Isand66's blog

I have not made a bread with coffee in a long time so I figured it was time to try one again. 

I used one of my favorite whole wheat berries from Barton Springs Mill Quanah along with some spelt berries and milled fresh flour. The Quanah was sifted and milled twice and the Spelt was sifted once and milled twice both with my MockMill 200. I milled the whole grains in my MockMill200, sifted with a #30 sieve, re-milled and then sifted with a #40. I save the bran to add to my levains which I find give them a nice boost.

  I call these “Italian” style pretzel rolls.  These are made with a 2 build durum starter and with over 50% total fresh milled durum.  I also used some fresh milled whole wheat and just a little bit of KAF bread flour to add a little gluten strength but you could probably leave it out and sub more durum or whole wheat.

The durum and whole wheat flour was sifted twice and milled twice with my Mockmill 200.

This was a nice flavorful bread made with fresh milled Durum, Rye and Rouge de Bordeaux whole wheat. I used some baked potatoes that were mashed up but still chunky so you end up with a rustic bread with pieces of potato throughout. 

The buttermilk was originally going to be used in my English Muffins but I forgot so I pivoted and used it in this bake instead. It adds a little extra tang to the final bread.

These were the other batch of rolls I made to bring to Thanksgiving dinner. You can’t go wrong combining cranberries with pecans, walnuts and potatoes.  Well at least in my opinion :).

I soaked the dried cranberries in water for several hours and after draining the cranberries I used the remaining water as indicated in the main dough.  I also added some cherry juice to the levain but if you have cranberry juice you can use that instead or just omit it and use all water.

  I had made a version of these rolls a few years ago and decided to update it slightly and make them to bring to my relatives house for Thanksgiving along with another style of roll I will post later.

The main change was to use Caputo 00 flour instead of bread flour and to use a Cocoa bean infused maple syrup.  This created a softer roll.  I’m not sure you really taste the cocoa bean maple syrup to be honest so using regular flavored maple syrup would probably not make much of a difference.

Walnuts and pecans are my two favorite nuts and what's not to like about cherries? This one has all of my favorites in one bread except for cheese (I'm baking a bacon cheese bread as I type this :)).

I also added some fresh milled Spelt flour and high extraction whole wheat (Rouge de Bordeaux) freshly milled as well along with some KAF Artisan Bread flour. A small amount of purple sweet potatoes roasted and mashed was also added. You could also use mashed regular potatoes as the potatoes just add a little extra softness and help the bread stay fresh longer.

I’m a big fan of Barton Springs Mill grains and one of their specialty grains is called Quanah. This is an Heritage grain which a grower in Texas just started up again. It’s become one of my favorite grains to mill and use in breads and it’s a Hard Red Winter Wheat, 11.5% protein and has a buttery, creamy and malty flavor. Here is a link for some more information.

  I made a new version of my pretzel rolls to bring to my Cousin’s for Rosh Hashanah dinner along with some of my standard ones.  Everyone seemed to really like the new ones so I guess I must have done something right :). 

This version had some fresh ground rye along with some dark cocoa powder along with the Guinness which really gave the final dough a nice malty flavor.  

I used pretzel salt, black sesame seeds and everything bagel topping for the toppings.  As usual these were made with a lye bath

   I made the same bread about a year ago to bring to my Cousin’s house for the Jewish New Year.  It was a big hit and I really liked the malty flavor the Guinness imparts on the overall bread.  It doesn’t taste like beer but you can definitely taste the underlying flavor.  I don’t really like beer that much and I definitely would not be caught dead drinking a motor oil type beer like Guinness but it’s my favorite one to add to bread.

A double build was used for the levain but you could easily just do one build if you desire.

One of my favorite wheat to use is Durum which I usually mill myself but since I was out of Durum berries I used some packaged Italian flour my wife had purchased for my pizza making, Semola Rimacinata Durum which is a very fine milled flour.