Mellow Bakers: Light Rye Bread

For someone like me who didn't like sourdough rye breads that much, Jeffrey Hamelman's Light Rye bread is a welcome surprise because I love its slightly sour and slightly sweet flavor. As the name says, it's light on rye, that is, the recipe has very little medium rye flour so I heeded his suggestion of using whole rye flour for a more pronounced rye flavor, and I also used rye sourdough starter instead of the white flour sourdough starter. Ground, not whole, caraway seeds were used sparingly at a quarter teaspoon, which to me is just about right, maybe less of it or none at all would be better. I love the flavor of caraway seeds but I think it masks the true flavor of rye flour which only recently I'm starting to appreciate.

The bread is another simple dough to make. The sourdough is built the night before and left on the kitchen counter to ripen for 14 hours. The next day high gluten flour, water, salt, yeast, and caraway seeds are mixed together with the sourdough. I did not have any problems with the mixing of this rather stiff but not dry dough which was made to ferment for 1 hour. I decided to shape the dough into a boule and baked it in a cast iron pot. It rose well, although the crumb is tight which is okay because its smokey flavor is more important to me. I also love its thin-ish chewy crust and soft but chewy crumb, perfect for ham or pastrami sandwiches.

ham sandwich on rye lunch

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Chicken Wings

crispy fried chicken wings with vinegar and hot pepper dipping sauce

finger-lickin' good Buffalo-style wings with sriracha

I got a ginormous bag of chicken wings already separated into drumettes and flats. They will be seasoned and cooked then stored in the freezer so they're ready when needed, just like the ones from the stores but homemade.

For the first batch the wings were seasoned in fish extract (patis) and sea salt, dredged in a little flour then were deep fried. In this batch I left half of the cooked wings plain and served with vinegar and hot pepper dipping sauce and to the other half I added a Buffalo-style hot sauce made with vinegar, sriracha, garlic powder, and Worcestershire sauce. I like them both. Which one do you prefer?

Here is a recipe for Buffalo Wings sauce which is a little bit more vinegary and not as spicy as the Thai sriracha sauce

Buffalo Wings
30 drumette and flat chicken wing pieces
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons flour
oil for frying
1½ tablespoons white vinegar
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
¼ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
¼ teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons Louisiana hot sauce

• Rub the wings with salt. Place the flour in a plastic zipper bag and add the wings. Shake the bag to coat the wings with flour evenly. Deep fry in hot oil until golden brown. Drain on paper towel.
• Prepare the sauce: In a large skillet add the remaining ingredients and cook until heated through. Add the chicken wings and mix until evenly coated with sauce. Serve with celery sticks and blue cheese dressing.

Punschtorte Bites

I was considering signing up for another baking community but reading through the assigned cookbook, The Modern Baker by Nick Malgieri, I decided not to join. I'm not in the mood to bake 150 breads, cakes, biscuits, tarts, and cookies. However, the very last recipe caught my eye because they are very pretty pink iced sandwich cookies called Viennese Punch Cookies, the author's take on a cake called Punschtorte.

I have never heard of this cake before. There are very few recipes online, one has layers made of cake crumbs moistened with a syrup made of citrus juices, rum, and apricot preserves then formed into 2 round layers. A layer each of marzipan and apricot preserves are sandwiched between the spiked cake layers. I thought the make up of the cake is strange.

I didn't like the cookie recipe and after reading the other recipes, I combined 2 of them with the book's cookie filling, baked a thin sponge cake, cut shapes with small cookie cutters, and made iced sandwich bites.

I love small cute cakes and they're easy to store too, although preparation is too involved and labor intensive. I made a mistake in the icing adding too much pink gel icing, I had to scrape them off. You will notice the cakes are not smooth at the edges and some of the pepto bismol pink icing is visible in a few places. The icing also is too thin which was done on purpose because I didn't want too much sweet icing. I like the cake but I was not wowed all that much. Maybe it'll taste better tomorrow because it's supposed to age at least a day for the flavors to meld.

Punschtorte Bites
cake
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
4 large eggs, room temperature
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon each finely grated lemon and orange zest
1 cup sifted cake flour
syrup
1 cup semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips, melted
1 cup marzipan
icing

• Line a jelly roll pan with parchment paper. Set aside.
• Mix eggs, sugar, vanilla, zest, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Using an electric mixer, whip egg mixture until it has tripled in volume, about 4 to 5 minutes. Fold flour into mixture, one third at a time, just until incorporated.
• Pour about 1 cup of batter into the melted butter, and fold just until combined. Return butter mixture to reserved batter, and again fold to combine. Pour batter into prepared pan. Smooth batter evenly. Bake in a 350 degree F oven for 15 minutes or until top springs back slightly when lightly touched. Cool completely then brush with syrup. Cut into squares or rounds and pair them up.
• Crumble the scraps and mix with the melted chocolate. Roll into a 1/16-inch thin rectangle between 2 pieces of plastic film. Cut into squares or rounds. Place on top of half of the shapes. Roll the marzipan into a thin rectangle and cut out shapes. Place on top of chocolate shapes, top with its cake pair making sandwiches. Pour the icing straight over the cake. Smooth the sides using a palette knife but avoid touching the top.

syrup
4 ounces sugar
3 tablespoons lemon juice, strained
3 tablespoons orange juice, strained
2 tablespoons apricot jam strained
3 tablespoons dark rum

• Dissolve the sugar in the juices over gentle heat. Add the strained jam and boil gently for 3 minutes until slightly thickened. Remove from heat and stir in rum.

icing
2 cups confectioners sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon fresh orange juice, strained
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, strained
1 tablespoon rum
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 drop red food coloring

• Mix the liquids. Slowly add the liquid to the sifted sugar in a bowl, stirring all the time. Do not add all liquid at once, the icing may become too runny. It should be thick and smooth enough to coat the back of the spoon. Place the bowl over a small pan with simmering water, and warm until the icing thins out and runs easily from the spoon. Remove from heat and use immediately.

Maple Sugar Iced Tea

It's still early spring but we are having a summer-like weather. Today the temperature will go as high as 80 degrees. I'm just starting my vegetable garden and staying outside clearing the yard of winter debris in this hot weather makes me exhausted and I get dehydrated quickly. But it's the perfect time to make gallons of sweet iced tea. Not just any iced tea but similar to the one served in restaurants in the Philippines, I think in the late 70s or maybe early 80s, called Butterfly iced tea. The iced tea was so popular the people who owned the restaurant and the drink started selling concentrate in gallon jugs at the supermarkets. But the drink disappeared just like that, never to be heard of again, it's a mystery. I read that somebody interviewed the owners who for some reason would not even talk about the ice tea and its demise. Odd.

Anyway, I have been making an iced tea drink that tastes similar to the Butterfly iced tea. The not-so-secret ingredient is maple extract. The flavor becomes unique when combined with the juice of the Philippine lime, calamansi, although lemon juice is equally wonderful with the maple flavor. Maple sugar is sold at most grocery stores but it is super expensive and maple flavoring is available at King Arthur Flour online and catalog.

A year ago I discovered an unopened jar of maple syrup that has expired. I don't really understand why it has an expiration date, it's sugar syrup, why should it go bad. Instead of throwing it away I boiled the syrup down, dried the crystals, broke them into large chunks, and that's what I use together with raw sugar to sweeten the iced tea. Yum. I could finish a gallon of this stuff in a day.:-)

Maple Sugar Iced Tea
makes approximately 4 cups
3 English breakfast tea bags
2 cups boiling water
maple sugar or syrup, to taste
raw sugar (demerara), to taste
juice of 1 lemon, strained
1 cup ice cold water
1½ cups ice

• Brew tea in boiling water. Discard bags. Add maple syrup or sugar and raw sugar until dissolved. Add the juice, water, and ice. Enjoy.