Jen Schall

Yeast challenge part 2

offwhiteliving1 Comment
homemade burger on a homemade bun

Recently I posted the first half of my “Kitchen Bootcamp Challenge”, by Jen Schall, to make a yeasted bread.

Well, I ‘rose’ to the challenge, so to speak, but my bread did not.  Here’s why:  I was using an enriched starter, meaning that is has milk, sugar, and flour added to grow the yeast.  A baguette style bread is just flour and water.  Hmm…. made me think about how my starter was (or was not) aligning with my eating values.

I really have no business feeding my bread sugar and milk when I try to minimize those in my own diet.  So, I’m putting my starter on a diet and ‘leaning’ it out, based on what I learned in the Professional Chef cookbook.  Let’s see what happens.

One good result was that I added an egg wash to the bread, which made for a nice shiny finish.  We ate the buns with turkey burgers instead of steak becasue I frankly don’t like steak sanwiches that much.

an egg wash makes for a shiny finish

Enriched buns are quite tasty, but a little too cakey to be a good sandwich or baguette bread.  Next time…..

better buns

offwhiteliving
whole grain italian bun dough

Recently my love affair with baking bread has spread into a personal challenge.  Steak buns.  Yes, you heard me!  I don’t really eat a lot of steak sandwiches, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity presented by Jen Scall,  on her Kitchen Bootcamp.  Oh, how I love a cooking challenge.

The deal was sweetened when she mentioned that this month’s challenge involves yeast (bread) and that she’s been inspired by her challenges from the book Professional Chef, from the Culinary Institute of America.  Lucky for me, my brother-in-law (a CIA graduate) gave me that book for Christmas a couple years ago.  Excellent!

My recipe is a unique blend of inspiration from Emeril’s Sourdough recipe and the bread start that I’ve been fermenting from the Amish frirendship bread I was gifted a few months ago.

I use rye and whole wheat bread flour for my mix, and 2% milk when I feed my start.  Today I learned (from my handy Prof. Chef book) that a yeast starter fed with sugar, milk and flour (mine) is an ‘enriched’ start, compared with those made with water, yeast , and flour (a lean start).  No wonder my breads come out dense and cake-like, which I find really pleasant.  So far no complaints from others either.

One thing I do to mediate the sweetness is I feed the start on day 6 and then bake on day 10, so the sugar and milk have been fermented.  Otherwise I’m to feed again on day 10 and THEN bake.  Delish for sweet breads, but not quite part of my off-white lifestyle.

Today, for creativity, I added some mediterranean spices during the kneading process because I hope to make these steakbuns to go with a mediterranean-inspired steak (recipe TBA).  mmmmm…….

spices to add flavor and flair

So now it’s a waiting game.  I rise the dough for a few hrs and then knead again, separate and form into cute little buns and bake.  I’ll keep ya posted on how it all goes.