Saturday, April 3, 2010

HBinFive: Carrot Bread and Olive Spelt Bread


This time around our HBin5 mission were two breads with veggies included-carrot bread and olive spelt bread. I still have spelt flour hanging around from the red beet buns, so I knew I was going to be making the  olive spelt one. And the carrot bread sounded tasty as well, so I got on board with both breads. 

I only made half a recipe of the carrot bread because I wasn't sure how the family would like it and I didn't want to put myself through the temptation of having to finish it all myself! The carrot bread calls for dried fruit to be added, so I used dates and apples. I had read several comments that the included coconut didn't show up strongly in the finished product, so I doubled the amount called for, and while it could be detected, it was still pretty light in coconut flavor. I also used all freshly milled white wheat flour for this bread instead of half wheat and half all-purpose. I wanted to make mine into a braid, so I refrigerated the dough before using it. I used half to form a braid and put the other half into some muffin pans I have with heart designs on the bottom. I wasn't impressed with how the breads looked after baking--they were definitely not the prettiest breads I have made. The braid turned out flat-looking, and the muffins didn't really show the designs from the bottom of the pan well. I decided to use the cream cheese honey cream cheese icing to top the breads with and the icing hid all the unprettiness, and they turned out looking fairly appetizing after all. Everyone said they tasted good, and I really liked this bread. The icing topping was pretty tasty as well. I read several comments from others who baked this bread and said it wasn't very sweet, but you couldn't tell with the icing.

I wasn't sure what kind of olives to get for my olive spelt bread, but found a jar of assorted olives marinated in some kind of wine and herbs combination. Unfortunately for me, the olives weren't pitted and let's just say, it takes quite a while pit a jar of olives! I had fresh yogurt from our goats' milk to use for this dough. I had the spelt flour, as I said, but again instead of using all-purpose flour, I just used some of my own flour ground from the white winter wheat. It's a lot lighter than whole wheat along the lines of the white wheat flour. I thought this dough sounded like a great base for a pizza, so I used about a fourth of it for making a pizza for lunch the other day. I topped it with pizza sauce, mozzarella, and turkey pepperoni. It was a bit hard to roll out because of the olives in the dough and I kept ripping holes in the crust, but managed to pinch it all together. Paul and I enjoyed it, and I loved the mix of olives in the dough. Ivy commented on why I couldn't just make something normal, but this didn't stop her from eating more pizza than either Paul or I did! She just said it would have been better without the olives. I still have some of this dough left and think I will probably wind up with a couple more pizzas from it, but think I might make a little round loaf from it to really see how the bread tastes on its own. If I make this one again, I'm definitely going with pitted olives!! (And I didn't get a picture of the pizza, because we really all were pretty hungry when it came out of the oven, but it looked pretty tasty--you'll have to trust me on that one!)

Tribest Yolife Yogurt Maker - YL-210

As there has been some discussion in the HBin5 group about making yogurt, I wanted to comment a little about it. I started making yogurt before we were getting milk from our goats, but now I make our yogurt from our own fresh milk and it's so tasty! I started out with just making it by adding a couple bottles of hot water wrapped in towels to the cooler with the warm innoculated milk and leaving it in the cooler all day to set up, but this year I bought a yogurt maker  (here) and I love how easy it makes the incubation period of the yogurt making. You still have to heat your milk and let it cool off before you add your yogurt in. But once it is ready, you can just put your containers right into the yogurt maker and let it keep your milk at the right temperature until it is yogurt. It's not a necessity for making yogurt, but it sure makes things easier. My yogurt maker came with 7 little cups for making individual servings of yogurt and a lid that fits over the little cups, but it also came with a tall lid that lets you use larger containers in your maker. I usually make two quart jars of yogurt at a time, but it could easily fit three and maybe four, I just haven't tried that many. This latest time that I made yogurt, I made a quart of plain to have some to use in my bread and a quart of strawberry. I hadn't added fruit to the yogurt before incubating it before, but the booklet with my maker had a few recipes to try. You have to cook the fruit first before adding it to the milk, and you add some sugar to the fruit while it cooks. All the fruit sank to the bottom while the yogurt incubated, but I strained the yogurt when it was done to make it a little thicker and creamier and then stirred the fruit through the yogurt, and it was so yummy! I'm looking forward to trying other flavors of fruit yogurts now that I saw how well that turned out.

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


8 comments:

brokenteepee April 3, 2010 at 11:15 PM  

I laughed out loud at the "make something normal" comment.
I love it.

Hey if it tastes good who cares what it looks like, right? I mean look at an artichoke. I wonder who first thought THAT would be good to eat.

I have learned with my wheat pizza dough that slowly stretching and sort of letting it hang works better than rolling it out. Hope that helps...

Michelle April 4, 2010 at 12:46 PM  

HAHAHAHAHA! "Make something normal"...too funny.

The best way to pit olives is to use the same method that is used to crush garlic. Place an olive on your cutting board, lay a large knife over the olive and then press down firmly on the knife and the olive will crush and you can easily remove the pit and dice the olive. Here's a video showing the pitting process.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1BEt-qfYJY

Petra April 4, 2010 at 4:39 PM  

Pizzas are great in any form or shape. Great to clean out the fridge too. I think it's great that you have your source of milk so close to your kitchen ;)

Ezzie April 5, 2010 at 2:43 PM  

I agree with Michelle on pitting the olives...it's easy to do with the flat of your chef knife...just roll it back and forth while putting pressure on. I think your breads came out great! Love pizza and can't wait to try the second dough for it.

Bonnie April 5, 2010 at 2:51 PM  

Hi Jenny, Thanks for the yogurt comments. I'm thinking about making ours. Of course , I don't have goat milk, but I can settle for milk from the market I guess. Have you tried making focaccia from the olive spelt bread. The soft dough makes great focaccia.

Mama Peck April 6, 2010 at 10:32 PM  

Too funny! I can just hear my kids saying something like that! They were always accusing me of using them as guinea pigs when I tried new recipes. LOL I'll bet your pizza was delicious- it sure sounds good to me!

Elwood April 8, 2010 at 8:53 AM  

I thought your carrot bread looked yummy. And olive spelt made with homemade yogurt..yummy. I wish I have some goat's milk to make my own yogurt. Great job.

Unknown April 20, 2010 at 2:13 AM  

haha...I bought olives with the pits by accident!! and ya....what a pain!! I made the carrot bread with the icing and then without it.....and its much much better with it!!

About This Blogger

I am a thirty-something mother of two girls and a boy ranging from preschool to middle school. My husband and I keep working and reworking on our goal of raising our family healthier. Our house is a constant work under construction--adding on and remodeling. We're happy to have bought our property a few years ago, but as any homeowners know, owning a home just adds to your list of projects and chores because there's always improvements to be made and maintenance to be done. On our burgeoning homestead, we have chickens, guineas, a few goats, and our most recent additions-rabbits.
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I picked the name Petalz and Finz a couple years ago when I decided to try Etsy out. I wanted to custom make some baby related items and have things for girls and boys. I felt the name incorporated both my kids (at the time) into it--petalz for Ivy and finz for Finn.

I haven't had time to do much of anything with my Etsy for a while, but it's still my in my long term goals. In the mean time, I'm having fun with this blog thing. I've found some creative inspiration through my own posting, but also through many other wonderful blogs out there.
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