Mexican Chocolate Bread Pudding

Mexican Chocolate Bread Pudding, as adapted from Recipezaar's Sourdough Bread Pudding



4 c cubed sourdough bread, very stale
1/2 c chocolate chips
2 c plain soy milk (because that's what I had on hand)
1/4 c heavy cream (to make up for the fact that I was only adding one, not 1.5, egg yolks)
3 eggs
1 egg yolk
3/4 c sugar
2.5 Tbs dark cocoa powder
1 Tbs vanilla
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp almond extract
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Grease a souffle dish or casserole pan and add the chocolate chips and bread cubes. Beat together everything else, then pour into the dish and stir, making sure the bread is all coated.

Cover with plastic wrap and let soak for at least two hours, preferably overnight. Then bake at 350°F until the center tests clean, abt 50-60 min.

Dark Rye Bread

Dark Rye Bread from Real Bread: A Fearless Guide To Making It



1 Tbs active dry yeast
0.25 c lukewarm water
1.5 c hot water
2 Tbs butter, cut into bits
0.25 c brown sugar
0.25 c molasses
2.5 c dark rye flour
3 c AP flour
1 Tbs salt
2 tsp grated Satsuma orange peel
0.5 tsp anise seeds, lightly crushed

1. Proof yeast in lukewarm water.
2. Combine hot water, butter, sugar and molasses in large bowl, stir to melt and dissolve, then cool to lukewarm.
3. Add proofed yeast, rye flour and 0.5 c AP flour. Beat until air bubbles form.
4. Stir in salt, seeds and peel, keep stirring as you slowly add AP flour until a stiff dough forms.
5. Knead on floured board for 8 min until smooth, pliable and firm, or like I did, let the stand mixer work at it with a dough hook until the firm stage. The recipe notes that the dough is VERY sticky until "suddenly it stops, and you know you've won."
6. Make into a ball, put into oiled bowl, turn to coat with oil, cover with a dampened towel and let rise in a warm place for 1:40, or until it has doubled in size.
7. Punch down, knead briefly and divide into 2 equal leaves and let rise on an oiled baking sheet, covered with a dampened towel. Let rise for another 1:40 or until almost doubled.
8. Brush with a water-molasses wash, score and bake in a 350°F oven for 40 min or until bread tests done. About 10 min into baking, spray loaves with water and shut the door. Spray again halfway through baking when you rotate the baking sheet.
9. Transfer to wire rack and don't cut until it's cool.


This worked very well with the broccoli-cheese soup my friend made. It was light, well-crusted and had just enough anise and orange taste to make it interesting.

Baking in Monochrome

We had leftover oranges at work, so I took some home to make orange bowknots from Better Homes and Gardens. The sweet, yeast rolls will be excellent for a brunch book group tomorrow.

I basically followed the recipe, extending the rises to accommodate slow yeast (probably due to a cold house) and substituting one of the eggs for 1/4 c pumpkin puree. (I was out of eggs.) The pumpkin made the dough delightfully orange!

(Click the images for larger ones)








This recipe made me really realize how much I've grown as a baker in the past two years. The first time I made them with with a friend, the rolls tasted great but the texture was dense, and they weren't appealing cold. These...are proper, fluffy, sweet and orangey rolls. Even though the orange peels were ugly, adding suspicious dark flecks to the dough, even though a few tiny seeds slipped through the strainer, they're tasty. I don't think it's that I'm paying more attention to the recipe--I've always brought my lab technique into the kitchen--I think it's more that I have an idea of what things should be like and I take steps to correct errors before they cause issues.

Question for our tiny readership: How much do you guys appreciate process photos? We'll take them as frequently as we remember, but if it annoys you, we can refrain from posting them all. At least, I can.

Oatmeal-Molasses Bread

Fall makes me want to bake. It's probably the changing leaves, the chill and the all-encompassing wetness that puts me in the mood for homemade soup and bread. Of course, the blazing heat of a PNW summer also makes me want to fire up the oven, so maybe I just really like this hobby.

So it's fitting that I chose a bread recipe from "Dairy Hollow House Soup and Bread" book: "Rabbit Hill Inn Oatmeal-Molasses Bread". We seem to be on a molasses kick at our house.

I went a little overboard on the blackstrap molasses, since there were only a few tablespoons left in the bottle and I love the taste. The loaf on the left has that extra molasses kneaded into the dough, and the one on the right just has the molasses smeared on top. (What's the effect of molasses as a glaze? Let's find out!) I also added vital wheat gluten, as I've taken to doing for my bread. If it's added any lift or shelf life, I wouldn't know because I haven't done a non-additive control.

My right wrist is bothersome, so I left the majority of the kneading up to the stand mixer and dough hook. It's a pretty sticky dough anyway.

I baked them at 375F for 30-odd minutes, spritzing with water generously and turning halfway through, then pulled them out when their internal temp was 210F. So what effect does a molasses glaze have on a bread? The crust is darker by a good lot, but there aren't other differences that I can tell.

They took forever to cool, but are deliciously worth the wait! They're sweet--thanks to the molasses--and like a sandwich bread in texture. The oatmeal didn't survive to lend anything to the texture, except perhaps to make it moister. I love how the molasses is swirled into the kneaded-in dough. It's almost like a cinnamon loaf.

autumn

This year I could not wait for fall weather to come around. We had (in my opinion) a rather wimpy summer, with a poor berry harvest and uninspiring stone-fruit crop. I just wasn't excited anymore. So when nights started crisping a few weeks ago, I could hardly contain my enthusiasm. I immediately dusted off the Crock Pot and made some beef stew and whole-wheat bread. This was my first attempt at a whole-wheat loaf, and I was pretty pleased with the results. I made one loaf plain, and two loaves as cinnamon/current whole-wheat. A few slices left out overnight to stale made excellent french toast!


This is the cinnamon variety (note the brown "swirl"...I've got to practice that swirling technique). Not much left. I got the recipe for Basic Whole-Wheat Bread and variations from Real Bread: A fearless guide to making it by M. Baylis and C. Castle (pg 69).