baking Archives - Page 3 of 6

Making Bavarian Pretzels

Making pretzels is a similar process to making bagels. Mix, ferment, shape, retard, boil, top, bake. I tried really hard to fuck these up. When I need to measure out water that’s a certain temperature range, I usually make the adjustments in the measuring cup, then pour out the excess once the temperature is right. This time, I got the temperature right, then just dumped the whole cup into the flour mixture. Crap. So I fiddled with it by adding more flour and a bit more yeast until the dough texture seemed about right. I was working with the Bavarian Pretzel recipe in Daniel Leader’s Local Breads. Unfortunately because I’m an idiot, this wasn’t a real test of the recipe. They came out pretty well despite this. The pretzels were best still warm from the oven. Oh yeah, I also burned the crap out of my arm on the baking sheet. Add that to the collection of scars.

Random Collection of Food

I don’t feel very writey right now, but here are a few food pics that have been piling up.

The Cajun Tofu from Yellow Rose Recipes has turned out to be a great quick week night dinner star. Once you have the spice mixture around, the rest can be made up of staples I keep around. This time we had it with some of the collards that are filling my freezer and some hash browns that cooked up quicker because I diced ’em smaller. Oh, and that’s a little bowl of home made apple sauce.

When I saw this fairly quick recipe for bread bowls, I knew I’d eventually be dumping come Cholent from Veganomicon into them. I was right! The dry milk powder was replaced with soy milk powder.

Trying to keep the healthy cruise diet going, I baked up some Asian tofu and ate it on a salad of raw kale and bok choy seasoned with sesame oil.

And finally, this Peanut Butter Quick Bread recipe looked interesting. I thought it would be even more interesting as Peanut Butter and Jelly Bread. So that’s what I did. The bread itself is not all that sweet like a lot of quick breads, so the jelly does not make it too sweet. I veganized by using a flax egg and soy milk as replacements. The recipe worked in both bread and muffin form.

2008 Holiday Bake Off!

Hey, don’t miss this year’s holiday bake off at Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe! You all should totally enter so there’s more for us to eat when we show up fresh from vacation. Oh yeah, we’ll be out of town and unable to enter, so that’s two more chances for YOU to win! I’m actually looking forward to gobbling up other people’s yummies rather than stressing over my own this year. So bust out your mixing bowl, okay?

Cupcake Testing

Posting is going to be a bit slim as we prepare for the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival. For now I’ll leave you with the scientific method as applied to cupcakes.

Hey, they kind of look like little Pacmans (Pacmen?)

My first bagels

Half of a plain bagel with cream cheese, half eaten

Not the first bagels I’ve eaten, but the first ones I’ve ever made. Like most bread, there is a series of timed steps that each contribute to the yumminess. For this batch, I used Rose Levy Beranbaum’s recipe in The Bread Bible. I have some steps for you here in pictures. I skipped pics of the sponge and bulk rise parts though. Too bad, you could’ve seen the dough almost bust out of it’s container.

Shaping bagels is pretty easy. After you’ve separated the dough into pieces, you poke a finger in the center, pick it up, stretch until you can get both fingers in the hole (yeah, it’s pretty naughty) and either pull and rotate around until you’ve got a 2 1/2″ hole (it’ll snap back) or wind it around with your fingers as kind of spokes like Kevin did and it’ll go really fast. That last bit is hard to describe. Oh well, you’ll figure it out.

You boil them up for about 2 minutes per side. Then let rest for a minute on a clean towel to drain before transferring to a baking sheet.

These are spongy and chewy crusted like bagels should be. We also made a few onion bagels. They were even more amazing. I was concerned because it looked like the onions were burninating while they were baking, but it all turned out fine.

In addition to this being a VeganMofo post, I’m submitting it to Wild Yeast Blog’s weekly Yeastspotting feature. Every week Susan rounds up yummy baking posts from around the ‘net. Check it out.