Last week, I happened to spot this item in our Israeli kids’ magazine. Don’t worry, I’ll translate it down below.   Wallah? Amazing fact of the week In all kinds of places all over the world, they sell a food called “Israeli couscous,” which actually has no connection with couscous. It’s actually just פתיתים / petitim, which are indeed an Israeli invention from the 1950s. And we say to the world: Wait ‘till you discover the amazing thing we call Bissli Grill (BBQ flavour)! Of course, it’s not quite true that there’s NO connection with couscous. Both couscous and Israeli couscous (petitim, which just means “flakes”) are made from semolina flour and water. It’s just a matter of what you do with it from that point. The production process for “real” couscous involves adding water to the semolina flour, rolling it around (traditionally with your fingers, but these days, by machine), then run it through a sieve to get pieces of the right size. It ends...

One of the mamas at our homeschool matzah bake today pointed out how many calories are in matzah compared to bread – I forget, but it’s something like 4 times as many – because matzah doesn’t have all the air and water that bread does so it’s just pure calories. Which got me thinking – it’s  astonishing how much flour today’s baking wasted… or, if you don’t want to think of it as waste, because everybody was learning and having fun, at least how INEFFICIENT matzah baking is. Each kid started with a cup of flour and 1/3 cup of water.  There were six kids, plus I had two cups of flour, which makes 8 cups of flour altogether.  If I’d made BREAD with 8 cups of flour (about 1080g), it would be enough for at least two big loaves.  In fact, I made two 680g loaves yesterday with 877g of flour, and I had dough to spare at the end of the evening.  Just one of those loaves would have fed everybody here for lunch quite handily. As it was, out of those eight cups, ...

Well, not a day off, but kind of a “working vacation” at the Shoresh First (hopefully annual!) Food Conference yesterday. I was covering it for the Canadian Jewish News, but I let someone snap this delightful shot of me kneading some authentic flour-and-water-only half-whole-wheat matzah.  There was a timer present, and indeed, the whole process was complete in under 18 minutes. Tons of fun! I attended two other sessions:  “Kosher Curds” and “Is Kosher Meat Fit to Eat?”  Tons of food for thought – it was kind of obvious that this was a pilot run, as some aspects weren’t as well-thought-out as others (I don’t think anybody thought to invite the mainstream kosher organizations here in town), but what a great concept!  I really hope they do it again next year.

This is the Pumpkin-Oatmeal No-Knead Bread from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (which I still don’t own!). It’s a fun bread because it doesn’t taste like a “healthy” bread (being mostly white flour), but does contain token quantities of rye, whole-wheat and oat. It is a very easy bread to make, despite the sloppiness of the final dough. I baked these seven loaves, along with gingerbread and shortbread cookies, to fill up holiday parcel boxes whicih we mailed to members of our extended families. (actually, the 7th was for our supper: shhh…) I added cranberries and lightly toasted walnuts to make it into more of a “festive” bread. Anyway, ours was delicious with tomato soup this evening; soft and fresh. Almost too soft, I hope, because, this being Thursday, the others won’t arrive at their new homes until perhaps Monday. This particular loaf is one that would be delicious slightly stale and toasted, so I was hoping that even if the loaves aren’t completely fresh when ...

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  “No knead” bread broke my mixer! Forgot to blog about this one during the week.  I have some wonderful, local Red Fife whole-wheat flour my sister gave me that I wanted to try out, so I decided to do the No-Knead 100% Whole-Wheat Bread from King Arthur Flour again.  I made it once before with spelt and it wasn’t fantastic.  This time around, it made a VERY dense loaf, but one that was eminently sliceable and eatable. This is an unusual no-knead bread because you use a hand mixer (or stand mixer) to mix the ingredients.  The finished “dough” is somewhere between a thick cake batter and a thin bread dough.  Definitely not kneadable.  And as the six words point out, really too heavy for what my cheapo hand mixer could take on, apparently.  (Luckily, I had a spare in the basement, albeit a tippy one I hate.) Once mixed, you let the dough rise in the loaf pan (mine’s a bit big, which the King ...

It’s my disasters that keep me humble… that’s for sure.  (Speaking of disasters, have you entered my Kitchen Disaster contest yet???) Then again, I bet you don’t get so many disasters with all those other marginally competent bread blogs out there!!!  I bet that’s how I earned my fifteen loyal followers in the first place, by being human, just like them! So.  If you recall, I decided to make a delicious sprouty, wheaty bread for our supper tonight!  I started sprouting the wheat berries on Monday, and mixed up a couple of components of this bread last night . Here’s what I started with when I picked it up this afternoon:  “soaker”, preferment, exactly 11g of sprouted wheat berries.       Ground the wheat berries to “kneadable” consistency.   Holds together when smooshed into a ball in your hand:   Tossed in the rest of the flour, touch of honey, touch more yeast and kneaded the whole mess together.  Should hav...

I’ve been sprouting these wheat berries for a few days now… they’re ready.  Now what should I do with them??  I have some rye flour I’ve been wanting to play around with… any thoughts? (the sprouts are in the fridge now, awaiting their fate – they should keep for a bit while I decide!) Postscript:  I’ve found the solution (I hope!):  Sprouty Spelty Wheat Bread. Original recipe, speltless, is here , apparently adapted from Peter Reinhardt’s Whole Grain Breads , which I haven’t read.    (from Kath Eats , a blog where I borrowed another recipe a while back, for making Ciabatta and Focaccia from the same batch of dough. (I also just discovered that the lovely Kath and her husband Matt – who bread-blogs at her food blog – are opening their own Great Harvest Bread franchise this fall!) I have no whole wheat flour in the house, but some leftover whole-grain spelt, a gift from my sister a long, LONG time ago.  I decided to use it up with thi...

It’s a fast day today and I decided to make a nice grainy bread like Ted likes for the end of the fast. So how does it happen that when I sit down to Google a nice, fairly quick, easy grainy bread to use up some of the ingredients I have on hand: barley flour, oat flour, bread flour, a bit of Pioneer Village whole wheat… I end up falling DEEPLY in love with a Sicilian No-Knead Bread , totally different from what I set out to bake??? I have been obsessed with Pane Siciliano for a while. For whatever reason, I love pasta and semolina and everything related to it. This bread is actually made with durum flour , which is a finer grind than durum semolina . Semolina is coarser, like corn meal. It works for bread in small quantities, and actually works well for pasta. I also keep it on hand because, like corn meal, it’s useful for sprinkling on a surface so breads don’t stick: the coarse grains act like ball bearings and your bread rolls right off! I haven’t been able to find...

Well, I don’t really LIKE sandwich bread, and I don’t like whole-wheat bread particularly much.  But fresh, easy, no-knead sandwich bread ?  This definitely looks like one to try for the future. This week, I’ve taken out Jim Lahey’s “My Bread” from the library, and for our before-the-fast meal tomorrow, I’m making an easy lasagna, along with Lahey’s focaccia, which I will sprinkle with olive oil, rosemary and a bit of kosher salt.  I am intrigued by this recipe because instead of plain water, the recipe uses a boiled potato, puréed in the boiling water.  The potato is supposed to add moisture, I guess, and if you read this blog regularly, you’ll know I am unnaturally obsessed with the idea of mushing potatoes into bread. Now, I am forewarned:  this guy (oops – it’s a girl, or rather, a woman ) had miserable failures the first few times he (oops - she) tried making this bread – to the extent that he (oops – she) had to throw out the PAN.  Okay, enough...

----- Original Message ----- From: Me, aka amateur bread baker / tooth murderer To: Recipient of the other loaf of sprouty seedy bread Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2010 8:37 PM Subject: Warning! Embarrassing but true: the wheat berries that ended up on top of the bread harden significantly during baking and CAN cause teeth damage. Eat with care!!!! Ask me how I found out... sheesh, one never wants to feel directly responsible for one's neighbour's dental bills. :-((( Hope there's some kind of Good Samaritan Bakers clause that protects me from lawsuits over this. Take care, J

On Monday at The Big Carrot , I bought some soft wheat kernels to sprout.  I started them right away, along with a batch of basic no-knead Artisan Bread in Five Minutes bread .  (you can buy them at almost any natural-food store, in the bulk-bin section) To sprout the kernels (also called wheat berries), I soak them overnight in a plain unbleached cotton bag, then drain well and rinse twice a day (hanging to dry well in between rinses) until they grow a tail.  These tails are a bit short; I usually leave them a bit longer.  Not bad, though, for a day and a half of growth.  (They’re a bit floury because I forgot to take the picture while they were still in the bag.  I don’t use any flour in the sprouting process.) So today I dumped out the Artisan Bread – which has a nice, ripe smell after two days’ fermentation in the fridge – along with the pre-soaked wheat.  (I had about a cup of kernels to begin with; didn’t weigh or measure after soaking.) ...