Whole Wheat and Honey Loaf

I did it! I finished my recipe development assignment! Well... for now.
As a refresher, a friend started a business selling his own stone-ground Whole Wheat flour and I offered to develop some signature recipes for him. I'd never worked with stone ground flour before but felt I was up to the challenge.
Now, sometime after I received my first bag of flour, I have developed his Pancake mix recipe, a Whole Wheat and Honey Loaf recipe and a Cinnamon Raisin Whole Wheat Soda Bread recipe! The latter two will be available with his products, and possibly on his Facebook page, shortly!
I had him over for a tasting today and he loved the soda bread and was surprised by the nice texture and rise of the Whole Wheat and Honey Loaf (I'm glad too, because it took a fair bit of ingenuity on my part to get it there!)
I've still got a bit of flour left, so I think I'm going to whip up some Coffee Date Muffins next week and do one more recipe for him right now, but until that happens, care for a preview??

Redstone Mills' Whole Wheat and Honey Loaf:

3 ¼ c. Redstone Mills Stone Ground Whole-Wheat Flour
½ c. all-purpose flour
¼ c. wheat bran
1 ½ tsp salt
1 ½ tsp yeast
1 ½ c. milk
3 tbsp butter
2 tbsp honey
Combine milk, butter and honey in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, just until the butter has melted.
Combine remaining ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Mix with dough-hook attachment on a standing mixer. Pour in warm milk mixture and mix until dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. On a lightly floured surface, kneed by hand for 8 minutes. Do not skip this step!
Once the dough is shaped into a ball, place it in a liberally oiled mixing bowl, turn it over once so all sides are oiled, and let it rise, covered, in a warm, dry place for 1 ½ - 2 hours. Once dough has doubled in size, punch it down and gently shape it into a loaf – don’t push all the air pockets out! Let rise in a greased loaf pan for another 1 ½ - 2 hours.
Bake at 375 degrees for 35 minutes.
Slice and serve while still warm with creamed honey, butter, jam, or plain! It tastes great the next day too (if it lasts that long)!


Check out his Facebook page, too! He currently only sells at local Farmer's Markets, but his stuff may get stocked in a local store soon! (P.S. the pancake mix is to die for, if I do say so myself!)

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)

Catching up!

I know, I know, I know... it's been forever since I posted, and I left everyone hanging about that Mac and Cheese I was going to make! I'm a horrible person, I know, but I hope that, in time, you'll forgive me, and we'll be able to move on.

I did get around to making that Mac and Cheese, and it really was epic. I hard to pare down some of the elements of grandeur, but overall, it was a surprisingly elegant meal, considering it was, well, Mac and Cheese.
I used my original Mac and Cheese recipe (you can find in my post "Quarantine") and I stirred in some crab meat that I'd had in the freezer. I reheated the crab in clarified butter first to bring out more of its own distinctive flavor. While I had originally planned on doing a separate cheese sauce of parmesan and goat cheese poured overtop, my parmesan stocks were getting low, so I instead stirred in the goat cheese in place of the sour cream in my recipe. Fantastic results! Actually, I think I might permanently change my recipe to include the goat cheese - the sour cream is a nice touch in a pinch, but the goat cheese is just that much better, you know? Matt was thrilled with the end result and so was I, partly because now I know what to do whenever I have leftover crab in my fridge! (Which happens more often than you might think...)

Besides the Mac and Cheese, I also managed to whip up my first "cake-mix" cake. I experimented in a number of ways (using skim milk powder, fine sugar vs. granulated sugar, etc) and the end result was fine except... I threw in instant coffee to add some flavor to the chocolate cake, and the coffee was so smokey that it made my cake taste burnt. Great. So the cake rose nicely, had a very nice crumb and a deep reddy-brown color, but it tasted like it had smoke in it. Fantastic.

While the cake wasn't perfect, it was a fairly good start, and actually, I had intended on it not being perfect. I'm working on learning the actual effects of ingredients in baking, and so I wanted to see first-hand what certain things would do. While my cake rose nicely, it did sink in the middle. Apparently, that indicates too small of a liquid-to-sugar ratio, so that the sugar couldn't all dissolve. I had tweaked the liquid amounts slightly because I was using skim milk powder instead of milk, but the fine sugar I subbed in was too much for the cake. Actually, fine sugar really shouldn't be used in normal sheet cakes, period. Sugar makes your baking crispy, so the top was too hard instead of light and airy, and the liquid ratio was off so it didn't stay up in the center... just stick with granulated. I was happy with the gluten content, that's the real trick to making mix cakes that you can just throw water, oil and eggs into willy-nilly and still get a good cake. Different fats and different mixing techniques either relax or strengthen glutens, making for either fluffy cakes, or tough and dense cakes. I had to do some special add-ins, but I did pretty well I think.
All in all, it was a fine first attempt, and I'm confident that the second will produce even better results.

I also made eclairs last week! It's been such a long time since I made those! I first made them back in high school and really enjoyed making the pate a choux. There's something so satisfying about stirring eggs in one at a time, and each time you drop one in thinking, "What a goopy mess", but as you stir more you can see it, almost miraculously, transforming into a nice, sticky dough. Funny thing, I made the eclairs because I was low on ingredients in my house and they were an 'easy' plan B. Who doesn't always have flour, eggs, butter and water in the house? True, I needed Matt to pick up whipping cream on the way home so I could fill them (I totally copped out there and didn't make a cream, but they were still yummy!) but the puff itself was simple enough to whip up even though I didn't have a lot of ingredients in the house.

This week I will be developing at least one recipe with the stone ground whole wheat, and I'm still playing in my head with what exactly that recipe will look like. I think a good whole wheat bread will be ideal, but I can't decide if I want to make it a rustic loaf or a sandwich loaf, if I should do exclusively whole wheat flour or throw in a bit of white flour, and whether or not I should make it a plain loaf or an herbed or honeyed loaf. I have yet to see the flour itself, and that may determine alot of those questions for me when I finally do, but until then, I suppose I can just keep tinkering with my regular whole wheat flour here at home and hope for the best - although I just had this beautiful picture in my head of rosemary infusing in a pot of warmed milk with butter melting in it, and now I want to eat that... so I think I'm currently leaning towards an herbed sandwich loaf.

Well, this has been fun catching up, but I really must dash. My crazy-busy life has been the reason that I've been unable to post more frequently, and unfortunately, life still hasn't slowed down that much yet, so back to the grind I guess!

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)

Recipe Recap

Well, St. Patty's Day has come and gone, all of the fudge has been eaten and all of the green food dye has finally washed off my hands.
I spent Saturday in the kitchen, listening to The Irish Descendants (Raggle Taggle Gypsy, anyone?) and making a load of yummy Irish-themed treats. I started the morning off with potato pancakes with cheese baked into them and bacon and sunny-side-up eggs on top. As soon as the dishes were all cleared I got to work on whipping up some Irish Soda Bread. I made up two loaves; one loaf stayed at home with us, and the second loaf went to my sister in Calgary along with some of the Irish Cream Fudge I had made up the night before. The Soda Bread recipe I used was a true, traditional Irish Soda Bread - no raisins, no sugars, no eggs. Just flour, salt, baking soda and buttermilk. It was quite yummy.
Since we had slept in quite late (rough night with the kiddos), we more or less skipped lunch, save for munching on fudge and soda bread, so I got to work fairly soon on the Steak and Guinness pie - something that was quite highly anticipated by my husband. Matt loves pie, however it comes, and pie with steak and beer? He was thrilled! The meat in our pie was super, super tender, not just because you simmer it for hours on the stove, but also because we actually used venison, from the young deer Matt got this fall. Young meat = tender meat, and this was melt-in-your-mouth tender meat. My only beef (ha.) with the recipe was the use of Worchestershire sauce - I have an extremely low tolerance for it (Thanks to Denny's, but that's an old story) and I could have subbed it out but I thought I'd leave it in and see if I still hated it. Yep, I do.
Well, I took the next couple days off from the kitchen (we had fish sticks the next night and A&W last night!) but today I'm right back into it. I fortunately had a thought last night that I would like bread today. I have often lamented my lack of foresight when it comes to bread making because had I taken 5 minutes the night before I could have whipped up a sponge, but there's just no rushing a sponge to compensate for that lack of foresight. So when I thought about it last night I threw three things in a bowl, gave it a quick stir, and set myself up to make a great loaf of focaccia today! When you make something like a nice, herby focaccia, you really plan your meal around it, rather than vice versa, so for supper we're having stuffed manicotti with a meaty tomato sauce, so our bread has something to sop up. This meal will involve winging it; I don't use recipes for meat sauces or pasta dishes typically, unless I'm trying to recreate something. And as it goes, I make a mean manicotti, so why would I try to make someone else's?
Here's a general idea of what I did for the manicotti tonight:

Stuffed Manicotti
1 lbs ground beef
1/2 lbs ground pork
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 yellow onion, chopped
1/4 c. red wine
1 can crushed tomatoes
Basil, Oregano

1 1/2 c. cottage cheese
1 egg
1 1/2 c. shredded cheddar, divided
salt and pepper

15 manicotti pieces, cooked and slightly cooled

Cook up beef and pork in a skillet, set aside in a medium bowl. Cook onion in a bit of oil until tender. Add garlic and heat until flavors release. Deglaze with wine. Pour in crushed tomatoes and add spices. Cook over medium until heated through. Pour half of the tomato sauce over the cooked meat and stir to combine.
In a separate bowl combined cottage cheese, egg and 3/4 c. shredded cheddar. Season with salt and pepper. Fold cheese mix into meat mix.
Stuff manicotti with meat and cheese mixture and lay piece in a casserole dish (make sure the manicotti pieces aren't touching in the dish). When all of the pieces are stuffed, pour remaining tomato sauce over and top with remaining shredded cheddar. Bake at 350 for 30 - 40 minutes, or until cheese is melted.
This makes A LOT of food. Matt and I ate until we were totally full, and we each had 3 pieces of manicotti, so if you're not cooking for company, divide the manicotti between freezer-safe containers before you top them with the remaining sauce and cheese. These freeze great!

As a bit of a disclaimer, sometimes I post healthy meals that pay attention to calories and fat content... this is not one of those times. I don't know the fat content of this meal, nor do I want to, but I know it tastes great, and so while you shouldn't eat this everyday, once in a while is great!

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)