Daring Bakers Go Crackers

This month we are making Daring Bakers history as our September challenge is vegan and/or gluten free. For the first time ever, the torch has been passed to Alternative Daring Bakers, Natalie from Gluten A Go Go, and co-host Shel, of Musings From the Fishbowl.

Many of the Alternative Daring Bakers must change a recipe to fit dietary restrictions or lifestyle decisions. They are a pretty smart bunch. They can take an egg laden, glutenized, nutty, sugar loaded concoction and transform it into a masterpiece. My hat is off to every alternative baker for educating us.

Our hosts chose something savory this month, the recipe for Lavash Crackers from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice .

This challenge allowed for large helpings of creativity and personality. Free range was given in flavour choices for the crackers and dip/spread choices. You could make the Lavash Crackers either with wheat flour or we could make them gluten free. All the dips had to be vegan and gluten free.

This challenge was much less time consuming than some of our past ones. Because it was a relatively quick challenge, I made it three times. Each time I tweaked the recipe flavouring and finally, I adjusted the liquid to yield a better gluten free cracker.

The first time, the crackers barely rose and they were the hardest gluten free Frisbees to take to the air. It wasn't a fault of the original recipe. Gluten free recipes need more liquid because the xanthan gum competes with the yeast and the yeast loses. It can't grow, bubble and lift the dough without more liquid. My next attempt doubled the liquid of the original recipe and there was a much better result.

Each cracker attempt had different flavours of flour and spices.

#1 Millet based flour with cinnamon and sugar
#2 Garbanzo flavoured flour with oregano and thyme
#3 Teff/sorghum flour with caraway and fennel seeds, sprinkled with coarse salt

We paired the crackers with hot pepper jelly and hummus because I have no imagination when it comes to vegan dips...

...but I make an amazing pate!Thank you Shel and Natalie, this quick recipe allowed me to experiment a little more with my gluten free side. Much much appreciated!

You can check out the other Daring Baker exploits by clicking on the Daring Bakers Blogroll.

Excellent Pain

Do you slather on the sunscreen after seeing this?

(This is a loaf of bread with "Excellent Bread" written in French. "Pain" is French for bread and excellent is the same in both languages.)

April Showers Bring May Flours

Jenny from All Things Edible and I had coffee together this week and she said something that floored me.

"Flour is about $14.00 for 10 kg (22 pounds)"

My jaw dropped. I haven't bought flour in three months because I had to work through my stash. I've gone through about 70 kilos since September. Crazy right? We have homemade pizza, bread and other goodies. When you don't buy much bread, flour disappears fast.

But this is double the price of a few weeks ago. Great danes! This is a shocking 100% rise in prices in a week. How would that work out per annum? Ouch, I don't even want to go there.

I know, I know rising prices are in the news everyday, I shouldn't be surprised.

But I have an idea...

The website Ottawa Gas Prices posts prices for Ottawa area stations. There's often a wide spread between the different places. I think it's a great idea and my favourite gas station always ranks among the best. They also have very friendly staff which is an added bonus.

Anybody want to launch a flour website? I'll start ...

Costco 20kg flour for $20.79.

Smokin' in the Baker's Hood

It's another fabulous challenge in the Daring Baker's hood and things were smokin' at my house.

This month's challenge was hosted by the amazing Tanna from My Kitchen in Half Cups. You can check out the recipe here of Tender Potato Bread. She also has a short clip of kneading the dough which is a great guide for bread baking newbies.

Round 1
I love these challenges and I play with them, much much more than is really wise. The first time I made the potato bread, I absolutely loved it. My downfall was my over confident attitude. Since I make a lot of bread I was very laid back.

The cooked potatoes were put through a ricer and immediately mixed with the hot cooking water. They dissolved to make a smooth consistent loaf. I flavoured the loaf with about two teaspoons of dried dill. The dough was quite sticky so I kneaded the dough directly in my huge stainless steel bowl until it was more firm, then I tranferred it to the counter top.

The rising, falling and shaping of the dough went without a hitch. Then I cooked it.

The top of the focaccia wasn’t very brown so I decided to play with my blowtorch. This is a new toy and oh so impressive in the eyes of my teenage son...

You can see this going wrong on so many levels…

The blowtorch took forever so I put it back in the oven to grill the top for a few minutes. Fast forward a few minutes and I’m yakking on the phone with a friend, my kitchen is full of kids and … is that burning I smell?!

I snatched the bread from the maw of my smokin’ hot oven and sent some over to my friend. Just so she could appreciate the depth and meaning of my shrieking at her over the phone.Round 2
I flavoured the bread with dill and caraway. The riced potatoes were mixed with the cooking water when it was cooler so there were little potato chunks in the bread. No problems. I stayed away from the phone.Round 3
Flavoured with just dill, used riced potatoes and rutabaga. No problems. I stayed away from the phone and watched Desperate Housewives instead.

Yeast Farts

Baking bread is something I've always loved. Maybe I haven't been the greatest baker but it's a great way to take a break when working at home. Stop. Punch some dough. Go back to work.

I once prepared a huge whack of focaccia for a friend's wedding.

As I was proofing the yeast for the umpteenth batch, I noticed a hideous smell coming from the yeast. It stunk. Had this happened in the previous batches? I hadn't noticed.

I called the 1-800 number and asked what to do? I was in the middle of making a ton of bread and now my yeast smelt like an old tennis shoe! The 1-800 lady started talking about the osmotic properties of yeast. What?!

Okay, I have some chemistry in my background and I know the meaning of osmotic properties of yeast.*

*Put quick rising yeast in water and the yeast cells become waterlogged, explode and die. The cell walls are delicate and need flour in order to shore them up. No, this is not scientific explanation of osmosis but this is all you need to know for yeast. Quick rising yeast needs flour.

But that had nothing to do with stinky sock smell emitting from my bubbling live yeast.

There was no explanation and the 1-800 lady assured me that the bread would be fine after I baked it. It was. The smell had been baked right out of the yeast.

She may not have had an explanation but I know.

It was yeast farts ..

... and dead yeast doesn't fart.

Pita Footballs

A Year in Bread is a fantastic website dedicated to baking bread. Three bakers provide recipes and gentle teasing of each other over each recipe. It makes bread baking accessible. I've been neglecting to make any bread from the website lately because the heat and humidity are overwhelming. We have no air conditioning and my baking is limited by my families tolerance to heat.

Besides, since I followed the recipe for Bacon Buns from the website I've run out of bacon fat.

But I haven't run out of stories and since A Year in Bread is asking for bread stories here is one of my first experiences with bread baking.

I have been baking bread, well experimenting for a long time. My parents indulged my cooking experiments with the hope that each experiment would be better than the previous one. The first bread recipe I remember trying was for pita bread. How I even came across the recipe is a mystery. I had never seen a pita. Nonetheless, the recipe seemed very clear and I worked my way through the directions.

Everything was going swimmingly. The dough seemed easy enough to work. In the oven the bread cooked beautifully and puffed with hot air. When I took them out of the oven, I piled them on a platter. It was a little difficult since they were still puffed and would skitter off each other. Naively I thought they would eventually deflate. I left the platter in the middle of the table for everyone to admire.

My father came home and looked at the pile of puffy pita and said "What is that?" The pitas never flattened. They were still a high pile of hollow pita footballs. By this time the pitas were crispy and hard just like delicate hollowed out Easter eggs.

My pitas may have been a storage nightmare but if you carefully burrowed a hole in one without shattering it, they were easy to fill.