HBinFive: 100% Whole Wheat with Olive Oil

As usual, I am running behind on posting my experiences with the current bread assignment. We were challenged to make a regular loaf and two variations—Aloo Paratha and Southwestern Focaccia with Roasted Corn and Goat Cheese.

In my last HBin5 post, I mentioned that I was considering a grain mill, and I'm happy to say that I went ahead and bought K-Tec kitchen mill. The best deal I could find was from Harvest Essentials for $179, but they also have a coupon code that is valid for orders over $169 to save another $10 (code: HARVEST) bringing the price down to $169. It seems to grind pretty quickly. Grinding the grain before baking just adds a couple minutes to my overall time. It is a bit noisy so a couple times I've had to put off baking because the kids were napping. I also ordered a large bag of hard white wheat and have been making my bread from my very own freshly ground flour now. This is the first time I've made a recipe from one of the "in five" books with the flour, but I've played around with several other more traditional bread recipes and everything has come out quite delicious.

This time I did something that I don't normally do with the recipes--I weighed my dough to make sure I was getting it in roughly one pound portions when I used it. I wanted to make sure I had the right amount of dough for each recipe. I just made a simple round loaf with some unrefrigerated dough for trying out the dough. It was quite sticky before being refrigerated, but with some flour and quick handling, I shaped it without problem. I still don't have a baking stone, so it just went into the oven on a cookie sheet. Ivy says it is one of the best breads I have made.

Next I made the Aloo Paratha. I skipped the peas because I don't like peas--at all! I can't get ghee in town and found the prices too dear on Amazon. So I figured I would make it myself. Since I couldn't see myself needing a whole pound of it, I just used two sticks of unsalted butter to make mine. Good thing too since I badly burned the first batch and had to start again. Second time I cooked it at a lot lower heat for a lot longer, and it turned out okay. I think it was a bit darker than the pictures on the website that I was using for the directions, but it definitely wasn't the nasty burned mess of the first batch. And it was definitely worth it. This bread was delicious! I could seriously have polished off the whole thing by myself, but stoically resisted. Ivy was all for me making another loaf right then and there, plus extra potato mixture that she could just scarf by itself! I made a pork curry to go along with it from our pork that we raised. It was a delicious meal. My mouth is watering just recalling it!

I haven't made the foccacia bread yet, but plan to tomorrow evening. I needed to pick up a couple things from the store for it. It sounds like it could be a dinner if you add meat to it, so that's what I have planned. Going to be using some of the fresh chevre I made a couple days ago to top it.

Check out what others did with these doughs by visiting the HBin5 Bread Braid hosted at Big Black Dog.