Red Fife Wheat

I recently read about Red Fife wheat, which was at one time the best wheat in Canada (a good crop yield at an early date); it has been recently, in the last 10 years, rediscovered and reintroduced to the market. Red Fife wheat was developed by David A. Fife near Peterborough, Ontario, from some seeds sent to him from a friend in Glasgow Scotland; he had got it from Danzig or Gdansk in Poland. It is red in colour, thus was called Red Fife, as was the naming convention of the day.

In looking for Red Fife, I noticed the other day, that you can buy the flour at Bulk Barn. I picked some up, and want to try it making bread, which it is best for.

The other Red Fife I found, was in Loblaws, they were selling artisanal bread made from Red Fife by Weston's (makers of many breads). We picked up a loaf, which tasted pretty good to me, with a dense loaf (this was a whole wheat loaf) and a chewy crust.

Pumpkin Bread with Walnuts and Raisins

This is a perfect bread to go with Hallowe'en celebrations, the spiced pumpkin pie flavour comes out. Too, it would work well at Thanksgiving. It's easy to make. Now, I didn't chop the walnuts so well, the large pieces ended up at the bottom of the bread. It makes two, one good for freezing.

Pumpkin Bread with Walnuts and Raisins
2-1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup vegetable oil
4 large eggs
425 g pumpkin puree
3-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup milk
1/2 cup raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Combine sugar, oil, eggs and pumpkin puree in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flower, baking soda, baking powder and spices. Add the flour mixture to the wet mixture in three batches, alternating with the milk; mix to combine. Add raisins and walnuts and mix well. Grease two 9x5 loaf pans, then divide the batter evenly between the two. Bake the pumpkin bread for 60-70 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes up dry (if you like the bread not so browned, cover at the halfway point with tinfoil). Allow to cool before slicing and serving.

SwissMar Fresh Bag

Fresh bread is wonderful. The smell of it. The feel of it. The taste of it. Go to your favourite bakery, and pick up a loaf, or two, made with whole grains and little or no preservatives, bring them home, spread with a little home-made jam, and enjoy.

Well, at least for a day or two. Because, with no preservatives, and sitting on your counter, it will soon be a stiff block (from which you can make bread crumbs or croutons, or feed the birds) and you feel like you wasted most of that wonderful bread.

SwissMar's Fresh Bag aims to prevent that kind of disappointment, it purports to keep things fresher longer, including potatoes, onions and apples. Designed with a cotton outer sleeve surrounding a specially perforated, naturally breathing inner poly lining, this creates an atmosphere which preserves your food.

Or, so it claims. For our first test, we took a loaf of Honey Wheat from Panera, a loaf that had gone rock hard on us less than two weeks ago. Well, it did as advertised, and has kept it "fresh" for 4 days. I know, eat if quicker, but when there's so many different foods to try and enjoy! Of course, it likely won't keep mould from growing, at least eventually. But, at least you have a little more time to enjoy that loaf of bread.

Our new Breadmaker

We got a surprise gift for our first wedding anniversary from my brother and his wife, a breadmaking machine. Thanks!

For our first attempt at fresh bread, we chose the Seeded Whole Wheat bread from the recipe provided (we added flax and chia seeds, and used 12 grain whole wheat instead of just whole wheat bread flour). It produced a dense, flavourful, tasty, huuuge loaf of bread (which rose too high and threatened to pop the lid right open, likely because of the high humidity in the air). We enjoyed it all week. Here's the recipe we used.

Seeded Whole Wheat Bread
2 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup water
2 Tbsp butter, cut into pieces
2 Tbsp maple syrup
1 Tbsp grated orange peel (I did not add this)
2 tsp salt
2 cups 12 grain whole wheat flour
4 cups white bread flour
3 tsp active dry or bread machine yeast
2 tsp vital wheat gluten (optional) (I did not add this)
1/2 cup flax seeds
2 Tbsp chia seeds

Add all ingredients, first liquid, then dry (make sure yeast is added last) except for last two (added at "Add ingredient" stage). Make on Whole Grain setting or according to manufacturer's instructions.

Ryvita Sunflower-Seeds and Oats

This new offering by the English company Ryvita is a whole grain rye crispbread, this one adds sunflower seeds and whole grain oats to its regular recipe. Other than whole grain rye flour and salt, there are no other ingredients. This produces a very crispy bread, which you can enjoy with cheese or meat slices, cream cheese, and almost any normal sandwich item. It's odd eating very crispy non-toasted bread, but once you get over that, they taste pretty good.

Sticky Fingers Bakeries Wild Blueberry Scones

I had never heard of the online bakery Sticky Fingers Bakery, but given that it's headquartered in Spokane, Washington, you'll forgive my ignorance. Perusing their website, I see they make a variety of packaged baking mixes, including brownies, breads, muffins, and what this one is, scones. They also make jams. Too, their mixes are made from all-natural ingredients, with no artificial anything, and no trans fats.

The variety I selected was their Wild Blueberry Scones; as you might know, I love wild blueberries.

They are easy to make, just add water (well, I added rice milk), stir with a fork, and divide into 12 scones.

Then bake for 12-15 minutes and, well, enjoy. Quite tasty.

President's Choice Burgers First Buns

This new entry from President's Choice intrigued me, in that it features a flat bun, the idea is to concentrate on what people are more interested in anyways, the burger, thus Burgers First, and the condiments. My sister-in-law recommended them too, she had tried them before.

bill's Coconut Bread

I've been meaning to make this, since the first time I saw it on someone's food blog, and now, more recently, in the book 'The Accidental Foodie', in which a number of influential, to the author, chefs are interviewed and provide recipes, and now, more importantly, as I have found that my beautiful Thai friend likes coconut, and wished me to make her a Western-style coconut cake. Bill Granger is an interesting chef from Sydney in Australia, and I doubt that I will ever be able to get to his famous restaurant, so I'll have to live vicariously through his various recipe books. So far, I've had success with this recipe, it was easy to make, and came out perfectly. Tasty, too. This is more like a coconut pound cake than bread, but it's still great toasted and buttered, as suggested. The recipe originally calls for 1 tsp of ground cinnamon, feel free to add it, if you like it more than I do.

bill's Coconut Bread
2 eggs
300 mL milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup superfine sugar
150 g shredded unsweetened coconut
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted

Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Grease and flour a 8-1/4 by 4 inch loaf pan.

Lightly whisk together eggs, milk and vanilla.

Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl. Add the coconut and sugar and stir to combine. Make a well in the centre and gradually stir in the egg mixture until just combined. Add the melted butter and stir until the mixture is just smooth. Be careful not to overmix.

Pour into the loaf pan and bake for about 1 hour, or until a toothpick comes clean.

Leave to cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then allow to cool on a wire rack.

To serve, toast thick slices and spread with butter.

Purity Basic Rolls

I made this recipe for several reasons. I got this new cookbook from my sister-in-law, who was giving away a lot of books for charity, one of them was called The New Purity Cook Book: The Complete Guide to Canadian Cooking, and so I snatched it, and several other cookbooks she pointed out. Purity brand flour was made by Maple Leaf Mills Ltd.; my sister-in-law has the earlier version of the cookbook, and leafing through it, it seems to have a number of recipes that look good. The second reason, is that we were to bring some bread to the Boxing Day meal at my brother's as one of our contributions. Lastly, we wanted to make bao zi, Chinese steamed buns with sweet red bean paste, and we needed some dough for the bun. This recipe turned out pretty good, the buns were good and tasty, and the dough worked fairly well with the bao zi.

Purity Basic Rolls
1-1/2 cups milk
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp salt
1/4 cup shortening
1 tsp sugar
1/2 cup lukewarm water (100F)
1 envelope active dry yeast
1 egg, beaten
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 to 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
melted butter, for brushing

Scald milk. Pour scalded milk into a large bowl and add sugar, salt and shortening, stirring until shortening dissolves. Cool to lukewarm.

Meanwhile, dissolve one teaspoon sugar in lukewarm water. Sprinkle yeast over this. Let stand for 10 minutes. Stir briskly with a fork.

Add softened yeast to lukewarm milk mixture, then add beaten egg, stirring to combine.

Beat in three cups of flour vigorously by hand or with electric mixer.

Then gradually beat in with a spoon the additional flour. Work in last of flour with a rotating motion of the hand.

Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead 8 to 10 minutes. Shape into a smooth ball and place in a greased bowl, rotating dough to grease surface. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled (about 1-1/2 hours).

Punch down and divide in 4. Shape each piece into a cylinder about 1-1/2" in diameter. Cut each cylinder into 8 equal pieces. Shape each piece of dough into a ball. Place 16 balls, almost touching in a greased 8 or 9-inch square pan. Brush with melted butter. Cover with greased wax paper and a damp cloth and let rise until doubled (about 3/4 hour). Bake at 375F for 25 to 30 minutes.

Honey Whole Wheat Bread

My brother met his wife when they were together in the government Katimavik program in the early 80's, it's a program designed to give young people experience, not only in living in a number of different places, but in different societies too. They live part of the time in the Yukon, part of the time in Saskatchewan, and the rest in Quebec. One of the main things that they did learn, was to cook, they rotated in who would do the cooking. There was a lot of vegetarian-style meals served, as there was little meat to go around. This recipe is one that survived past the experience, the two of them made it several times after that, but soon graduated to a bread maker when they got their own house. Potato water is the water used to boil potatoes, you keep it instead of pouring it down the drain. You must make sure not to heat the water-oil-honey mixture too hot, otherwise it will kill the yeast. The bread itself is quite tasty, fairly solid, and good when toasted. I imagine that it could be adapted to a bread maker style recipe, but it's easy enough to make, with good results that can be duplicated.

Honey Whole Wheat Bread
3 cups whole wheat bread flour, plus 1 additional cup
1/2 cup nonfat dry milk
1 Tbsp salt
2 pkg. dry yeast
3 cups water or potato water
1/2 cup honey
1 Tbsp oil
4 to 4-1/2 cups white bread flour

Heat in saucepan until warm, the water, honey and oil.

Combine in mixer bowl, the 3 cups whole wheat flour, dry milk, salt and dry yeast.

Pour warm (not hot) liquid over flour mixture. Beat with electric mixer for 3 minutes.

Stir in additional cup of whole wheat flour and white flour.

Knead 5 minutes, using additional white flour, if necessary. Place in a well-greased bowl, turn to coat dough, and let it rise in a warm place until it is double in size. Punch down, then divide dough in half and shape into loaves. Place in greased 9x5-inch bread pans. Cover and let rise 40-45 minutes. Bake at 375F for 40-45 minutes.