The Powerful Secret of Thick, Rich, Homemade Winter Soups

I’m sure you know how to make soup.  Good soup.  Maybe great soup. 

(It’s cold outside.  Just close your eyes and think of delicious soup…)

Maybe you’re thinking you don’t need more soup recipes.

I agree.  You don’t.  Here’s how you can make your current homemade soups even better, without adding a ton of more work.

I’ve been making soup for years.  Years and years.  Years and years and years.  But this year, I’ve discovered a trick that makes even good soups a million times greater.  It boosts the soup’s nutrition and flavour – and it’s easy.

The trick is…

Spontaneous Bagels!

These are actually based on this yummy mall-pretzel copycat recipe, which I’ve made a lot, but I made a couple of changes to turn them into bagels.  First, I doubled it… that’s not really a change.  I mixed it in the food processor, which was great.  I also subbed malt syrup for the brown sugar to make it more bagel-y, and added a tsp of salt per recipe, because there’s none in the original.

They had a nice long rise because I started them in the early afternoon before we went out to a 2-hour kids’ class.  I made the holes a bit differently from usual – started with 100g boules and, with a well-greased finger, poked a hole into them which I expanded over several iterations until there was more hole than bagel (I can’t stand cake-y bagels with skimpy holes!).

Nice big holes… ready to boil!

Added the last of the malt syrup (boo hoo) to the boiling water, along with a bit (2-4 tbsp?) of baking soda.  This is a terrible pot for boiling in, because it can only take 3-4 bagels at a time. (One – not shown here – got squashed as it went in, which immediately and permanently twisted it into a figure 8.).  Boiled about 1.5 minutes…

Now out on the pan for poppy seeds!  I could only fit 6 on a pan because they were quite large and puffed up a bit more from the boiling step:

  

Baked 12 minutes at 500… perfect!

 

They were a bit weirdly “moist” around the bottom, which I’ve never experienced before, but all in all, fresh, delicious, and not too involved.  I would like to investigate how the boiling time affects the final texture, though I’m not sure exactly what texture I’d be hoping for, ultimately.  I’ll know it when I taste it.  I do know these were a darn sight better than most of the “bagels” available here in Toronto (which are actually just bread-in-a-circle – blah).

Served with a simple bean soup that everybody raved over… ah, the simple things.

Do you have a go-to bagel recipe???  Or a bread that involves several steps… that are SO worth the extra work?

Homeschool Matzah Bakery 5772!

One of the mamas at our homeschool matzah bake today pointed out how many calories are in matzah compared to bread – I forget, but it’s something like 4 times as many – because matzah doesn’t have all the air and water that bread does so it’s just pure calories.

Which got me thinking – it’s  astonishing how much flour today’s baking wasted… or, if you don’t want to think of it as waste, because everybody was learning and having fun, at least how INEFFICIENT matzah baking is.

Each kid started with a cup of flour and 1/3 cup of water.  There were six kids, plus I had two cups of flour, which makes 8 cups of flour altogether. 

If I’d made BREAD with 8 cups of flour (about 1080g), it would be enough for at least two big loaves.  In fact, I made two 680g loaves yesterday with 877g of flour, and I had dough to spare at the end of the evening.  Just one of those loaves would have fed everybody here for lunch quite handily.

As it was, out of those eight cups, we had barely enough matzah for lunch – each kid made two big matzahs, and they didn’t eat it all, but because the mamas were also eating lunch, all the matzah was gone by the time the shmearing was done.  Eight cups worth of dough (granted, one matzah burnt beyond recognition – yet another inefficiency!).

It didn’t help that (once again, according to last year’s post), the dough was too wet.  That meant I couldn’t roll it out super-thin, which not only makes “more” matzah – ie more surface area – but also creates more PALATABLE matzah, since thinner = crispier and easier to eat.

Anyway, just thinking about this made me realize that although matzah prices seem exorbitant, these inefficiencies of matzah baking probably extend somewhat to the larger-scale operations that make it professionally.

In other news, I had a brilliant idea for a “chometz museum,” which I set up to showcase the five different grains (wheat, oats, barley, rye, spelt) with which matzah can be made, in their various forms (well… I ran out of spelt, and I wasn’t going to buy more two weeks before Pesach just for this occasion).  I also had separate dishes for kitniyos “grains” – rice, corn and beans – so the kids could pass them around and touch and feel them.

Test-Driving the Pyrex Bake-a-Round

I have taken one giant step forward in my Ongoing Quest to create the perfect round and malty bread, which will sustain me through the winter!  And I also got to test-drive the newly-toivelled Pyrex Bake-a-Round baking “pan.”  (which is really just a tube in a rack)

Here’s the Bake-a-Round, all greased up (with shortening, per the instructions, NOT Pam, though I don’t know why) and ready for action.

I decided to use this British Malt Loaf Recipe, for authenticity.  I figured it’s from the Flour Advisory Bureau.  Even their name is FAB; how bad could the bread be?  I liked the fact that most of the ingredients were scaled, and quickly switched my scale to pounds and ounces so I wouldn’t have to convert.  I also appreciate its use of the word “whilst.”

(I doubled everything, because it didn’t sound like very much.)

Ingredients for Malt Loaf

(bastardizations of the original, for necessity or preference, shown with strikeout below)

75ml (2 1/2 fl oz) hand-hot water
200g (7oz) brown flour or 100g (3 1/2 oz) wholemeal flour and 100g (3 1/2 oz) strong white flour – I don’t have whole wheat, so I subbed 3oz spelt, 4oz bread, then doubled these to get 6oz spelt, 8oz bread flour.
2.5ml spoon 1/2 tsp) salt
2 x 15ml spoons (2 tbsp) malt extract – YES!!!  I have this!
2 x 15ml spoon (2 tbsp) black treacle dunno what treacle is, but I suspect it’s molasses; I used molasses.
25g (1oz) margarine we’re out of margarine, so I used oil, but ran out halfway, so I only ended up with 1.5oz instead of 2oz of oil.
30g (1oz) dark soft brown sugar we’re out of brown, so I used white and a bit of extra molasses
100g (3 1/2 oz) sultanas  sultanas is British for raisins; I omitted these!
Honey or golden syrup to glaze because I baked this in the Bake a Round, I didn’t glaze it.

Yeast:
2 x 5ml spoons (2 tsp) conventional dried yeast + 5ml spoon (1 tsp) sugar
or 15g (1/2 oz) fresh yeast
or 1 x 5ml spoon (1 tsp) fast action easy blend yeast – YUP, I used regular instant yeast.

How to make Malt Loaf

1. Stir the dried yeast and sugar into the water and leave until frothy, or blend the fresh yeast with water, or mix the easy blend yeast with the flour.
2. Place the flour and salt in a bowl, add the sultanas.
3. Warm the malt, treacle, margarine and sugar until just melted and the sugar dissolved, and stir into the flour with the yeast liquid. (Note: if using instant yeast add to dry flour and warm the water with the malt mixture).
4. Mix to a soft dough.
5. Turn onto a floured surface and knead until no longer sticky (about four minutes), adding more flour if necessary.
6. Shape and place the malt loaf in a greased 500g (1lb) loaf tin. Cover the dough and leave to prove in a warm place until doubled in size - about one and a quarter hours.
7. Bake at 220°C, Gas Mark 7, for 30 minutes until browned and the malt loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.
8. Cool the Malt Loaf on a wire rack. Whilst the loaf is still hot brush the top with honey or syrup.

Actually, I just dumped the wet stuff, yeast, salt, sugar, etc., into the bucket and stirred in the flours until it was kneadable.  I might warm the wet things a bit more first next time.

Makes 1 Malt Loaf

Flour Advisory Bureau
www.fabflour.co.uk

Once mixed, the dough just kind of sat there in the bucket.

After a LONG wait, I blobbed it into a ball and rolled it up, then jammed it into the tube.  It was easy enough to insert, but didn’t keep its shape – the whole loaf sagged down to the bottom more than I’d expected.

     

Oops – forgot to cover the ends with tinfoil, so I did that after a bit.

Time for baking (still not very risen, but a bit bubbly, at least!

 

Popped it into a 425° oven, which turned out to be too hot for a loaf this big and sweet.  After a while, it got very dark, but it still wasn’t done.  After another long while, it got BLACK on the bottom, and was as done as it was going to be, so I pulled it out.

I thought getting the loaf out of the Bake A Round was going to be tricky, but it turned out the loaf wasn’t coming out because I still had the tube in the rack.  Once I lifted it slightly out of the rack, the loaf pretty much slid out, with the help of a silicone splatula.  (splatula = more like a bowl scraper than the pancake turning thing most people call a spatula)

Looks like a disaster, I know, but – cooled and sliced, it actually ended up tasting delicious.  My mother said, “tastes like it should have raisins in it!”  Thanks for that vote of confidence.  Everybody thought it was very sweet indeed – probably too sweet to serve at supper alongside potato-corn soup, which I did.

Also, the loaf had a weird “split” down the centre, which you can kind of see here, probably due to the overly high baking temperature.  I would bring it down next time, probably to 400 or maybe even 375, to give it time to rise and bake through without excessive browning.

It didn’t slice particularly well, and I did wait until it was only warm, not hot.  The crust crumbled tremendously.  I think perhaps a bit more kneading next time will give it less cakey crumbliness and more bready strength.  And less sugar, because it really doesn’t need all that treacle/molasses, plus sugar, on top of the malt, unless you want a really festive or breakfasty loaf.

So, to sum up, for the future:

• no added sugar
• all white flour to maximize rise / gluten until the recipe is perfected
• use the full amount of oil
• knead more
• longer rise time before forming loaf?
• lower bake temperature

Nevertheless, I feel good about this recipe.  I really feel like I’m on my way!

(filing this under barley because that’s what malt really is!)

Barley Semolina Bread

Recipe here if you’re curious, but truthfully, this wasn’t an outstanding bread… possibly because (mea culpa) my barley flour had actually expired.  That may explain the slight bitter taste that only I could detect, though that may just be an effect of barley in general.

What WAS nice was having my hands in a lump of dough again.  This dough was beautiful to work with; silky-smooth and damp, but not too damp.  The recipe made two beautiful bâtards, just enough for the family plus a bit left over.

Served with a nondescript soup, this was not my best bread meal ever… but definitely not the worst, by far.

 

Slashed deeply, I thought, but not deeply enough…

 

… to really open up during baking or…

 

… to prevent a wee bit of a blowout out the side.

Sliced beautifully, though!

 

And it was quite nice with a bit of butter.  But then, what isn’t?

So why is it that warm weather seemingly gives me this compulsion to work with BREAD?  Shouldn’t I be at it more in the wintertime, when we’re allowed to lounge around indoors heating up the place and eating carby survival things???bar

How does this happen?

It’s a fast day today and I decided to make a nice grainy bread like Ted likes for the end of the fast.

So how does it happen that when I sit down to Google a nice, fairly quick, easy grainy bread to use up some of the ingredients I have on hand: barley flour, oat flour, bread flour, a bit of Pioneer Village whole wheat… I end up falling DEEPLY in love with a Sicilian No-Knead Bread, totally different from what I set out to bake???

I have been obsessed with Pane Siciliano for a while. For whatever reason, I love pasta and semolina and everything related to it.

This bread is actually made with durum flour, which is a finer grind than durum semolina. Semolina is coarser, like corn meal. It works for bread in small quantities, and actually works well for pasta. I also keep it on hand because, like corn meal, it’s useful for sprinkling on a surface so breads don’t stick: the coarse grains act like ball bearings and your bread rolls right off!

I haven’t been able to find proper durum flour locally, but the comments after the recipe say that Indian brands of chapatti flour are basically the same thing. In fact, the author specifically mentions “Golden Temple Durum Atta Flour,” which is exactly what I happen to have on hand. Yay for me and my poori craving!

So this helps clear up some of the confusion I’ve had about flours for pasta vs bread, durum vs semolina vs… well, whatever.

In addition to the semolina obsession, I have been fascinated with the appealing look and concept of the sesame-seed sprinkling on top of proper pane siciliano – not to mention the beguiling S-shape it’s often formed into.

Finally, this recipe called to me because it uses barley malt. It actually calls for syrup, which I don’t have, but the comments say that the powder should work just fine. My sister gifted me with a big bag of barley malt powder, which has been in the basement freezer for way too long. But it looked and smelled just fine when I took it out, so I substituted 2 tablespoons for the 1 tablespoon of syrup called for.

Since it’s for tonight, I don’t have the time to let it sit and rise for 18 hours like the recipe calls for. I plan to add extra yeast (gasp!) to compensate.

So there you have it: I have taken a perfectly lovely recipe and am now going to butcher it and see what comes out the other end. Stay tuned for pictures!!! Or else a depressing, grim tale of failure… and either will be super-entertaining, right?

p.s. I really need a Danish Dough Whisk!!! It looks waaay cool when the guy in the video stirs his dough with it!

Artisan Bread in Five B(oat) Bread

New bread book from the library! Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking, by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.

I have been baking from this book – especially the challah recipe, which I’ve been tweaking for better workability – for months now, so it already feels like an old friend.

I came this close to buying it in Chapters a few weeks ago, and decided not to because it doesn’t really include very many recipes. However, sitting down with it, I’m sort of starting to rethink that decision… I think this one may be a keeper.

Now that I have it in my hands (not literally; I had to put it down to type) I’m finding I do love the happy, balanced tone of the book itself – above and beyond its core formulae (of which there are more than I’d originally estimated, however).

I like the fact that most of the recipes are non-dairy, though some do include milk and butter and whatnot.

Anyway, I really want to make as many of the breads as appeal to me (not all do), starting with the semolina bread, which I’ve been wanting to try anyway… however, since I decided that, I have been completely unable to find semolina flour in our regular grocery stores.

I used to buy it all the time when I made pasta, but now it seems to have vanished from the shelves. Will have to try again over the weekend. I don’t love sesame seeds, but Hertzberg and Francois say the combo of semolina and sesame is wonderful, and I think I’ll trust them and try it out the way they say.

Meanwhile, I decided to make the very blah-vanilla-looking Oat Flour Bread (p. 104). Well, I wanted to make the Oatmeal Bread (p. 94), but it looked too involved, and I was tired, so I decided to just chuck a cup of rolled oats into the Boring Oat Bread and call it a day.

Except the Oat Bread calls for oat flour, and I forgot until halfway through mixing it that what I’d bought was barley flour (the store had no oat flour, so I figured I’d find another recipe). I should call this blog “The Distracted Chef” because yes, when shopping with children I forget what I’ve bought, and when baking with children, I forget what flours I have on hand.

So I made (b)oat bread! The B is for Barley, which I substituted for the one cup of oat flour called for. I used bread flour because we were out of all-purpose, cut down the flour by one cup and dumped in the cup of rolled oats to liven it up.

What else? Oh, yeah, while I was massacreing the recipe, I added 1/4 cup of maple syrup because the Oatmeal Bread calls for 1/2 a cup and it sounded yummy, but we only had 1/4 cup left in the house; I reduced the water accordingly.

So throw it all together at 8:00 a.m., stir it up, rise it for 2 hours, fridge it for 4 hours, and what do you get…?

Well… GREAT bread! Amazing!

The barley and maple syrup gave the bread such a lovely, soft sweet taste and texture.

Soft means this bread is very hard to slice when hot…but reasonable once cooled. I made grilled cheese with this bread today for the little kids’ lunches.

The rolled oats disappeared completely, by the way; I could feel them with my fingers when I was forming the loaves, but there was no trace of them on my tongue when eating the bread.

So there you go. Sometimes you work hard and the bread flops… and sometimes you just throw a few things in a bowl, stir it around, and end up with Very Good Bread.

The super-nice thing is that the recipe made enough for three loaves… I baked up two last night before supper (served it with lasagna), and saved one to bake tonight so we will have fresh bread for the kids tomorrow morning. Yay, me!

Jennifer’s Reliable Challah

Forgot to take pictures before cutting into this challah. This was the one I made for the kids’ challah-making last Wednesday, but it was also a test run of the recipe I used for the entire Yom Tov.

The main difference from what I usually do is that instead of 5 cups of wheat flour, I used one cup of stone-ground spelt (courtesy of my baker sister, who gave me a free sample!), plus two cups of bread flour and two cups of all-purpose.

It was delicious, and I’m constantly amazed at how the spelt makes the bread so soft and lovely. Not at all like whole wheat, which I don’t usually enjoy in a Shabbos or Yom Tov bread. The spelt does give a bit of an unfortunate grey cast to the bread (not as much as barley, though!).

I like to think that when people see it coming, they kind of brace themselves for “healthy”-tasting bread, and are then pleasantly surprised when it is so soft and cakey!

In this picture it looks a bit too damp and soggy in the middle, but that’s probably because I cut it when it was still extremely hot. If I’d left it, it probably would have been fine (as were the rest over Yom Tov).

Jennifer’s Reliable Challah Recipe

The DRY stuff:

5 cups flour – all-purpose or mix of whole wheat (not more than 50%) and/or bread flour

¼ cup sugar (up to 1/3 to make it sweet and special)

1 ½ tbsp salt 

(CAUTION:  a friend says hers was too salty; I will weigh this out again, but meanwhile, try 1 tbsp!)

1 tbsp yeast (Instant – avoid “Traditional”)

¼ cup “spare” flour – just in case!

3 tbsp “dusting” flour

The WET stuff:

1/3 cup oil

1 2/3 cups water – you will probably not need all of the water!

1. Add oil and water to 2-cup measure. Set aside so oil will rise to the top.

2. Sprinkle dusting flour into a large non-zip freezer bag. Close bag top, with air inside (it’ll look like a balloon), and shake flour around to coat inside of bag.

3. Add dry ingredients to food processor and process with steel blade to combine.

4. With food processor running, slowly pour oil/water mixture through tube into dry ingredients (oil will pour first, ensuring that it all gets mixed in – you probably won’t need all the water).

5. Continue pouring slowly until mixture pulls away from sides of bowl and forms a “ball” that moves around the machine in one clump.

6. Continue processing for 30-45 seconds. One of two things may happen:

a. Mixture gets gloppy & starts sticking to sides again – add a sprinkling of flour!

b. Mixture gets crumbly and doesn’t stick together anymore – slowly add a bit more water.

7. Turn off food processor after 30-45 seconds, or 15 seconds after the most recent addition.

8. Dump dough into prepared non-zip freezer bag, knot top and set aside to rise (2-8 hours). OR rest in fridge overnight or longer, then bring to room temperature for 1-2 hours before continuing.

Now it’s risen!

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. The longer it’s hot before bread goes in, the better.

2. On floured table, gently divide dough into portions – ie, how many loaves do you want? – do not knead it!

3. Shape each portion into a “loaf”. Here’s where you get to be creative! Braid it or whatever!

4. Set finished loaves on parchment paper in tinfoil or regular pan.

5. Spray each finished loaf with oil, cover with plastic, and let rise (1-2 hours).

6. Brush loaves with beaten egg if desired.

7. Sprinkle with: poppy, sesame, streusel*, whatever!

8. Bake for 30 minutes at 375 degrees. Thick loaves may require a few minutes longer; using oven mitts, pick up the loaf after 30 minutes and check that the bottom is firm, dry and brown. It should make a hollow “echo” sound when tapped with knuckles.

9. Remove from pan as soon as it’s cool enough to handle and cool on a rack (or upside-down if you don’t want to find a rack) so the bottom doesn’t get soggy.

* Streusel topping: ½ cup flour, ½ cup sugar, add oil and mix until crumbly. Add cinnamon if desired. I know this isn’t REAL streusel, but in my opinion, if it looks like streusel and tastes like streusel, it IS streusel. All my guests seem to agree.