Honey Kefir Bread

A little while back I saw a link to this post by The Restless Chipotle on making Honey Buttermilk Bread.  I pretty much avoid breads due to wheat allergies.  Yeah, I cheat once in a while.  So sue me.

There were a few things I needed to tweak for it to work for me. First, because of a rash on my hands (probably from cheating on the wheat products  - but those cookies were good!) I couldn't knead the dough. So it had to be doable in the bread machine.

Second, I didn't have any buttermilk, but I do make my own dairy kefir so I decided to substitute that instead. I purchased my kefir grains from Cultures for Health. They are very helpful, my first attempt at kefir didn't work and they replaced the grains and gave me some excellent advice which ultimately enabled me to get homemade kefir going.

If your kefir is thick you may want to thin it down a bit with some milk to where it has the consistency of buttermilk.

Back to the bread. It's a simple recipe, nothing exotic, and you can go from Zero-Yum in about 3-1/2 hours. Add the following ingredients to the bread pan in the order listed. This is for a 1-1/2 pound loaf.

1 Cup Kefir
2 Tablespoons Coconut Oil
1/4 Cup Honey
1 Teaspoon Salt
3 Cups Flour

Now stop and smooth the flour out over the liquid ingredients to form a barrier between these last two ingredients and the liquid.

1/2 Teaspoon Baking Soda
2 Teaspoons Dry Yeast

At this point you turn on the bread machine and go take a nap.  :-)  All bread machines I am aware of have a 3 hour cycle.  In 3 hours your bread should be ready, tap it out of the bread pan onto a wire rack and allow to cool 20 minutes before slicing.

It will still be warm, slather on some butter and enjoy!

Quick Rolls

If you saw the picture in yesterday's Easter Dinner post, you may have noticed a strange looking dinner roll on the plate.  I am supposed to avoid wheat, but I gave myself a "cheat day" for the holiday.

I had remembered late in the day that while I was avoiding wheat, others weren't.  So I needed a quick recipe for dinner rolls.  I found a couple "30 minute dinner rolls" recipes on Google (like this one), but they didn't exactly strike my fancy.  So what I did was use them with my own twist.

Be warned, this dough rises fast! I had to punch it down twice, and because of that I didn't have enough time after the final punch down to allow it to fully rise again.  They were still very good tasting, with a texture about halfway between a biscuit and a roll.  Had they been allowed to rise that final time I'm sure they'd have had a good roll texture.

Here's the recipe:

3/4 cup water
2 Tablespoons yeast
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup yogurt
1 egg
3 to 4 cups flour

Mix the yeast and water and allow to sit until the yeast hydrates a little (about 10 mins).  Add the sugar and let it sit another 10 mins and look at how it is going to town!  Add the yogurt and egg and mix well.  Add a cup of flour to start.  I'm a bit old fashioned and I add it with a spoon.  Mix it in, then begin adding 1/2 cup of flour at a time until you can't stir it any longer.  Add another 1/2 cup and begin mixing by hand.  When you've added about 2-1/2 to 3 cups of flour you should be able to turn it out onto a floured board.  Once you're working it on the floured board, add flour 1/4 cup at a time until you have a good textured dough ball. Continue working (kneading) the dough for another 5 minutes.

Here's where I was stuck yesterday.  I had the dough ready but was still about an hour from time to put it in the oven. So I put the dough into an oiled bowl, turning the doughball to get it covered with oil.  Had I been closer ready to cook the rolls, I would have skipped this step and went right to forming the rolls.

As I prepped other items for the dinner, I checked the dough.  It was rising fast!  I punched it down once at about 30 minutes, and again at 1 hour as I was ready to form the rolls.

I oiled my hands and pinched off a piece of dough slightly smaller than a tennis ball (about the size of a medium lemon).  This gave me 7 pieces, which was perfect for the cast iron skillet I planned on using. Spacing 6 around the sides of the oiled skillet and 1 in the middle I covered them with a towel while I finished other items (another 10 minutes).  They hadn't risen the way I would like, but it was time to cook!

I cooked them in a 400*F oven for 20 minutes.  They came out good, I just wish I had been able to allow them to rise a little more before cooking.

The roll in the picture is the center roll, and the others were similar.  While these are ready quickly, I wouldn't start them too far ahead of time in the future!

Coconut Flour Banana Bread

Be sure to read the updates below!

I haven't been baking much lately, having been too busy with this thing called "life".  So today I found myself with 1/2 dozen ripe bananas, and an urge to make it into banana bread or muffins.  Since I am trying to avoid wheat as much as possible, I perused the web for recipes that used coconut flour.  There are several out there that combine various flours but only a few that used strictly coconut flour.  To be honest, none of them appealed to me, so I did my usual of "a little from this one, a little from that one, a little from experience" to see what I would get.

Now one thing about coconut flour is that it is very dry.  It also has no gluten.  So that means more moisture added and to expect less of a rise that you would get from wheat flours.  We'll see if my memory holds true!

Here is what I did:

I took 2 cups of coconut flour and added a cup of kefir I needed to use to give it some moisture.  The coconut flour sucked that up and asked for more! LOL.  But I left it at that amount.  I let that sit for an hour while I watched the end of the baseball game and then got the remaining stuff together.

I mashed the bananas (6, remember?) with a fork until they were nice and creamy.  Call me old fashioned but I like to do this step by hand.  I can find and squish any chunks that try to hide this way.  Then I got out the hand mixer.  To the bananas I added 1/2 cup pure maple syrup, mix, 4 eggs, mix, 2 teaspoons vanilla, mix, and 3/4 cup flaxseed meal and mixed some more.

I then added the coconut flour and mixed it all very well.  Quite frankly, I'm concerned there is too much batter for my loaf pan.  Oh well, wouldn't be the first kitchen disaster I've ever had.

Speaking of the loaf pan, you need to either line it with parchment paper or grease it very, very well.  I was out of parchment paper, so I greased it well with coconut oil.  Let's keep our fingers crossed.

So the recipe looks like this:
2 cups Coconut Flour
1 cup Kefir
6 Ripe Bananas
1/2 Cup Maple Syrup
4 eggs
2 teaspoons Vanilla
3/4 cup Flaxseed Meal.

Summary instructions:

Mix the kefir and coconut flour together and set aside.

Mash the bananas (or use your mixer) until all squished.  Add remaining ingredients one at a time, mixing after each addition.

Pour into a 9X5 loaf pan that's either been well greased or lined with parchment paper.

Bake @ 325*F for 60 minutes or until a knife inserted comes out clean.

This is how it looked from the oven:

Let cool in pan for 15 -20 minutes. (I let it cool for about 15 minutes and should have given it a little longer)

After turning out onto rack:

As you can see from the crack running down the side I should have let it cool a bit more before removing it from the pan.  Another thing with coconut flour is the products lose moisture and firm up as they cool.  So a little longer in the pan would probably would have avoided that crack.  If you look at the rear right, you can also see where a small corner of the loaf fell off while putting it on the rack.  It was delicious!  :-)

Gluten free, Grain Free Banana Bread is possible!

Update:

Some 3 hours later and I decided it had cooled enough to try a slice.  The good news is it is nice and moist, the way I like my Banana Bread.  The bad news it is sweet.  Too sweet!  And I am a guy who likes sweet things!

I think next time I will cut the maple syrup to 1/4 cup and add 1/4 cup water or milk.

Applesauce-Pumpkin Bread

If you made a loaf (or 2) of my Pumpkin Bread you'll notice this recipe is almost the same.  I use vegetable oil instead of butter, cut the amount of oil in half and add some applesauce.  In the Pumpkin Bread recipe I said you could use 1 cup sugar (or more, to taste).  In this recipe stick to 1 cup, no more, due to the sweetness of the applesauce.

 Try it, I think you'll like it!


1/2 of a 15oz can of Pumpkin (Approx 1 Cup)
2 eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 cup apple juice (use water if you don't have juice)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice mix

You can add a half teaspoon of salt.  I don't add salt to many things, but you decide for yourself.

Preheat oven to 350*F.  Grease a loaf pan.

In a large bowl, combine the first 6 ingredients (the wet ones).  Mix together with your mixer until well blended.

In another bowl, Add the remaining ingredients (the dry ones) and mix well with a wire whisk.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, mixing as you go.  Continue mixing until blended.

Cook for 60 mins at 350*F or until a toothpick or sharp knife inserted comes out clean.

Let cool in the pan for 10 - 15 minutes, then turn onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

Enjoy!

Pumpkin Bread Recipe

Fall is here.  In my part of CA that means 80*F days and 50*F nights.  LOL!  Believe it or not, we do get fall colors and such, the leaves should start turning any week now.  You know it;s fall when the stores are putting out Christmas items before Halloween and the grocery has displays of pumpkins.

I'm not going to go into cooking your pumpkin so you can use the meat to make bread, but I am going to share a good recipe for pumpkin bread.  This recipe will make one loaf, I know a lot of recipes make 2 (or more) loaves, but why make more then one until you've tried it?  You may want to make adjustments so make it one loaf at a time until the recipe is unique to you and your tastes, then double (or triple or quadruple) it for more loaves at once.

Here we go! You'll need:

1/2 of a 15oz can of Pumpkin (Approx 1 Cup)
2 eggs
1/2 cup softened butter (1 stick)
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup sugar (a little more is ok to suit your tastes)
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice mix

You can add a half teaspoon of salt.  I don't add salt to many things, but you decide for yourself.

First, get your oven preheating to 350*F.  Also get out your loaf pan, either an 8.5 X 4 or 9X5.

Take a large bowl and add the softened butter to it.  A neat trick I got from TheRedheadRiter is to use the paper from the cube of butter to grease the pan.  Rub the paper over the inside of the pan and the butter left on it will grease your loaf pan.  Great tip, Red!

To the  large bowl add the pumpkin, eggs, water and vanilla.  Mix well with your mixer.

In a separate bowl, combine the sugar, flour, baking soda and spice mix. Also the salt, if used.

Use a whisk to mix them until well mixed.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones, mixing as you go.

When totally blended, pour the batter into the loaf pan and bake in the oven for about 60 minutes, until a sharp knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Let it cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, then turn it out onto a wire rack to cool.

At this point you can sprinkle a little powdered sugar over the top if you like.

Let it cool for another 10 to 20 minutes, then slice if you want to try it warm with a little melted butter.

As you can see, I was too anxious and didn't let it cool enough before slicing so it crumbled a bit at the edges.  It still tasted great!

Oh no, I forgot the rolls!

It all started last night.  I made up the dough for a loaf of sourdough bread using my basic recipe, and replenished the starter so it would be ready this morning for me to make rolls.

The morning was busy and the making of the rolls got away from me until just after noon.  Since I knew I wouldn't have time to allow sourdough rolls to rise I decided to try to make "Faux Sourdough Rolls" by adapting my recipe for Faux Sourdough Bread.  I did and they came out great.  Unfortunately, things were hopping quickly in the kitchen so I wasn't able to take photos.  I plan on making these again soon, when things are more relaxed, and will take pictures then.

The recipe:

1 Cup plain yogurt
1 Cup room temp water
2 tsp yeast
2 Tbspn Sugar
2 Tbspn Light Olive Oil
about 4 cups flour
melted butter (about 1 tbspn)

Mix the yeast in the water and set aside so it can start activating

In a large bowl, add the yogurt, sugar and oil, mix lightly, then add the water/yeast mixture and mix well.

Mix in 2 cups of flour, mix it well.  Start adding flour 1/2 cup at a time until you get a dough ball you can work with.

Turn it onto a floured board and knead well, adding flour as needed to prevent the dough from sticking. Work in flour until the dough ball no longer sticks to your hands or the board as you knead it (this took a little over 3-1/2 cups for me)

Knead well for about 5 mins

Put the dough ball in a clean bowl, cover with a towel and set in a warm place to rise.

After the dough has doubled in size:

Lightly oil a 9X13 baking sheet

Punch down the dough ball, transfer it to oiled baking sheet

Work the dough ball out so it fills the baking sheet

Using a Single Edge Pastry Chopper cut 2 lengthwise cuts and 3 widthwise cuts, giving a total of 12 rolls.

Cover with a towel and allow to raise until roughly doubled again.

Cook in a 375*F oven for 15 mins, brush tops with melted butter and cook for 5 mins more.

Remove from oven, allow to cool for about 10 mins before separating.  Enjoy!

Faux Sourdough

In keeping with recipes that save some time during the busy Holiday season, here's one I call "Faux Sourdough".  Plain yogurt in this bread recipe gives it a sourdough like tang.  Now nothing tastes exactly like real sourdough except real sourdough, but this bread has a good flavor and you can either bake it in a pan or free form it, depending on how moist you make the dough.

This bread can go from dough to finished loaf in as little as 3 hours.  That may not seem like a time saver, but if you've ever made bread, especially sourdough, you know that is pretty good.

1 Cup plain yogurt
2-3/4 cups AP or bread flour
2 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons oil
1 packet yeast
1/4 cup milk
water

Put the flour, sugar and yeast in a bowl.
Add the yogurt and mix it in, then the oil, mix more and then the milk.
Work the dough a bit at this point.  It will most likely still be pretty dry as far as dough goes.
As you work the dough, add water 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing well after each addition, until you reach the desired consistency.
Turn the dough out onto a floured board and knead for 10 - 15 minutes.
Let the dough rest while you oil another bowl and oil a 9X5 loaf pan.
Place the dough ball in the oiled bowl and turn the ball until it is oiled all around.
Shape into a loaf to fit the pan and place it in the pan.
To get a quick rise you need a warm place of about 80*F.
You can start with a COLD oven, turn it to it's lowest setting and let it warm for 1 minute and then turn it off.
Cover the pan with a clean towel and set in the warm place (example the warmed oven) and let it rise until it is equal to the top of the pan or even an inch above the edges.
Cook at 350*F for 45-50 mins, until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped upon, or to an internal temp of 195-200 with a thermometer.
Let cool for 10 mins, then turn onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

I like this bread still slightly warm, with lots of butter!