Cherry-chocolate whiskey ice cream and a bunch of breads

Last week was busy, due to choral concerts, so I never managed to blog about the ice cream and breads I made two weekends ago. I tried making baguettes for the first time, to meh results. I also made a white whole wheat bread and a yeasted cornbread; both worked out well.

This weekend I made my first bread with instant potatoes (but mostly with whole wheat flour): Irish potato brown bread. It also was a winner, but it didn't stay fresh for long, so soon afterward I baked a loaf of Swedish rye.

More excitingly, I unvented a new ice cream flavor: cherry-chocolate whiskey. It's like Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia, but with a better recipe and added rye. I also made a yummy chocolate peanut butter ice cream, with peanut butter chunks.

Ice cream

I started out wanting to make a fruit ice cream, to go along with a peanut butter chocolate ice cream I was already planning to make. Strawberries looked great, but the birthday boy wanted cherries, so I figured I'd make Ben & Jerry's recipe for Cherry Garcia ice cream.

This was the first time I'd tried Ben & Jerry's recipe book, and although it was good for inspiration, it seemed lacking in implementation. It called for shaved Hershey's dark chocolate, when I expected chunks of better chocolate. It didn't give any hint as to how to avoid having the cherries freeze solid. And it used whole eggs (not egg yolks) and didn't cook them—an interesting approach, but one I'm leery of. It's not even close to their own recipe, I suspect. So I decided to adapt a recipe from The Perfect Scoop.

Since the occasion was an adult's birthday where whiskey would be consumed, I got the idea of adding some sort of booze to the chocolate-cherry ice cream. My daughter informed me that bourbon and cherries go together, and I found some Bulleit in the cupboard. It was rye, not bourbon, but I figured it'd work.

Cherries and whiskey go together

I pitted maybe half a pound of cherries, cut them in half, poured rye over them, and put them (covered) in the fridge.

Then I got some good dark chocolate disks (from Berkeley Bowl), chopped them, and refrigerated them, too.

I made the rum-raisin ice cream base from The Perfect Scoop, minus the salt, and refrigerated it.

The next day, I churned the ice cream, substituting the cherry-infused rye for the rum. When it seemed to be close to done, I added the cherries (which I'd chopped a bit more because they were very alcoholic) and chocolate. The alcohol in the cherries seemed to unfreeze the ice cream, so I had to churn it another 10 minutes or so.

If you like whiskey and boozy ice cream, this is delicious! The cherries were perhaps overly boozy; I might try soaking them less next time. And there will be a next time.

An added bonus was that the alcohol made this ice cream stay scoopable, even after a couple of days in the freezer.

The peanut butter chocolate ice cream, on the other hand, did not stay scoopable, but it was delicious. I added little peanut butter disks to it. I might do that again, but I'd make them much smaller.

The only other difference from before was that I made the ice cream using Skippy "natural peanut butter spread" (no stirring needed) instead of TJ's unsalted peanut butter. I don't know if the difference was noticeable, but I tried the Skippy because David Lebovitz recommends against peanut butters that separate.

Bread

I tried to make baguettes, but they were disappointing—they didn't rise well. Apparently, they tasted good, though. I used the usual Josey Baker sourdough recipe, mixing the dough at 4 pm or so, and "kneading" it at 4:50, 5:15, 5:40, and 6:20. I expected the dough to be risen at 8:20, since it was warm, but by 7:30 it looked dangerously big, so I put it in the fridge.

The next day at 2 pm I took it out, and divided the 820 g of dough into 3 parts that I pre-shaped. At 2:15 I shaped it into baguettes, which I supported using rolled-up placements that were covered with parchment paper. I covered the baguettes with plastic. I scored 2 of the loaves and tried cutting the third into an epi, but my scissors were too short to do that well. Still, the epi disappeared first. People like bread that they can grab a chunk of.

I used rolled-up placemats to support the rising baguettes

The white whole wheat bread was a Hensperger bread machine recipe (p. 127). I might have used a delay timer. I used light sesame oil, which is currently my favorite oil for baking. The maple syrup was half grade A and half grade B, because that's what I had. I reduced the salt and yeast by one half. I don't remember much about the bread, except that I liked it, and it didn't seem very different from a regular whole wheat bread.

The yeasted cornbread was a Josey Baker recipe (p. 208). I used whole wheat pastry flour instead of Kamut flour, and sodium-free baking powder and soda. I don't recall whether I added any of the salt the recipe called for. People liked it, but I think I like regular cornbread better.

Yeasted cornbread

I'd been wanting to make a bread with instant potatoes, so I made Irish potato brown bread (Hensperger p. 117). It was nice but delicate, and it turned stale quickly. Like all breads with potato flakes, it can't be made using the delay timer.

Sunday's Irish potato brown bread was great for French toast Wednesday night

Tuesday night I set up some Swedish rye to be baked by 7 a.m. Wednesday. With fennel, honey, and citrus zest, that bread is a heavenly smell to wake up to!

Swedish rye, baked on the delay timer

The recipe (Hensperger p. 136) calls for orange zest, but we were low on that, so I used mostly lemon zest. This bread is delicious, whether on its own, in French toast, or as the basis for a tuna sandwich.

Swedish rye, the inside

Double sourdough and sesame bread

Last weekend, recovering from 1000+ miles of driving over 3 days, I made my two standby breads: Josey Baker's sourdough and Beth Hensperger's toasted sesame. I accidentally doubled the water in the JB pre-ferment, so I turned it into a double batch (something I'd been wanting to try anyway). The first half I turned into the usual boule; with the second I made a more rectangular loaf.

The boule turned out very pretty.

The crust didn't sing this time, but it looked good to me.

The white stuff is rice flour

There were a few large holes toward the top, but otherwise I was happy with the texture.

Why so holey?

Some bread and butter ended up being my lunch.

Lunch

Here are the details of the timing:

• I took the sourdough starter out of the fridge as soon as we got home Friday, shortly after noon. I did 2 refreshes (one immediately, and another at 11 pm or so).
• The next morning, I mixed the dough, finishing at 11:30.
• I was under time constraints, so instead of letting the dough rise at cool room temperature, I used the proofing mode of my oven for the "kneading" part (it's really stretching + time, not kneading).
• I stretched the dough at 11:55, 12:10, 12:25, and 12:40. I then left it out until 4:40, when I returned home and put it in the fridge before leaving the house again.
• At 6 p.m. the dough was looking pretty inflated, so I punched it down and put it back in the fridge before leaving the house yet again.
• At 2:30 a.m. I took out half the dough and shaped it into a boule, using an unlined, rice-floured basket. I refrigerated it with plastic wrap on top.
• The next morning, I preheated the oven and baking stone for 45 minutes.
• At 11:10, I started baking the boule, using the usual methods. (Parchment paper, slash across the top, pan on top for the first 20 minutes.)

Here's a picture of the boule before and after the final rise:

Before the final rise

After the final rise

I used the same percentage of salt as usual. Notes:

• The total amount of salt for the double batch was 11g (a little under 2 tsp).
• This time I used coarse sea salt instead of fine.

I didn't keep detailed notes about the second loaf. I think I shaped it Tuesday night, leaving instructions so Nathan could bake it the next day.

Perhaps a bit overbaked

Nate slashed it nicely and baked it in the usual way, although for longer than usual. (Fortunately, I happened to call and ask him if it was out of the oven yet.)

Nice crust

I noticed no ill effects from keeping the dough around much longer than usual.

The crumb

We ate it all up, over the next few days.

The toasted sesame bread was its usual good self, although we didn't finish even half of it before it got moldy. Oops. Notes:

• I used mostly white whole wheat flour. I didn't notice any difference.
• The sesame seeds weren't as well integrated this time; when I took out the bread, some sesame crusts fell out (yum!). I'd almost forgotten the seeds, and then dumped them along the sides. Perhaps the Zo doesn't mix things along the sides as well as things at either end. Despite the missing seeds, the bread still tasted the same. Perhaps these seeds (Terrasoul Superfoods organic unhulled sesame seeds) are more strongly flavored than the ones I'd been using (Bob's Red Mill unhulled, or regular hulled seeds in spice jars). Or perhaps the oil adds much of the sesame flavor.
• I need to remember to freeze a few slices after a couple of days, so it doesn't go to waste.

Sourdough hamburger buns

I made the same Josey Baker sourdough recipe as I have the past couple of weeks, except I formed it into hamburger buns. It worked! These buns tasted good and stood up to some very big, juicy burgers.

The outside

I coated them with sesame seeds, but couldn't really taste the seeds. Next time I might try poppy seeds or onions. Or nothing.

The inside

I took some shortcuts with this recipe. The pre-ferment started the night before, as usual, and around 9 or 10 in the morning I mixed the dough and started the occasional gentle stretching and folding that the recipe calls for. Around 2 I formed the dough into balls. I wet the top of each ball and dunked it into a small saucepan containing fresh-toasted sesame seeds. Then I put the balls into the hamburger bun pan, squashed them, and let them sit for about an hour.

My friend Shams gave me this great hamburger pan

I tried slashing a couple of the larger buns, but they were rather wet and the shaping had been abbreviated, so slashing didn't do much. I baked the buns pretty much as normal (just 25 degrees cooler) but didn't let them get as dark as I'd let a big loaf get, since I was afraid they'd be too dry.

Despite the shortcuts, these were some darned good buns. They worked well with the delicious beef/lamb/onion burgers that our friend Johnny concocted.

PS: I also made some banana-bran nut muffins, from Bob's Red Mill Baking Book, but substituting pecans for walnuts. I used my usual sodium-free baking powder and soda. These aren't as muffiny as I expected—they're very very branny—but they grew on me. I might make them again.

Toasted sesame wheat bread and real sourdough

Over the last week or so, I've made two kinds of bread two times each, successfully.

First, I made toasted sesame whole wheat bread (Hensperger p. 113). I'd tried this before, unsuccessfully. Last time I used toasted walnut oil and dark honey; this time I used light sesame oil (as the recipe called for) and regular honey. Like last time, I reduced the salt to under 1t and the yeast to 1-1/2 t.

Toasted sesame whole wheat bread: a little lopsided but very tasty

This bread looked a little funny but tasted great and kept fresh for many days.

Yum

A week later I made another loaf. It turned out prettier, but equally tasty. I love this bread!

Less lopsided

First piece, sliced while the bread was still warm.
(I couldn't help myself.)

If you look closely, you can see the sesame seeds.

The other bread I made was my first successful, real sourdough. By "real" I mean it had no added yeast—just the wild yeast from the starter. I'd tried making a similar recipe before, but failed due to forgetting the salt. Like last time, I used a Josey Baker recipe. Unlike last time, I added 1 teaspoon of salt (half of what the recipe called for).

My first successful sourdough

Although this bread tasted great and had a nice crust, it wasn't perfect. It had a big flying roof (empty space beneath the top crust). I suspect I didn't let it rise enough before shaping it. I also wonder if slashing deeper might have helped.

Flying roof

Also, the crumb was inconsistent—it looked dense in some sections, with a different sheen.

Inconsistent crumb

Still, it was delicious!

The next two photos show the dough when first mixed and then after the final stretch-and-fold. (I suppose real kneading would be much faster, but Josey Baker calls for stretch-and-fold, and that's much less intimidating to me than kneading.)

   

The following two photos show the dough in the banneton, when first added and when about to be baked. Per Josey Baker's instructions, I used rice flour to keep the bread from sticking. (Actually, his instructions say to use rice flour on muslin, but I wanted to try to give the finished bread a spiral design; it didn't work.)

   

Finally, here's the bread just after being transferred (on parchment paper) to the heated stone.

Immediately after slashing the loaf, I put a big soup pot over the bread and closed the oven door. 20 minutes later, when I removed the soup pot, the bread hadn't risen much. I took this to mean that it wouldn't rise more, but it really really did. I wonder if I could have scored the bread again at this midway point, but I suspect it was too late.

A week later, I made the bread again.

The initial sourdough mix: whole-wheat sourdough starter, water, and salt

I followed the same process as last time, but the weather was warmer.

I marked the dough's position after the final stretch-and-fold.

It was hard to figure out when the dough had risen 150%. A straight-sided bowl or bucket might make that easier.

Ready, I guess.

I used muslin in the banneton this time, and covered the banneton with plastic instead of a paper towel when I put it in the fridge. Like last time, I wasn't sure it had risen enough when I put it in the oven, but I had a deadline. Next time I might let it rise a couple of hours before putting it into the fridge. I did let the dough sit out for 40 minutes while the oven and baking stone heated.

Bottom side up, ready to bake

I made an effort to score the loaf more deeply this time. After slashing the loaf, I found a a great page, Scoring Bread, that seemed to indicate that I did it completely wrong—that a less angled cut in a cross shape or even parallel lines might be better for a round loaf. Oh well.

Deeply scored in a curved line at an angle

Halfway through baking, as usual, I removed the pan from on top of the loaf. The loaf had risen nicely but not too much—it looked better to me than last time. Interestingly, there was no ear, but an even spread from the cut (as the page I looked at said should be the case for a cut that was perpendicular to the loaf, which I wasn't trying to do).

After 20 minutes

After 15 minutes more of baking, the bread was starting to look very dark in spots, so I took it out.

I put the bread on a rack to cool. For the first time in my short baking experience, I noticed that the bread made small crackling noises as it cooled. Apparently, that's not a bad thing.

The crust has an interesting texture, bubbly in spots and jagged in others. Some people like these crust bubbles, called bird's eyes, and some consider it a fault. The bird's eyes were probably caused by proofing the dough in the refrigerator with plastic wrap on top, so the dough stayed moister than before. Also, I'd washed the banneton, and it might have still been moist.

Bubbly crust toward the bottom of the loaf

The crust was more jagged in the slash. At least one of the dark spots was the top of a large bubble.

Jaggies in the slash, a bubble just above

The crumb was much better than last time—more consistent, and no flying roof!

The taste, like last time, was excellent. 

Fail breads, great brownies, and more

It's been a while since I posted, in part because it's no fun to talk about failures. Here's what's happened since I last posted:

• I forgot to put salt into a sourdough poppy-sesame seed loaf (which I'd never made before).
• I didn't seat the bread pan well, ruining a sourdough buckwheat loaf (which I'd successfully made before).
• I made a pretty good rye bread from a new (to me) cookbook.
• I successfully made super lemon ice cream and chunky raspberry sauce (which I'd made a few times before, but not recently).
• I found a delicious brownie recipe that features coconut flour, and I made it twice.

Salt. It's the reason I started baking bread. I can't take too much sodium, and most bread has an awful lot of it. So I bake bread with about half the salt the recipes call for (halving the yeast as well), and it usually turns out.

Without salt, bread tastes anywhere from boring to downright nasty. The sourdough poppy-sesame bread tasted nasty. I can't be sure that leaving out the salt was the only reason for this bread's failure, since I'd never made the bread before (much less any recipes from Josey Baker Bread's sourdough section). Here are the problems with the bread:

• Nasty flavor, making the bread inedible. (Lack of salt was definitely a factor. It's also possible that the poppy seeds were bad.)
• Failure to develop gluten. The bread stayed wet, the gluten never seeming to develop. (Kneading helps gluten and this was a low-knead recipe, but so is the sesame bread that I've made successfully a few times. Salt makes gluten stickier and stronger, which is what you want in yeast-raised bread. More info: Fine Cooking's article about how to increase or limit gluten development.)
• Failure to rise in the oven. (This might have been as least partly because I didn't preheat the baking stone for a full 45 minutes; I was in a hurry.)

Here's what the dough looked like when it was supposedly ready to shape:

Here's the outside of the cooked loaf:

Not undercooked (nor overcooked)

Here's what it looked like inside:

Enough of that. I didn't take a picture of the failed sourdough buckwheat loaf, so I'll just describe it. Imagine a tiny ball of bread around one paddle, and a big lump around the other paddle. The tiny ball was hard, the other one seemed a bit compressed, and together they were smaller than when I successfully cooked this bread before. I threw out the bread without eating it.

If I ever hear the bread machine making a racket again, I'll restart the cycle from the beginning, rather than reseating the bread pan and letting it continue.

Here's the rye bread, which was from the Raisin Pumpernickel recipe in Rustic European Breads from Your Bread Machine, by Linda West Eckhardt and Diana Collingwood Butts (p. 175). I took the caraway seed option instead of raisins. I probably halved the salt and yeast... I don't remember.

My first slice attempted was timid, so I sliced again
(as you can see from the curvy line at the top left)

I messed up on the baking a bit, forgetting to decrease the heat from the 400 degree preheat to a 375 degree baking heat. Strangely, the instructions say to bake it "until done...or until golden brown and done through." How are you supposed to know that a dark brown bread is golden brown? I sense cut and paste.

I shaped the dough as a free loaf, covering it for the first 20 minutes of baking. If I make this bread again, I might just use a loaf pan, since the bread crust didn't stay crisp for long. And if it comes to that, why not just bake it in the bread machine?

Here's a picture of the inside.

 Great with tomato, mozzarella, basil, and olive oil!

Changing the subject to ice cream, I made super lemon ice cream with chunky raspberry sauce, from recipes in The Perfect Scoop. I'd gotten a request for birthday ice cream the same morning. For most of the ice creams I make, this would be a problem, since I usually cook one day and then churn the next (so the custard is completely cool). I chose this recipe because it's tasty and it requires no cooking.

As usual, I used lemons from the garden.

You whir up the lemon zest with some sugar, and then you add half and half.

The raspberry sauce was also good, as always.

Ingredients for the chunky raspberry sauce

Finally, the brownie recipe. It's on the back of the Let's Do... Organic Coconut Flour package, and it's very similar to a King Arthur chocolate coconut cake recipe. Moist, deliciously chocolatey... it's a winner. It's gluten free (whatever) but definitely not low in cholesterol or fat—lots of eggs and butter.

I've made these brownies twice, both times adding chocolate chips. The brownies are OK cold, but they're great room temperature or warm. When I make them again, I'd like to try adding nuts or cocoa nibs—with or without chocolate chips.