Cooper Jackson

Here we are, at 10 pm on a Sunday, trying to keep up with the Olson’s. Not the Jones’s, but the Olson’s. See, the past few months, we have gotten big-headed about our breadmaking skills. The bread isn’t mind-blowing amazing, its just good enough for you to appreciate it, because we gave it to you for free. If you had to pay for it, you might not be so gracious in your description of it. Anyway, because we have gotten big-headed about our bread, I think we have also become a little lazy. We’re not taking some of the extra steps we used to. Then, our friend Erik Olson decided to pull out his fancy bread machine, and with the flick of a wrist, he began churning out bread with very little effort & fanfare, unlike our usual procedure. Last night he graduated to baking his bread in the oven rather than in the bread machine, and we went over to see his finished product. He has achieved in a few weeks, a certain level in breadmaking which took us a few years to get to.

Not yet defeated, we decided to raise the ante a little today. It’s Christmas, so we thought we would send out a few batches to our Concord neighbors. First we made a single batch of Brother’s Bread, then decided to make another double batch of it. We then graduated to Italian baguettes, and finally topped it all of with a festive Cranberry Walnut bread. Look at this spread!

bread spread

Plus we re-invigorated some techniques that may have been lost over the past few months: egg whites on the crust before the loaves go in the oven, extra effort in cutting them, and even had the idea to toast the walnuts. Fancy Fancy!

We got this recipe from Benni (sp?) in New Hampshire who makes the best bread!  This is his mother Charlotte’s recipe and basically involves flour, water, yeast, and lots of walnuts.  The picture shows the dough rising in the bowl and trust me when I say the bread was awesome!

Lateef got out the “Secrets of Jesuit Breadmaking” by Brother Rick Curry cookbook for Easter and made a few of the best loaves ever. The book was given to us by my Uncle Richard and Aunt Lisa (cool relatives from New Orleans) and Lateef uses this book about once per week now. Big thanks to Lisa for thinking of us when it came to this book. Except I credit my last few pounds of weight gain to this book, so there’s the only negative. Anyway, the Easter bread tastes like some kind of dreamsickle sweet bread. It had raisins, honey, cinnamon, it was beautiful, and it didn’t last long:

A romantic bread-related gesture from Lateef.  French bread little-debbie-rolled style with Nutella.  MMMMMmmmm.

Our first round of bagels where really good. We thought we would just wip up a couple for the fun of it. The first recipe from a new bread book Lateef got for XMas. This was a pre-fermentation method, which took an extra day to get the sponge going. However the results where worth every extra minute.

We may have gotten a little overconfident the second round was not nearly as good. Lateef got experimental and fell asleep (which seems to be an occupational hazard for bakers) so the bagels did not turn out so well. However not to fear third time is a charm.

Last night we return to the stander recipe. Adding a little more honey for flavor. The bagels where superb. Infact probably the best tasting bread we have ever made. Melissa has gotten down a good technique for boiling the bagels. One of the keys is the new mixer Lateef got for XMas. A professional Kitchen Aid mixer has made our bread lighter and nicer all round. The pre-fermentation has also made a tremendous different in the taste and texture of the bagels.

This morning we also made some cranberry walnut bread. The pre-fermentation method also increase the taste and lightness of the bread. As usually we distributed half our creations. We haven’t heard that they where good or not but we found them to be amazingly different then our previous batches.

Lateef’s favorite breakfast is when Melissa makes oatmeal pancakes. This truly magnificent experience should be incorporated in everything we make. So right now Lateef is experimenting with an maple oatmeal bagel and maple oatmeal bread. Nothing strong just a hint of maple and oatmeal. Best eaten after a good long exercise so there is no chance of guilt feelings.

For Thanksgiving Lateef wanted to try cooking the bird in the outdoor oven. We decided on a chicken since we knew it would fit into the oven opening. We stuck the chicken in a bread pan, then Lateef came into the kitchen with armfuls of rosemary. Seriously like enough rosemary to season 10 chickens. Then he crammed it all inside the chicken. After baking the bread for the day (16 loaves or so), he and Liam put the chicken in for 2 hours and it came out amazing – so they say since I’m vegitarian. Look:

And after the bread oven:

After returning from a trip in NH we brought back some sourdough starter.

Benny gave us a great bread making lesson. He is really an amazing baker. He had been working on his swiss twist which is sooooo good. What I was so amazed with is that this bread spends 24 hours in the fridge before baking it.

Benny’s oven works so much better than mine. It retains more heat and hold 40 loafs instead of 3 as mine does.

For Octoberfest this year we made bread and pretzels. Overall the pretzels came out great but the bread didn’t do as well as usual. We made 29 pretzels, all except 3 big ones were made in the electric oven. The process for the pretzels after you have them formed is to boil them for 10 seconds first:

After the boiling in baking soda and water the pretzel must be salted:

Finally it is time to bake the pretzel in the oven:

With the oven hot I decided to put some Lotti’s (Charlotte’s Waltnut Raisin) in however I am not sure what made it not turn out so good. Might have been the cold and rainy weather or it might have been the oven was not as hot as usual. This round the oven was heating up for 5 hours but it still was not hot. It could be because there was too much ash by the end. It looks good and tastes fine but just isn’t what past batches were.

Last night we made Zopf. The first batch of the Zopf we ever made had a very sweet taste to it. Ever since then we have been following the recipe and have tried different amounts of molassas. So far however we have not been able to replicate it. After baking this round I think the first time I added the molasses as I was mixing the dry and wet ingredients together so I will try that next time.

On Sunday September 24 we made our first walnut rasin bread. It tasted really good and the oven was just a little to hot. 5 hours is to long to heat the oven but I think 4 might be just right.