Rose's Alpha Bakers: Whole Wheat Walnut & Raisin Loaf (bump)

I haven't had a chance recently to bake with my friends in the Rose's Alpha Bakers group, but I'm going to try to get back into the swing of things as the summer winds down (I can't believe it's already August!). This week's bake is Rose's 100% Whole Wheat Walnut Loaf. I made this bread (with a few tweaks) way back in February and it was absolutely delicious!

It quickly became a favorite and I made is about 5-6 more times during the long and seemingly never-ending New England winter we had this past year. It was the perfect winter bread - hearty but not heavy, tasty, and amazing when toasted up and topped with butter and honey.

My tweaks were to add a small amount of white flour and to add raisins. I also started making 1.5x the recipe so I could get two full loaves out of it. The first time I made it I got one loaf plus a few rolls so figured...why not increase the recipe slightly and get two loaves?

This bread is an all-day affair as the starter takes about 4 hours and then there are two rises. I tried once to start the dough the night before and finish it the next morning, but I didn't like that loaf as much so went back to waking up early to start the loaf and finishing it around lunchtime of the same day.

I highly recommend making this bread! Delicious.

yummy and healthy!

delicious with butter and a bit of honey

nothing better than homemade bread on a cold winters day!

My full post for my tweaked loaf that I called Whole Wheat Walnut & Raisin Loaf, plus lots of pictures, is here.

Bye for now...
 

Chinese BBQ Pork & Homemade Pork Fried Rice

I love reading other people's food and baking blogs, especially when they have yummy recipes and lots of gorgeous pictures. I found this recipe, for Chinese BBQ Pork (Cha Siu) & Pork Fried Rice, while poking around on a cool family blog, The Woks of Life.

Here in Boston we have had one snowstorm after another - literally a snowstorm every weekend for the past seven weeks - it's been a truly awful winter (although the Pats did win the Superbowl...so maybe that's a fair tradeoff!). So, what better activity on a blizzarding Valentine's Day weekend than to make Chinese BBQ pork from scratch and then homemade pork fried rice?! It was absolutely delicious! You can find the recipes here: Chinese BBQ pork and here: pork fried rice.

Here are my photos of the finished rice and then my step-by-step...

my finished rice

time for dinner!

First came the BBQ pork. I was excited to make BBQ sauce from scratch and it was dead easy. I'll definitely make this again!

ingredients for the BBQ sauce for the pork

I reserved some sauce for basting the cooking meat. The rest of the sauce got poured over the pork (in a ziplock bag) and then it's set in the fridge overnight to marinade.

the final sauce was thick and it smelled great

meat in a bag

in goes the sauce

smoosh it around and it's done for the night

After a night in the fridge, the pork is set on a rack over the pan (to allow air to flow around the meat). Cook the pork until the internal temperature reaches at least 145 degrees, about 40-50 minutes at 450 (flip the meat over about half way through). My meat is much darker and more caramelized then the original recipe...next time I will experiment with cooking at a slightly lower temperature to see if that makes a difference.

ready for roasting

done...OMG, delicious!

While the pork is roasting, you can cook the Jasmine rice. I actually made mine the day before since my rice cooker keeps it fresh for a few days.

we got pork, we got rice...pork fried rice, here we come!

The pork is done to perfection! Moist and delicious. It was really fun to cook a large piece of meat and even after making a huge batch of rice, we had lots of leftover pork. It lasted all week!

After a short rest, cut about the pork you'll use for the fired rice into bite-sized pieces. 

a few test slices for the cook

so delicious!

The pork is done so now it's time to make the rice!

First, mix up the sauce, then chop the onions and scallions and prep the rest of the ingredients. The only change I made to the sauce was to use sake instead of Chinese wine (because that's all I had) and skipped the "dark soy sauce" since I couldn't find any at the grocery store. I also added some green peas to the fried rice.

ingredients for the sauce for the fried rice

the finished sauce

chopping the onions and scallions

All of my ingredients are ready...just need to scramble up the eggs.

ingredients for the fried rice

scramble, scramble, scramble...ready

Now it's time to combine everything and make the fried rice. First, the onions are sauteed, then the BBQ pork is added.

adding the pork to the onions

stir and cook for a few minutes so the flavors come together

Next, the rice is added and then the sauce. I think I used much more rice than the recipe called for, so I should have upped the amount of sauce a bit. Will definitely do that next time!

stirring in the rice

and then the sauce

Then the rest of the ingredients are added...peas, then sprouts, then egg and scallions. Give it a good stir to thoroughly mix everything...and then that's it...done!

next I added the peas and sprouts

and finally, the cooked eggs and scallions

And...done! It was so delicious, can't wait to make it again soon.

the finished fried rice

so yummy!

Bye for now...

Rose's Alpha Bakers: Whole Wheat Walnut & Raisin Loaf

It's catch-up week for Rose's Alpha Bakers. Instead of making a recipe I missed, I decided to try something healthy this week and made the 100% Whole Wheat Walnut Loaf from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Baking Bible. I made a few small changes though - adding a bit of white flour and some raisins - so I'll call mine a Whole Wheat Walnut & Raisin Loaf. It was a mostly whole wheat loaf that was 100% delicious!

While I am enjoying baking through The Baking Bible, I am really feeling the need to be more healthy...so I've just purchased Rose's The Bread Bible and will be making more breads and fewer sweets. I'll still be baking along with my online buddies (as evidenced by next week's chocolate cake, which I've already made!), but - here in Massachusetts - we've been digging out from one storm after another and making fresh bread from scratch while I'm stuck in the house feels like an awesome winter project.

my finished loaf and dinner rolls

You can see here that the loaf baked up with a nice light crumb. It was hearty, but not heavy.

a view of the inside

lovely fresh rolls

Overall, the bread was amazing. It was easy to make (although it took all day) and the taste was delicious. I felt so healthy eating it! It also made so much dough that I could make a full sized loaf plus eight rolls.

I was a bit nervous about using only whole wheat flour because I feared the bread would be too dense and heavy, so my loaf doesn't look much like the picture in the book. Rose's bread (in the book) looks almost like a Boston brown bread to me - very dark in color with a tight crumb. My loaf is lighter in color and slightly fluffier inside. The addition of raisins also kind of threw off my senses and I was expecting it to be slightly sweeter, so next time I think I would add a bit more honey to the dough or just use nuts and no raisins. Turning it into some kind of cinnamon-raisin-walnut bread would also be yummy.

The first step in making the bread is making a "sponge," a starter dough that adds structure, flavor and texture to the final bread. I let mine rise for the full 4 hours (with the rest of the flour sprinkled over the top) to get the best flavor possible.

ingredients for the sponge - so easy!

the sponge was really liquidy

One of the ingredients was vital wheat gluten. I'd never even heard of this before, but was glad I found it at the grocery store! I don't know if it was just a great recipe or the addition of the vital wheat gluten, but this bread was really great! A definite make again recipe.

ingredients for the bread

hmmm...so this is what vital wheat gluten looks like!

the dry ingredients are mixed together

After mixing the starter ingredients, the rest of the dry ingredients are mixed together and sprinkled over the top of the sponge like a thick flour blanket. Then the dough rests for 1-4 hours.

sprinkle sprinkle...see you in 4 hours!

After 1 hour, small cracks have formed in the flour "blanket." After 4 hours, there are lots of bubbles all around the edges. Baking with yeast is so cool - it's alive (said in Dr. Frankenstein's voice)!

after 4 hours...bubbles everywhere

so cool - a science experiment in my bowl

After four hours of resting, the dough gets mixed together then the oil and salt are mixed in. I was a bit worried at this point because it seemed really oily...but, of course, it turned out fine.

After that, the raisins and walnuts are mixed in, then it gets the first rise.

mixing everything together...a bit oily now, but not for long

in go the raisins and walnuts

and another very brief mix, to incorporate everything

Time for the first rise. The dough goes into my lovely dough-rising-bin.

there is always that nervous moment...will it rise properly??

yahoo, it rose! Beautiful.

After the first rise, the dough is turned out - look at all those beautiful air bubbles! - gently deflated, and back in the bin for another rise.

gently deflating the dough

and giving it a gentle knead

Time for the second rise...

after about an hour, it's done

Then the dough is turned out again, shaped, and put in the pan for the final rise. To shape it, it's rolled up and placed in the pan, seam side down.

rolling...

...rolling....

and pinching the seams

into the pan for the final rise

I thought there was way too much dough to fit into my bread pan so I split it in half for the loaf and to make 8 rolls.

roll dough, ready to be shaped

into the pan for rising

After the final rise we're ready for baking. Yum!

beautiful dough!

golden brown rolls

look how pretty they are!

a bit of butter and we're ready to go

gorgeous loaf on the outside...

...and in the inside!

Bye for now...