour, and the salt. Add the activated yeast mixture and mix well. (Volger suggests using a paddle attachment at first if using a stand mixer, but I did it by hand with a Danish whisk, and then switched out to let the dough hook do my kneading.) Add the additional flours to feel (add the whole wheat first, since it's only 1/4), being careful not to make too stiff a dough. Knead 10-12 minutes by hand, or 8-10 minutes with the stand mixer. The dough will feel smooth and elastic, not really sticky. Form the dough into a loose ball.

Coat a large bowl with a bit of olive oil, and place the dough inside. Cover with plastic wrap and leave in a warm place to double in size, 1 to 2 hours. (It's very cold here today, and I actually did my first rise at 90 degrees in my dehydrator! It worked great, and the dough doubled in one hour.)

After the first rise, divide dough into 10 portions (I weighed it, each roll was 89 g. or about 3 oz. - a perfect size for a burger), and place on a parchment lined baking sheet. (Place them at least 3-4 inches apart if you don't want them to touch at all, this is 8 rolls for a standard quarter sheet pan) Cover with a lint-free cloth, and let rise until the buns are doubled in size, another 1-2 hours.

Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 400. Just before baking, brush each roll with the eggwash and sprinkle with seeds if desired. Bake the rolls for about 15 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through.

I know I shouldn't be so surprised when something turns out great, after all shouldn't most published recipes be great? And, don't I know how to bake bread? Why shouldn't I just expect the bread is going to turn out? These could be some of the mysteries that prevent so many people from the the joys of bread baking. But, with each bread attempt, I still learn something. These taught me to realize that I don't care much for heartier Anadama bread, with larger amounts of coal black molasses. I like the flavor of molasses in bread much more when it is tempered to caramel goodness, and soft. Soft bread does have it's place on my table once in a while.

a sharp eye will notice the middle of this is just a bit damp. that's because I was too excited to wait for this bun to cool before slicing into it.

It is my goal to go without refined sugar for the entire month of January. (Julia and I have a dedicated Sugar-Free January Facebook page here, if you want to check it out or participate.) The blackstrap molasses I used today is maybe technically refined. It is a by-product of the cane sugar industry, but it's not unlike boiling down apple cider into cider syrup, or boiling down pomegranates into pomegranate "molasses". My goal for this month isn't to berate myself and get upset, it's only to be more mindful of my sugar consumption - and this includes my fruit intake too. I love vegetables, but fruits do seem easier to grab this time of year. I'm hoping a book like Veggie Burgers Every Which Way will continue to inspire me to eat differently and appreciate different flavors. Judging from just this first recipe, I have no doubts really.

When the month and the year are new, and I feel the same blank slate that many do this time of year, I am happy for the variation in my diet, and thankful that I have the ability to be so choosy about what I eat!



This post has been Yeastspotted.

Daring Baker Challenge December 2011: Sourdough.

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 Andrew Whitley 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!

I guess if I'm honest, at first I was a bit disappointed that our December challenge wasn't panettone, fruitcake, or something else more seasonally suited. But even if personally I questioned the seasonality of the challenge, I was more than excited that the gospel of sourdough was about to be tackled by a wide audience of Daring Bakers! It also gave me a chance to read a little more about other methods of sourdough starters, and re-kindled my excitement for all things bread.

I did not grow an additional starter as outlined in the recipes we were provided since I had already grown my own, and I didn't craft a plain sourdough bread since I have been regularly practicing this now for more than a year. I did feel once again that I fulfilled the spirit of the Daring Baker by challenging myself to make a sweet dough with my sourdough starter - something that outside of pancakes and waffles, I've never done before. My results were visually stunning, but lacking a little in the softness of traditional sweet yeasted breads. I am not about to give up on the quest to transform my sourdough starter into a softer, kinder being... this journey is only just begun.

cinnamon-carmel sauce.

I decided rather last minute before Christmas to make a sourdough wreath using Teresa's (from Northwest Sourdough) recipe. With components like sour cream in the dough and a gorgeous cinnamon scented (and easy) caramel sauce, I knew the flavors couldn't be beat. It also was shaped in a way I had never seen any bread shaped before. Just a little patience and staggered forming times, and 4 near-identical wreaths were resting on my dining room table.

soft dough, a little sticky, but really lovely to work with.

I used Teresa's method of baking the wreaths under a cast iron "lid" of sorts, my overturned 5qt. Dutch oven base. In order for them to fit, I needed to make 4 smaller wreaths, which I weighed out at just over a pound each before forming. I started around 11 am on Christmas Eve, and my first completed wreath was out of the oven to cool just after 8 pm. I had first considered some refrigerated proofing time and setting my alarm to do the Midnight Baker thing, but thought that since it was Christmas after all, I shouldn't tax myself too much. I was also leaving pretty early in the morning on Christmas Day, and didn't want to feel sleepy at the wheel, which can occasionally happen to me when I get too little of solid sleep the day before.

When they came out of the oven, I brushed them with butter, and let them cool about a half hour each (nearly all the way) before tucking them into plastic wrappings to try to preserve a little of the softness that I had already figured would be elusive. I gave two away, and took two with me out to "the farm", and a day later when I finally was able to try a slice, they were a little tough. I wasn't really surprised. The flavor was really good, the dough a little sour, and the cinnamon caramel with chocolate and walnuts or pecans was really a good match. But I've still a lot to learn about wild yeast, and how to coax it into soft breads is not far from the top of the list. I wouldn't say it was a failure, it was just a stronger dough than I would have liked, and that my family was expecting.

I have been mentally obsessed with this post from another of my favorite bread blogs, Wild Yeast. In it, Susan describes the special treatment of wild yeast starter prior to baking a panettone. Several days of balmy 85 degree atmosphere and more frequent (every 4 hours) feedings may be the ticket to softer, more "traditionally textured" sweet bread dough. I am considering a personal, month-long, sugar-free zone for January, but I may have to make an exception for the sake of experimentation... that or I'll have to give it all away. That works for me too.

I am sure you have not read the last from me on the quest for the perfect soft sourdough. Meanwhile, please have a look at the original recipe from Northwest Sourdough that I used for these sourdough wreaths. If I were to eat one hot from the oven, I have a feeling my textural complaints would have been far fewer. Why not reduce the recipe and give it a go yourself!

If you are looking to start a sourdough starter of your very own, this month's Daring Baker Challenge recipe has some starters (made with rye and whole wheat flours) to get you started. (There is also a gluten-free starter and an interesting rice, Brazil nut and flax seed bread to make with it.) I made mine using grapes, and the process took me much longer to get going that the DB instructions suggest. It was well over 2 months before my starter was in any condition to raise a loaf of bread, but that is only my experience. The miraculous thing about wild yeast is that your location and atmosphere and a whole host of other factors will determine your successes and failures. You have only to dive in and start experimenting. If you ask me, it's a good New Year's Resolution to pursue!

If I don't get a chance to post any more kitchen adventures before the end of 2011, this Daring Baker Challenge was an excellent way to end my culinary year. It piqued my interest into a new facet of sourdough baking, and it allowed me to check out other bakers who may have never used a wild yeast starter before. There is always something to learn with wild yeast, and I look forward to a new year full of new experiments with it!

Happy New Year!!

(Oh and one last thing: if you live in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area and would like some sourdough starter, just email me! I am more than willing to give you a starter to work with. I am also open to dehydrating some and mailing it to you, provided you live in the US (since I'm unsure of international wild yeast shipping laws...). It should rehydrate with a bit of care and build up much more quickly than starting completely from scratch.)

Hot Lunch and Vinegar.

I feel like it's been months since I've eaten lunch. At least, the lunches I was used to eating before my Kiddo went to full-day Kindergarten. While most of the time I do make a point to carve out a proper lunchtime for myself, the past month or so has been bread and cheese eaten on the fly type lunch, or cold whatever I had for dinner last night lunch. I was just telling a new friend how the school lunch time for my son is only about 15 minutes long, and how important meal times are to us. Before the Kiddo went to school, we would frequently sit for an hour around the table for lunch, chatting and lallygagging over a proper meal. How is it I've reduced myself to 10 minutes of cold food?

This past two weeks, I have been swamped in sugar. I haven't really tried to eat my fill, but it seems that in testing (and you do need to taste things, just to make sure they are good, right?) multiple sweets many times during the morning, my belly was just aching for some real vegetable food. When half of a sweet potato fell out of the Tetris of my refrigerator around lunchtime today, it was as if I was being beckoned to cook for myself. A hot lunch of vegetable drawer items, sauteed in olive oil and finished off with a bit of hot, home-canned jalapeno brine. Lucky for me, I had a couple of pinto bean tortillas hiding in the freezer that quickly came back to life under the steam of the skillet, and the remains of some cotija cheese I found buried in my cheese drawer. I felt lonely at the table by myself, but fortunately, my eyes wandered across the room to the cider vinegar that I've been putting off for a while now...

Satiated with my wholesome, non-sugared lunch, I started my afternoon by tasting the jars of vinegar. The larger of the two jars I started first, just after pressing the apples for the first time this fall with my Parents. It was pleasantly floral, vinegary but still gracefully reminiscent of the apples we picked. Since I plan to use these vinegars to cook with or dress salads (or drink with seltzer), I am not worried so much that they aren't very strong, not nearly as strong as Bragg's cider vinegar. The smaller of the two jars was considerably weaker but still a bit acidic. I figured it could benefit to stand longer, but I decided to use some right away in my fermented hot sauce I had all but forgotten about.

The vinegar mat that formed on the tops of the smaller diameter jar was much thicker than the larger, shallower jar. I'm not sure if the type of jars I used contributed to the time frames that the vinegars took to complete. I almost suspect so. I saved my "mothers" (if you are local and want some, let me know...), and I'm saving them not quite sure where my vinegar adventures will take me going into the new year. I have taken a break from kombucha brewing, in part because I don't have a huge space to store all my projects and I was a bit worried about cross-contamination. I'd like to get back to daily kombucha consumption, especially since I have quite a cache of tested fruit syrups that have made their way to my freezer!

I had quite a time finding jalapenos this summer, which I remembered when I was eating my taco lunch devoid of any additional peppers. I was able to find an ice cream pail of mixed hot peppers, and I got to pick them alongside an Amish man as we talked about his family and who in it liked hot food. The Amish, for the most part, like spicy things which is kind of surprising to me. I didn't get to make as many candied jalapenos as I had hoped this year, instead I got a pint of wicked orange pepper paste. It was much too hot to eat a spoonful on anything (and I can handle things pretty warm, mind you), so after I fermented it I left it in the fridge for months where I nearly forgot about it. (You can read more about my search for peppers this year over here. The recipe link that I loosely followed to lacto-fermenting my hot sauce is there as well.)

I transferred it to my VitaMix, and added some of the mild vinegar to taste. Taste testing hot sauce is a difficult thing, but I did my best. I threw in a casual soup spoonful of honey and added more of the mild vinegar. This is a pretty hefty heat, but one that hits the front of your tongue first and then moves on fairly quickly. It's not the lingering, throat coating heat of a jalapeno, and it's a good thing, since it's maybe 10 times hotter. I think I got my sauce to a good flavor, but it's nearly water in consistency. No matter, since just a few drops of this stuff will enliven anything I can throw at it for the next year or so. I got one old Frank's Red Hot bottle full, plus two small 8 oz. vanilla extract jars. Even though they were washed thoroughly, I wonder if a nuance of vanilla will be found in the sauce after it sits, or if that hot sauce will just eat its way through any residual vanilla perfume. Time will tell.

I sat down last night to make a quick label for some Blueberry Vinegar, this was the only vinegar success I had after obtaining my original mother of vinegar from Lizzy, my Parents neighbor. I had 3 half pint jars, plus this little re-purposed vial:

I clarified this vinegar by bringing it up to 140 degrees. It's no longer raw, but very pretty!

Since my Husband has been working more evenings, I have lately felt ravenously hungry by the time 5 o'clock hits, too hungry to wait for him for supper. But not so much today. Hot lunch is something I'll have to implement for myself again on a regular basis. I've talked before on the pleasures of cooking for one, and it is such a good feeling. I had no idea what would become of throwing vegetables into my cast iron skillet, and then miraculously tacos appeared. Even eating alone didn't feel quite so lonely when contemplating the vinegar and all of its complexities, though I still felt the pangs of aging as I remembered the solemn fact that my son is now going to be in school, unable to spend the lunch hour with me for most of the year from here on out. I suspect I'll be making labels now for my hot sauce, provided I can think of a clever name that isn't too trite. Maybe I'll ponder that over tomorrow's lunch.

Experimental Sweet Potato Muffins.

I think most sweet recipes have personalities. Ice creams are light and playful, brownies suspicious and full of desire, and muffins are sturdy, the utilitarian farm-girls of recipe lexicon. With less sugar than their cupcakey counterparts, they are also something that most people feel they can indulge in on a near daily basis. I send a muffin to school with my Kiddo each day, and it is true that if I can bake it into a muffin shape, he will probably eat it.

I wasn't really intending to share this recipe. It's been around the block a few times - developed by Kim Boyce in her stellar whole grain baking book and posted by The Wednesday Chef where I plucked it up to help it continue on it's way. I've been testing a new batch of recipes for Andrea Lynn for her forthcoming book on artisan sodas. Using up an experimental sweet potato, I was pleasantly surprised at both how delicious and soft these muffins were, and at my son's enchantment with them. He wanted to eat three after he got home from school yesterday, when they still sat on the cooling racks before their transfer to the freezer. I let him have two, only because it made my heart so happy. He told me they were "as good as Alterra on the East Side's", which is pretty high praise. If I'm going to eat a non-homemade muffin, I go for Alterra's too.

I'd suspect you could use any orange vegetable that's been pureed in these muffins, so long as they equal about a cup total. Since I was using up about 6 oz. of grated sweet potato, I simply boiled it in a little water for about 20 minutes until it was soft enough. I used my immersion blender to blend it smooth, it was a little on the thinner side of vegetable purees but I suspect it added to the softness of the muffins. I also had to omit the dates, since my picky Kiddo will not eat them. I recently put them in granola, and he patiently picked out each one. Really. Every little tiny chunk of date. Dates would make these extra excellent however.

Experimental Sweet Potato Muffins (adapted from Kim Boyce via The Wednesday Chef)

• 1 c. pureed sweet potato or other orange vegetable
• 1/4 c. (1/2 stick) butter
• 3 T. dark brown sugar
• 3 T. granulated sugar
• 1 c. ap flour
• 3/4 c. whole wheat flour
• 1/4 c. pastry flour (the recipe called for whole wheat pastry, but I only had regular on hand)
• 1 t. baking powder
• 1/2 t. baking soda
• 1/2 t. salt
• 1 T. cinnamon
• 1 t. ground ginger
• 1/2 t. allspice
• 1 c. thin yogurt or buttermilk (I didn't need quite as much liquid as the original recipe because I used thinner pureed sweet potato)
• 1 egg
• 1 t. vanilla

Preheat oven to 350.

Sift the flours, baking powder and soda, and spices over a medium sized bowl to combine.

In another medium sized bowl, cream the butter and sugars until the sugar starts to dissolve, about 3 minutes. In a 2 cup glass measure or small bowl, combine the yogurt, egg, vanilla and pureed vegetable, and mix to blend.

Add the dry and wet ingredients alternately to the bowl with the butter, beginning and ending with dry ingredients (3 installments of dry and 2 installments of wet ingredients).

Portion into greased or paper lined muffin tins, and bake for 25-30 minutes until a tester comes out clean. Remove from tin and cool completely on a wire rack.

I feel so fortunate lately to be completely immersed in food. Local projects and testing on top of Christmas baking seems to make me feel like a full-fledged pastry chef, and I love every second of it. I'm trying to find the time now for more in depth projects like this panettone with a specially attended wild yeast that needs to be nursed along at 85 degrees. I'm dreaming about it actually. I wish I had just one more week before Christmas...

Surprises arrive in my days like these muffins, which really appeared out of my desire for not wasting, and took advantage of an oven that was already on. So my apologies for yet another muffin posting, which the food blog world is certainly full up on. But their sturdy, good-natured selves are welcome in my world, their balanced nutrition and hints of sweetness complements to my freezer for quick bites and snacks.

Hungry.

Do you think about being hungry? Hunger is something I actually think of a lot because I tend not to get very hungry. Instead I regularly cook and bake myself little bites here and there as I try to carve out a job for myself in the food world. It suits me a great deal to savor many mouthfuls of food throughout the day... even if a fair number of those bites end up being sweets. I long for the days that I work hard outdoors, for days that long walks and physical activities take me away from my kitchen. On those days, when I’ve allowed enough time to conjure an appetite, even the simplest of foods taste better to me.

While I can think about my hunger in a romanticized way, I realize so many people in our world are deprived of the basics of eating to simply sustain themselves. They aren’t thinking about their next kitchen experiment as I am, or how to maybe make a little money using food as their vehicle. They think about how to keep their families fed.

A while back I read the book by Jonathan Bloom called American Wasteland. If I took anything away from that book, it was the sheer amount of food that our country produces. So much, in fact, that “every day, America wastes enough food to fill the Rose Bowl. Yes, that Rose Bowl - the 90,000-seat football stadium in Pasadena, California. Of course, that's if we had an inclination to truck the nation's excess food to California for a memorable but messy publicity stunt.” (I've quoted that passage on my blog before, but really I have it committed to memory. The image of that stadium heaped with mostly viable food is overwhelming to me.) I have become much better at not wasting food on a personal level, but much can still be done on my part to help take some of that wasted food to feed others who are still really hungry.

Milwaukee has many amazing individuals and organizations who help distribute donated food to those who really need it. One new grass roots organization, FoodFightMKE, was started this fall by OrangeAid interns Joel Rottier from University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, Bryan Padovano from Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and Sallie Stacker and Dominic Mertens-Pellitteri from Marquette University.

FoodFightMKE is an effort to educate more people in our community about the real hunger that exists here, and to partner with and support the Hunger Task Force in their efforts to effectively distribute it. They are using social media outlets to effectively spread the word about hunger, and to engage more people to volunteer and take an interest in this issue.

FoodFightMKE is hosting a Bread and Soup event at the Riverwest Public House this Thursday, December 15. The event runs from 6:00-8:30 p.m, and soup will be donated by area foodies and local chefs (contact kriscollett@gmail.com or 414-807-5193 if you would like to contribute). The volunteers behind FoodFightMKE will be on hand to collect free-will donations on behalf of Hunger Task Force of Wisconsin.

There are also other ways to participate. Check out the FoodFightMKE website, and also the Hunger Task Force website for opportunities to help. You don’t have to give money or food, you can donate a few hours of your time helping to sort or distribute food, or even doing some data entry.

My own ideas on hunger, food waste, and food (re)distribution in America are complex. I remember reading once about a program like CookShop in New York City and thinking that if it were my passion and calling to tend to the nation’s hungry, I would start with a pound of beans and the knowledge of what to do with them. But sometimes, the realities of our culture and the immediate need of sustenance is most important, and what is best for some families is not for me to debate or criticize.

If the need of the hungry speaks to you, find the venue that best suits your abilities and availabilities. If nothing else, pondering the hungry is a good exercise in self-reflection. We can all benefit from the reminders that food is a miraculous thing, not to be taken for granted. It's something that in its basic, most primitive form is beautiful and overwhelmingly complex. It is something that, in the right hands, can transcend the everyday and become an art form. To have a body designed to thrive on eating is such a gift really, and our nation has been blessed with plenty. We should all at least work to be good stewards of what we have been given.