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Aug 16, 2012

BBA Challenge # 16 Kaiser Rolls, #17 Lavash Crackers, #18 Light Wheat Bread

Installment number six of my chronicle of baking every recipe in Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread.

BBA Challenge # 16 Kaiser Rolls

These are also known as New York hard rolls, and are intended for making deli sandwiches. These rolls were really tasty. They also gave me another opportunity to use the diastatic barley malt powder that I purchased especially for the bagels from King Arthur Flour. Thank goodness. my pantry and freezer are overrun with ingredients and are shrines to that company.
The recipe requires a Pâte Fermentée, pre-fermented dough to develop flavor. 

While I would definitely make these rolls again, there are a couple of things I would do differently. First, I used a Kaiser roll cutter. As you can see, the cuts grew back together.  Next time I will knot the rolls. I also think that the recipe has a misprint. It has you place the rolls top down on a parchment sprinkled with corn meal. The rolls in the book are shiny and not sprinkled with corn meal. I think the corn meal is supposed to be on the bottom of the rolls once you flip them and place them in the oven. 

Otherwise, these make great sandwich rolls and hamburger buns. 

Google BBA Challenge #16 for more feedback on this recipe.

BBA Challenge #17, Lavash Crackers


Lavash is an Armenian flatbread and is similar to a lot of the flatbreads throughout the Middle East. It involves rolling the dough paper thin. The ingredients include bread flour, salt, yeast, honey, oil, water, and toppings. These crackers are super crispy and flavorful.

Once I rolled out the dough, I topped it with stripes of poppy seeds, paprika, toasted sesame seeds, black sesame seeds, caraway seeds, sea salt, herbes de Provence, and flax seeds. I ran a pizza wheel over the dough in random patterns, and baked it for 20 minutes in an non-rimmed baking sheet. Loved these crackers.

This is a sweetgrass basket I picked up in Charleston, South Carolina a year ago, and a napkin I picked up in Provence, FR eleven years or so ago. Makes me sound like a world traveler. Hardly. But I love both of these pieces and just noticed that I used them both in this photo. =)

Google BBA Challenge #17 for more feedback on this recipe.

BBA Challenge #18, Light Wheat Bread

 
This bread is 33 per cent whole-wheat, and 67 percent high gluten white flour. This is a good sandwich bread. It includes just enough whole-wheat so that the flavor is not overwhelming. The bread is easy to make.

Along with the high gluten flour (Since my house will not fit another bag of flour, I used bread flour and a couple of tablespoons of Bob's Red Mill vital wheat gluten, which you can find at the supermarket) and whole-wheat flour, the ingredients include honey, salt, powdered milk, yeast, butter, and water.

Great go-to recipe for a "brown" bread. Great oven spring.

Google BBA Challenge #18 for more feedback on this recipe.







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