A DIFFERENT TREAT

Waffles, who doesn’t like them? I am noted as the great waffle maker amongst our family. Here s one of my basic waffle recipes. I had problems this time because I normally do not measure any of the ingredients and I had to measure everything to put into this blog.

BASIC WAFFLES

The waffle iron is a 9 ½” x 9 ½” Standard Cuisnart Waffle iron.

1 cup Spelt flour

¼ cup Hazelnut Meal flour

½ cup White Whole Wheat flour

¼ cup Teff flour

½ cup Oven Toasted Oats

2 tea Cinnamon

1 dash Cloves

2 dashes Nutmeg

1/8 cup Coconut

Stir all the dry ingredients, add enough water or milk, to make dough like the consistency of cake batter.

Add 2 cups of Blueberries

Stir in 3 egg yokes

Fold in 3 beaten egg whites firm

Spray the waffle iron with Canola Oil organic cooking spray each time a waffle is removed.

Serve with Butter or Earth Balance Organic Butter spread and Grade B Maple Syrup.

This amount makes about 2 ½ complete waffles. Dig in and enjoy the waffles from our kitchen to yours.

Optional Ingredients:

Fruit and Berries: Apples, Strawberries, pears, black berries, raisins and dried cherries

Meat: Precooked Sausage, Crisp Bacon

Flours: Brown Whole Wheat flour, Rye flour, Walnuts, Amaranth and Sesame Seeds

Q / A reguarding OUR BREAD

After our last blog we were asked what is a horno? Horno is a mud adobe-built outdoor oven used by Native Americans and early settlers of North America. Originally introduced to the Iberian Peninsula by the Moors, it was quickly adopted and carried to all Spanish-occupied lands. The horno has a beehive shape and uses wood as the only heat source. The procedure still used in parts of New Mexico and Arizona is to build a fire inside the Horno and, when the proper amount of time has passed, remove the embers and ashes and insert the bread to be cooked. When cooking meats, the oven is fired to a "white hot" temperature (approximately 650 degrees Fahrenheit), the coals are moved to the back of the oven, and the meats placed inside. This horno was built in the back yard of Paul and Tarah in their Seattle home. The fruit wood fire brings the temperature up to 900 degrees which is great for pizzas but too hot for no-knead bread. Paul is a great bread maker once his horno has cooled down for the bread to be baked. (http://www.farsi-una-pizza.blogspot.com/). See the photo on the right.

In our oven we have built a number of loaves of bread. We made a white organic flour bread, organic rosemary bread, a white organic flour bread with dark chocolate chunks from Green & Black’s organic 85% Cocoa (http://www.greenandblacks.com/), a whole wheat bread, a rye bread with caraway seeds and a whole wheat raisin and cinnamon bread. We were able to give a half of a loaf to some of our friends. We bought White Wheat flour, a All Purpose flour, a Whole Wheat flour and a Bread flour all organic and all from King Arthur Flour. (http://www.kingarthurflour.com/). We have due the cold weather that we have been having and due to the fact that we turn off our furnace at nights, we have been using the upstairs bath room and we use a small heater to keep the temperature up to 70 degrees. We brought in the outside thermostat in which tells us the temperature of the bath room in our kitchen. We both get up through the night to make adjustments on the heater. Get the flour, a bowl, a smidgen of yeast and a little water and build your own no-knead bread. See photo on the left.

How we got started in No-Knead Bread

During our Christmas trip out to the State of Washington we visited Seattle Anacortes, Bellingham and Home, Washington. While in Seattle our son baked us a loaf of No-Knead Bread in his horno (http://www.farsi-una-pizza.blogspot.com/) and a girl friend of my wife baked us a loaf at her place in Home, Washington. When we got home with a recipe in our h ands, printed later, we also went on YOU TUBE and found (Speedy No-Kneed Bread Revisited) and (No-Knead Bread Baking). These articles really got us excided about baking no-knead bread. I took a copy to my doctor’s office and gave it to them, they were very excited. The photo is of the first loaf that we built. We baked this loaf in a cast iron pot with a lid.


Recipe: No-Knead Break
Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1 ½ hours plus 14 to20 hours rising

Readers’ Opinions:

3 C. All-purpose or bread flour
More for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1 ¼ teaspoon salt

Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water and stir until blended: dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature about 70 degrees.
2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on to; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.
3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or your fingers, gently and quickly form the dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seams side down on the towel and dust more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back poked with finger.
4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6 – to – 8 quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pot once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes. Until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on rack.

 We have been told you cannot ruin this bread, so get crazy and bake all of the different types of  bread you can think of.  Here are a couple of different recipes for you.

WW Bread use 2 C. WW flour and 1 C. White flour.

Rye Bread use 1 C. Rye flour and 2 C. White flour.