Jananas

My friend Breeze and I like to talk baking. She had mentioned her awesome one loaf vegan bread recipe in the comments for the post on no-knead, slow-rise bread. I gave the recipe a try and it was such a resounding success that I had to make a second loaf that day just to keep up with demand for it.

There’s a couple of things that I really like about this recipe. First, it only makes one loaf. Second, its versatile meaning that you can add what you want to it (in our case this normally means lots and lots of flax seed). Third, its damn tasty!

Recipe forVegan Whole Wheat Bread:

• 1 cup warm water
• 1/4 maple syrup or agave (or 1/4 cup honey for the beegans)
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon active dry yeast (up to 1 1/4 tsp)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 2 1/3 cups bread flour (or mixture of bread & whole wheat flour)
• Additional flour when kneading

Mix water, agave, and yeast together. Let sit for 5+ minutes, or until ‘foamy’. Add to dry ingredients, stirring until just mixed. Roll onto floured counter, kneading until smooth. Place in an oiled bowl, turning to coat dough. Cover with saran wrap or a damp towel. Let rise until doubled in volume (at least one hour). Punch down and knead briefly. Place loaf in an oiled 5×9 pan, covering and allowing to rise again.

Cook at 325F for 25-30 minutes. Done when you hear a hollow sound when you tap the bottom. You can also place a sheet of aluminum foil over the top of the loaf once its browned to prevent further colour from developing.

I like making bread. The problem with a lot of the normal bread recipes is that they end up making two loaves at a time, which is a lot of bread to eat in a short time period! I know that you can freeze a loaf if you need to, but we have a small freezer and space is at a premium. Added to that the fact that I’m experimenting with different recipes to see what we like best, what works best, what works with our schedules, etc.

So this week we tried to make slow rise no knead bread, using this recipe. Overall, this was super easy to make up. Ours didn’t rise as much as we’d hoped (although I have a feeling that the pan I was using was a little too large for the amount of dough). Also, we both found it a little sweet, which was strange because there wasn’t much sugar.

Next time we’re talking about adding some flax, caraway, or sesame seed to it to add a little more texture. I also think that it would be good with some savoury flavouring. I didn’t add any this time because I wasn’t sure what we were going to use it for and decided to err on the side of caution (as rosemary doesn’t really go well with strawberry jam).

We made the dough up in the evening and left it to sit overnight, doing the final rise and baking it the next morning (which took about two hours). I think that once I’m back working again it would work better to make the dough up in the morning before work. That way, I can do the final rise and bake it in the evening, when I have time versus in the morning when I certainly won’t!

I’ve been getting up much earlier in the morning in the last week. Its amazing how much you can accomplish before noon! Today I made some vegan whole wheat bread by veganizing (using rice milk & earth balance because that’s what we had in the fridge) a white bread recipe in one of my cookbooks. I used whole wheat bread flour, again because that’s what I had available. I was a little nervous because it didn’t rise as much as bread normally does, although that may just be because its only 20C inside the house (in fact, the furnace was on this morning!!).

I’ll be giving the second loaf to a friend today, because we don’t normally eat enough bread to go through two loaves in a few days. Worst case, I have to make a second batch…

Speaking of second batches, I made a second batch of garlic & dill pickles yesterday. This time I cut them into spears and they fit into the jars much easier. Now I have enough to give a few away as gifts!

So before anyone gets their knickers in a knot or thinks that I’m some sort of woman with an agenda against my former company, I actually busy making cookies while writing/editing last night’s post.

While looking through our cupboards yesterday, Jason had come across a bag of vegan chocolate chips that I’d ever so deviously hidden away (and subsequently forgot about). I haven’t (successfully) baked since we’ve been home so I decided that I should make us something good and wholesome for dessert. [As an aside, dinner was curried adzuki beans & green peas over steamed mixed rice]

I googled vegan chocolate chip cookies to see what would come up, and came across Post Punk Kitchen’s Chewy Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. Seriously, these things are like brownies in a cookie form – just amazing!

Here they are just out of the oven. However, this picture didn’t really do them justice, so I took a close up of one cookie (the was shortly demolished).

And they really are chewy cookies! When the instructions say cook them for exactly 10 minutes (they won’t look done, but they are) – listen!!!! Its what gives them their amazing texture.

The other night, Jason made homemade bread. He found a vegan focaccia recipe somewhere online and attempted his hand at it. The end result was whole wheat focaccia with caramelized onions, rosemary, garlic, and red pepper flakes on top. It went amazing well with the homemade hummus he’d made earlier that day.

Sadly, my teeth hurt too much after yesterday’s dentist appointment to get to enjoy his homemade bread on day two. Instead I got to drool over his dinner while he ate some last night.