Whole Grain Garlic Studded Baguette, Whole Grain Pizza on the Grille

Whole Grain Margherita Pizza

Garlic-Studded Baguettes

For my "Healthy Breads in 5 Minutes a Day" baking group, I felt it was finally time to conquer my fears of making pizza on the grill.  Also, I decided to make my favorite baguettes with a different dough.

We had a choice of several whole grain doughs.  My choice was to try the Whole Wheat with Olive Oil dough again.  The first time I made this dough, it seemed to be a bit loose.  There's now a post-it note on my recipe that reads, "good for flatbreads."  Now that I have more experience, I've begun to adjust these recipes more.  Michelle, our host, is probably smiling about that!


White Whole Wheat flour was used, and slightly less water--about 1/4 cup less.  Using less water seemed to help this time.  The dough seemed firmer.  After the dough rose and was chilled overnight, it was time to bake!  Yaay!!!

Whole Grain Grilled Pizzas

It was time to brave the grill!  I've been  nervous about grilling pizzas.  There's the thought of the dough falling through the grates.  Also, it's my hubby who usually does the grilling, so I don't have much experience in this. He didn't want to do the pizzas.  Lastly, it's close to fire!  Need I say more?

For my first try, I used flour under the dough on the peel.  Lots of flour!  The pizza ended up with a "too much flour" taste.  Next time, I think I'll flour my peel by rubbing flour all over it--not dumping it on top. 

Getting the dough onto the grill was the toughest part.  We have a split grill.  It's great for small amounts of grilling.  You can fire up half the grill for two people, or use both sides for more people.  The problem for this type of grill is that the peel is too big for one side and there's not much "wiggle room."  

The pizza slid into a bunched up mass on the grill, with the side caught off the grill.  Quickly, I nervously straightened out the pizza.  Possibly I can find a smaller peel for the future.

The dough was turned over when it began to bubble up, and olive oil was added.  Then the tomatoes and cheese were added.  We used "Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet" cheese.  Closing the lid for a few minutes helped the cheese melt some.
 

The sliced basil was added just before removing the pizza.

A little Wiki research--This is very similar Pizza Margherita, which was made in honor of the Queen consort of Italy--Margherita of Savoy.  The pizza toppings are fresh sliced tomatoes (well, I used canned diced), fresh sliced Mozzarella, and fresh basil leaves. It represents the colors of the Italian flag. It is believed to be the first pizza to use cheese--the pizzas we all know and love today.

There was about 1 1/2 pounds of dough left.  That would be enough for two smaller pizzas.  We decided to give the grilled pizzas another try.  I decided to test out the suggestions of several people in our group.  

Debbie felt that cornmeal works better than flour for sliding the pizzas from the peel.  

Guff and Joanna both felt that flipping the pizza onto the grill worked well. Guff felt that putting the pizza on parchment paper, flipping it so that the paper was on top, and then peeling it off partway through the cooking worked well.

Gwen, from our HBin5 group, agreed that using parchment paper gives good results in grilling.

Joanna mentioned a youtube video of Alton Brown's "Good Eats" show, where he flips the pizza onto the grill.   I am including it here, because there are a lot of great tips--flouring the peel (not overflouring it!), cooking tomatoes, and rolling out the dough.




Also, in this video, Alton Brown shows how to grill a flatbread over a gas burner!  This is wonderful for people who live in an apartment building or otherwise can't do outdoor grilling! He said it would even work for people living in a 5th floor walkup apartment in New York, as long as they have a gas stove.


The experiment--using cornmeal to slid one pizza onto the grill, and putting trimmed parchment paper under the other pizza.  The fire was kept medium low.

The crust that had cornmeal under it on the peel had the same problems as the one with the flour.  I shook the pizza to try to move it to the grill, and it bunched up into a mass over the fire.  Quickly, I moved it back into a larger piece.  But it lost its round shape; it's the one on the plate.


The pizza on the grill is the one that had parchment under it.  It moved easily to the grill, kept its shape, and cooked nicely.  We watched the pizzas carefully.  However, I'll try Guff's method of flipping the pizza crust so that the parchment is on top next time.  That may enable us to use higher heat.

We ate the pizza cooked on the parchment paper that night.  It was wonderful, served with fast totellini soup.

 Baguettes

I've made the garlic-studded baguettes before, and love the garlic-infused flavor from this method. This time, I decided to try omitting the stone or steam.  What would happen?  

letterfold technique

Twelve ounces (a bit larger than recommended) were used.  The baguettes were shaped using the letterfold 
technique, before stretching into a longer baguette.  Whenever there was resistance, I let the dough rest for a few minutes (so the dough wouldn't be so cranky!). 

The baguettes were place on my Silpat, on top of a baking sheet.  They were baked after baking a different bread, and the temperature was about 375 degrees.   After approximately 15 minutes, the breads were taken off the baking sheet and put onto the oven racks to firm up the bottoms.

Soft Crust Garlic-Studded Baguettes

These baguettes were wonderful  with tortellini soup.  I might continue making them this way, and you might want to try it.  For me, baking without adding the hot water and stone is a bit simpler.  Also, it takes less time and energy to heat the oven to a cooler temperature.

Grissini

I had some gluten free olive oil dough in the freezer. It was in the freezer for awhile, but looked fine. I figured it was good for flatbread. What did I have to lose by trying grissini and flatbread with that?!
I rolled 1/2 pound of dough out on parchment on a baking sheet, cut it into a rectangle (re-using the scraps) and drizzled olive oil on top.  The toppings were kosher salt and some leftover spicy spice mix from baking crackers some months back.  Then I cut the dough into strips; I made several groups of strips.  Then it was time to put the grissini in the oven to bake. Halfway thru baking, I took the pan out, separated the strips, (easy) and finished baking them. Easy, and yummy! A lot easier than moving the strips onto a baking sheet.  Crisp, too.

Sorry there aren't any pictures of the spicy grissini, but they went really fast!  So did the 2 pieces of spicy gluten free flatbreads...




Wherever, you are, I hope you are enjoying the beautiful fall colors.  As a former Southern California gal, seeing leaves change colors is new to me.  We just took a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway to see the beautiful bright red, orange, and yellow leaf colors on the trees.  We were able to see the leaf colors at their peak!  I thought you would enjoy seeing a few of the pictures:

Grandfather Mountain, NC, from the Blue Ridge Parkway

Yours Truly, enjoying the Fall Colors

Grandfather Mountain has a mile-high swinging/suspension bridge which gives breathtaking views. 

Blue Ridge Parkway, Central Section, Moses Cone Memorial Park 

Handwise tips:  If you have hand pain, tendonitis, or arthritis or any other pain issues and want to make this recipe:  

• My tip for this post is for the pizzas. By cooking two pizzas, we were able to freeze one pizza and eat one for dinner (cook once, eat twice!). 

This bread is one of the breads from the "Healthy Breads in 5 Minutes a Day" book.
The HBinFive Baking Group, started by Michelle of Big Black Dogs, is baking through all of the breads in this book.  To see what Guff, Debbie, Gwen, Joanne, Michelle, and my other HB5 baking buddies have made recently, check out The 21st HBinfive Bread Braid

Thanks for stopping by to visit! Come back soon, I'll be baking again often. I hope you will leave a comment below. I read every comment, and really appreciate your feedback. 

Quinoa Bread



Yummy Quinoa Baguettes!

Hubby: "What's for dinner tomorrow night, sweetie?"

Me: "I dunno, I didn't make up a menu."
That's when I remembered the quinoa I just purchased, and the Smart Bacon (soy) that I had in the freezer.

Luckily, it's easy to whip up some HB5 quinoa dough one night, and bake baguettes tomorrow. I had seen photos of yummy quinoa baguettes made by our HB5 group leader Michelle, of Big Black Dogs. The baguettes could make some great "BLT" sandwiches. And that's just what I made--the dough was mixed and was rising within just a few minutes.

There weren't enough hours for the dough to rise on the counter before bedtime. Therefore, the dough went into the fridge after 1 1/2 hours. I took it out the next morning to come to room temperature and finish rising.

 The next day, the dough was somewhat stiff. While that made it easy to shape baguettes, I wondered if the raw quinoa had soaked up some of the liquid.

First baguette, and 2 pieces resting after gluten cloak.
Next time a raw grain is part of a recipe, I am considering keeping the dough wetter. After all, my maple oatmeal bread was very wet, and the oatmeal seemed to absorb some of the liquid overnight.

I used the letterfold technique found in the HB5 book, and they came out nice. I had 2 baguettes that were 11oz. each, and a smaller one of 7 oz. each.

The fresh quinoa baguettes made wonderful vegetarian "BLT" sandwiches. 


Now, here's my "while the oven is still hot" recipe. I'm starting to test out holiday gift recipes, and this caught my eye.  A similar recipe came in the King Arthur catalog, but I've adjustment the amounts and ingredients slightly:

Pecan, Chocolate and Caramel candies

(adapted from King Arthur Flour recipe)

 1 ounce pecans

6 caramel candies

16 Dark Cocoa Candy Melts (by Wilton) 

    or other 1" - 1 1/2" bittersweet chocolate disk

sea salt to garnish each candy (if desired)

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Unwrap caramels, place on a baking sheet and platter, and put them in a warm area to soften.

Chop pecans; you may need to chop more than 1 ounce in case you get crumbs. Toast chopped pecans. When pecans are toasted, place them into 16 piles (about 1/4oz./2tsp each) of pecans on a parchment-lined or lightly greased baking sheet.

Take caramel cubes and use your fingers to flatten them into disks the size of a half silver dollar. Place them on top of pecans. Heat in the oven for 2 to 3 minutes, until the caramel softens and begins to smell. Remove from oven. Top each cluster with a Candy Melt.

Once the chocolate has softened, top each candy with a few flakes of sea salt (if you like sweet and salty combo). Allow the caramel and chocolate to cool and set before removing candies from the pan.

Makes 16 candies

The candies tasted good.  Next time, however, I might make them in a mini muffin pan to improve the shape.

This bread is one of the breads from the "Healthy Breads in 5 Minutes a Day" book.
The HBinFive Baking Group, started by Michelle of Big Black Dogs, is baking through all of the breads in this book.  To see what my HB5 baking buddies have made recently, check out Big Black Dogs

Thanks for stopping by to visit! Come back soon, I'll be baking again often. I hope you will leave a comment below. I read every comment, and really appreciate your feedback. 

Judy

100% Whole Grain Maple Oatmeal Bread

Maple Oatmeal Bread, mini loaf

There wasn't much time to make this dough, but much time wasn't needed!  That's the beauty of this type of baking.  The most time was spent buying the wheat germ for this recipe and quinoa for the next loaf.

Raisins were added, after hearing reviews of this bread from other group members.  As usual, I rinse my dried fruits to clean them.  This also keeps the fruit from soaking up liquid from the dough.

Dough, next day

The dough was rather wet, but I didn't mind.  I knew that I would be making mini loaves.  

The next day, the dough was stiffer.  It is possible that the raw oatmeal had absorbed some of the liquid.  Still, it wasn't easy to do the gluten cloak.  

We had a lot of plans for the day--building our harvest booth.  So I quickly covered the pans to let them rise, set two timers (one to turn on the oven awhile before actual baking), and went outside to start work on the booth.

I had made half a recipe, and it was just enough for 3 mini loaves.

Ready to rise in mini pans

When the second timer went off, the loaves were put into the oven.  Because they were mini loaves, they would bake sooner.  I kept setting timers for 10 minute intervals, and took them out when the internal temperature said 195 degrees.

Yummy, full of raisins and flavor!

The breads were a really nice snack for all of us building the harvest booth!  Nice crumb and flavor.  My friend, Debbie, said that the raisins really made the loaf!  Even my hubby said that he really liked it.  We all felt the loaf would be great with butter.  Next time, I might add some walnuts.  

I think I'll have another piece right now--excuse me for a minute...

Mmmmm, tastes great with honey butter!

What a great treat to have while we built the booth, and to give a loaf to my friend.  Here's some pictures of our harvest booth: 

Putting up the "walls"

Our crew, the booth all finished.  The "roof" is bamboo mats, so you can see the stars at night.  Peyton, who is 9, is a pro at putting up the lights.  We will be adding Chinese decorations later on, for our Asian theme.

The booth, lit up for night.  We need to add more decorations, a table, chairs, and lots of happy people!  Our friends look forward to this celebration every year!

Handwise tips:  If you have hand pain, tendonitis, or arthritis or any other pain issues and want to make this recipe:  

I guess the best tip for this recipe is to add the dried fruits into the water/dough, when you are making the dough. And rinse the raisins--you will be surprised how dirty raisins can be.

This bread is one of the breads from the "Healthy Breads in 5 Minutes a Day" book.

The HBinFive Baking Group, started by Michelle of Big Black Dogs, is baking through all of the breads in this book.  To see what my HB5 baking buddies have made recently, check out welcome-to-the-19th-hbinfive-bread-braid/">The 19th HBin5 Bread Braid
 

Thanks for stopping by to visit!  Come back soon, I'll be baking again often.  I hope you will leave a comment below.  I read every comment, and really appreciate your feedback.


Judy

Rosemary Flax Baguette

Rosemary Flax Baguette

The whole wheat dough for these baguettes was really easy to use.  It was much stiffer than the dough using all purpose flour, making the shaping much easier.  I baked these baguettes twice, using  stored dough.  

The first time, they were baked on my baguette pan.  Parchment paper was used so the dough wouldn't seep through or stick:

Halfway through baking time, I took the baguettes off the baking pan and put them directly onto the stone that was in the oven.  This gave the bottom of the baguettes a nice crust:

Energy saving tip:  Instead of heating up the oven twice for baking, I baked my blueberry pie first.  Then I heated up the oven higher for the baguettes.  It takes a half hour to heat up the oven, but it the oven was pretty hot by the time I baked the baguettes:

Nice crumb, crust on the baguettes.  Great whole wheat and rosemary flavor!

There was just enough dough for a second baguette, later in the week.  It's great to have stored dough in the fridge--no need to mix up another batch of dough.  This time, I did a "freehand" shape:

It looks like the baguette pan makes smaller loaves.  The loaf on the left is the freehand loaf.  The one on the right was baked in the baguette pan.

The baguettes were especially enjoyable when we dipped them into olive oil!

This bread is one of the breads from the "Healthy Breads in 5 Minutes a Day" book.

The HBinFive Baking Group, started by Michelle of Big Black Dogs, is baking through all of the breads in this book.  To see what my HB5 baking buddies have made recently, check out The 17th HBin5 Bread Braid

Thanks for stopping by to visit!  Come back soon, I'll be baking again often.  I hope you will leave a comment below.

Judy

Shaping Baguettes

Shaping Baguettes

I'm still practicing shaping a pretty baguette.  I was getting sad that I wasn't able to do this classic shape very well.  

The pictures in the "Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day" book explain a method of letter fold and then holding the ends and stretching the dough.  I get pinched ends and irregular thickness when I try this method.  

I saw a helpful video by Susan Reid at King Arthur Flour Baking Education Center.  She said that baguette shaping takes practice, so don't be upset if you can't do this right away!  I've included her wonderful video so maybe you can also pick up some tips:

Don't you just love Susan's favorite dough cover--a showercap?  :)  It works really well.  And, if you can't find your broiler pan, she uses a cast iron pan.

I didn't use Susan Reid's starter and dough recipe.  I had some Master Dough from "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day" in the refrigerator.  It keeps for 7 - 10 days, so I often have this dough in the refrigerator. After it sits in the refrigerator for a few days, it develops a more sourdough flavor.  I don't usually use the dough the same day I make it, so it can develop more flavor.  This time was also my first time using starter!  I cut down the amount of flour and water to compensate for the starter.


The dough was hard to mix, so I added more water until it was the right consistency.  The next morning, however, the dough was too wet.  I decided to try baking it anyways.

Here's my first attempt, after seeing the video:

They didn't come out in the shape I wanted, but they tasted good.  At this point, I added more flour to the dough.  I was hoping that the flour would be absorbed into the dough.  I think the dough was somewhat thicker next time.

Next, I tried using my baguette pan.  I put parchment paper on my special two-channel pan.  I measured out 3/4 pound of dough for each baguette.  I used the video's tip of spraying the dough before I put them into the oven.  Here's the finished product, with the baguette pan in the background:

It's strange to see that the one in the front came out nicer, and I worked with that baguette a lot less! Maybe "less is more!"  I think it will take me a bit more of practice to shape with both hands.  I do like the multiple letter fold technique in the video. Come to think of it, I did redo that baguette when I didn't like the look the first time.  So I guess I did do a multiple letter fold.  I think that I would use a pound of dough per baguette next time, to make a fatter baguette.

I sliced up thin slices of warm baguette, spread them with butter, and ate them with a big salad.  Wonderful!

------------
Update, 2 weeks later...:

I tried baguettes again, this time with a thicker HB5 master dough.  I made the garlic studded baguette.  I used white whole wheat flour and peeled the garlic.  I also pulled the letter-folded logs into a longer log, like in our book.  This thicker dough was easier to handle:

I gave them to a friend (a good thing, I had enough bread around here!), and she immediately tried it with butter.  They were wonderful--the roasted garlic flavored the loaves!  YUM!!



Handwise tips:  If you have hand pain, tendonitis, or arthritis or any other pain issues and want to make this recipe, you might space it out over a few days:

1. Use some AB5 or HB5 stored dough that you made several days before.  You don't have to bake them on the same day.  Baguette shaping is pretty "hand intensive," involving a lot of use of your hands.  Think about what else you will be doing that day--you may not want to pull weeds or do a lot of typing on that day.
2. When you are mixing the dough--If your hand problems respond to warmth, mixing with your hands may be a wonderful option.  The water you add is about 100 degrees, and it's a very wet dough.  It's pretty easy to mix, and no kneading.  I always love to put my hand into the warm dough to mix it!  You can get a better idea of when the dough is "just right," too!
3. Let the dough rest if it resists stretching out.  Wait 10-15 minutes after doing the gluten cloak, and it easily should be able to be patted into a larger circle or rolled out.  Good time to have a seat and rest your hands!
4. Find what kind of rolling method works best for you.  You might pick up the dough and have gravity stretch it for you.  You might use an OXO-type rolling pin.  Or a pastry roller may be easier for you to use, with the angle of the roller coming from above.  I think a pastry roller was easy to use.
5. Soak your tools in your empty dough bucket or a pan when you are finished using them. That way, you can wash them easily later (or tomorrow!)  Give yourself the permission of time to clean up much later. 

Thanks for stopping by to visit!  I hope you will leave a comment below.  Maybe you can add a handwise or time saving suggestion that will help others?

About the HBinFive Baking Group
The HBinFive Baking Group, started by Michelle of Big Black Dogs, is baking through all of the breads in the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes book. For more information on the HBinFive baking group, check out BigBlackDog.