Husband overheard me watching Canadian Bakeoff during the Montreal-style bagels challenge. After several weeks of subsequent nagging, I said, "Ugh fine, I'll make you some." So I found a recipe.
A fun, honey-enriched dough. I guess you could call me a dough boy.
The boiling and sesame-seeding process.
Came out a little overdone at 450...
Subsequent (and half whole wheat flour) batch: 375 for 13 minutes and then 400 for 12 minutes. To be exact.
Not sure how "Montreal-style" these bagels are, but they sure are delicious! They go great with cream cheese and a beefsteak tomato. Hus-quested/hus-manded several more times since.
I was watching Canadian Bakeoff and there was a Kugelhopf challenge... a festive, yeasted cake with a chocolate-infused spiral. For some reason I said to myself, "I'm making that." So I found a recipe.
(I left out the raisins, since something about "yeasted chocolate cake" doesn't scream "raisins" in my book)
Here is the genius of martha stewart or whoever she got this recipe from. Cut and arrange in a (nothing) bundt cake pan so that some of the spirals... face... out... I mean... genius!
Check out that side-spiral action.
Dust with icing sugar and then eat.
My friend Steve wanted to know what the "crumb" was like, i.e. did it meet his high standard of "diaphanous strands"...? Unfortunately not. This is a workin' man's "kuge", Steve. Maybe next time.
Note how I didn't title this project, "a wry twist of rye". Impressive restraint, I know.
When we go out to "brunch", I usually choose rye toast, a generally unpopular choice, n = my husband, who likes to use me as a way to sample more foods than he can reasonably order on his own. If we are at a new establishment, I will ask, casually, "do you have rye?" Usually the answer is an enthusiastic "we sure do, hon!", and I will smile across the table, dickishly.
So it was inevitable that I would try to bake my own rye bread one day. Did you know that it is difficult to find rye flour in conventional grocery stores? Even our local old-timey grocery store didn't have it. Apparently it's a thing, according to the internet, so I ordered some on the dark-flour web. God god, I am on a roll today. Ok, I knead to stop. Seriously, knock the air out of me, someone.
I decided to make a fancy rye bread. A marble rye, with a twist. I found a recipe.
The light-colored dough, rolled out:
Things I did not know: part of the "rye" flavor comes from molasses. Also, the rich brown of a dark-colored rye comes from unsweetened cocoa powder! Will wonders never yeast? (Ouch, that one even hurt me...)
Now the fun begins... give your roll a length-wise slice.
Cram into a loaf pan for the second rise.
Didn't ryes so well, I'm afraid.
Sliced and ready to make toast.
If i had to guess what went wrong with this bread, it would be that the yeast was slowed down by all the other crap in the dough from the outset. I think I'd let the yeast come more to life before mixing up the dough if I had to do this all over again. I'm sure I could get caraway troubleshooting this recipe. Is it worth it? Let me work it. The dough, that is.