Ypsi Cooks

Assignment: 1 Full recipe Soft Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread
Hamburger or Hotdog Buns
1 Loaf Apple Strudel

I've been having fun baking with this group: it has certainly served as major motivation to make some of the recipes in the Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day book that would have taken me years to try. However, not one to take assignments literally, I made a major substitution right away. We did another batch of the Master Recipe instead of the Soft Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread. Why? We really haven't been thrilled enriched doughs, so with the cost of local eggs and honey, and the recent layoff, it just didn't seem worth it. But I was certainly excited to get on with the apple strudel bread.
WIth all these ingredients, I needed a helper.

Eli is in charge of measuring raisins and walnuts… with supervision.

My first challenge was gala apples. They're nice and rather sweet, but way too one-demensional for baking in my opinion. Checking the the fridge, I found I had cranberries left from Christmas. Knowing cranberries would add the necessary zing, I settled on my filling.

In addition to the apples, coarsely chopped walnuts, and raisins I added
1/2 cup fresh cranberries, chopped
3 T turbinado sugar
1 t cinnamon
pinch salt

Some other bakers had problems with it being too moist. In the past I have sauteed or microwave the filling and that has taken care of the problem, but with the gala apples, it was not necessary.

I've made plenty of rolled breads and knew I wanted something fancier for this loaf since I was bringing it to a friends for dessert. Besides, I wanted to play! I decided to try more of a traditional strudel look, knowing that the dough wouldn't be as flakey, but also would be much healthier. I rolled the dough on my silpat and put the filling long-way down the middle in a mound. Then using scissors I slit the dough in ~3/4 inch strips stopping just before the filling.

You can hardly see (or taste) the cranberries, but their tartness made all the difference.

I then brought the strips in, alternating sides to create what I call a “fishbone.” (I'm sure there's an official term for this, but I have no idea what it is.)
I slid the silpat onto a cookie sheet, covered with a greased opened cereal bag and let it rise.

Some little princess had to have a taste!

At the end of the rise, I brushed it with eggwash and sprinkled it with a cinnamon sugar topping. I baked it for about 35 min, pulled it out and checked the temp. It was over 200*, so I covered it with a towel and the family walked over to our neighbor's to enjoy a great dinner and an even better dessert and wonderful friends.

Perfect for sharing with friends.

As for the buns, we were having tempeh, which is rectangular, so to make rectangular buns I created the boule, rolled into a rectangle around an inch thick and cut them into rectangles. I didn't love the way they turned out, but I think I just needed more dough. I'll try again and report back then! In the mean time, I'm off to make another apple strudel!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 7:05 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.