Would ya Challah?

A few months back, we decided to save some money and have dinner at home instead of go to my favorite restaurant in Worcester Pho Dakao on friday. Since friday is shabbat, we decided it would be nice to make Challah.

I've been using this recipe http://allrecipes.com/recipe/challah-i/. It works well and is tasty. Instead of 8 cups, I usually do 6 cups and reduce the water to 2 cups. The full 8 cups make a huge challah that barely fits in the oven. This time my daughter decided to make 2 loafs. One round and the other 4 strand braid.

Vanilla Turmeric Loaf

Last nite I had a crazy idea to make a loaf with turmeric.

3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup white whole what
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp yeast
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 eggs
1.5 cups warm water
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp oil

It is hard to describe the taste, but it is wonderful. There's a slight hint of vanilla and turmeric. The crumb is a lovely shade of yellow from the turmeric.

Perhaps some orange with it?

I started a currant lime loaf tonight for breakfast tomorrow. That got me thinking again about other flavor combinations that might be different and savory. For some reason I thought of orange, since I don't usually eat breads with orange. A quick search on google turned up some results like this one.

orange ginger quick bread
orange tube bread

That got me thinking about orange chicken, which is a very popular chinese dish 陳皮雞. In chinese, it means "old peal chicken." For the bread, I'm thinking of adapting the flavors a bit. Ginger, vinegar, garlic, shaoxing rice wine and orange are the dominant flavors in the dish. For the bread, I'm thinking of combining

Orange juice
ginger
shaoxing rice wine
teaspoon sugar
teaspon of vinegar
garlic

It sounds crazy enough to taste really good, or really bad. I won't know until I try it, but it should be interesting either way.

Lime Currant Loaf

The previous currant loaf I used store bought lemon rind, which worked fine. This time I decided to juice half a lime and see how it tastes. Happily, it is better than lemon rind. In general, I prefer the flavor of lime to lemon, so I'm biased.

2.5 cups all purpose flour
1 cup white whole wheat
1/2 lime juiced
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup currants
1/2 teaspoon yeast
1.5-2 cups warm water

Like the regular no knead recipe, combine the ingredients and mix until you have a wet dough. For me, that took about 2 cups of water. Let the dough rise for 12-14 hours. Preheat the dutch oven at 550F. Shape the dough into a loaf and let it rise for 1 hour.

Bake covered at 500 for 30 minutes. Bake 4-15 minutes uncovered depending on how crusty you like your bread. The kids like a soft crust, so I do 4 minutes.

Maybe pumpkin and cranberry-orange

I'm having so much fun with savory breads, it got me thinking about other flavors. Normally I don't eat cake or pie. The only pie I like is pumpkin pie during thanksgiving. I came across this cranberry orange loaf recipe which looks interesting. If I do it, I'll modify it so it has a lot less sugar. Another potential flavor combination is lemon and poppy from the same http://www.bhg.com .

One thing I don't eat regularly is rubarb. This ginger and rhubarb loaf recipe looks very interesting.

Sweet potato curry bread

Ingredients

2 medium size sweet potato
4 Tbsp butter
1 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3 cups king arthur all purpose flour
1/4 tsp yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp light brown sugar
1-1.5 cups water

Start by peeling and cutting the sweet potato. Steam the sweet potato for about 15-20 minutes. It should be very tender. Add curry power, cinnamon, melted butter and mash. It doesn't have to be totally smooth and I find it is nice to have little chunks. This step can be done several hours in advance.

Take half the sweet potato mash and mix it with 3 cups of flour, brown sugar, salt and yeast. Depending on how wet your sweet potato mash is, you may need less water. Start by adding 1 cup of warm water and mix the dough. If it's too dry, add more water. You want a wet no-knead dough.

Let it rise for 12 hours. Turn the dough out on to your work surface and flatten it. Take out the remaining sweet potato mash and microwave it for 1 min. spread a thin layer over the dough and roll. This time I put it in a loaf pan, since my daughter wanted it as a regular loaf, so she could have toast. Let it rise for 1-1.5 hours. Bake at 350F for 45-60 minutes or until golden brown.

I forgot to oil the loaf pan and had a hard time getting it out. The flavor and aroma was great though. The sweet potato is slightly sweet with a good kick from the cinnamon and curry.

Crazy curry idea

I've been thinking about different variations for no-knead bread and last nite I came up with a crazy one. Often I make Goat curry with sweet potato and cocoanut milk. The curry goes great with rice and bread. In Japanese cuisine, there's curry bread.

My brain connected those two and thought, curry + sweet potato + bread could be good. A spice commonly used with sweet potato is cinnamon, so the idea morphed into curry + sweet potato + cinnamon + bread.

It sounds crazy, but I think it could be really delicious. The Taro bread I made turned out so well, I immediately thought about other roots that could go with bread. There's plenty of sweet potato bread recipes out there, though most of the ones I found were rather sweet. For example, saras secrets sweet potato bread with pecans has over 2 cups of sugar. The same with this Sweet Potato and Zucchini Bread recipe on Epicurious.

Since I prefer savory flavors, combining sweet potato with curry should be a kick in the mouth, but in a good way.