Gumming Up The Works

Ever heard of Xanthum Gum? It’s the secrete ingredient people use to make non gluten stuff glue the non-gluten flours to make bread. Apparently, this is one of those occasions for too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Needless to say, I’m back to making adobe bricks…that taste like beans and almonds.

My mistake was thinking that I would need on tablespoon of Xanthum Gum for every cup of flour…seemed like a fair trade-off, so this time around I’m going to make it with a teaspoon of XG for every cup of flour. And hope, pray, that it’s sticky enough to rise together but not too sticky to stick to the bottom of the pan….or for a week at the bottom of your stomach.

Going Nutty

People consider me a bit nutty because when I find something new I completely immerse myself in the process and learning everything I can about it….whatever it is at the time. So, while doing research for Gluten Free flours for bread I had this epiphany: Why can’t I use these flours in gluten-rich bread. I normally try something when I’ve seen it’s been done by someone else, and then make variations around that. I’ve never heard of almond bread…or almnd enhanced bread (if that’s a better way to put it). I’m trying to perfect a hight protein lower carb bread that will keep my carb-hating, fat-avoiding, and politically-vegetarian family members happy.

Nuts. Nuts have a high protein, low carb, okay kinda fatty but in a good way source to plump up the bread in a healthy way. Bob’s Redmill offers Almond meal/flour and though I bought it for my gluten-free experiments I thought I’d add a bit to my bread pale and see what happens. And what happened was pure magic. It gives the bread a more complex taste, the texture is heartier but not necessarily heavier. It toasts like a dream, and don’t even get me started on the heavenly french toast it made for dinner a night or so ago. I’d recommend this process to anyone that wants to perk up their whole wheat bread. It’s worth the %5.00 investment in a small bag of Almond flour for the extra protein (about 16g of protein for a 1/2 of kernels….I don’t know how many are in a half cup of meal…sorry, I’m not that good at puzzles) and a richer flavor is well worth it.

Dumb Bunny Bread

Tommy Hopkins had a way of explaining the learning curve. There are four stages of learning something, and I’ve applied them (in my own words) to baking bread:

1) Unconscious incompetence – The state of mind where you are succeeding without know why but EVERYTHING is going your way so you must be totally awesome at this new path you’ve chosen.

2) Conscious incompetence – The the bottom falls out, and reality smacks you upside the head when you realize you really don’t know what you’re doing, or even how you did it before successfully. As you start to pack up your measuring cups and retire your wheat grinder you try again, this time following a set of simple, spelled out rule….like following the recipe.

3) Conscious competence – After setting out a plan, work the plan and steadily gaining confidence you realize that you can do this, you can be successful. As long as you work the plan.

4) Unconscious competence – The plan has become woven into your genetic fabric, you no longer have to think about it. You have ARRIVED.

So, what does this have to do with dumb bunny bread? Dumb Bunnies happen when you are under the delusion and think you’re at step four….and then forget the yeast.

Sugar…..ah, Honey Honey (Originally Posted 24 Sept 2009)

So, I’ve been trying to perfect my apple cinnamon bread, made with the apples from the cannery. If you put in just the right amount you get this cake like texture at the top and a denser bead on the bottom. Not exactly what I wanted for a consistent bread. So, I add more apples and I get a brick. A good tasting brick, but a brick nonetheless. So, Patrick wants me to make his roommates some “welcome to the apartment” bread. I’m sure he’d tell them that he baked it himself, but I digress. So, I had finished up my apples and thought I’d make some raisin bread. Raisins are reduced grapes, the apples are dehydrated apples so I figured I’d soak the raisins like I did the apples and everything would be hunky-dory……you’d think….

So, when I got up the next morning the bread, again was a brick and there weren’t any raisins in it but it was this really nice russet color and sweet tasting brick. So, I figured the paddle that mixes and kneads the bread pulverizes the raisins, which is good if you want raisin flavored raisin cinnamon bread. I realized that was what was happening to most of my apples in the apple bread too, but the whole “brick” thing, honestly scared me.

I know that sounds melodramatic, but I just got Frankie up and running again, and now he’s acting like he’s forgotten how to make a whole loaf of bread….so, using a hybridized form of the scientific method and dumb luck I started to postulate what I had done differently between the fully formed, though not totally mixed bread. The only difference is I thought it would be cool if I used half the measure of sugar as brown sugar. Apparently, yeast, as a fungus, is a particular sugar-avore. I tried it twice, and got bricks. (Did I mention the birds and squirrels are eating really well at the Gartner house these days?)

Well, with that deduction deduced I decided to task Frankie with something easy….plain old white bread. No wheat, not funny sugar….just white bread. And might I add, it was the best bread I have ever made. So, I knew Frankie was fine. Thank goodness.

So, then I thought, well, Honey is a lot like sugar, I’ll use that. I’m a purest when it comes to honey, I love the cheap clover honey you get from the grocery store. The stuff we grew up with before the Whole Foods and Organic people introduced us to Lavender and Orange Blossom honey. So, I went back to wheat and added the honey to the water. The first batch came out good, and you could really taste the honey, but having an interruption in my process (putting the sugar in with the water instead of after the flours) I forgot to put in salt. I mention this because though the bread tasted flat, you could definitely taste the honey. So, yes, I cranked up another batch tout suit and the wheat bread and honey with the salt canceled out the flavor of the honey and I still didn’t get the rise that I would prefer for the amount of ingredients put in.

So, after this you’re probably asking, what did I learn….Sugar, nothing special is what I need to feed the yeast. Honey is for the top of the finished bread and though I can’t do a CarFax on my bread machine, I’m pretty sure that it was owned by a little old lady that only used it on Sundays, which is why my loaves aren’t reaching their full potential….the machine is tired. So, to be kind, I’m giving it a rest. But, trust me, when I recall him from his vacation, we’ll be trying toasted wheat and I’m getting enough courage to try the gluten free breads. There’s a new grain that I want to try…It’s like Quinoa or Quinto or something like that. It’s an Indian grain from the mountains of Columbia. It’s like their rice. Gluten free, high in protein and has a low glycemic value. So, it’s sort of a win-win-win. Stay tuned.

It’s Alive! ALIVE!!! (Originally Posted 25 Aug 2009)

Okay, I know I said in my last post that I didn’t think I could fix the drive belt because of my general lack of aptitude for mechanical processes. I’m so glad I was wrong! And it was soooo much easier than I imagined. I guess Hitachi realized the belt would be a weak link and placed it just above the plate on the bottom of the machine where any Tom, Dick or Sally can access it.

Since the machine was built in the early 1990′s it has since been End-Of-Lifed from Hitachi so parts and extra pans and paddles are going to be an issue. I did my normal Google-ing and went to my on-line owners manual there was an additional page added by the company that scanned it onto the world wide web….Breadmaker Guru….it’s the place to go if you have a bread maker and want extra stuff. They made the belt for the machine because it doesn’t match the one I took off, but it still works….and if it breaks again I’ll just order a new one. For $10 and a little elbow grease I now have bread kneading and taking in my machine ready for dinner tonight!

I’ve been thinking about a name for him since he’s come back from the dead. I am one of those people that name items that give me trouble just so I can yell at them by name. I thought about Lazarus as a name, but I didn’t so much as raise him from dead as I adjusted the mechanics, so the only other dead mechanically coming to life is Frankenstein. So, I have christened him FrankenBrot, Frankie for short. So, if I slip and refer to my machine as Frankie, you’ll of whom I speak.

I’ll get back to perfecting the apple bread to post soon.

Pamela

RIP: Hitachi HB-B101 (Originally Posted 16 Aug 2009)

Sad news. I tried to bake apple cinnamon bread for breakfast this morning but nothing happened inside the breadpan. I thought it could be that I mixed the wet apples with the flour and it dried and created something that the machine couldn’t mix (which could have also been the COD), so I tried to mix a new batch for dinner. Again nothing. My poking and probing has proven that the pan works, the little thing on the bottom of the machine works, so I’m thinking it’s the drive belt which is something I can’t fix. So, if you hear of a good deal for a breadmaker, let me know. I’ve got some feelers out on CraigsList, one is my machines identical twin so I can keep my bread pans and everything. Obviously, bread updates will be on hold until I get a new one. I’m sure glad I didn’t give away all the store bought bread out of my freezer when I got the maching.

BTW, the apple Cinnamon bread is beyond yummy. I’m still working out the recipe, but as soon as I have it I’ll post it in the recipe section of the site.

Thanks for reading!
Pamela

Kneaded Lessons (Originally Posted 14 Aug 2009)

I’m starting to get quite proficient at baking bread in my little bread maker now. At least I thought I was until I had a bad batch come out of the pan. It took me a few days to figure out what I did to cause the short, dense, dry loaf of bread….

I spent some time the evening before grinding my wheat in my coffee grinder, filling my containers with both, and then I joined the two, mixing them together at 2:1 white and red so I can just pull out a cup or two as I needed it. I figured I’d make my 2 cups wheat two cups flour while I was putting in the ground wheat but somewhere my mind changed to doing 1 cup ground wheat to 3 cups flour. You can see my mistake. My bread ended up getting 5 cups of flour total and I ended up with something that looked like an adobe brick.

As I was pondering the cause of this mistake, I saw in the shadows of this solution a common thread that often repeats through my life. I start out on one path towards a goal and in the middle get tempted, or find a different route and instead of being stalwart and steadfast on the path I have chosen I go towards
the path that I feel would be “easier” or “better”. I do eventually get to the end of that journey, quite often not exactly where I wanted to be, only to find, like the bread, that it’s too weak to build on and too dry to eat.

In With The Read Out With The White (Originally Published 4 Aug 2009)

I baked with red wheat last night. It ground just fine, I was thinking it would be harder than the white but I’d say that it actually ground better than the white wheat.

The bread came out with a better texture, but I’m not entirely sure if it’s because of the red wheat or because I actually worked the instructions with the tools that the machine was provided with. It came with it’s own spoon but instead of using it I used the Large Spoon to mean Tbl. and the medium spoon to be Tsp. I was almost right. So, I now have the recipe correct, as well as the “cake” and family standard loaf. I thought it wise to be a little more methodical about my kitchen experiments by writing down the different varieties that I’ve concocted so far so I can refer back to them in time.

I was pecking around the different food sites last night and I found instructions on how to toast the wheat berries. I think the red wheat would do well with toasting, adding a nutty flavor to the bread. Another idea I had/saw was using a different kind of oil (I use vegetable oil) like walnut oil to give it a deeper taste. I’m wondering if I could use brown sugar, toasted wheat berries and walnut oil to make bread with, but I’m not sure if the yeast will be hindered by the molasses in the brown sugar of it is a non-discriminatory kind of fungus.

So, my recipes are:

“Cake” bread – 1 cup white wheat flour and 3 cups white flour
Standard Bread – 3 cup white wheat flour and 1 cup white flour
Red Wheat “Cake” Bread – 1 cup red wheat flour and 3 cups white flour with correct measurements for the bread machine.

This little experiment has ignited a desire to go further….like make jam and jelly too. We got in the Bithell Farms fruit today, with dark sweet cherries. I love cherry jam, so I’m thinking that if I can make some nice yummy jam out of the nice yummy dark cherries to go on the yummy “cake” bread……..then I read the instructions on how to make the yummy jam. I’m going to start checking to see if someone has come up with a home jam making machine….my prowess in the kitchen isn’t up to par for dealing with hot glass and sealing baths.

Warm Bread and Early Mornings (Originally Posted 27 July 2009)

I love the timer feature on my bread maker. I set it so the bread would be done by 5:30 this morning and then had fresh warm bread for breakfast at 6:00. I love the very top of the loaf, which is strange because I don’t and never liked the heels of store bought bread.

I talked with Karla after Relief Society yesterday about how much wheat I should put in. I told her of my idea of going to the farthest extreme since the one cup of white wheat didn’t seem to give the bread any body, though it was like cake, it wasn’t what I want in a daily kind of bread. Cake, as you can imagine, has a very short shelf life in my family. So, she suggested I try three cups instead of full on white wheat for this loaf.

The bread came out very light, not quite as wheaty looking as I had thought it would, but it wasn’t as dense as I thought it would either. I might have to break into a can of red wheat to see if I can get the color and texture I’m looking for. I’ve heard cooking with too much red wheat, or all red wheat, is equivalent to baking adobe bricks, so just enough to enhance color, texture and weight without sacrificing anything.

I’m going to hold off baking more bread until we finish this one. It seems to have enough wheat to make it “bread” in my house and not “ooooh, bread!” so, I guess you can say, the new bread smell has worn off. I also want to see if this is more wheat than my family can handle. My family has always eaten wheat, either as bread or cereal, so it’s not that our systems can’t handle it. But also in the back of my mind is the case of my friend, she loved pasta, bread, soy sauce, etc, only to find out she had developed Celiac’s (not an alien from Star Trek, I checked) which is an autoimmune reaction to gluten intolerance. See, I’m expecting Murphy to post a new law requiring now that I have a garage of wheat I won’t be able to eat it. Irrational I know, but my reality none the less.

I was blessed with two pails for my bread maker, so I’m going to mark on Gluten Free and try to make bread that my friend can eat. (It’s best to keep all things gluten away from all things not gluten…depending on the severity of their reactions) And it’s always good to have variety of breads to pull out of the pail….I just need learn how much Xanthum Gum to mix with the rice, bean, soy, and almond flours…if that’s the route I want to go with her bread. So, if anyone out there has any experiences on how they’ve made Gluten Free bread, please share.

Post again soon!
Pamela

In Goes The Wheat (Originally Posted 25 July 2009)

My first batch of wheat, after working through some of the niggly little
problems of size and salt distribution, came out like cake….or so my mother called it. It was wonderful to get up this morning and pull the pail out of the bread machine and have warm bread for breakfast.

I’ve started with just 1 cup flour or 1/4 of the flour total. It gave the bread a light, very light, brown hue and I couldn’t even tell if it was anything other than the normal white bread I’ve been making. I’m thinking twice about my original plan of ramping up slowly and just doing the next batch of 100% white wheat and see where it is on the acceptance meter. Then working my way backwards with the white flour I should be able to find exactly what I like for my base bread. I’m hoping from there to be able to add things like cinnamon and raisins. I’m going to try and put that bread in before church tomorrow so I can have something to go with dinner tomorrow night.

It’s still such a novel thing in my family to have fresh bread that one loaf doesn’t last with all the family drifting in and out. Hopefully the new bread smell will wear off and I’ll be able to bake bread maybe twice a week. Cross your fingers!

Still baking!
Pamela