I’m well into my 3rd year of my MBA and I’ve been really burned out with projects, lectures, group projects…yadda yadda.  Anyhoo…I had to take a break on Saturday…so I hit the gym.  While I was out…Steph made Nigella’s chocolate bread.  I came home to an incredible smelling home and a very supportive wife.  Once the bread came out of the oven however…this is what it looked like:

Molten goodness, eh??  Looked like something from Hawaii! lol  The taste was fab so I wasn’t complaining.  On Sunday, however, Steph was determined to give it a whirl again as she got her ingredients together.

Pretty standard stuff…everything that you can find around your house.  This time around, Steph felt like she would not fill up the bread pan as much.  Lining the loaf pan with parchment paper made taking the cake out later on a snap as Steph poured in the yummy batter.

Of course, being the quality control/photographer…I had to lick the spatula   Steph poured some of the remaining batter into two of our Kiwi Le Creuset Ramekins. Cute eh?  This time…the chocolate bread didn’t over flow and the little ramekins were like little pots of chocolate goodness!

I was a bit wary at first, putting the 6 cups of whole wheat flour into the mixing bowl with some salt.

Though from everything I’ve read, quick rising yeast doesn’t necessitate proofing, it always makes me feel damn good to do it….plus…what can it hurt? Now, here is the key…the wet ingredients which included some olive oil, honey and a beaten egg.

I really believe that the egg helps along the process in giving the yeasties more readily available proteins to munch on. White flour is far easier to do this with than whole wheat flour…thus the egg might act as a surrogate. This got quite a great first rise!

What I may have been missing with the other loaves I’ve made that are whole wheat is that I usually had them rise once, then put them in a pan for a second rise. What this recipe recommended is two risings…then put it on a corn meal dusted cookay tray. Note the new silpat!

What came out of the oven was some INCREDIBLY soft, tasty bread! Seriously…this was like no other whole wheat bread…light, airy and with some great flavor. I will say that you have to eat homemade bread somewhat faster than store bought bread…but man for bread like this, it is worth chowing down super fast

FINISHED!!!

Seriously, I have no idea what the heck the clerks were thinking when we checked out…maybe thought we were starting Valentines day early or something! *laugh* Using our kitchenaid the batter came together pretty quick…VERY silkay

Of course, that was before the red was added. Now, the big question (at least to me) was how to get the batter even between the two cake pans. How ’bout measuring them by weight??

This is why Steph has some major cake making skillz, and the reason I stay outta the kitchen when she’s bakin’ Into the oven the cakes went and what came out were too beautiful

Now, here comes my contribution. I had thought it would be fun to have some hearts on top of the cake that would look a little like Necco hearts. Necco’s are my favorite Valentines day candy and are originated here in Boston Problem was…how do we make the coolio heart on top. Inspiration came from that naughtay, damn talented guy Duff from Charm City Cakes. Duff uses Rice Crispy treats to make interesting molds so I thought we could do the same!

Steph has a ton of cookay cutters which we used to cut out the hearts out of the rice crispay treats.

Finishing off the hearts we frosted them. Can you tell which hearts I frosted and which ones Steph did?? hehe Much of the competition chefs use fondant as their frosting, but we went with a buttercream. Not quite as smooth as fondant, but the hearts came out pretty good!

We decided to put some necco hearts around the edge of the cake. This cake presented a challenge in the cream cheese frosting. It didn’t smooth out like buttercream and was a bit more textured than what she probably would like. Steph then decided to make some pink frosting and line the top and bottom of the cake.

What came out was a super tasty cake! The rice crispy treats were really fun as large hearts. The cream cheese frosting added a nice tart compliment to the very interesting flavor of the red velvet cake. Given Steph’s quest for the perfect cake, she probably would’ve like to have made this with buttercream to have the ultimate in smooth texture. Personally, all I know was that the cake was beautiful and super fun to look at. I would totally recommend making this cake if you have some small helpers that love helping with left over rice crispy treats

FINISHED!!!

1 cup milk
1 packet yeast
3 TBS butter
1 1/2 TBS salt
3 TBS sugar
3 Cups AP flour

There were two surprises…#1. that this recipe is very much in line with a “Traditional” bread recipe and #2. This was a ‘found’ recipe…not one passed down. I guess I was expecting a handmedown from ancestors past…but you know what…I LOVE this recipe and am super glad we now have it Kicking things off I melted the butter. I’ve had some issues in the past when melting butter then adding it to milk to fast…seems to coagulate *shrug* so I let it cool a bit then added it the milk. Into the microwave it all went for an annoying process of trying to get it to the proper temperature for the yeast. While that was in the ‘wave, I put the dry ingredients into the mixer and gave it a whirl! Then it was your standard “Wet into Dry” as I added the yeast to the milk/butter combo.

This was a little different from the way I usually do things. Normally, I let the yeast ‘melt’ in with the liquids, but this recipe said to put it in right away with the flour. Hey…gotta walk on the bread wild side every now and again!! Once everything was mixed…into a slightly oiled (in this case…a quicky spray of PAM) bowl it went to rise.

What came out was a BEAUTIFUL rise. I was so excited as I wasn’t sure how this whole dealio was gonna work without ‘proofing’ the yeast. Needless to say…it worked pretty damn well.

Into a couple loaf pans for the second rise which went just as well as the first then into a 375 degree oven for about 35-45 minutes.

What came out was spot on for the bread that I had when I was a youngster. The milk and butter (substituted for my usual water/oil) seemed to add some toothiness to the bread…almost like a chewy crunch on the inside and a bit more of a depth of flavor than my ‘usual’ white bread. This bread can be used to make all sorts of bread like cinnamon/raisin and cheddar. These loaves didn’t last long (I doubled the recipe for two loaves) in our house…my fav was making a PB+J sandwich and for a couple moments…I was 7 again

FINISHED!!!

Now, in our bread class, we watched our teacher make Focaccia bread. She didn’t deviate much from her standard recipe which consisted of:

3 cups flour
1 cup of warm water
3 tablespoons sweet (I go with 1 TBS sugar, 2 TBS honey)
3 tablespoon of salt (I go with 1 1/2 TBS, as 3 tastes too much like a damn pretzel)
3 tablespoons of oil (I eyeball this)
1 package of yeast

Starting off, I got out my instant read thermometer, made sure the water was about 110ish degrees and mixed in the yeast. I then threw in the sugar (and honey), which the yeast started gobblin’ up like some greedy 6th graders getting a bit o’ honey, then into a cold oven covered to proof for about 10 minutes.

I measured by weight 3 cups of flour…adding about 2 1/2 to the mixing bowl then adding the salt to that ,giving it a quick stir.

I then added in the liquids and let the bread hook do the work, adding the remaining flour. What came out was a nice smooth dough, ready for a rise. What I had done while this mixed was put the oven on ‘Warm’ setting, which I now turned off as I covered the dough with some plastic wrap and then put the dough in the warm oven to rise. It is so clutch to make sure you don’t forget to turn off the oven…first, you burn your hand when taking the dough out…second…the dough cooks which is a total drag!

After about an hour of rising, I took the dough out and punched it down. I put out a bit of parchment paper on a cookie sheet, then pushed the dough out to the corners. That’s right…no wussy rolling pin for me! Frankly, I didn’t want to wash something else I used my finger tips to make some indentations, then back into the sorta warm oven to rise again for a bit.

Now, here was the problem. How to make Focaccia without fresh herbs?? Well…thankfully we had a good deal of dried rosemary hangin’ about.

While the dough was in for the second rise, I threw some rosemary in a 1/3 of a cup of olive oil (hey…it’s Focaccia and we love olive oil!!).

Once the dough rose to what I considered a ‘good place,’ I took it out and drizzled the olive oil/rosemary on top then into a 375 degree oven ’till it was golden brown. As we took it out to ‘rest,’ Steph noticed that there was some olive oil on the bottom of the parchment paper and thought we should take it off. As we were saying this, we noticed the olive oil got sucked back inside the bread!! We both looked at each other and laughed! I know this probably isn’t an “official” Focaccia recipe, but when you have a couple hours before entertaining, this bread really is pretty damn good if I do say so myself! Of course, Steph and myself are carb fiends so this bread didn’t last too long and boy did that oil/rosemary add a nice depth of flavor

FINISHED!!!