The experiments in bread making idea:
Today seemed like a good day to make bread in my bread maker. I had some quinoa, flax seed, chia seed and some steel-cut oats in the cupboard, so I thought I’d try some fanciful experiments in bread making.
I searched the interwebz to find a couple of recipes that I could adjust to the ingredients I have, and found a few. One recipe I found used molasses instead of sugar or honey, so I used the Middle Eastern date molasses I had in the cupboard as well. You could use any molasses if you can’t find date molasses. One of the other recipes I found called for nuts (optional), and I had some raw peanuts leftover from Burning Man, so I added them too.
The actual experiment:
I made this in my bread maker, so the recipe is for that. I will experiment again in a conventional oven and see if I need to adjust anything. But for now this is good enough!
The ingredients:
300ml water
25g molasses
15g sunflower oil
170g whole wheat flour
45g steel-cut oats
45g chia seed
45g quinoa
45g flax seed
45g raw unsalted peanuts
8g sea salt
8g active dry yeast
The procedures:
First thing is grind up your measured quinoa, flax seed and peanuts all together in a food processor or bullet tool.
Add all items in the order listed into your bread maker. The water should be warm, but not hot, as that’s what the bread maker’s function is…to heat the water to the right temperature to activate the yeast. Even if you don’t get the order exactly correct, it will be OK as long as the water is in the bottom of the bread maker and the yeast is on the top of all the other ingredients.
Set your bread maker to bake a 1 lb. whole wheat loaf, and step away, as you’ll be waiting for over 4 hours. It has to knead, rise, knead again, rise again, and then bake. You can lift the lid to check out progress, but don’t do it too much, you’ll mess with the temperature.
When the bread is done, take it out of the baking loaf and cool the bread on a wire rack. Wrap in a plastic bag when completely cool. The bread will last about 4 days in the kitchen, longer if in the fridge, and months if you put it in the freezer.
The Result:
Even though my loaf of bread wasn’t beautiful, and I may make some adjustments in the future, I made a damn good bread with stuff just laying around in my kitchen!
This is a dense bread, so thin slices work nicely. With avocado, peanut butter, hummus, nearly anything! It was so good that I made a nice homemade mayonnaise to put on the bread for a nice chicken sandwich. Which. Was. Amazing. The recipe for the mayonnaise will be the next cooking post.
0 Replies to “Experiments In Bread Making”