Pantry/Freezer Clearout – Chocolate Digestive Biscuits

It’s always fun when you have all the ingredients for something that catches your eye.

I saw these delicious looking biscuits on one of the FB food groups I belong to. When I checked out the link I found that the recipe used whole wheat flour and fine porridge oats and not all purpose flour. I happened to have some leftover finely ground rolled oats, from a previous sourdough bread bake, in my pantry, so it was a win-win situation. Cookies/biscuits AND it used up another item from my pantry. The recipe, as posted by Paul Hollywood, seems to be similar to the McVitie brand of biscuits.

Paul Hollywood’s Chocolate Digestive Biscuits

 

  

Review: Just a touch of sweetness. I used a 72% dark cocoa chocolate for the coating but if you want something sweeter, a milk chocolate would be tasty as well.

Sometimes, my cooking choice is designed around using up a specific ingredient. Like  the cream of wheat dumplings (Hungarian grizgaluska) I made with the last 3/4 cup of cream of wheat in my pantry. And the pot of chicken stock made with a chicken carcass, a few chicken backs and about a dozen chicken thigh bones that I ran across, as I was transferring the contents of the upstairs freezer to the basement one. I served the dumplings in the resulting soup.

 

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Pantry Clear-out – Day 1 (Whole Wheat Pasta)

Over the last few years, I’ve made many resolutions to empty out my freezers due to excess frost build-up. Unfortunately, great grocery sales keep tempting me to bring home more goodies to stuff inside.

Today is the last day of classes and I’ll have about three months of free time to play in my kitchen. It also means no pay cheques coming in. A perfect time to use up what I already have. I’ll try to buy only items absolutely needed to finish off carefully planned dishes or menus. I’ll transfer as much of the contents of the freezer that’s next to my kitchen as possible, to the one used for long term storage in the basement, and use up what’s left. When the freezer is empty, I’ll thaw the freezer, removing any ice that falls off the sides, then clean and dry carefully. When it comes back up to temperature, I’ll do the reverse with the one in the basement.

Keep your fingers crossed that I’ll end up with two frost-freezers, a much reduced pantry, and a few extra dollars in my pocket, by the end of the summer.

Whole Wheat Pasta Pappardelle with Duck Ragu

Whole Wheat Pasta – makes ~ 1 lb/454 gm pasta, serves 2-4

2 cups/250 gm whole wheat flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten
water (6-8 tbsp) **

** add 1 tbsp of olive oil and then water, as needed

Add the flour and salt to the bowl of a food processor. Pulse briefly on low.

Add the eggs and olive oil to the food processor through the feed tube, pulsing briefly. With the food processor on, slowly add the water, a tablespoon at a time until the dough gathers together into a ball.

Remove the pasta dough to a lightly floured work surface and knead for 3-4 minutes using as little extra flour as possible.

 

Shape the dough into a ball and wrap tightly with plastic food wrap. Let sit on the counter for 30 minutes to allow the gluten developed during kneading to relax.

 

 

Divide into 3-4 portions and roll out with a rolling pin or pasta machine to about 1/8 th to 1/16 th inch thickness, depending on the purpose required. Cut into strips etc.

Fill a large pot with water, salt generously and bring to a boil. Add the pasta and cook for 3-5 minutes until the pasta is tender but still a bit chewy. Dress as desired.

Tri-Colour Quinoa Honey Whole Wheat SD Loaf And SD English Muffins

ETA: If you don’t have any starter, simply replace it with 1/2 cup of warm milk, about 1/3 cups more AP flour, 1 tsp of sugar and 2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast in the quinoa bread recipe below. Proof the yeast with the warm milk into which the sugar has been dissolved and add it to the dough at the same point that you would have added the starter.

On a recent trip to Bulk Barn I picked up some tri-colour quinoa and riffing on my previous honey whole wheat sourdough bread experiments, I made a lovely sandwich loaf with some soaked quinoa.

Tri-Colour Quinoa Honey Whole Wheat Sourdough Loaf

Tri-Colour Quinoa Honey Whole Wheat Sourdough Loaf – 860 grams of dough, makes one 9″ by 5 1/4″ loaf

1/4 cup quinoa, rinsed 3 times and soaked overnight at room temp in fresh water**
2 1/4 cup all purpose flour, divided
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/4 tsp ground garlic powder (optional)
3/4 cup active sourdough starter
1/2 cup warm milk
1 large egg, room temperature, slightly beaten

** You may find that some of your quinoa has sprouted the next morning.

 

 

In a large bowl, combine 1 cup of the AP flour, the WW flour and the salt, stir well.

Add the quinoa, honey, olive oil, garlic powder (if used), starter, milk and egg and beat well with a large wooden spoon until you have a smooth batter. Gradually stir in the rest of the all purpose flour, 1/4 cup at a time, until the dough forms a ball around the spoon.

Turn out the dough onto a floured working surface and gradually knead in the rest of the flour until you have a soft but not sticky dough. Knead for 5 minutes, let rest for 5 minutes under a bowl and then knead for another 5 minutes.

Form the dough into a ball, place into a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a sheet of saran wrap or a damp towel and place in a warm place until doubled. (This took about 1 hr 45 min in my oven with the light turned on.)

Shape the dough and place into an oiled 9 by 5 1/4 inch loaf pan. Cover again with saran wrap or the towel and let rise until doubled, another 1 1/2 – 2 hrs.

Preheat the oven to 375 deg F and bake the loaf for 25-30 minutes until well browned and the bottom is firm and sounds hollow when knocked. You may need to cover with a sheet of aluminum foil if it gets too brown before it’s finished baking.

Turn out and let cool on rack. Don’t cut until it’s cooled to room temperature.

Recently, I had a craving for English muffins and this weekend I tried a new recipe I found on line, which used sourdough starter. It ended up being a bit fiddly to execute and the finished muffins were much bigger than I liked. I split and toasted the muffins and ate them with butter, honey and peanut butter. I even had a hearty ham and peanut butter sandwich. Tasty, but not remarkable.

Sourdough English Muffins with honey

Honey Whole Wheat – Trio of Experiments

An early pair of experiments in which I transformed a yeast mini loaf recipe into one with JUST sourdough was a success so I repeated it here, in reverse, starting with yeast and sourdough (SD) starter and gradually reducing the amount of yeast used. I baked the bread in an actual loaf pan … something I rarely do … just because I’m bored and this will at least make me feel like I did SOMETHING productive. The bread was pretty good too, though next time, I’m only going to use whole wheat in the starter, as I’m not very fond of the taste in the finished loaf.

Nice bubbly starter fed with all purpose and whole wheat results in a ‘poofy’ dough after bulk proofing. Don’t you just love the technical jargon of bread baking?

Experiment 1 – 2 tsp of dry yeast and <1 cup of SD starter, mostly all purpose (AP) flour but with some whole wheat (WW), 2 lbs of dough all baked in one 9×5″ loaf pan, at 375 deg F.

I learned not to trust internet sources too much as 2 lbs of dough were obviously too much for the 9 by 5 inch bread pan and I ended up with a mushroom topped shape. Over proofing probably didn’t help. Oh, and the cracks in the crust? I dropped the pan as I was transferring it to the cooling rack. (sigh)

Experiment 2 – 1 tsp of dry yeast and <1 cup of SD starter, as above, 1 1/2 lbs of dough baked in loaf pan and the other 1/2 lbs of dough were baked in a smaller disposable aluminum foil pan. The resulting mini loaf was quickly sliced and devoured … for quality assurance, you understand.

Using only 1 1/2 lbs of dough in my pan gave me a much nicer final loaf shape after baking. I proofed the loaf a bit longer as I had reduced the yeast to 1 tsp, rather than 2 tsp, while still keeping the same amount of starter.

Experiment 3 – NO YEAST, only <1 cup SD starter, as above, 1 1/2 lb of dough baked in loaf pan, rest of the dough (>1/2 lbs) shaped into crescent rolls. I used 1 cup of  WW flour to ~ 2 1/4 cups of AP flour in this final trial.

Shaping the crescent rolls – > 1/2 lbs dough rolled out into an 8 x 14 inch rectangle. Triangles had a base of 7 inches resulting in 3 perfect triangles and a 4th triangle pieced together out of the two end halves.

PS: Gave away the loaves from Experiment 2 and 3, as well as the 3 crescent rolls, so I only have the brioche buns I made a while back and some of the bread from Experiment 1 left in the freezer.

I may write up the recipe of a basic version of this loaf but it’s pretty repetitive of previous ones I’ve posted.

Honey Whole Wheat Loaf – Sourdough Starter Version

Warning: PICTURE HEAVY POST – Please remember, the post is mostly to help me remember what I did so I can recreate or improve my efforts. Especially since often I don’t make the dishes again for a year or more. I’m happy if the research I did from various sources and synthesized here helps others too, of course.

The crumb looks a bit moist and the shaping isn’t as tight and even as I would have liked. In the interest of full disclosure, I under baked the loaf by 5 minutes compared to the yeast loaf. I just wanted it to be DONE! And I cut it after 35 minutes NOT an hour so it was still warm. On the whole though, I’m pleased with my results.

All Sourdough Starter

The Five Steps of Bread Baking

1. Mixing

I wasn’t sure if I had enough yeast in my starter to ‘lift’ the loaf so I fed 1/2 cup of active sourdough starter with 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour and 1/4 cup of warm water.

Pictures right after mixing and 1 hr later.

Two hours afterwards – I tried the float test, which failed. I’ve been advised that with such a thick/stiff starter, that bit of dough would never float.

At that point, I added the salt, the rest of the water, some honey and enough bread flour to get a soft supple dough. I kneaded the dough for 10 minutes, let it rest for 5 minutes under a bowl and then kneaded it for another 5 minutes, as with the yeast version

2. First rise or Bulk proofing – It should double in size before being shaped … I think it did.

Time: 1/2 hr and 1 hr

Time: 1 1/2 hr and 2 hr

3. Shaping – I didn’t take my time with this and seal the roll so it’s a bit uneven.

4. Proofing or Second Rise – I estimated that it had doubled in size by eye. Didn’t even do the ‘finger poke’ test. Google it if you’re curious

5. Baking

After 30 minutes, the loaf was removed from the metal baking pan and baked directly on the shelf in the oven for an additional 10 minutes to brown the bottom and finish cooking. (Note that this loaf was ONLY baked for an additional 5 minutes, which probably accounted for the ‘moist’ and what was called ‘underdeveloped’ crumb on my FB sourdough baking group.)

The finished loaf brushed with melted butter and allowed to cool until room temperature.

Mini Honey Whole Wheat – makes one 400 gm loaf

Version 2 – Whole Wheat Pineapple Sourdough Starter

Step 1: Increasing the amount of starter

1/2 cup of active starter
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup warm water

Mix well in a bowl and place into a warm place (microwave with a measuring cup with 2 cups of very hot water in it) for 2 hrs.

Step 2: Mixing the dough

3/4 cup bread flour, divided
1 1/2 tsp honey
1/4 cup warm water
1/2 tsp salt

In a small bowl, dissolve the salt and honey in warm water.

Add the warm water, honey and salt mixture to the sourdough mixture and stir well with a wooden spoon until it’s well incorporated. Stir in about 1/4 cup of bread flour and beat gently. Keep adding the flour until the batter gets too thick to stir and forms a ball around the wooden spoon.

Transfer to a lightly floured working surface and knead using as much flour as you need to get a smooth and supple dough, about 10 minutes.

Let rest for 5 minutes covered with a large bowl then knead for another 5 minutes.

Transfer to an oiled bowl, cover with a sheet of plastic wrap and a towel and let rise until doubled, 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Transfer the risen dough to a lightly floured work surface and shape into a loaf. Place on a prepared baking sheet or in a loaf pan and let rise until doubled.

Preheat the oven to 375 deg F.

Bake for 30 minutes, take out of pan, and bake directly on the oven shelf for another 5-10 minutes or until the bottom is golden brown and when rapped, the loaf gives a hollow sound.

Spray top with water after placing in oven and a second time 5 minutes later.

Brush the top with melted butter after removing from the oven.

Let cool to room temperature before cutting.