Orange zest bread

Tis the season for mandarin oranges at the ol grocery store! Thus, jotimaz and I had an overabundance of orange peels that needed to be put to good use as zest. We saved several days’ worth of peels, let them dry and then ground them up in my trusty food processor. jotimaz has several recipes in his bread books that call for orange zest so it was not hard to find a good loaf for the week’s sandwiches. Oh man was this loaf aromatic! It made the whole house smell like wonderful bread and oranges. On the sandwich side, the citrus taste goes surprisingly well with turkey breast, cheese and mustard. AND – it kept for over a week in the fridge!

Whole wheat hamburger buns

Well…chicken burger buns in our case. Big fluffy whole wheat buns, fresh out of the oven, are awesome. It is so nice to be able to just make the size, shape and amount that you need.

Pumpernickel bread

We wanted to try some good ol pumpernickel bread for sandwiches this week. jotimaz substituted some of the bread flour with barley flour so we had a nice mix of barley, rye and bread flour that made for a good tasting loaf. Unfortunately, it dried out a little towards the end of the week. For some reason, the only loaves that keeps really well for are those that are wheat flour based. Curious indeed.

Beer bread

As a thank you to some guys at work that helped him out, jotimaz made them beer bread with leftover Barley Wine Ale from Alaskan Brewing Company. As an aside, barley wine is neither beer nor wine by definition. By taste, it’s a dark rich beer made like wine except with barley instead of grapes. (It also has a higher alcohol content than ordinary beer) . This is the first time Alaskan Brewing Company has bottled this beer; it’s only been on tap in the past. Anyhow, the loaf looked like it was going to be very large so jotimaz took a little bit off and made us a sampler loaf, which you can see in the pictures. The bread was soft and the beer gave it a rich, robust flavor and smell. It would be fun to experiment with different beers to see how it impacts the taste and aroma of the bread.

A new honey whole wheat loaf

This was last week’s sandwich bread – a very pretty bread if I do say so myself. The wheat flour gave the loaf an almost cinnamon color and the honey probably contributed a bit too. =) This was a great sandwich bread – it wasn’t crumbly and it stayed soft throughout the week. Plus, it had a great crust!

6-grain bread

Our sandwich bread this week is full of yummy grains: bread flour, wheat flour, oats, cornmeal, wheat germ, wheat gluten, and dark rye flour. You would think that this bread would be especially dense, oh but this recipe compensates for all the grains by adding extra gluten and lots of yeast. jotimaz cut down the rising time and it still ballooned up. The dough was more flimsy than the usual and had some issues crawling down the side of the pan. As you can see from the 1st picture, there was some overhang that had to be chopped off (and eaten). I’ll tell you what…this is some very tasty bread. I’m a huge fan of cornmeal and the taste of it really comes out in this loaf.

Fancy white bread

 jotimaz and I were totally on the ball for Wednesday and had a crock pot meal AND bread (used the delay timer!) waiting for us when we came home from work. It was glorious. The little white bread loaf was so cute…all of 1lb and perfect for a dinner for 2. The loaf had buttermilk and potato flakes in it, which gave it a very smooth and inviting flavor. This loaf would be perfect for making bread bowls because of its hearty crust and soft inside.

Barley bread

After a very long and cold Sunday, Monday brought a reprieve both in the outside temperature and the temperature in our apartment. jotimaz stayed at home today just in case the pipes decided to burst or something. As well, he managed to squeeze in some great bread baking. This barley bread is made with barley flour, bread flour, and wheat flour. It has a slightly sweet, cinnamon-y flavor but it’s a perfect dinner bread. jotimaz said that it rose like crazy and even though it was only a 1 1/2 lb loaf, it became big enough for a 2 lb loaf pan.

Whole wheat zucchini bread

In order to keep the kitchen warm on Sunday, I baked a big loaf of zucchini bread. I found a great recipe on (where else?) allrecipes. com for a loaf that contained whole wheat flour and wheat germ. It was the perfect bread to make the kitchen warm and good-smelling. I was really surprised because there was a neat swirl effect on the inside of the loaf when I cut it open. Yum! Definitely a good recipe for all that zucchini in my freezer…

Sunday baking tragedy

I apologize that we haven’t had any posts recently. We normally do all of our baking on Sunday and those loaves take us through the week. However, this morning we woke up and it was about 45F in our house. The heat went out last night and our landlord hasn’t quite figured out how to fix it yet. It doesn’t make it any better that it’s about -30F outside. So….no bread is being made as of yet. Stay tuned and hopefully we’ll have some loaves up for you all.

Here’s a picture of our current situation (time, inside temp, outside temp):