Isand66's blog

I bought some "Country Wild Rice" at Whole Foods a few weeks ago and wanted to use some of the leftover cooked rice in a bread.  The rice is a combo of brown, whole grain Wehani, and whole grain black Japonica and is very tasty all by itself.

I had some Guinness left over from the corned beef my wife made in the Instant Pot a few weeks ago and I thought some fresh milled barley flour would go perfect with this combination.

This is my second attempt at a similar bread.  I wanted to use my new Apple/Orange Yeast Water to make a Levain for this bread and not use any other sour dough levain.  When I did this a few weeks ago I didn't let the levain ripen long enough and the dough didn't develop correctly.  This time I let the levain go for a good 12 hours and then refrigerated and used it the next day.  No problem this time with developing the dough correctly.

 Onions and rye go together like hot fudge and ice cream.  I haven't made a good rye bread in a while so today's bake was all about creating a flavorful onion rye with a moist open crumb.  I wanted to use my new Yeast Water in this bake but didn't want to only rely on it to leaven the bread so I mixed up a simple AP starter with some spelt bran and added the YW as part of the liquid in the main dough.

The porridge was a combo of rolled oats and rye chops (chopped rye berries) and milk to add some extra creaminess.

This is a very rustic bread using roasted baby red potatoes and roasted sweet potatoes.  For the red potatoes I mashed them up and added them skins and all.  You can see some whole pieces of potato sticking out in the crumb shots below.

   I needed some rolls to eat with all the food we've been cooking with our Instant Pot and figured I would make a version of one of my favorites.  Cream cheese always makes for a nice soft crumb and the addition of the maple syrup in the porridge added a little extra sweetness to go along with the honey.

    I made a rye bread with shredded carrots while being a test baker for Stanley Ginsberg's Rye Baker book and that came out better than I expected.  I'm not a big carrot cake fan, but I do love roasted caramelized carrots, which are sweet like candy.  I used some special multi-colored purple, yellow, and orange carrots and roasted them in some olive oil until they were nice and soft and sweet.  I mashed them up before adding them in the dough and I was not disa

This is the first bake since returning from my business trip to Germany.  I had a nice trip, but unfortunately as usual I brought back the "Black Death" with me and it took me a good week to start feeling normal again, not to mention adjust to the East Coast time zone.

My wife has been dying to try making yogurt in the Instant Pot so after she finally made enough yogurt to feed a small army I decided to make use of some of it in a bread.

This was my second bake of 2018.  The first one I attempted to make some baguettes using a formula I adapted from German Rolls but increasing the whole wheat flour.  Needless to say it was a disaster and hopefully my worse bake of the year :).

For this bake I used a nice % of fresh milled high extraction spelt flour with a little fresh milled rye and the balance KAF Bread flour.  I made some polenta for dinner the other night which included a little butter and cheese added in and used the left-over cooked polenta in this bake.

          Happy Holidays to everyone.  As usual, we celebrated the holidays with family and friends and cooked and baked and baked some more :).

   Wine, Walnuts, Cranberries and Porridge....what's not to like?  I have to say, nothing!  This one is chock full of flavor and good enough to eat by itself, but even better with some cheese.  I gave 2 of these away to some work colleagues.  I think they will enjoy them, I hope.

There is just enough wine in this one to add a nice flavor without overpowering the bread or inhibiting it's fermentation.  The crumb is nice and moist and you get a mouthful of walnuts and cranberries with each bite.