Sourdoughs, buckwheat bread, and cold stuff

Last week I made a bunch of bread, plus some frozen goodies. All the bread turned out well, though not without incident. The ginger ice cream was delicious, like before, the waffle cones were fine, and the mocha sherbet was... well let's just say it was great in a shake.

Breads

First, let's cover the breads. I made the usual adjustments to the recipes, generally reducing the salt and yeast (if any) by half.

Sourdough #1

I made the first sourdough Friday from dough that had been in the refrigerator since Sunday. By the time I was ready to bake, the dough smelled slightly alcoholic. This would be one sour loaf of bread! But in a good way.

The temperature in the kitchen was mild

I shaped the bread around 9:30 a.m. I smooshed it flattish (it had risen fairly high), folded it in thirds, and then started moving the edges under, to create a tight surface.

After shaping

By 11:20 it had risen quite a bit.

During the final rise

I put it in the oven around noon.

Scored and ready to bake

I forgot to put a pan over the bread, so it cooked faster than usual, but otherwise I couldn't tell any difference. It's possible that the crust was harder than usual, which is not a bad thing for me. The inside was still moist.

The crust sang again!

By Saturday night the bread was all gone.

Sourdough #2

Sunday morning I mixed the dough for a loaf of sourdough with poppy seeds and toasted sesame seeds (both of which I'd soaked in hot water the night before). I'd tried making this bread before, when I was just getting started with Josey Baker sourdough, but I'd accidentally omitted the salt, and the result was inedible.

Unfortunately, when I happened to notice that the cookbook's definition of the weight of the required amount of dough (375 g) conflicted with the flour bag's definition for the same volume (300 g), I chose the flour bag's definition. So this was one very wet loaf. I couldn't really slash it.

Just after "shaping"

Shaping was a messy affair, but we managed to roll it in seeds and plop it into a basket. This was at about 12:40, just before I left for a baseball game.

When I returned, at about 4:30 (A's won!), the bread had risen above the basket. Yikes! It wasn't that warm out (maybe 68 degrees), but this new sourdough starter is very enthusiastic. I put the dough in the refrigerator while waiting for the oven to finish preheating.

The end result was very tasty and had a nice texture, but it was very flat. I'll make it again with the full amount of flour.

Buckwheat bread with cinnamon and pecans

I made some buckwheat bread using a Hensperger recipe, but not from the usual cookbook. This recipe was from p. 38 of The Pleasure of Whole-Grain Breads.

Buckwheat bread with cinnamon and pecans

The bread was tasty and good, although everyone had been eating the sourdoughs so much that they rather ignored this bread.

Three-seed whole wheat bread

This half-whole-wheat bread from p. 116 of Hensperger's bread machine cookbook was supposed to have sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, and poppy seeds. I couldn't find the poppy seeds, so I substituted black sesame seeds.

1 T sesame seeds, .5 T black sesame seeds

Other adjustments I made:

• Used light sesame oil instead of sunflower seed oil
• Reduced the salt from 1 t to 3/4 t
• Reduced the yeast to a scant 2 t

It was a tasty bread, and I ate way too much of it.

Tasty warm, with a crunchy crust that'll no doubt go soft

Cold stuff

To help celebrate three birthdays, we made ginger ice cream, mocha sherbet, and waffle cones, all from recipes in The Perfect Scoop. I'd made the ginger ice cream before, but the other two recipes were new to me.

Ginger ice cream

This was delicious, just like before. It's so creamy and subtle that my son initially mistook it for coconut, but then the ginger bite comes on.

Mocha sherbet

This tasted kind of weird, possibly because I used King Arthur's espresso powder instead of real coffee. Or maybe the Dutch cocoa wasn't great. Whatever the cause, we didn't like it as an ice cream-type treat. It smelled and tasted like frappuccino mix instead like delicious mocha.

However... it made great milk shakes! We blended it with milk (no additional sugar) and topped it with whipped cream and a few candied cherries in syrup. Delicious!

Waffle cones

This was the first time we broke out the cone maker I'd gotten a year or so ago. Somehow, I'd thought it would make sugar cones, but it doesn't. It makes waffle cones. I don't really like waffle cones. They're too big, for one thing. If I'm going to have a cone, a sugar cone is the only kind I've ever liked.

Still, the machine and the recipe (from The Perfect Scoop) made reasonably good waffle cones, though it took us a while to figure out how to shape them without burning fingers or leaving a big hole at the bottom.

I'm going to see if I can find a sugar cone shaper and recipe.