Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Bread Baking Babes bake a Carrot bread

Here we go again, the Babes are baking under the guidance of the sweet Heather at Girlichef and she designed a perfect challenge for busy times, it's a poolish but not too fiddly, it's a dough but not too difficult, and it produces a wonderful bread with looks!

So that's what we did, a wonderful carrot bread, with some carrot juice mixed in, a little rye and a tiger topping. My bread came out really nice and smelled wonderful but alas no tiger topping! My slathering baked up on the bread giving me a nice shiny crust but no spots at all.

I think I picked the "wrong" rice flour to make the topping because it acted strange. Later I realised this wasn't rice flour but baby rice porridge. No wonder 60 grams was so much and needed much more water. Aaargh! It took me two days to figure that one out haha.

Other than that the bread behaved wonderfully! It mixed up nicely, (I even had to add  a little water but that was probably because I made a very stiff poolish). I really like the freckled inside, the carrot showed and even the green of the parsley came through.

Finally managed to get the camera connected to the computer in a way that I can actually get my pics off of it. Nice. A lot of problems are gone with the computer revamped but some new things occur and need some thinking with that fuzzy mind of mine.

All in all I think this is a winner. (Please, if you have any leftovers promise to try it toasted? Grilled Cheese sandwich? with pumpkin soup? Ladeedahdeedah....


Carrot Bread

by Heather Schmitt-Gonzalez
Prep Time: 28 hours (mostly unattended)
Cook Time: 45 minutes
Keywords: bake bread vegan dairy-free soy-free carrots flour

Ingredients (3 loaves)
    for the Poolish:
    • 3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
    • 1 cup lukewarm water + more as needed
    • 2-1/2 cups (13 ounces / 364 grams) stone ground rye flour
    for the Dough:
    • 1/3 cup toasted sesame seeds
    • 3/4 cup toasted sunflower seeds
    • 2-1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
    • 1 cup carrot juice, lukewarm
    • 1-1/4 cups grated carrot
    • 1/2 cup chopped parsley
    • 6-6-1/2 cups (29.4-31.8 ounces / 823.2-890.4 grams) bread flour
    • 2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon golden syrup (or honey or maple syrup)
    • 1/4 cup sunflower oil
    • 4 teaspoons sea salt
    for the Crackle Glaze:
    • 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
    • 3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons lukewarm water
    • 3/4 cup + 1-1/4 tablespoons (4.7 ounce / 131.6 gram) rice flour
    • 2 teaspoons sugar
    • 1-3/4 teaspoons sunflower oil
    • 3/4 teaspoons sea salt
    Instructions
    Day 1: Make the Poolish
    Dissolve the yeast in the water, and let sit a few minutes to bloom. Whisk in the flour until smooth - if it is very thick, continue whisking in more water until it is the consistency of a thick batter. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 24 hours; at this point it should be a bit bubbly.

    Day 2: Baking Day
    In a large bowl (or bowl of a stand mixer fitted with dough hook attachment), dissolve the yeast in the carrot juice, let sit a few minutes until it looks creamy (bloomed). Add the grated carrot, parsley, the lesser amount of bread flour, and the poolish to the bowl. Knead on low spead for 3 minutes. If the dough doesn't seem too sticky, then don't add any more of the flour; it will firm up as it is kneaded (plus you have more to add to it).

    Add the oil to the bowl and knead for another 8 minutes. Add the salt, increase the speed, and knead until elastic, about 7 more minutes. At this point, the dough will not be sticky any longer. Use the extra flour, a tiny bit at a time, to remedy the dough if it is. Add the toasted seeds, and gently mix in.

    Place the dough into a large, lightly oiled bowl or container and cover. Let sit for 60-90 minutes, *knocking the dough back halfway through. To knock the dough back, remove it from the bowl and set it on a work surface. Use your hands to knock the air out of it. Fold the edges towards the center to form a cushion. Replace in the container, seam side down.

    make the Crackling Glaze:
    While the dough is rising, dissolve the yeast in the water in a medium bowl. Whisk in the remaining ingredients. It should be spreadable, but not runny. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to sit for at least 30 minutes before using.

    shaping and baking:
    Turn the dough out onto a lighty floured work surface and divide into 3 equal parts (approximately 78 ounces of dough to equal three 26 ounce portions).

    Form the portions into three round balls, and cover them with a clean tea towel. Let rest for 10 minutes.
    Shape each circle of dough into an oblong loaf, by gently pressing ball down into a circle and then tucking/rolling into shape. Set loaves, seam side down, onto a lightly floured bread peel or thin cutting board. Glaze the loaves generously with the crackling glaze (you'll have a lot of leftover glaze), and leave to rise at room temperature for 60-75 minutes, or until the dough has doubled in size and the the surface is crackled.

    Place a baking stone into the oven, and preheat to 475° F during last 20 minutes or so of rise time.
    Slide the loaves onto the stone (let them rise directly on a baking sheet or two if you don't have a stone - slide that into preheated oven) and spray generously with water. Close oven door. Lower the temperature to 400° F after 5 minutes. After another 10 minutes, open the oven door to let in a little air. Repeat two more times (every 10 minutes). Total baking time will be 45 minutes.

    Remove bread from oven and cool on a wire rack.

    if you'd like to join in and be a Bread Baking Buddy, simply bake this Carrot Bread (yes, you may adapt) - and then send Heather a link to your post via email (girlichef at yahoo dot com) or leave it in the comments section of her post.  Submissions are due by October 29th.  Once you've posted, you will be send a Buddy badge for baking along.  I hope you'll join us this month!

    Please click to see how my fellow Babes did this month!
    Bitchin' Bread Baking Babe Bibliothécaire - Katie
    blog from OUR kitchen - Elizabeth
    Feeding my enthusiasms - Pat
    girlichef - Heather
    Life's A Feast - Jamie
    Living in the Kitchen with Puppies - Natashya
    Lucullian Delights - Ilva
    My Kitchen In Half Cups - Tanna
    Notitie Van Lien - Lien
    Paulchens Foodblog - Astrid


    10 comments:

    1. Baby rijstepap, euwwh! vond ik vroeger al vies. Crackle or not, lovely loaves. I'm starting to wonder why my bread really was orange from the c.juice (and you should have seen the loaf I baked later with only c.juice to finish the bottle, like the dutch finally won the soccer world cup), did you use c juice or orange?

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    2. You had to add only a little water? I couldn't believe how stiff both the starter and the final dough were! Too bad about no crackle crust. Even so, your bread looks pretty wonderful and I'm guessing that there is zero bitterness in baby rice porridge (who knew that one could even buy baby rice porridge?!)

      I used almost all orange juice (aside from a few tablespoons of apple juice and several sloshes of water) in my bread, Lien and it was hardly orange coloured at all.

      Well done on getting your computer to allow you to retrieve your photos from your camera. I STILL haven't figured out how to get my webcam working on this new computer unless I start up Skype. (Finding things has been a nightmare; I can't believe they changed the name of "Accessibility Options" to "Ease of Access Center" and "Add or Remove Programs" to "Programs and Features". How ridiculous is that? ...I hate change!)

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    3. It is a winner, although I had the same experience as Elizabeth...needed lots more water. Maybe I should have used some baby food rice instead of rye flour..haha. Your bread is lovely, tiger or not.

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    4. Gosh, I love the shape of your slices! Makes me think I should cut mine thicker some times at least. I tend to slice thin.
      Must try this again when I can get parsley! Oh wouldn't this be beautiful for St Pats day ... but that's Irish soda bread.
      The baby rice thing I have to chuckle. I'm sure seen side by side, you'd obviously know them for what they are. But I like you have those moments when something wonders off and there simply is no focus ... that's when we do stuff like that.
      Really gorgeous loaves!

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    5. It's beautiful... Grilled ham and sharp German cheese I think.... Let me know if you have any leftovers and I'll be over LOL

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    6. oops!! I MEANT to say that I used almost all _carrot_ juice (it was very orange though...).

      Good idea, Katie. Grilled ham and sharp German cheese... mmmmmm!

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    7. I have to giggle at the baby rice porridge! That said, I love the color that it lent the outside of your loaf ;). It looks absolutely wonderful, Karen.

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    8. You girls have the best remarks, thumbs up for grilled ham and sharp cheese. And yes I had to add quite the bit of water but I held back on water in the poolish for fear of a swamp. Don't know why my bread was just ordinary colored, not orange. I used half orange juice, half carrot juice. Have beent hinking I could use some of that A.C.E. vitamin drink next time (which contains mostly carrots...)

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    9. I am incredibly late but seeing everyone's gorgeous loaves and I just have to make this. The flavors intrigue me as well - this must be the perfect bread to accompany a meal, soup or just a bread and cheese lunch. Yours is stunning, even with the baby rice porridge topping :-)

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    10. I am so glad I have stumbled upon this article, because I ran out of good recipes for making delicious breads (well, we love to experiment, although we've discovered some really good ones). This one sounds delicious, and we are going to try it this week, only using baking soda instead of yeast. Tnx!

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