Spent grain bread, sourdough onion rolls, cornbread, bread to go, and starting a starter

This past week, I made spent grain bread successfully, a relief after last time's weirdly low loaf. I also cooked a couple of great cornbreads, made sourdough onion buns again, brought bread on a family trip, and started making a starter.

Starter

Why do I need a third starter? I don't, so I converted my white starter (50-50, by volume). But why convert it? I'm beta testing an app, Bread Boss, which guides you through a variety of sourdough bread recipes. Now's the perfect time to test, since I'm staycationing the two final weeks of the year.

Spent grain bread

I used the same ingredients for my spent grain bread as last time (and almost the same as the time before). The only differences were in the prep:

• I put in the salt, olive oil, and honey first, with the water and spent grain.
• The spent grain was frozen, so I nuked it with the water until it was warm (but not as hot as last time).
• I took out the bread as soon as it was done.
• I didn't use the delay timer.

This loaf wasn't as tall as the first one, but it had great taste and texture. It was a bit lopsided, which is common when baking in the bread machine, but hadn't happened the two times before.

The outside

This recipe, especially with the spent grain from North English brown ale, is a winner.

The inside

Cornbreads

I used The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook recipe for Southern Skillet Bread (p. 496), and the results were so good I made the cornbread again just a few days later. Here's what was different from the recipe:

• Instead of 3/4 cup buttermilk, use 3T buttermilk powder and 3/4 cup water.
• Instead of bacon drippings, use 2t roasted peanut oil and 2t vegetable oil (safflower, I think).
• The usual sodium reduction measures:
• No salt
• Sodium free baking powder and baking soda

I'd used all peanut oil before, which I rather liked, but it seemed to taste too peanutty for our guests. Half the amount seemed perfect.

I used Quaker Oats yellow cornmeal, which worked just fine. Before I'd used Bob's Red Mill medium grind cornmeal, which I liked, but sometimes it had hard bits of grain that would hurt my teeth. If I happen to find Bob's fine grind, I'll try that.

This bread tasted fine the next day, but it had lost its wonderful crunch. Also, it's best warm.

Sourdough onion rolls

I've made these before, with success, but it's been a long time since I made any sourdough bread, so it felt new.

We had only one, smallish onion, so I chopped it, cooked it, and put all of it (2/3-3/4 cup) into the dough. I added it during the final stretch-and-fold, which turned into a dough mangling session.

I wanted to bake the rolls the next day, so I immediately put the dough in the refrigerator.

Dough, the next morning

The next day I took it out, let it warm up (partly in the oven on proof mode), and divided it into 8 parts. I shaped 6 buns and left the other 2 until later.

6 buns ready to rise

I cooked a little more onion and put it on top of a couple of buns, but I think the bread without the onion topping was just as good.

The buns at the bottom left have additional onion on top.
These buns probably would higher if my niece didn't pat them.

I cooked the buns at 450 degrees for 20 minutes with a cover over the pan, and then about 15 more minutes uncovered.

After cooking

These buns are amazing within the first hour or two out of the oven, when the onions are warm and the crust is still crunchy. After a few hours, they're probably best toasted, to bring out the onion flavor and make the crust crisper.

The next day I took the remaining two roll portions and shaped them into balls. After letting them rise a bit, I cooked them at 475, covered, for 15 minutes, and then uncovered for about 15 more minutes.

Mini boule

Bread to go

So I'd have food to eat with 10 of my closest family members, I baked a couple of loaves of bread: Bohemian black bread (BBB) and spent grain bread.

The BBB was much better looking than last time, thanks to using black cocoa.

Dark and out of focus, just the way I like it

The spent grain bread was the same recipe I made the last couple of times. I checked the dough a few minutes into its first rise and noticed that it was very soft and was almost non-existent on the left side of the bread pan. I picked the dough up, as best as I could, and put it back down in a more symmetric shape.

It worked! The loaf was high and symmetric.

Spent grain bread

For future reference, here's the ingredient list, in pan-addition order:

• Scant 1 cup water, mixed (and, if the grain is cold or tough, microwaved 2 minutes) with 3/4 cup spent grain, firmly packed
• 2 T olive oil
• 2 T honey
• 3/4 t salt
• 2-1/4 c bread flour
• 3/4 c whole wheat flour
• 1 t bread machine yeast

It's best to check the dough's shape when it begins rising, so you can fix the shaping (making it symmetric) if necessary.

Over-the-hill sourdough, spent grain bread, and whiskey-cherry-chocolate ice cream

I was out of town again last weekend, but managed to make a couple of breads and some ice cream.

The first bread was the usual sourdough, but with a starter that was long in the tooth. The second was a bread machine recipe that used the spent grain from my guys' initial attempt at brewing beer. I say attempt because it'll be a month before we know whether they succeeded. Thank goodness bread doesn't take as long.

Sourdough bread

Tired starter produces misshapen yet tasty sourdough

The sourdough was the same Josey Baker recipe I usually use, except:

• The starter had last been refreshed over 24 hours before, so although it smelled great, it was way past peak activity/volume.
• I refrigerated the dough after the last "knead" (on Friday), not returning to shape it until Sunday evening, and not cooking it until Tuesday morning.
• Since it seemed very wet, after shaping it I put it in the fridge with a kitchen towel over it, instead of plastic wrap.

Covered with a kitchen towel, not plastic wrap

I put it in the basket seam side down, meaning not to slash it. However, it was so nice and dry after its rest that I did end up slashing it, and it (for once) cut nicely. I probably shouldn't have slashed it, though, because it might have grown taller without the cut.

Before going into the fridge

Fresh out of the fridge, 2 days later: barely risen, with weird dry spots

The resulting loaf was wide and misshapen, but it still tasted really good. I thought it might be extra sour due to the acetic acid encouraged by extended refrigeration, but it wasn't, probably because the yeast was barely alive and the dough was on the wet side. (See Tips for Manipulating the Sourness of Your Sourdough and "Where does the sour flavor come from?" in King Arthur's guide to sourdough.)

The final result
It looks burned but doesn't taste like it

Spent grain bread

This was a good bread that I will make again, although perhaps with more interesting grains and fats. I used Hensperger's whole-grain daily bread recipe (p. 181), which calls for 3/4 cups cooked whole grains and 2 T canola oil. In addition to the usual salt, yeast, and gluten, the recipe also calls for honey, buttermilk (I used powdered) bread flour, a bit of whole wheat flour, and an even smaller amount of rolled oats.

Spent grain bread

I liked the texture and flavor, but the spent grains didn't seem to add much flavor, and the oil certainly didn't contribute any. Next time I might try farro and olive oil, or perhaps buckwheat and hazelnut oil. So many possibilities. I might also try real buttermilk.

Whiskey-cherry-chocolate ice cream

This ice cream was similar to the version I made before, except I used bourbon instead of rye, candied jarred cherries instead of rye-soaked fresh cherries, whole cherries instead of quartered cherries, and TJ's semi-sweet chocolate chunks instead of whatever I used before.

I also was low on cream, so I used some half-and-half and more milk than the recipe called for. All in all, the fat and alcohol content was lower, and this ice cream wasn't quite as delicious as before—I mostly blame the cherries not being chopped. We also overcooked the eggs, which might have affected the flavor and consistency (although we strained the mix, as usual, so at least it was smooth).

Next time, I want to try this:

• 3/4 cup whole milk
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 4 large egg yolks
• 3 T whiskey
• 1 cup chocolate chunks
• ~1 cup quartered candied cherries (TPS p. 185), perhaps with a bit of their syrup

Sorry, no pictures this time.

Baguettes and two old standbys

I was away this weekend, but the week before I made baguettes again—successfully!—and a couple of bread machine loaves: toasted sesame and Bohemian black bread (BBB). Then for this weekend, I made the toasted sesame bread again.

Toasted sesame bread #1, uneven as usual (but tasty)

The toasted sesame bread seems to always turn out much higher on one side than the other. I thought maybe it was due to my not sprinkling the salt on evenly, but even when I mixed the salt with the water for loaf #2, the loaf was uneven.

Toasted sesame bread #2, still uneven

Now I'm thinking that perhaps the problem is simply that the bread is 100% whole wheat, and (even on the whole wheat cycle) the bread simply tends to clump around one mixing paddle more than the other.

A possible solution might be to check the dough when the raisin/nut beeps sound, to make sure it's even. It's not a big deal, though. The unevenness doesn't affect the taste or texture at all, just the size.

Toasted sesame is becoming my go-to bread. It's 100% whole wheat, it smells great, and it tastes great with everything except sweet toppings. It's great with tuna or pesto, and very good as a PBJ bread, but not so great with butter & jam or butter & cinnamon sugar.

Inside toasted sesame bread

Last week's Bohemian black bread (BBB) was fairly even, but a bit lower in the middle. I think that might be caused by the dough separating into two halves, each one centered on a mixing paddle. BBB has less whole grain than the sesame bread, fwiw.

Bohemian black bread (BBB)

The BBB was much lighter in color this time, since instead of using black cocoa I used Lake Champlain Chocolates cocoa, which is a light reddish brown. I need to get some more of that black cocoa.

The inside of BBB

On to baguettes.

A week ago Thursday and Saturday, I refreshed the white sourdough starter. Saturday morning I refreshed the whole wheat starter. Sunday I made baguettes.

I used a variant of King Arthur Flour's sourdough baguette recipe, ending up with these ingredients (almost identical to the first batch, except I used all-purpose flour + gluten instead of bread flour):

• 1/2 cup + 2 T lukewarm water
• 1 cup sourdough starter (I used white only)
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp gluten
• 1 t salt
• 1/2 T bread machine yeast

I forgot the gluten until a couple of minutes into the mixing. Whoops! Canceled the cycle, added the gluten, and started the dough cycle again.

Around 5:45 I took the dough out, shaped it, and put it in the gheed baker (where gheed is to ghee what oiled is to oil).

I wet a dish towel, put it on a cookie sheet, and then awkwardly dipped the top side of each baguette onto the sheet. I put the largest baguette in the middle. I added raw, whole buckwheat to the top baguette.

From top to bottom: buckwheat, biggest, prettiest

I accidentally turned the oven on before putting the baker in. I didn't realize until it was already hot, but I turned it off while the loaves finished rising.

About to go into the oven

I might have overbaked the bread a little bit, but my family and I liked it. It had a nice crust (though perhaps a little thick) and tasty, tender innards. And it didn't stick to the pan, at all!

Buckwheat covered baguette

We started with the buckwheat-covered baguette. A lot of the buckwheat fell off, but that just made it that much more fun for my daughter and me to go on a little treasure hunt of the cutting board.

The buckwheat-covered baguette didn't last long

The next day we had about 1.5 loaves left, which we used for chicken sandwiches. It was so nice to have a real baguette sandwich again! It made me want to find a recipe for banh mi bread, the craptastic bread that makes a terrific holder for delicious Vietnamese fillings. Here are some recipes that I might try:

• Viet World Kitchen: Vietnamese Baguette Recipe (Banh Mi Tay)
• Andrea Nguyen's recipe for banh mi rolls (also see this)
• Vietnam Online: Vietnamese Bread Rolls
• EvillyChic: Recreation of the mysterious Bánh mì baguette

Back to traditional baguette recipes, I'm thinking about trying some of the following recipes from King Arthur Flour, all but one of which require an overnight rest:

• easy crusty baguettes (overnight)
• the almost no-knead baguette (overnight, or up to 7 days)
• classic baguettes and stuffed baguettes (overnight)
• french baguettes (overnight)
• french-style baguettes
• baguette pan baguettes (overnight)
• whole wheat baguettes (overnight)
• wild yeast baguettes (overnight)

Baguettes (starring Emile Henry) and onion sourdough

This week: baguettes! (Cue Flight of the Conchords' Foux Du Fafa.) I also made an onion sourdough before the weekend (new for me), mixing the dough Thursday night and shaping it Friday morning before going to work.

The baguette baker

This Emile Henry baguette baker was the last of my birthday presents to arrive. 

From my enabling-in-a-good-way husband

The baker came with a recipe book filled with lies, such as using flour to prevent sticking. Unfortunately, I believed the book the first time I tried making baguettes.

The first batch of baguettes stuck badly

All the baguettes stuck to the pan. One even stuck to the top of the pan, which made removing the top a challenge. When I finally managed to get the top off, most of the stuck loaf's crust tore off.

The biggest loaf stuck to the top

As a result, Saturday night we had pieces of baguette with dinner. Delicious, crusty pieces, but still... pieces.

What we could scrape out of the baguette pan

Lessons for next time:

• Oil, don't flour, the pan.
• Be careful about watering the tops of the baguettes.
• Put the biggest baguette in the center.
• Always look at King Arthur's site before trying to use equipment they carry.

Baguette trial #1

Here are more details about my first try with the baguette baker.

I looked at four recipes:

• Hensperger's pain de paris (p. 216)
• Hensperger's classic baguettes (p. 204)
• Emile Henry's "The real French baguette"
• King Arthur's recipe for sourdough baguettes

I ended up using kind of a mix:

• 1/2 cup + 2 T lukewarm water
• 1 cup sourdough starter (I used white only)
• 2 1/4 cups bread flour (most called for all-purpose flour plus gluten, but I had no all-purpose)
• 1 t salt
• 1/2 T yeast

The recipe in the Emile Henry book called for just 2 cups of flour (3/4 less than the King Arthur recipe, if you count the half cup in the sourdough starter), so I considered taking out 1/3 of the dough for baking separately. But then I weighed the dough, and it was just over the 600 g that the Emile Henry dough should have weighed, so I decided against removing any.

The dough was quite slack (my new word of the week), but I used a ton of flour on the board, and a dough card as necessary. I managed to shape the baguettes, more or less, although my hands ended up covered in dough.

Shaped and ready to rise

I don't trust my ability to eyeball quantities, so I weighed the dough when dividing it in 3. That was kind of a pain, so I should just try to just eyeball it in the future.

After rising

I decided to slash one baguette, leave one unslashed, and put sesame seeds on one. I brushed all of them with water.

After slashing, splashing, and seeding

Coming out of the oven, they looked nice enough, even though half the top of the slashed one came off.

Fresh out of the oven

The crusts were crunchy, and the insides were delish. If only they had come out of the baker in one piece, I would have called them successful.

A success, if you ignore the fact that the loaves were in many pieces

Baguette trial #2

The next day I tried again, using the King Arthur recipe for sourdough baguettes, sugar and all. I halved it because 3 baguettes is plenty. So, along with the salt/yeast adjustments I always make, that meant:

• 5/8 cup lukewarm water
• 1 cup sourdough starter (I mixed my white and wheat starters to get the thick pancake batter consistency it called for)
• 2 1/4 cups bread flour (I had gotten all-purpose flour in the meantime, but I didn't want to change too much from the last time, so I used bread flour and no additional gluten)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2 tablespoon bread yeast (not instant yeast)

I put all this into the bread machine and got the dough cycle going. I started 4 pm Sunday afternoon, and started shaping the loaves around 5:30 pm. By 5:50 they were shaped and in the pan. (The kitchen was fairly warm but probably a few degrees cooler than the day before.)

Shaped

I decided to experiment a bit with the toppings, and to forgo slashing. The middle baguette had just canola oil spray; the others had olive oil and seeds (pumpkin or fennel). I feared that oil with toppings was a bad idea, but the egg yolk wash that the recipe recommended sounded like it might stick to the pan.

Ready to go into the oven
Top: olive oil & pumpkin seeds
Middle: canola oil spray
Bottom: olive oil & fennel seeds

I preheated the oven to 475. At 7:15 (perhaps a bit early, but I was out of time) I put loaves into oven, turning it down to 450.

Oil meant no sticking, and less crunch. Boo.

The results were OK but not great. This time, there was no sticking at all, but the crust wasn't as crunchy, and the loaves were flat. The taste was fine, but I don't see any reason to add sugar to the dough.

Next time, I'll oil the pan but water the baguettes. I'll also make sure the baguettes rise long enough.

Onion sourdough

Thursday night I cooked an onion in some olive oil.

Cooked and cooled onion

I then made my usual Josey Baker sourdough loaf, but with the cooled onion added.

The dough just after mixing

I did the usual 4 stretches of the dough. This dough was pretty darned slack, probably because of the olive oil in the onions.

After the final stretch

After less than an hour of rise time, I put the dough into the fridge.

About to go into the refrigerator
The green line is the dough's height just after mixing

When I woke up the next morning, I took the dough out of the refrigerator. The kitchen was pretty warm (81) before I opened the back door, which cooled us off a few degrees.

Fresh out of the fridge

I shaped the bread and put it in the long covered baker.

Shaped and ready to rise again

Almost 3 hours later, I decided it was ready to go.

Ready to slash

My guys took it out of the oven and sent me this pic.

All baked

My husband adored this bread warm. It was fine once cool, too, but when it was warm you could really smell and taste the onion.

A slice of onion sourdough

Details:

• 9.5 oz onion
• Thursday night:
• 20:25 mix all done
• 21:05 stretch #1
• 21:25 stretch #2
• 21:45 stretch #3
• 22:05 stretch #4
• 22:50 into the fridge
• Friday morning:
• 6:15 took out of fridge, let rest a bit, started to shape
• 6:35 shaping complete; resting in baker
• 9:18 slashed (badly) and put into oven, which I then turned on to 425 degrees
• After the oven got to 425, I set a timer for 30 minutes and left for work.
• My peeps took off the lid at 30 minutes, and then left it in the oven to brown for a few minutes more.

Garlic sourdough, take 2

I made garlic sourdough for the second weekend in a row. Last time it turned out well, but I wanted more garlic pieces. This time, I used two heads of garlic, not just one. But, it turns out, two is a bit too much for everyday eating. It was good in an overwhelming, Stinking Rose kind of way, but not something you'd want to eat for more than one meal. (We did manage to finish it eventually, but it was more out of duty and a great breadbox keeping it fresh, and less because the bread was so good.)

This week's garlic sourdough

This time I also used a starter that wasn't as many hours old, so it had plenty of life in it. I think I did two iterations of starter revivification, one the night before making the dough, and one the next morning. I mixed the dough in the afternoon.

The size of the dough, pre-refrigeration, was similar to last time's. I kind of messed up on the shaping, though. I shaped it once, realized I'd forgotten to add the garlic, and had to shape it again. Like last time, I patted it out into a rectangle, folded it in thirds, and then folded it in half to create a longish loaf. I popped quite a few big bubbles doing this, since the dough was going a little crazy.

The previous week's loaf, just before going into the fridge.

This time, unlike last time, the dough grew a huge amount in the fridge. I'm glad I oiled the plastic wrap.

After ~15 hours in the refrigerator

This time, as I have the past few times, I put parchment paper on a cookie sheet, put both on top of the basket, and then tipped them all over, so the bread could fall onto the parchment-covered cookie sheet. The bread held on a bit to the basket, but not nearly as much as last time.

Ready to go in the oven.
I still could do better with slashing. It took a few tries to get the cuts I wanted.

I meant to use the cookie sheet as a peel, but I accidentally left it in the oven for the first, covered part of cooking. I used our largest pasta pot (from Ikea) to cover the loaf. It's not quite as wide as I'd like, but it's not too confining.

After 20 minutes of baking, I took off the pot... and realized that
I'd forgotten to remove the baking sheet

I removed the sheet and parchment paper and baked until I remembered to take the bread out. Maybe 15 minutes? The bake was a little bolder than I sometimes prefer, but it tasted really good—not burnt at all.

Like last time, the bread wasn't as high as I'd like, so it was a little hard to slice. I think I'm going to try cooking it in a pan next time. Fortunately, my birthday is coming up, and I've asked for a covered clay loaf pan.

A slice

In one place, an air pocket had formed around a mess of garlic. I was a little scared and a little excited to taste it, and rightly so. It was intense!

A bunch of garlic is at the lower left