Carrot Rolls

These carrot rolls are a favorite with the kids and adults in our house: tasty and healthy! This recipe makes 32 rolls, but they freeze well, and then you're not baking quite as often.

From Green-Savvy

Ingredients

• 9 dl (1 qt) milk
• 60 g (2 oz) butter
• 2 Tbsp honey
  
• 2.5 dl (1 cup) plain yogurt
  
• 1.5 Tbsp active dry yeast
• 1 dl (1/3 cup) flaxseed meal
• 1.5 dl (1/2 cup) 10-grain cereal (or other grain mix like King Arthur's Harvest Grain Blend). You can also substitute wheat bran.
• 350 g (12 oz) whole wheat flour
• 2 Tbsp dry parsley flakes or 2 dl (3/4 cup) fresh
• 1 Tbsp coarse salt
• 400 g (14 oz) shredded carrots
• 1.4 kg (3 lb) all-purpose flour

Melt butter in a large stock pot (I use a 4 gallon stock pot for the whole process, but you could also melt butter and heat milk in a smaller pot and then continue in a large mixing bowl). Add milk and heat until mixture reaches about 38C (100F), or until luke warm. Take the pot off the heat and stir in honey and yogurt. Dissolve yeast in the mixture. Add remaining ingredients, keeping back some of the all-purpose flour. Turn dough out on a floured surface and knead for 5-10 minutes. Transfer dough to a lare oiled bowl/pot, and allow to rise covered for 60 minutes until doubled in size and the dough doesn't spring back when poked with a finger.

Form into individual rolls. I try to make them 100-125g (~4 oz) each. I find that oiling the work surface when making the rolls is a lot easier than with a floured surface. Place on baking sheet and allow to rise covered for about 30 minutes. Brush tops with beaten eggs. Bake 15 minutes at 225C (437F) until golden brown and sound hollow when tapped.

Recipe: Spent grain bread

Here's the recipe we use for our Spent Grain Bread. It is adapted from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads (if you like whole grain bread, this book is great!). It takes two days, but it is really simple stuff on both days. It uses 'spent grain' which is the grains that are left over from brewing beer. In the homebrewing process we use, these grains are steeped for about an hour in 68℃ / 155℉ water. Normally they would be discarded (we'd composted them before we started baking them). The taste, texture, and color of the bread will vary considerably with the type of grain used for the beer (big difference between a stout and pale ale grains). If you're not a homebrewer try asking your friends - I'm often surprised at how many people are homebrewers - youought to find someone who knows someone who brews. You could also ask a local microbrewery.

This recipe makes two loaves, or about two dozen rolls.

Day 1:
About 20 minutes of work.
Soaker
The soaker works to hydrate the grains in the whole wheat by mixing it with water and salt and let it sit overnight. This makes the grain softer but also enhances flavor and makes the bread a little sweeter (check Reinhart's book for the whole explanation).
Ingredients:

• 454 g / 1 lb whole wheat flour
  
• 1 tsp (8 g) salt
• 1½ cups water
  

Mix all soaker ingredients until flour is fully hydrated, then cover and let sit at room temperature for 12-24 hours. Can be refrigerated up to 3 days.

Biga
Reinhart uses the term 'Biga' for an overnight starter that uses a small amount of yeast and also soaks the whole wheat flour to increase flavor and acidity.
Ingredients:

• 454 g / 1 lb whole wheat flour
  
• 5/8 tsp active dry yeast (1/2 tsp instant dry yeast)
  
• 1½ cups warm water
  

Make a well in the flour. Pour the water into the well and then sprinkle the yeast in the water. Mix the water, gradually drawing in all the flour until hydrated. Once you have a ball of dough, knead in the bowl using wet hands for about two minutes. You may need to wet your hands again, but be careful not to add too much water to the dough.
Let the dough rest for five minutes, then knead again with wet hands for about one minutes. This time, the dough will be easier to work with, although it will still be tacky. Cover and refrigerate for at least 8 hours.

Day 2:
About 2 hours de-chill, then 20 minutes mixing followed by 2-3 hours fermentation. Baking takes 45-60 minutes.
Now we make the bread. Remove the Biga from the refrigerator about two hours before starting to mix the final dough.

Ingredients:

• Soaker
• Biga
• 225 g spent grain
• 113 g whole wheat flour
• 2¼ tsp (10 g) salt
• 2 Tbsp + 1 tsp active dry yeast (1½ Tbsp instand dry yeast)
• 85 g (4½ Tbsp) honey
• 2 Tbsp vegetable oil (optional)
• Extra whole wheat flour for adjustments
  

Chop the soaker and biga into 10-12 smaller pieces each - sprinkle some extra flour to keep them from sticking to each other. Hydrate the yeast in a little warm water (just enough to form a thick paste). Add to biga and soaker pieces along with the remaining ingredients except extra flour. Mix with a spoon or knead with wet hands for a few minutes to evenly distribute all ingredients. Take the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead for 3-4 minutes until dough is soft and tacky but not sticky. Form the dough into a ball and let it rest on the counter for five minutes.

Knead the dough again for about a minute. The dough should feel soft, supple, and very tacky. Place the dough into a lightly oiled bowl, covering it in oil on all sides. Cover the bowl and let the dough rise at room temperature for 45 to 60 minutes.

Form the dough into two loaves or smaller rolls. Cover loosely and let rise an additional 45 to 60 minutes.

Preheat oven to 425℉/218℃. Add a steam pan to the oven and a hearth stone. When you put the bread into the oven, pour a cup of water into the steam pan and spray several times with a water mister inside the oven (not on the bread). The purpose is to create steam that will produce a crusty crumb on the bread. Lower the temperature to 350℉/ 177℃and bake for 20 minutes. Rotate the bread 180°and bake another 20-30 minutes until the bread is done (thump the bottom to hear if it sounds hollow).

Cool on a wire rack and enjoy! Leave a comment if you try it out and let us know how it went.

Big Baking Day!

We were pretty busy this weekend doing some baking - see most of the results in the picture. Clockwise from top left: Spent grain batards, spent grain rolls, farmhouse white, pumpernickel, and baguettes. The farmhouse white (with white whole wheat) is fast becoming our staple sandwich bread, and the pumpernickel is the staple Danish bread, that most Danes are unable to survive without for prolonged periods.

In addition, we also did the usual Friday night pizza with the homemade crusts, and Sunday Kim baked an additional three loaves of farmhouse white.

The trickiest part on Saturday was timing all the breads so that the oven would be available when things needed to go in. Of course, each bread requires a different temperature and time in the oven...

This table shows how we planned it out:

Bread	Prep time (mix, knead, raise etc)	Baking time	Start time	Oven time
Pumpernickel	3 hours 30 min	1 hr 15 min @ 350F	11:30 am	3:00 pm
Farm house white	3 hours	35 min @ 375F	10:00 am	1:00 pm
Spent grain	2 hrs 15 min	20 min @ 425/350F	9:30 am	11:45 am
Baguettes	4 hours 30 min	20 min @ 475	9:30 am	2:00 pm

This worked out fine for the most part, except the baguettes didn't rise as expected and needed a bit more time, so they were ready at the same time as the pumpernickel loaves. We resolved the conflict by sticking the pumpernickel in the garage (close to freezing temps) until the baguettes were done in the oven.

Beer = Liquid Bread...

This weekend is shaping up to be an interesting joining of good things!

I will brew Java Coffee Stout on Saturday, and then we will use the steeped grains in a bread following a recipe from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads.

Part of the beer brewing process is to steep about a pound of crushed grains in warm water (155F/68C) for about 30 minutes. These grains would then normally be discarded (I usually compost them, but some will feed them to the birds), but this time we'll use them as the grains in a whole wheat bread.

The bread will be started tonight with a starter to soak the whole wheat flour. The bread will then be completed tomorrow after brewing the beer and adding the grains and other ingredients.