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Apricot dumplings: A true Austrian delight!  Just in time for Apricot season (northern hemisphere)

A few things to remember before getting started: The dough is 2/3 cooked potatoes combined with 1/3 other ingredients by weight. Potatoes should be the flaky type or bake type potatoes and boil one or two extra to make sure there are enough. Apricots can be fresh, frozen and even slightly on the firm side. One can carefully remove the pits and place a sugar cube inside larger fruits, this works esp. well for freezing. Apricots, peaches or cherries are all posible. Crumbs may include grated nuts as well.

You will need:

potatoes 700g, AP flour, one egg, salt, butter, a large fry pan, a large pot for boiling, work surface, & about 750g fruit or 12 apricots, a slotted spoon, sugar.

APRICOT DUMPLINGS      makes 12

Potato Dough:

• 500g potato; boiled, hot or one day old, peeled and put through ricer, grated or fork mashed very fine.
• 165g flour
• 5g salt
• 1 egg
• 15g unsalted butter

Crumbs:

• 100g unsalted butter
  
• 70g bread crumbs
  

Grate fine or put potatoes thru a ricer. Combine loosely and evenly with flour and salt and make a hole in the middle. Add egg and bits of butter. Now pinch and quickly knead into a nice firm dough, no added flour, remove or squish any lumps. Roll out into a log and divide into 60g lumps for apricots and 40g for cherries.

Set a large pot of salt water to boil, you will want to cover the dumplings and they should just swim and not touch the bottom, about 1/3 to 1/2 full of water with about a teaspoon of salt.

Roll each lump into a ball and then into a disk with the middle slightly thinner than edges. Now you can use just a little flour in the palm of one hand to help shape lump and keep it from sticking while you place each fruit into dough. Press & stretch the dough tightly around each fruit trying to prevent any air pockets. Seal opening and roll slightly in hands to make round. Set aside and repeat for next fruit until all are prepared. (They can be frozen or refrigerated at this point. If using frozen fruit, it is recommended to boil right away to retain shape.)

When water is boiling, give it a good stir so it is moving and slip dumplings in on a wet spoon. Set timer for 15 minutes. Turn or jar pot often to prevent sticking. After water has returned to boiling reduce heat to softly roll the dumplings as they boil. Meanwhile, heat up a large fry pan and brown crumbs in melting butter. The trick here is not to let them burn so stir often and turn off heat before they're done, the heat in the pan will continue to brown them. Set the pan aside or nearby.

When the dumplings have boiled 15 min, gently transfer with a slotted spoon into the crumbly pan. Pick up the pan and with a rotating motion rolling the balls into the crumbs coating them as you play. Remove onto a serving plate or smaller plates and serve warm with fine sugar. Variations may include serving with Vanilla sauce or Vanilla ice cream. Three make a meal, one a dessert. I made 8 Apricot and 8 cherry.

Put potatoes thru a ricer... or whatever and fluff in flour & salt

Add egg and butter...and start squishing and kneading

knead: ..and take a picture at the same time ...until uniform  

Shape a disk

shape and fill

...and press around until closed up and sealed

boil and brown at the same time

rock and roll until coated ... then serve up piping hot!

Apricots and Cherries! Yum yum!

Enjoy!

Today I found a dear little foil pan, called a Deep Roasting pan. It measures 11 3/4"x9 5/16" and is 4" deep. Perfect for baking Susan's loaf on a heavy cookie sheet - which I just did. I was concerned because it isn't as deep as my ss bowl - which won't fit on the cookie sheet - but it worked just fine. I also noticed that my store sells 5# bags of rye flour from Hodgson Mill for $4.19, and all of the KA flours were $5.99. A.

I had baked this bread and posted some pics of this recipe (from Daniel Leader's Local Breads book) a week or so ago.  The crumb on the previous post was not as open as it should have been and the loaf, as MiniOven said, was not nearly "ugly" enough.  So, a couple of days ago I decided that the problem I was having was a result of my starter not being active enough before introducing it into the dough mixture, and I had not baked it long enough.  Anyway, I received some good critiques from a number of TFLer's and greatly appreciate the advice and suggestions I received.  I gave it another try a couple of days ago with better results.  It could, as MiniOven and Jane said, use some more "ugly" but I believe I'm making progress.  I doubled the recipe. I divided it into 3 pieces, 2 smaller loaves and one larger loaf.  Here's pics of the larger loaf.  I froze the 2 smaller ones without cutting them but assume they're fairly similar to this one in crumb. They look about the same as far as crust and color.

I left my K.A. on the shelf and mixed it completely by hand, as MiniOven suggested, in a large bowl using a large rubber spatula with more of a folding technique than a mixing action and followed Mr. Leader's recipe to the letter.  I retarded it for 18 hours before baking.  That, I think, gave it greater flavor. It tasted really good.

Pierre Nury's light rye no. 1

Pierre Nury's light rye no. 2

Thanks to:

Mike Avery for his refreshment/feeding instructions for my starter.

Janedo for her suggestions about handling the dough and baking.

MiniOven for her advice on mixing by hand and making them more "ugly".

David Snyder for his numerous posts showing what it should really look like.

Howard - St. Augustine, FL

Today I had time to "play" and an excess of discarded sourdough starter so I decided to see what I could come up with. I took a cup of starter, a cup of warm water a "dollop" of oil, two teaspoons of kosher salt, four cups of flour (half ap, half bread flour) and a scant 1/2 tspn of instant yeast. Mixed this in the Bosch until the dough came away from the sides, then let it double in an oiled bowl. Shaped it into two short baguettes which proofed for about 40 minutes, then I baked them on a heated sheet pan under the base of an oblong roaster which I removed after 15 minutes. Then I rotated the pan and baked them for another 15 minutes, to 205*. The loaves rose well and the crust was quite crisp. The crumb was very soft and none-holey, and it would make perfect sandwich rolls ( hero?) I live in a retirement community and I think this will be my "gift" bread from now on - that way I won't have to worry about people coping with crusty bread. I did take pictures and hopefully will figure out how to share them one day, A.

[DELETED BY AUTHOR]

SF Sourdough Baguettes 6-29-08

SF Sourdough Baguettes Crumb 6-29-08

These baguettes were made with the formula for San Francisco Sourdough from Peter Reinhart's "Crust&Crumb." The firm starter was made with a mixture of Guisto's Organic (whole) Rye and King Arthur Bread Flour. The final dough was made with King Arthur European Artisan Flour.

The recipe makes 4-1/2 pounds of dough. I made two 1.5 lb. boules and these two baguettes. The dough was on the dry side, although I added about 1/4 cup of water during mixing. I cold retarded the formed loaves for about 18 hours. The baguettes were baked with steam for the first 10 minutes, then dry for another 15 minutes. The crust is crunchy, thicker than a traditional baguette. The crumb is less open than I wanted. The taste is typical of breads made with this dough - moderately sour and complex.

A word about the scoring, since that has been a source of frustration for me: These results are as good as I have ever obtained. I think the factors that contributed to it were 1) The dryer dough is easier to slash, 2) I was careful not to over-proof. They were baked 2 hours after being taken out of the refrigerator, 3) I consciously attempted to implement what Proth5 calls "Mental mis en place." I take this to mean clearing your mind of any other thoughts, then reviewing the procedure elements and visualizing the procedure before starting to slash, then executing the slashes quickly and smoothly according to the chosen procedure. I did not achieve perfection, but I feel I have progressed. What's needed is practice, practice, practice.

Here is one of the boules made with the same batch of dough:

SF Sourdough Boule 6-29-08

David

Well, I haven't been around much lately, just too busy! But yesterday I decided to read the directions VERY carefully and try the Acme rustic baguettes once again. Howard's looked so great, I figured I should try again respecting every single step because I didn't last time.

The difficulties I found were the flour and the weather. It's HOT, around 30°C and over 25°C in the kitchen. Things went fast and I'm not used to this extra heat with this type of bread. I think I got them in the oven at almost the right moment. I got some oven spring this time... though probably not enough. The initial rise was a bit too much, I think. 

Now, the other problem is the flour. The crumb was similar to the last baguettes I made which makes me think there is a gluten problem happening. During fermentation the dough gets very bubbly, but the bubbles end up baking quite uniformly compared to a very holey, open crumb. The dough was sticky and remained very soft and sticky. I even added flour even though Glezer said NOT too. I HAD to! I think the American recipes use a higher gluten flour (that's what Glezer said in her book) and the French flours don't react the way they should for these recipes. Now, I may be TOTALLY wrong and would like some input. I bought some gluten and thought maybe I should try to add some the next time. Is this a good idea and how much?

Other than that, they TASTE great and they are very light and airy even though the hole structure isn't picture perfect.

I'll try the ones posted in my last blog entry next following ALL the indications given. But before I do that, I'll wait to get some gluten answers.

Jane 

Acme's rustic baguette crust

Acme's rustic baguette crumb

Rustic Baguettes made with Nury Light Rye dough

Rustic Baguettes Crumb made with Nury Light Rye dough 

As promised, I made some baguettes using Nury's Light Rye dough from Daniel Leader's "Local Breads." I followed Leader's recipe except for using a couple tablespoons less water, thinking it might work better for baguettes. In hindsight, I don't think this improved the product.

For those not familiar with the recipe, it is documented in Zolablue's original posting of her baking of this bread.

 http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/5500/pierre-nury’s-rustic-light-rye-leader

This was an excellent thread. It led me to make this bread myself for the first time, and it remains one of my very favorites.

Leader's recipe calls for patting out the mass of fermented dough into a 10 x 10 inch rectangle, cutting it in half with a bench knife and gently transferring the cut pieces to floured parchment, then immediately baking it on a stone with steam. For these "baguettes," I simply sliced off 3 portions, about 2.5 cm wide each, and stretched them gently to 12 inches as I laid them on the parchment. I baked with steam at 500F for 10 minutes, then removed the skillet and loaf pan with the water and turned down the oven to 440F. The bake time was 17-20 minutes, total.

The baguettes are beautiful, in a very rustic way. The crust was very nicely crunchy, and the crumb was chewy. The taste was wonderful, as it always is with this recipe. The main difference between these baguettes and the "proper" Nury Light Rye is that the baguettes have proportionally much more crust, and the crust stays crisp rather than softening.

 My efforts to make traditional baguettes will continue, but this version is one I'll be making again. 

David 

Thank you Floyd! The bread is absolutely delicious!

Here is what I did to Floyd's version of the recipe:

• cinnamon raisin oatmeal bread

Hi,

I wanted to share my experience of building a backyard brick oven. I researched (and talked with mates) on and off for quite a few years before getting to work on this project. There is a lot of detail on the internet and books with lots of design, construction and material options (confusing!). I finally settled on a simple design that was a mixture of ideas from various sources. Simple approach as I'm not a trades-person, so I went with a dome-shaped oven out in the open to eliminate the need of a chimney. The dome is made from red clay bricks and has an inner diameter is 1.1 meters. The oven is insulated with four layers of perlite-cement mixture and a final outer layer of builder's render. I included two K-type thermocouples during the build so I can measure the floor and dome brick temperatures.

My oven was built mostly from second-hand materials and scrap for about $500 AUD and was constructed in my spare time between Oct and Dec 2005. I use the oven for pizza days with friends, roasts and veggies on special occasions, and of course, bread baking when a few mates also prepare dough to make the firing of the oven worthwhile.

I have placed a photo set of the construction approach at:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/27771627@N07/2589138025/in/dateposted-public/

I hope this encourages other novices that may be thinking of a similar project. It wasn't as hard as I had envisaged and has given a tremendous amount of satisfaction and good times.

Edited to fix broken link to flickr.