This week’s smoked meats included the usual sausage, chicken thighs and pork ribs but Lucy threw in a 3 pound chuck roast that was on the thick side too. Normally we would smoke a pastrami, corned beef or brisket but they are ridiculously expensive and Chuck roast is half the price. She wanted to see if this usually slow braised meat could be smoked and pulled like a pork shoulder
Lucy started off to do a more complicated bread by getting the 5 grain sprouts going on Wednesday but we forgot about the new Fig Yeast Water we started last Friday from the re-hydration soaking water left over from last week’s bake. We wanted to include it in a SD / YW combo bake but it took a day longer than planned to get up to full ramming speed.
Lucy really went to work this week to come up with a bread that would fit the Oriental Pullman pan perfectly – with the lid on! A more complex kind of bread so she didn’t specify sprouting the whole grains so we got off a bit easy this week. Every time I turned around she was pulling put another grain, seed or nut long hidden away that pantry she guards with her life.
The name isn’t really all it is cracked up to be. Yes, it has 3 toasted seeds folded into the mix – squash, sunflower and flax. But is also has 8 different sprouted seeds and at least 2 unsprouted seeds that were ground into flour. So, this could be called a 13, some sprouted, seed sourdough too.
Lucy and I were trying to remember the last time we made an all wheat bread and came up with the thought that it had been a really long, long time. This week was a good one for several reasons so we decided to celebrate it with something we rarely do – make an all wheat bread.
Last week we had no time and wanted to see how the yeast affected the flavor of the sourdough bread. This week Lucy wanted to get some pecans and cranberries in the mix and get the yeast out because we had the time to do it with no worries about the wife coming home in tome to smell the bread baking. The 7 sprouted grain flour was equal parts of Kamut, rye, oat, buckwheat, red and white hard wheat and barley.
Lucy had come up with a 50% sprouted 9 gran SD for this week’s bake but, at the last minute, we saw Lazy Loafers 50% whole wheat bread that has a yeast kicker in it. Normally we don’t put yeast in a SD bread because it just makes things go faster and reduces the flavor of the bread.
Lucy finally got back to her German roots and came up with a rye bread that reminds her of home. It is 70% whole grain rye and 30 % sprouted red and white wheat. It had a bit of red malt, some barley malt syrup and some Deschutes Black Butte Porter for some of the liquid to bring out a dark color.
We always have pizza on New Year’s Eve, every year ……… for years and years. But this year we didn’t….. at least not homemade pizza. We got a take out from Oregano’s and it was good but it just cannot compare to homemade pizza – sorry to Oregano’s.
It has been 3 weeks since we last baked a loaf of bread proving that IBBA (Insane Bread Baking Addiction) can be controlled to some degree – but I did bake some rolls 2 weeks ago - for Christmas / Hanukkah. We never did get around to baking fruitcake and panettone for the holidays either…..Lucy is getting pretty lazy if you ask me
