BBA Challenge #9: Cinnamon Raisin Bread

Somehow, when you start baking bread, you end up having to give most of it away to keep yourself sane and/or thin. However, once you start to do that, people's eyes get all wide and they want more.

I made this bread on 4 July, just before a company picnic, so I was under a bit of time pressure, so I decided to skip the cinnamon swirl on the loaf. Oh, by the way, this post is brought to you by the letters, B, B and A from The Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge.


For some reason, Germans prefer their shortening in 1kg bars. They're huge and look like a stick of butter for giants. Fortunately, I found this "small" cube weighing in at 250g. I now realize that Kokosfett, which is Coconut fat, might not match the profile of shortening, but it's in the same section, and behaves the same way. In any case, the package says "Reines Pflanzenfett ungehartet" which means "Pure plant fat, unhardened" which is close enough!


I actually wasn't really into this bread, plus I was under time pressure, so I think I might have rushed through it. Okay, okay, I definitely rushed through it. I did a dry ingredients plus wet ingredients mixture as I would with a cake or quick bread. Here are the dry ingredients.


And the wet ones on the left. All I did was mix them together.


Into the DLX they went.


One of the niftiest functions of the Electrolux Assistent AKM4110W/N26/DLX is that it has a built-in timer. Here, I set the timer for six minutes and 33% power. I very rarely go above 50% power, but it's not because the machine can't handle it. Believe you me, the machine can beat around dough at 100% power, no problem. The thing is, at 100% the bowl is spinning so fast it's actually quite frightening.


I used 25% dried cranberries in the recipe and 75% raisins. Unfortunately, the raisins overpowered the whole loaf and the cranberries were nowhere to be found.


Into the mixer they go. When adding dried fruit, the DLX usually takes about 2 minutes at 33% power to mix everything in, and an additional minute to mix everything in evenly. However, whenever I put walnuts in, the dough gets stuck, and I have to move the arm back and forth and back and forth in order to get them to even enter the dough.


I usually let dough rise in the DLX bowl. I take off the scraper and roller and then cover with a moist kitchen towel. Here is the bread after the rise.


And the bread after the shaping. Because I give away most of the bread, I try to make two of them. In this case, the loaf on the left was for Amy's colleagues, and the rolls on the right were for Amy and myself. I don't remember if I didn't feel like doing the cinnamon swirl in the middle or if I just decided to omit it for no reason.


Forgive me, I totally forgot about brushing the butter on the warm bread as it came out. I did love the way the loaf looked, all gnarled up.


Here's a peek at the bottom. Even though the loaf wasn't brown or anything, it was still pretty dark. Maybe because I used Type 1050 flour, the darkest before going to Whole Wheat.


And here are the rolls. Many people in the Challenge actually make rolls out of the breads, so I decided to give it a shot.


Because the loaf was a gift, I could only get a shot of the crumb from the rolls.

Still, the bread smelled divine coming out of the oven. On the weekends, I occasionally forget to eat because I don't have the structure of a workday. On this day, I was going to a BBQ after baking, so I was saving my hunger. However, the smell of the bread got to me and I was unable to resist. As soon as the rolls came out of the oven. Correction- as soon as the rolls came out of the oven and had been phorographed, I tore one off and shoved it into my mouth.

I suppose I'm just used to raisin bread being sweeter, but I was not so impressed by this one. Perhaps it's because we did Cinnamon Rolls the week before that I skipped the cinnamon sugar.

But looking at other people's loaves makes me think it was a huge mistake! I'll probably have to re-do this one "the right way" as soon as I get the chance.

The next post will be a Ciabatta Redux, followed by the Corn( )bread and then the Cranberry Walnut Celebration Bread that fell over. See: http://twitpic.com/avyee

Until soon!

BBA Challenge #8: Cinnamon Buns (of pure evil!)

So, Amy and I have been trying to lose weight since January. Which is all well and good except that I decided to join this Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge hosted by Nicole of Pinch My Salt. So I am still trying, but it has definitely been slow going. I have given lots of bread away, but lately that has been very hard, as the bread is so good that I just want to keep it.

For the next recipe from the challenge, we were baking Cinnamon Buns. Now, I've never really been a fan of Cinnabon. I can eat about half of one before I go into Sugar Shock, and have to save the rest for later.

If you didn't gather from the Casatiello post, I am a vegetarian. Once, there was nothing for me to eat at an airport, and I had to make do with a Cinnabon. Not a good idea. Note to Airports: Offer more vegetarian food. I don't care how much it costs. That Cinnabon was almost six US dollars!


The number "2" on the egg designates that it is a Bodenhaltung Ei, which is to say that it was taken from a chicken that was not caged. DE means it was produced in Germany, and the number at the end is the number of the company that produced it and their production code.


Unfortunately for me, the flavor extracts come in small tubes with no mention of how much is in the little buggers. Plus you have to shake the thing to get the liquid out, so it's not a good system. I did see a small bottle of extract next to these, but didn't think I would be needing much, so I decided not to get it.


Type 550 flour is pretty much all-purpose flour. I rarely buy it, but always try to have at least a kilo on hand, as compared to up to 4 kilos of Type 812 and Type 1050. The higher the number, the more of the grain is milled into the flour. There is a type 405, which is in fact the most common flour here, but it is basically made up of the very center of the grain. That means no nutrients and all starch. I never buy it.


In all its Type 550 glory.


I managed to get a good mise en place shot for this one, though it was actually the last time it happened. I think this is also the recipe where I got muddled in the directions, so if you're wondering what that pyrex measuring cup full of water is doing there, it's because I got confused.


To the non-existent naysayers that say the DLX cannot cream butter and sugar. Boo-ya! It took a minute for the butter to behave, but after cranking it up to 2/3 of its 700 possible Watts, the sugar and butter creamed.

A little caveat here if you do have a DLX, make sure the butter is at room temperature or this adventure will end in a big FAIL.


At first the dough was very cake-batter like. I hadn't added in the flour yet. With the DLX you pretty much add the liquids in first then the flour.


Which turns it into this.


And then this.


This too.


And eventually into silky smooth dough. I kept taking pieces off and popping them into my mouth. It was that good!



Here's the first rise. Zimtschnecken literally means Cinnamon Snails, and is the German word for Cinnamon Buns/Rolls.


Because I wanted to net 12 rolls for everyone on my list (yes, I made a list!), I rolled the rectangle long to about 40cm. That ruler thingie at the top of the photo is a Zollstock, a collapsible measuring stick that is ubiquitous here.


Oh man, what a beautiful schnecke! That is, a beautiful snail.


I first divided it in half and then in half again, taking the advice of a blogger (I don't remember who). Here are the first three.


I sort of skimmed over the part where it says to place them close together so that they grow into each other.


We have no oven light, so this is me holding a flashlight to the cinnamon rolls and also taking a photo.


Pre-icing. They broke a bit due to the oven spring.


Also, they were a bit brown. Even though I have two thermometers running, my baking times are always shorter than Peter Reinhart's in the book. And yes, the thermometers match when they are side by side!


A shot of all of them. The end bun on the bottom right was my fave, aesthetically.


See, I even took a close-up of it.


I have to confess that I sort of messed up the glaze. I was going to make a half recipe, but I added the full amount of milk, and ended up having to open up another box of powdered sugar to make up for it.


Nevertheless, they were pretty good, and nowhere near the diabetic-shock-inducing sugary-sweetness of the aforementioned Cinnabon. So they were way better.


Here a skewed shot of the dozen buns.

I actually had to hold off on trying these until the next day because I was bringing them in for Monday morning breakfast at work, so they were a bit dry the next day, but I think this is because I baked them too long. Still, they were really good.

BBA Challenge #7: Ciabatta

Now, there are some BBA Challenge participants that are reporting that the poolish Ciabatta did not come out as hole-y as they had hoped. I am going to be fully honest here, and say that mine was also not at all hole-y, but, even though I went by the book, I still ended up with something that was not very good.

I decided to go the poolish route.


Here you see the initial mix with my King Arthur Flour Brotpisker. I bought this about eleven years ago, and it shows no sign of letting up. For the flour, I used 25% Type 1050, 50% Type 812, and 25% High Gluten flour. I thought this would give me more holes, but it didn't. Maybe next time I'll stick to just 812 or a mix of 812 and 550. 1050 seems to work best in thick hearth-like breads like my favorite 1050 Sauerteigbrot made the night before and baked in the morning.


After six hours on the counter and an additional twenty-four in the fridge, it came out like this. It looks gray like brains only because I was still getting the hang of the flash. I had an umbrella set-up, which I have since abandoned.


The thing I noticed immediately about this bread was how low in hydration it was. The only other Ciabatta I have made was 95% hydration and came out fabulous, if a bit flat. This one had the consistency of regular bread.


As it came together, I began to doubt myself. I even added extra water and made a mess in the DLX. One of the disadvantages of the machine is that if you add water after the dough has come together, it will not catch on to the spinning bowl. See, the machine works through the awesome power of friction, and if you add water to the dough, it will act as a lubricant, and the friction will be gone. Nevertheless, it was the second time I had added water after the fact, so I ended up having to knead by hand, and then put it back into the machine to take another photo. Hey, I could have lied about it!


Here it is in daylight, after being stretched and folded. I made a double batch, so maybe it was collapsing under its own weight instead of forming nice big bubbles.


Here it is under flash lighting, having risen some.


An impromptu couche using two new boxes of parchment paper. Oddly enough parchment paper, known here as backpapier is fairly common. You can get it for 0,99 € at any supermarket next to the plastic wrap and foil. However, wax paper is nowhere to be found.

I made four loaves as well as six rolls for our Monday morning office breakfast.


The first loaves came out decidedly un-rustic looking.


As did the rolls.


I find myself photographing the bottoms of the breads, ever since the Casatiello, and have found out that Cindy from Salt and Serenity as well as Nicole from Pinch My Salt both photograph the undersides. Crazy!


Close-up of one of the loaves.


The last loaf came out a bit more rustic, but I am not sure if it was because by this time the oven stone was fully warmed or what. I cheated on this one and added a ton of flour to the top later, but it didn't look like classic Ciabatta. As bread it was okay, as Ciabatta, not so good.

It seems I have overlooked the crumb photograph. I'll just say that the bread was tight and dense, and great in flavor, and great when warm (yes, I could not resist). However, after a day the crumb was tight and the bread was too dense and too chewy, but not in a fun way.

I'll be trying this one again with much more hydration, as well as with a Biga instead of a Poolish as the pre-ferment. Thanks to everyone else who has posted on the Ciabatta. I have learned more on this bread than from any other!