ABin5 Whole Wheat Bread with Purple Basil and Sunflower Seeds

ABin5 Whole Wheat Bread with Purple Basil and Sunflower Seeds

This is the same dough as last time, just a couple days later.  It is amazing the different tastes you can get by just changing a couple of ingredients or the method of baking.  The other day I used ginger on the crust; this time I used some purple basil and sunflower seeds in the interior of the loaf, rolling it up tightly.  This herb bread is pure experiment.

What made me hit on this combination?  I just opened the cupboard and looked.  The purple basil was sitting there.  We had grown it in our garden last year, lots of it, and now we had lots of it dried and ready to use.  There were a few sunflower seeds that I could toss into the loaf too, and I thought that it might give the loaf a nice crunchy texture.

On Basil in Bread
The wiki on basil indicates that the plant has been around for some time.  This purple variety (not the African Blue variety, some other kind) is probably more ornamental than culinary, likely a modern hybrid rather than the original.  Basil is used fresh more often than dried, where it loses much of its flavour.  It would appear that the plant has many healthful benefits (antioxidant, anticancer, antiviral, and antimicrobial), but also a few possible dangers (e.g. contains estragole, a known carcinogen and teratogen, probably acceptable in small amounts)-- much like bread itself, I suppose.  Of particular interest to me (given my job and my interests) I found the following lines in the wiki, which may one day be edited out because there is no citation given:

In Europe, basil is placed in the hands of the dead to ensure a safe journey. In India, they place it in the mouth of the dying to ensure they reach God. The ancient Egyptians and ancient Greeks believed it would open the gates of heaven for a person passing on.

So it might kill me, or it might lead me to God Realization.

I tossed it on the flattened dough, rolled it up and set it to rise for 90 minutes.

I baked it in a casserole dish, and let it bake about 5 minutes longer than I usually do (20min cover on, 25min cover off).  It is unfortunate that the casserole dish I used was slightly too small, and so the loaf became a bit misshapen.  But it still tastes fine.

By baking it about 5 minutes longer than usual, the crust became chunkier, darker, and harder, with a more distinct carmelized flavour.  I cut into the loaf while it was still hot (I barely had it made in time before I had to leave for work, and I needed to take some with me), and the scent of the herbs was really strong on the escaping steam.   This subsided a bit over the next day, but you can still smell the basil when you bring it close to your nose (which you have to do, to eat it).

This bread tastes quite different from the ginger crust version.  And yet, it is the same basic dough.  The basil provides more scent than substance; and only a hint of colour.  The sunflower seeds worked nicely with this dough.

I like both loaves.

Notes to Myself

• I used 1/4c each of the purple basil and sunflower seeds.  I also had a bit of flour to help with rolling up the dough.  I would re-think the use of flour for this purpose next time, or the amount I used: in the final bread, there are a few places where the white flour is still noticeable. 
• Try adding a fine spice to any flour you might use in this way, or use the fine spice in place of the flour.  What would you use, other than the ginger you've already tried?  Imagine paprika, or even cayenne.  What about mustard?  What seeds or nuts would complement these spices in a loaf?

Everyday Bread #11

Schnelles Brotrezept

It's not like I need more bread.  I have four loaves on the counter that I'm working my way through, and some in the freezer.  But there's this recipe I want to try...

On the German website chefkoch.de, someone has posted a 'Schnelles Brotrezept', or Quick Bread Recipe.  It sounds easy enough.  It uses lots of yeast and a quick mix, no-rise method.  Here is the recipe, as I translated it from the chefkoch web site (I've already changed it a bit here):

Schnelles Brotrezept - German Quick Bread Recipe

• 500 g flour (to taste)
• 2 pkts dried instant yeast (4 1/2 tsp)
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 TBSP vinegar
• 200 g sunflower seeds
• 500 ml hot water or milk
• 1 tsp honey
• spice mix for bread

Preheat the Oven (and a casserole dish!) to 200 degrees C (390 degrees F).
Dissolve yeast in Lukewarm liquid, sweetened with honey.
Add all the other ingredients to the flour in a big bowl, and whisk.
When the oven is preheated, add the vinegar to the yeast mixture.
Blend into the flour mix.
Do not let rise; pour in a casserole dish.
Bake covered at 200 degrees C for 45 minutes, then 15 minutes uncovered.

My Variations and Method:

This recipe calls for a spice mix for bread that I didn't have.  I looked up the Brotgewürz online and soon discovered a homemade recipe for the German Kotänyi bread spice somewhere online:

• 2 T Anise seeds
• 2 T Caraway seeds
• 2 T Fennel seeds
• 1 T Coriander seeds

Use 2 T of this mix for every 1 kg of flour in breads.  
You can use either whole seeds or ground seeds.

I didn't have any caraway seeds (my wife doesn't care for them, so we rarely buy them).  I mixed up the rest of the ingredients, but I only used a teaspoon of each.  And I was using whole seeds.

As for the flour for the bread recipe, I was told to use 500 g of any flour, 'to your taste'.  I decided to use a mixture.  Not really knowing what my taste is yet, having little experience with various flours, for this experiment I merely used 100 g each of:

• All Purpose Wheat Flour
• Whole Wheat Flour
• Spelt Flour
• Dark Rye Flour
• Oat Flour

For the hydration, I used buttermilk that was slightly past its 'best before' date.  It still smelled okay to me.  I mean, it still smelled like buttermilk.  I'm not sure why we had buttermilk, but no one else was using it, so I felt justified in using it up.

I also didn't have enough sunflower seeds.  I had only 150 grams of them; the remainder I made up with sesame seeds.  Someone online said that they used roasted onion instead of seeds; that sounded good, but not so 'Schnelles' for me today.

Although the original recipe didn't tell me to let the yeast foam, and it didn't tell me to keep the vinegar separate until I was going to add it to the flour, I decided to let the yeast sit at least as long as the oven was pre-heating.

I had just mixed the dough all together with the yeast mix and vinegar, and the oven was preheated, when I realized that I had not pre-heated the casserole dish with the oven.  The recipe hadn't said to do this (well, maybe it did, is that what schieben means in this context?), but on the basis of my last disaster loaf, where the dough stuck miserably to a cold pot, I figured it would be better made hot.  So I stuck it in for about 5 minutes.  So the dough was waiting at least that long before I put it in the oven (although it didn't have time to rise).

Unfortunately, this meant that the casserole dish was warm, but it wasn't entirely preheated.  Like the last disaster loaf, I had some difficulty getting this bread out of the pan intact.  Perhaps placing some steel cut oats, cracked wheat, or bran on the bottom of the casserole dish might actually help get the bread out in the future.  The original recipe in German says you are to grease the pan, but I don't want to go that route if I can help it.

My wife came by as I was digging it out of the pan, and asked suspiciously, "Is it baked?"  I told her I didn't know.  But when I got it out -- pretty much in one piece, thankfully -- I decided to stick it back onto a rack in the oven for a few minutes while it was preheating for the next loaf I was baking today (probably only about 5 minutes tops, but I was trying to get the oven to 475 degrees F).  This was enough to crisp up the overly moist bottom for me.  However, I don't know if the bottom crust was breaking off later because I so heated it, or because I was hacking at it with flat utensils to get the loaf out in one piece, or if that is just the nature of the 5 flours I threw together.

The loaf has a pleasant taste.  I think the anise is a tiny bit overpowering, but once in awhile you crunch another spice (the coriander?) and there is something subtle going on, an overlay of taste, like an overtone in music, it is a harmonic that evens it all out.  When you hit a sunflower seed, there is a texture surprise that creates interest and a gentle sweetness in the upper palate.  The crust is not too crunchy, and the crumb is not too dry.  I have toasted this bread, and it is good that way too.  It's pretty good bread.  And it came together pretty quick, too, despite my somewhat anal need to measure out each ingredient exactly. 

While cooking, this loaf smells great.  I think it is the spices.  I wonder what a curry loaf would smell like?  Or cinnamon?  Or nutmeg?  Or rosemary?  Could I use fresh herbs from my garden?

The wheels are turning.

Notes to Myself:

• Try this recipe again or a version of it, only reduce the yeast by half; 
• How many times do I have to say this?  PREHEAT THE DISH.
• Put something on the bottom of the casserole dish before pouring in the liquid: something like bran, or cracked wheat, or steel-rolled oats.
• See if you think that the loaf could use a bit longer bake
• Experiment with spices that you like and think are healthy.  Try turmeric for its healthful properties, for instance, or paprika.  These might add some interesting colour, too.