BBA #7: Cinnamon Rolls and Sticky Buns

For round 7 of the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge I decided I didn't want to choose between making the cinnamon rolls vs the sticky buns because I really love them both. It was easy enough to just cut my log of dough into 12 pieces (just under 1 1/2-inches each roughly) and to bake six as cinnamon rolls and use the other six for sticky buns.

I then made a half batch of the caramel glaze mixture and placed it in the bottom of a 9-inch round pan, placed the rolls, covered, held them in the refrigerator overnight. All I had to do was get up a bit early the next morning and sit them out on the counter for a couple of hours to rise.

While this dough was delicious, and a joy to work with, I really preferred them as the sticky buns because I really didn't particularly care for the lemon zest in the dough. I liked it - but just ok. I wouldn't probably put it in again - though I WILL switch it to orange next time and turn these into orange rolls instead with an orange cream cheese glaze.

The dough was tender, easy to make, easy to work with and the sticky bun glaze was easy to make and really delicious!

BBA #6: Ciabatta

I made the poolish version first, found it delicious and easy to work with.

I did use some milk in the dough as well, as one of the options.

Sometimes life just happens in funny ways. Sometimes bread is just made in funny ways. Sometimes bread just looks kind of funny. In this instance, that is pretty much what this Ciabatta bread was all about for me.

The sixth recipe section in the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge is the Ciabatta, which had several different options for how to make it. I have actually made Ciabatta a few times in the past, but these recipes were vastly different than the one I used before. The funny thing about this for me is the fact that I am just now finally posting this bread. You see, I actually made this in week one - but the past few weeks have just been filled with other things going on and I am just finally getting around to posting this. Thankfully, I'm not the only one!

What is funnier to me is that I actually made this twice since we started the challenge. You know, sometimes things just work out that way. So, since it is very late at night and I just don't want to wait any longer before I get this going (because I have the next challenge all ready to post too!) I am just adding my rather weak thoughts and notes about the Ciabatta bread under each photo and hope you will forgive my total lack of writing prowess and wit tonight.

Perfect holes and beautiful texture - this tasted soooo good!

Ciabatta made with biga mixture - didn't go so well and didn't taste as good to me.

The loaves I made with the biga were more difficult to work with and didn't end
up with the proper texture at all - probably more my fault in not handling gently
enough or something, but I really didn't like this version.

Totally just personal preference for me here but I loved the version made with the poolish. It was easy to work with, turned out just right, tasted lovely and we really enjoyed it. The biga was not quite as easy to work with for me and I really didn't enjoy the results for all the extra steps that were involved.

We ate the first loaves from the poolish with butter and just scarfed it down. The other loaves we turned into french toast since the texture was already rather heavy anyway. I will definitely make the poolish version again in the future!

BBA #4: Brioche - Middle Class Loaves and Cinnamon Brioche Cupcakes

I guess when it comes to my brioche I am a middle of the road, middle class kind of gal. What I really loved about this week was the explanations and options for the brioche and what they could be used for.

I really want to try making a tart or something with some brioche dough some time, since it is mentioned in the book that it could work.

For this week's Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge we were tasked with making brioche. Luckily I have made brioche a couple of times before, so I had a decent idea of what to expect. What I didn't expect was how much nicer and easier this recipe would come together. The dough was soft, silky and buttery smooth.

I made two loaves from the recipe and used the third portion to make 12 cinnamon rolls/cupcakes. The bread was tender, delicious and very light - especially for all that butter and eggs!

You can check out the challenge page on Pinch My Salt for more bakers and brioche this week!

BBA #3: Bagels

Bagels, baby.  I so dearly love them.  This recipe is fantastic and I can't wait to try it again and make a sweet version.  The book gives directions for making a sweeter dough to make a cinnamon raisin bagel so I plan to work from that to make my favorite type of bagel - no shocker here - the chocolate chip bagel!

The dough was silky and beautiful to work with.  I am very grateful that I have a KA Pro stand mixer because it got a serious workout with this dough, but it did the job beautifully!  I know my smaller KA wouldn't have stood a chance.

I made 12 large bagels and topped some with poppy seeds, some with sesame seeds and some with a little sprinkle of kosher salt.  I also left a few plain.  We ate these plain and hubs even took some bagel sandwiches (ham and cheese) to work for his lunches and loved them.

Make sure to visit the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge page to visit the rest of the bakers and see how their bagels turned out!

To my Sweet Melissa Sunday's peeps - sorry I am missing the challenge today.  I tried to make the pastry cream, which failed miserably and had to be thrown out.  I didn't even get to make the dough yet, but I do hope to try making the Bee Stings in the future.  Jaime made it through the problems though so you should check out how she did!

BBA #2: Artos - Greek Celebration Bread

The second recipe in the Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge is a Greek Celebration bread call Artos, which can be used as a base to create some other bread's with the addition of some dried fruits and nuts, depending on the holiday, I believe.

For my first attempt, and since I'm not that big of a dried fruit fan, I decided to just make the Artos itself in the boule shape - which was basically a large round loaf... very large in this case.

The bread itself gets its warm color on the inside from the spices in the dough and its deep amber-gold color on the outside from being brushed with some warmed honey. The texture was velvet soft and tender and the taste was delicious.

The recipe for Artos and its variations can be found in Peter Reinhart's book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice.  Next week's challenge - Bagels!

BBA #1: Anadama Bread

It is true. I've joined yet another baking group. The thing of it is thought that it is all about breads this time. The book The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart in fact.


When Nicole at Pinch My Salt announced on Twitter that she was going to bake her way through the entire book, in order, and asked if anyone wanted to join in the fun, it didn't take me too long to decide to go for it. So, over the next 40+ weeks, I, along with 199 others have committed to the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge - seriously, who couldn't go with some kind of homemade bread every week. Nicole has even created a map that shows where we are all scattered around the globe.

Nicole plans to post her breads on Mondays, and since that seems like a good day to me, I plan to try to just post them around the same time, or at least one each week. Since it is an amazing book with so much more information than just a recipe though, we won't be posting the recipes on our blogs - you should really get the book!

Thank you Nicole for such a great idea!!

I actually love making breads, probably just as much as I like making desserts, which for me is saying a lot. The book is the perfect choice for learning how to work with yeast and bread making since it is chock full of great information, while still being accessible to a beginner. I figure since I have been working with yeast and making bread for several years but don't know a whole lot about the mechanics or science of how it all works it puts me somewhere in between.

The first bread in the book was Anadama Bread. I've heard of this before, but never had or made it. It is a fairly soft loaf made with bread flour, coarse cornmeal or polenta and inclues molasses as well. They are all ingredients I like, so no problem there!

There are several explanations about the source for the bread's strange name, some of which are explained here.

I made a simple chicken salad for sandwiches with my bread - just some shredded roast chicken, mayo, a little Dijon mustard and some chopped walnuts. Very yummy!