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Food Friday – April 2017 King Arthur Flour Bakealong Challenge: Chocolate Babka

21 Friday Apr 2017

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from Kris B.

There seems to be a theme to my posts lately and it is not good food, good recipes, or good eating, though there has been some of that; it is a lack of time.  I seem to be doing everything at the last minute.  That is not my intention, but it is the way life is working out at the moment.  My making of this week’s recipe was no exception!

The free time that I had to make the Chocolate Babka, which is this month’s King Arthur Flour Bakealong Challenge, was last night, beginning at 8pm.  That was the end of my work week so I could give my total, albeit tired, attention to trying this recipe.  I was a bit concerned about starting so late in the evening because Tracey, who is not quite the procrastinator that I am, had told me that her experience with this recipe required longer rise times than were indicated.  Worst case scenario, I would stay up late and knit while my dough was rising and then I would sleep in this morning.

I was fortunate that the dough came together easily and rose quickly.  I admit that I did use the bread proofing setting on my oven.  I suspect the 80 degree temperatures here in Texas versus Tracey’s thirty something temperatures in Michigan may have had something to do with our greatly varying rise times!  Mine took only an hour and a half for the first rise.  At this point, the dough is divided into two equal pieces, as the recipe makes two loaves, and the filling is made.  The filling consists of cocoa powder, espresso powder, cinnamon, sugar, butter, mini chocolate chips, and nuts, which I omitted because I wanted to share my bread with a friend who cannot eat nuts.  Half of the dough is rolled into a 9×18 rectangle.  The first five ingredients above are mixed together and spread on the rectangle.  Half of the chocolate chips and nuts are then sprinkled on top as well.  Beginning with the short end, the dough is the rolled “cinnamon roll” style.  This process is repeated with the second piece of dough.

Once rolled, the dough is split in half Lengthwise, revealing all of the layers of dough and filling.  The two halves are twisted together to form an “S” and placed in a lightly oiled 9×5 loaf pan.  The loaves are brushed with an egg wash and then topped with a crumbled mixture consisting of butter, cinnamon, powdered sugar, and flour.  At this point, the pans are loosely covered and allowed to rise again for about two hours.  They then bake for 50-60 minutes in a 300 degree oven.

I was quite fortunate that my rise times were at the shorter limit both times and that all the parts of the recipe – dough, filling, shaping, glaze, and topping – all came together easily.  I began making the dough at 8 pm, and I pulled the finished loaves out of the oven at 1am.  Yes, it was a five-hour process, but 3 1/2 hours of that was rise time and another fifty minutes was bake time.

When the loaves come out of the oven, it is necessary to run a table knife around the edges to prevent sticking.  The Chocolate Babka then cools completely in the pans.  I loosened the sides of mine and then went to bed hoping that when I got up this morning and tried to turn it out, nothing had stuck.  The baking gods were with me!  Both of my loaves came right out of the pans and looked really pretty!  So far so good!  The fact that I had started the process of making the babka when I was pretty much exhausted and everything had gone smoothly was a big plus for this recipe!

As is always the case with our Food Friday baked items, I had to photograph the babka  before I could eat it.  My creative juices for food photography were lacking at 8am this morning, but that is a different problem.  Lol!  I opted for a simple shot of exactly how the loaf was sitting on the kitchen counter.  Often for me, the more I try to “make” a photo happen, the less satisfied I am with it.  I am learning to go with the natural appearance of things – crumbs, drips, and all. 🙂

I got the photos taken.  Finally it was time to eat some of this chocolate goodness.  Chocolate and coffee for breakfast.  My Friday morning was looking pretty good!  Then came a bit of disappointment.

The first bite of the Chocolate Babka that I tried was an end piece.  It lacked filling, which is no surprise since the filling was not spread completely to the edge, and the whole thing seemed dry.  OK, the end piece of anything is not always the best tasting, so I went for an inner slice.  The chocolate filling situation improved, but the bread itself was still a little too dry for my taste.  I used the minimum amounts of flour and bake times and the maximum amount of water in the dough, so I’m not sure if the dough is supposed to be a lighter drier dough, or if I did something wrong.  I have only made chocolate babka one other time; I used a recipe from Smitten Kitchen. Though the ingredients are more or less the same, the process varies greatly. The dough rests in the refrigerator at least half a day and preferably overnight.  This recipe calls for the babka to be baked at a higher temperature for about half the time.  And, the baked babka is brushed with a generous amount of sugar syrup immediately upon being removed from the oven.  This recipe definitely resulted in a more dense and more moist bread.

Bread and chocolate are two of my favorite things so, despite being dry, my attempt at chocolate babka using this month’s King Arthur Flour Bakealong Challenge recipe will not go to waste; but, I think I will consider some variations in the recipe next time I make it.

If you try this month’s bakealong challenge, please share your results with us!

 

from Tracey G.

This month’s King Arthur Flour Bakealong Challenge for Chocolate Babka, was my first ever experience with making it. I was a bit hesitant in making this recipe to be totally honest, even after reading the Walk Through. It seemed like an awful lot things to do and to have them all go right. But like most times I am apprehensive about a recipe, it too turned out to be not so frightening/taxing as I thought it would be. Kris pretty much outlined how the steps go, so I won’t go into that, but I’ll relate my experiences with this recipe!

I will also admit in the spirit of full-disclosure, that I had issues right out of the gate – and it was totally my own fault, lol. After I got the dough mixing up in my mixer I realized it looked off, and then I figured out that it was most likely due to the fact I forgot to add the butter into the mixer when I was supposed to! Oops. So, I added it and it did take a bit of time to get it incorporated, but it eventually got there!

I had about a 1 3/4 – 2 hour first rise time, but it was about 35 degrees here that day, so that can slow it down for me, so I guess I went pretty much to the far end of the 1 1/2 to 2 hour rise time they state in the recipe, as in closer to the 2 hours. The rolling out and filling went really easily, and even the splitting the of the rolled loaves and braiding went well – that’s really the part that gave me the most anxiety, and was actually fairly easy and fun! I used the nuts that it called for, and now I wish I would have done one loaf with and one without, as Harry’s not a big fan of nuts in his baked goods. But anyway, the second rise took about 2 hours, so this time around I hit the middle of the stated potential rise times.

After it was baked, I ended up with some “gaping” in my loaves, as if filling had melted away – but it was still there. I also had issues with the pieces after they were cut, falling a bit apart. To be fair though, I did have to bake mine longer to reach the internal temperature of 190°, and even that really didn’t happen, I think I hit 170° or a bit above and called it quits. I did cool them in the pan 10 minutes before turning them out on the rack to cool as the recipe mentioned, and I also loosened the edges right after it came out of the oven as directed. I had some sticking issues due to the bit of crowning over the edges of the pan and my egg wash running in places on one that it shouldn’t have, lol. But overall, they came out alright.

Like Kris, I wait to taste until I’ve gotten my photos, and I too taste tested the end first and had the same “hmmm, it’s a bit dry” thought, but also thought “well, it IS the end piece”.

After my photos, it was time to have a real piece with a cup of coffee, and yep it’s super yummy, but still a bit on the dry side. I also am not sure where the fault lies, if it’s in my handling and techniques or if that’s just how it is, I’m not certain. I weighed my ingredients, and used the higher end of the water amount. Plus it was raining here, so there was even humidity in the air, lol. So, I’m really not sure. I would like to attempt it again to see if I have the same results!

No matter what, I enjoyed it because it tasted delicious and was something I’ve never made before. It was another totally new experience for me and I was able to sail through the parts I was nervous about – the shaping! Yay! I am already looking forward to next month’s challenge! Bring it on!

Food Friday – March 2017 King Arthur Flour Bakealong Challenge: Butterflake Herb Loaf

17 Friday Mar 2017

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from Tracey G

This was a fun recipe this week – and the joy of it being the King Arthur Flour Bakealong Challenge recipe this month, is that it is one “style” I honestly don’t think I would have tried on my own volition! I would have written it off as too much work – and it’s not! It was actually fun work, lol. This is the Butterflake Herb Loaf recipe, and it’s wonderful! Not only was it easy, it’s so customizable as well!!

Harry declared that is the bread I should make whenever we have spaghetti/pasta night instead of any other kind of garlic bread – homemade or not! LOL! To please the palates around here, I chose a few of the butter seasonings listed and modified one out of necessity. I chose to just use the salt, basil and fresh garlic. I grated the garlic on my larger-holed Microplane Grater, instead of mincing it as the recipe directs and it worked wonderfully. The ingredient I “modified” was the cayenne pepper. Somehow, someway, I discovered I was out of the stuff! That never happens! So, being in a pinch, I decided to add a few drops of Frank’s RedHot hot sauce – it added such a wonderful flavor, I will do that again next time I make it on purpose!

In this recipe you make your dough, after it is all done rising the first time, you divide it, then you roll it out and cut into circles. I didn’t have a 3.5″- 4″ cutter, so I did as they suggested and used a canning jar lid ring, worked like a charm! I cut out all my circles, spread with the seasoned butter, folded in half and lined them up in the pan. And then you repeat for the second half of the dough in another pan. Rise again. I will note here that it was a slow riser for me, it took the full 90 minutes, and then some, to get where it was supposed to be – on both the first and second risings. Once it was ready to bake, after rising in the pan, into the oven it went. And wow, did it smell yummy while it was baking! Not to mention, the recipe walk-through really helped see it was pretty darn easy to do!

Of course, after they were baked, the first loaf didn’t last long – that’s why I’m glad this recipe made 2, one to eat right away and one to photograph THEN eat! Kris and I have already started discussing some variations we’d like to try with this super versatile recipe. The Butterflake Herb Loaf is a certain keeper!

 

 

from Kris B.

As Tracey said, this month’s King Arthur Bakealong Challenge was a fun recipe to make and even more fun to eat!  When you first read the procedure for making the Butterflake Herb Loaf, it may sound a bit burdensome, but once you get going with it, the recipe is super simple.

This is a great bread to accompany almost any meal.  I have to admit that the loaves at my house never made it to mealtime.  They became an afternoon snack and then a midnight snack.  I did make the filling exactly as the recipe called for except that I omitted the caraway seeds.  Here in Texas, we always have cayenne pepper.  🙂  It is not something that I would have thought to add to a recipe like this, but it gave the bread the tiniest little kick, which we hot sauce and jalapeño-loving Texans like!  I will say that I did not add enough of the filling to my bread rounds as I went because I had more than I think I should have after my pans of bread were done.  So, when the bread came out of the oven, I brushed the tops of the loaves with the remaining butter and herb filling.  All I can say is yum!

There is something about bread though…it is often times hard to photograph.  It falls into that “brown food” category that Tracey and I joke about all te time!  Bread tastes so good, but often doesn’t look equally as good in photos.  Yes, you can add a little pop of color to the photo by using a colorful placemat or serving piece, but you have to be careful that the eye is not so pulled to the color that it upstages your tasty brown bread.  Something to think about when photographing any kind of food…remember that no matter how pretty your dishes and linens may be, the food is the subject of your photo!

Butterflake Herb Loaf recipe

Recipe walk-through

King Arthur Bakealong Challenge

 

 

Food Friday – February King Arthur Flour Bakealong Challenge: Dark Chocolate Eclairs

18 Saturday Feb 2017

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Hello all! I am flying solo this week for our Bakealong Challenge/Food Friday. Kris has out-of-town company visiting and had a hectic week schedule to boot, so since I owe her bigtime for helping me out while I was down with strep-throat, I totally wanted to help her out and make her life easier this week and give her a break! She deserves it and deserves to have fun with her visitor! Thank you again Kris, you saved my behind the past couple weeks! Love you my friend!!! 

 

This week it’s the King Arthur Flour February Bakealong Challenge recipe! I know I have said this more times than I can count, but I truly do enjoy these challenges. And I say that because most of the time they truly are a challenge, getting me to make something I never have, plus things I’d never even thought to make! This month’s, the Dark Chocolate Eclairs are one such never-thought-to-make recipe. They were always something bought in the bakery – certainly not something I myself could make! Well, I am here to tell you that it is a VERY doable. I was so proud of myself for creating these little lovelies in my very own kitchen. The Dark Chocolate Eclairs Bakealong Walk-Through on KAF blog, makes it even easier to follow along!

The ingredients were simple, even if I had stuck with the original ones called for in the recipe, lol. I’d read a few of the reviews for this Challenge, and one stuck in my head that thought the filling was too bitter, so it was suggested to try using semi-sweet chocolate instead of the unsweetened chocolate. That’s what I did, and I just used the semi-sweet chocolate chips I had in my pantry. I also used my own Hershey’s Cocoa Powder I had, not the Dutch Processed – I am just recovering from being sick for 2 weeks with strep, and wanted to make it as simple on myself as I could! The only things that I had to purchase special for this recipe, were a couple of items I don’t always have around – whole milk and heavy cream. The whole milk is for the chocolate cream filling and the heavy cream is for the ganache – the chocolate glaze coating. Everything else, was on hand –  eggs, butter, flour, water, cornstarch, regular cocoa powder, light corn syrup and granulated sugar.

I did mine in stages as well (I’d read through the walk-through blog post for this and it’s stated it works well that way if you need it to!) – and this recipe is a champ for that sort of thing! I made the eclair shells and the pastry cream one day, then the day I was going to photograph them, I put them together and made the glaze. Let me just say that photographing them was harder than making them! LOL!

I had never made a pastry cream (in this case I kept thinking of it as homemade pudding, because that’s what it tasted like every time I had to taste, for quality control purposes you know, lol) and it was much easier than I thought! The eclair pastry I’d had experience with as it’s a pate a choux and that’s what we made as part of the Kringle in the December 2016 recipe challenge! I actually got to use a skill/technique again, and I felt pretty confident! I used a pastry bag with no tip, just a cut end, to pipe the eclair pastry batter/dough, and they even recommend using an ordinary ziptop bag with a hole cut in the corner – it was easy peasy either way! I also piped in my chocolate cream filling with a 1M Wilton tip for prettiness AND easiness. You could use the ziptop bag thing again for that, or spoon it in etc. For me, it was less-messy and faster to pipe it in, and the bonus effect of it being pretty, lol.

The glaze was very simple to make and a recipe/technique I was very familiar with, a simple ganache. I use ganache to make my homemade chocolate truffles, so it’s definitely something I’m really used to making, and honestly, even if it was the first time I’d ever made it, it’s a very simple thing to do! I drizzled my glaze on top of my put-together eclairs, just because I wanted to, lol. It was purely and personal choice, you can dip the cut tops in the glaze if you like.

All in all, this recipe was a lot of fun to make and I feel like I added another skill to my repertoire – I CAN make eclairs! Yay me!! And you can too!! Seriously! It does make a lot of shells, so I am going to make a 1/2 batch of the Vanilla Pastry Cream to use them up, I do have some chocolate left as well, but I really want to try my hand at the regular pastry cream – if I can nail that, I’ll never have to buy custard-filled-anything again, I can just make my own! LOL!!

January King Arthur Bakealong Challenge – Pizza Party Buns

21 Saturday Jan 2017

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It’s time for our post on this month’s King Arthur Flour Bakealong Challenge recipe, Pizza Party Buns.

At our house, pizza is usually reserved for those nights when no one feels like cooking.  If I happen to have dough in the fridge, (We are fans of Jeff Hertzenberg and Zoe Francois’ recipe in Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes A Day.) We will have homemade pizza with whatever toppings I can scrounge – vegetables from peppers to asparagus to butternut squash and/or meats of various kinds.  Sometimes I have sauce on hand and sometimes a don’t.  But I always cheese.  And when there is no dough already made, we have pizza delivered.  All this to say that pizza is most often a lazy day meal.

I was excited to try this month’s Bakealong Challenge recipe because I am good with anything that has pizza in it’s name!  I have to say this at the outset here…There are recipes that look impressive and look like they took a lot of time to prepare and didn’t, and then there are recipes like this one that are actually time consuming, though relatively easy, but take a good amount of time and most people won’t realize what went into its preparation.  That is meant only as an observation, not a value statement.  From start to finish, because my rise times were slow, the making of the Party Pizza Buns took a little over four hours.  Would I make them again?  You bet!  They are well worth the time to make.

The dough is a relatively simple dough, though it does call for bread flour rather than all-purpose.  The liquids used are milk and a little olive oil.  And then of course salt and yeast are necessary.  Once made, the recipe says that the dough should rise until it doubles in size, 60-90 minutes.  Mine took almost two hours and I had it in my oven on the bread proofing setting.

After the first rise, the dough is rolled into a 12×18 rectangle.  This dough was quite cooperative when I was rolling it.  My go-to pizza dough recipe is much more “elastic” and is sometimes difficult to roll.  Once you have the rectangle of dough, it is spread with a layer of pizza sauce, (I used prepared.  I know.  Lazy!)  followed by cheese and then the filling.  The recipe suggests pepperoni; I used finely diced Canadian bacon, green bell pepper, and onion.  Any of your favorite pizza topics will work.  Just be careful to not overstuff!  After all of the “toppings” are added, you roll from the wide end of the dough just as you would cinnamon rolls.  The Party Pizza Buns are then sliced and laid flat on a parchment paper lined baking sheet for a second rise.  I cut mine into twelve slices, each of which makes a meal sized portion.  My rise time took the full ninety minutes.

After the second rise, the buns bake for 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees.

We ate them straight out of the oven (Well, after they were photographed.) and they were delicious!  I have some in the fridge.  I’ll report back on how they are when reheated.

I prefer a thick crust pizza  so I loved these; however, if you prefer thin crust pizza, these are “bready”; hence there name, “buns.”  Lol!  Think of them more like a savory cinnamon roll rather than like a thin crust pizza.

I am also going to try using this dough to make other kinds of roll-up type meals.  I think ham and cheese or spinach and cheese would be just as good as the pizza filling.

I hope you’ll bake some Pizza Party Buns along with us and the January 2017 King Arthur Flour Bakealong Challenge!

from Tracey G

It’s my favorite time – – King Arthur Flour’s Bakealong Challenge time! Ok, I also love Mix Time too, but I really love Bakealong time! As in the household of my partner in crime, pizza is one of those save-mama-some-work dinners here – usually we get take out since my pizza stone cracked in half and I haven’t bothered to replace it. Due to where we live though, we don’t have the opportunity for delivery, lol, so it always still involves some effort – we (read: Jeremy) have to go out and pick it up. But that’s ok, it’s still a time saver! And one heck of a yummy one at that. Depending on where we order from, my favorite toppings can vary, but the boys favorites are: pepperoni and green olives. This can be a favorite of mine as well, but I equally enjoy a meat-free version of green peppers and onion, however, they do not! So, since this batch of Pizza Party Buns would be for everyone in the household, majority ruled, and I opted for the toppings suggested in the recipe, pepperoni and cheese, but added in sliced green olives.

As I read through the recipe for this month’s Bakealong Challenge, I knew what ingredients I had to pick up, the filling items, to be exact. While I always have pepperoni on hand and cheese, I didn’t have any pizza sauce – and I noticed I was low on the other two, so I grabbed some pepperoni and mozzarella cheese too while I was at it. I was ready to roll for whenever I got the chance to make them. Or so I thought. Once I was ready to get started on these, I started gathering my ingredients. Sauce, yep… cheese, check… pepperoni, yes… olive oil, check… salt, right here… yeast, got it… bread flour… Um bread flour… Hello bread flour???? Uh oh. Bread flour is MIA. I was sure I had bread flour – looked through every cabinet…none to be found. Even enlisted Jeremy’s help in the search as he’s my tall person who can check the higher areas of the cabinets easily, lol. But nope, there wasn’t any anywhere. So, when you’re thrown a curve, it’s on to Plan B – all-purpose flour it had to be. The difference between bread flour and all-purpose flour is protein content, bread flour is typically higher in protein content so it aids in the gluten development, which produces and chewier and more elastic crumb. But most of the time it’s ok to swap. And it was this time, as far as I’m concerned, lol. I had no choice! And it was ok! Nothing bad happened!

I too had a bit of trouble in the rising of the dough area – it was incredibly slow! But since it’s cold here in Northern Michigan, it didn’t completely surprise me, just an inconvenience. I don’t have a proofing-setting on my oven, but I do have trick I learned along the way from somewhere – I turn my oven on to 400 for 1-2 minutes, then turn it off and pop my dough in for its rising time. Usually works quite well!

But other than that, the rising, everything came together quite easily – what Kris mentioned about the dough being easy to work with and roll out, is spot-on. I had no issues with mine either. I patted it out into a rectangle with my hands slightly oiled with olive oil, and then rolled it the rest of the way to the desired size of 12×18″. Spooned on the sauce, sprinkled the cheese and toppings then rolled it up. I cut mine into 1-inch pieces, and somehow managed to get 17, I don’t know how I didn’t get 18 pieces, but I must have cut a couple a little larger than the others, lol.

After the 2nd rise, it was time to bake! Yay! And they baked-off beautifully, I think. I didn’t get to eat them straight out of the oven, but I did get to taste-test after they’d cooled to room temperature and they were super yummy – I was so pleased! Harry announced he loved them – and that right there made me extremely happy, 😉 I haven’t tried reheating them yet, but I can say that they are still yummy the next day straight out of the refrigerator! Cold Party Pizza Buns for breakfast! And lunch, and a snack…. Yes, they will definitely be made again, not only are they tasty, but they are very versatile as well – your imagination can run wild with one!

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