Sunday Braids...Whole wheat and All Purpose.

The seven ingredients and our recipe today: 

Flour: 4 cups:  2c Organic Whole Wheat and 2c All Purpose;

Milk: 1 cup-- the Nestle box milk we have here in Trinidad works fine;

Sea salt 2 teaspoons;

Yeast: 1 1/2 teaspoons -- about a half of one package (we have only used instant in all of our breads)

Castor sugar: 1/2 teaspoon;

Unsalted butter :1/4 cup;

One egg.

Dominique adding the yeast.

On her step stool, still in her Panda Pajamas -- Dominique is still forming the dough incorporating all of the ingredients.

A close-up of Dominique kneading.

Dominique, after the dough has risen, and we've rolled out the dough into three equal sized pieces, forming the first of two braids...swim goggles are optional.

We might have missed one crossover here, but still pretty good for an eight year old baker.

Lucas helped with the small loaves today. We have to do better at getting them  the same size.

The final results from this attempt at getting a good whole wheat. Shown are the two flours we used. Two small loaves and two braids.

A closeup of the two small loaves

Beignets! Cafe du Monde -- Port of Spain Branch

Beignets!

They are bread, aren't they? In Trinidad & Tobago, where we live, some bread is fried and it's called bake..You may have heard of world famous bake and shark sandwiches available at most of the local beaches. That, plus some conversations with family members that still live in New Orleans, Louisiana (USA) inspired what turned out to be a Saturday morning family project.

Since Lucas came back from visiting Auntie Denise in California last summer, we have been perfecting our beignet recipe and cooking methods. The recipe is simple, but doing it well has taken us several attempts -- I think this is the fourth or fifth try and we were ready to go public.

I hope you get a feel for how much fun the kids (and we) had making them and well, eating them!

The dough is mixed and Lucas is greasing a bowl where it will rise. We let it go for 3 hours under a light on the stove top before rolling out and cutting them.

Roll them out until very thin, approximately 1/8th of an inch.

The pizza cutter works well to cut into individual pieces.

Working together to decide the shapes. Squares don't stretch out as much as triangles and diamonds.

Some good squares!

This is just half of the batch. The beignets, I mean -- that's all the kids; everybody pitched in. Gabe on pictures and sugar, Luke on dough, rolling and cutting, Dominique cutting and supervising.

Cafe du Monde -- Port of Spain Branch.

Featuring New Orleans style beignets, coacoa, and cafe au lait.

Photo composed by Mommy!

I can't eat another bite...oh well, let's see what happens if I do...

Too much beignets....catatonia sets in.



January 23, 2011 White Bread from Baker's Flour

Here are the results up front...The Baker's Flour alone came out pretty good, eh?

Squeaker and I picked up some small loaf pans to try something new. Here I did one with an egg wash with sea salt, and one plain, but split. The larger one is split with just the wash.

A close up view. It is amazing how good they look!

A medium density, but still a nice, fluffy out come with good flavor.



January 19, 2010 -- Another whole wheat, this one with Baker's Flour and Organic Whole Wheat Flour.

This week's variation: Baker's Flour and Organic Whole Wheat. Dominique is showing off her hard work by sprinkling her face with flour.

Here is our dough...before rising.

And here it is pretty close to the end....maybe 10 minutes before we punched it down.

Another variable here was we put this loaf -- the whole batch-- in the fridge to rise overnight. Here it is after rising in the fridge. This is Dominique at 6 am, before school.

Here are the results, it came out ok...the feedback was it was too dense....it needed to be baked much longer than 20 minutes, which took some trial and error..I think it took about 35 min total ... toasted with butter and jam though, it was still pretty good.

Dominique in her school gear and the whole wheat flour are also shown.

As always, the results right up front. Best braid yet, but the loaf was deelicious!

Great technique!

Dominique sprinkling flour over the dough as she kneaded it. She is getting pretty good at this. I don't think I'll ever forget dancing to Michael Jackson's Thriller with her as we traded off the kneading of this batch..!

Having fun with the Squeaker on the camera.

Our latest attempt....January 15, 2011. The first attempt at a loaf form, and our biggest braid to date. The milk and butter were warmed on the stove top and added when a little warmer than in past attempts. As a result, the dough rose to double the original volume in less time -- only two hours. No egg wash, 15 mins at 450 F was just right for the loaf (2/3 of the batch, used a 9" loaf pan) and a bit too much for the braid (1/3 of batch). The best bread yet!

First attempt: December 26, 2010

Pretty professional looking, eh?

2nd Batch December 28, 2010

December 28, 2010
Second Batch

Whole wheat rolls, plain, poppy seeds, and sesame seeds. Results shown above. The feedback from the family was definitely to make more without seeds -- the plain ones without the egg wash were everyone's favorite.

For the first time, Dominique joined in and helped to add ingredients and, most importantly, with the kneading! Dominique learned a new word in a most tactile fashion. She said, "Wouldn't it be cool if we started our own bread store and bakery? I could tell a story about how I started baking with my Dad when I was just 8 years old!"

Here's Dominique kneading for the first time.

Dominique: It takes about ten minutes to knead. The kneading strategy I learned was . . . fold it, turn it about half way round then finally push it! The picture shows me with one palm on top of another and pushing the dough. This was my first and best experience.

The dough changes from very sticky at the beginning to much harder and elastic at the end of the kneading. The glutens form as the kneading progresses and are necessary to trap the gases generated when the dough rises in the next stage.

Welcome to the Lombard Bread Making Blog

Welcome to our Blog! We will be using this location to document our adventures in bread making. We just started in December when we gave my Dad a bread making book! Since then he has been cuckoo making bread. I hope you enjoy our adventures as much as we do!

Sincerely,

Dominique A. Lombard