Bread Machine (56 page)

2
¹
/
₂
teaspoons SAF yeast or 1 tablespoon bread machine yeast

1
¹
/
₂
cups canned hominy, rinsed

Place all the ingredients, except the hominy, in the pan according to the order in the manufacturer’s instructions. Set crust on dark and program for the Basic or Fruit and Nut cycle; press Start. (This recipe is not suitable for use with the Delay Timer.) When the machine beeps, or between Knead 1 and Knead 2, add the hominy.

When the baking cycle ends, immediately remove the bread from the pan and place it on a rack. Let cool to room temperature before slicing.

The Baker’s Glossary of Specialty Flours and Grains

Barley Flour

Barley has a chewy texture and a mild, sweet flavor. Hulled pearl barley can be toasted and rolled into barley flakes, which are used like rolled oats, or ground into a low-gluten flour with a grayish color. Use a small proportion (1 cup of barley flour to 5 cups of wheat flour, or 20 percent barley flour, at the most) for a slightly bitter, moist-crumbed bread that is excellent toasted. Of course, smaller proportions of barley flour can also be used. The crusts of barley breads bake up a tan color and tend to harden as they cool. Barley combines well with the flavors of orange, rye, and whole wheat.

Buckwheat Flour

Small amounts of buckwheat flour combined with wheat flour make a surprisingly delicious light-textured bread. Usually eaten in its robust roasted form, called
kasha
, buckwheat is technically not a grain, but the seed of a red-stemmed plant related to rhubarb. Buckwheat flour is low in protein, which makes for a tender baked product with an assertive, musky, slightly bitter flavor, and the purple-gray color of its flour bakes into a dark gray-brown crust. Buckwheat grown in Europe has a rather mild taste, distinctly different from the Japanese variety of buckwheat grown in the United States, which can be quite earthy and musky. While the whole grain is an acquired taste, I have found that the addition of a small amount of buckwheat flour makes an exceptional bread that is loved upon first bite. Give it a try. At most, use 1 cup of buckwheat flour to 5 cups of wheat flour. Use buckwheat with wheat flours, rye flours, and cornmeal. It pairs very well with cinnamon and prunes.

Chestnut Flour

Chestnut flour is ground from dried chestnuts and the flavor varies depending on how the nuts have been dried. The flour’s beige texture is dust-fine and silky, and the flavor distinctive. Use a small proportion (a scant 1 cup of chestnut flour to 5 cups of wheat flour at the most) in breads. Chestnut flour combines well with all nuts, assertive honeys, and whole wheats. Use chestnut flour in everything from regular loaves to pizza doughs to country breads.

Cornmeal

Yellow cornmeal comes in a variety of grinds, from fine to coarse, and makes delicious yeasted cornbreads. Degerminated cornmeal has had the germ removed for longer shelf life.
Masa harina
is finely ground golden cornmeal made from lime-treated hominy. For the best flavor, search out fresh stone-ground cornmeals. Polenta is considered a coarse grind of cornmeal.

Baked goods made with cornmeal are crumbly in texture and a bit gritty, with a characteristic pale yellow color. Because cornmeal is unique in flavor and texture, there is no substitute for it. Use a small proportion (1 to 2 cups of cornmeal to 4 to 5 cups of wheat flour) to create light-textured breads. Corn-meal’s mild flavor combines well with all other grains and is great seasoned with chiles. Blue cornmeal may be substituted for yellow cornmeal in breads.

Millet

Tiny round yellow grains of millet resemble pale mustard seeds and are a common addition to whole-grain cereal mixtures. Millet has a slightly mild nutty taste, a fluffy texture, and is very easy to digest. I use the whole raw millet as a “crunchy munchy” addition to other grains and seeds in a dough that bakes up into firm, chewy textured bread. Millet combines well with the flavors of all flours, but is especially nice with wild and domestic rices, cornmeals, oats, rye, and whole wheat.

Oats

Rolled oats are the most familiar cereal grain on the market. Whole groats are hulled, steamed, and flattened into flakes. They may be ground into oat flour with a food processor or into a coarse meal suitable for breadmaking. The mild, nutty flavor and moist, nubby texture of oats is a favorite in breads, with the recipes often calling for spices, honey, nuts, and dried fruits. Use a small proportion (1 cup of rolled oats to 2 cups of wheat flour at most and a 1-to-5 ratio for oat flour). Oats combine well with the flavors of graham, whole wheat, rye, wild rice, and millet.

Potato Flour

Potato flour is ground from cooked, dried, starchy potatoes. Used mostly as a thickener, it is great for dusting loaves and makes moist doughs in lieu of adding cooked mashed potatoes to the dough. It is a premium food for the yeast, as the yeast thrives on the starch. Use a scant 1 cup of potato flour to 5 cups of wheat flour at most, since potato flour tends to be heavy. It is not the same as potato starch flour, which is used extensively in Jewish baking for sponge cakes and dinner rolls. Potato flour is also different from dehydrated instant potato flakes.

Quinoa

Quinoa (prounounced “keen-wa”) is really the fruit of a plant rather than a grass, and has the highest protein content of any grain (about 17 percent). It has been grown in the Andes Mountains of South America for about three thousand years. It can be used like rice or millet. Before it is used, whole quinoa must be thoroughly rinsed because it is coated with saponin, a resin-like substance with a bitter, soapy taste that protects the grains from insects. Rinse and drain the quinoa about 5 times with cold running water. The more rinsing it undergoes, the milder the flavor of the cooked grain will be. When cooked, the disc-shaped sesame-like grains become translucent. Quinoa is used cooked in breads in the same manner as rice. There is also quinoa flour, but it is hard to find outside of health food stores. Do not confuse quinoa with amaranth, also from South America.

Rice and Rice Flour

There are thousands of varieties of rice, each with its own distinct flavor, texture, aroma, color, length of grain, and degree of translucency. Short-grain brown rice is nutty, sweet, dense, and chewy. Unpolished, it retains a layer of bran, which adds fiber and flavor. Long-grain brown (Texmati) rice is beige in color and nutty in flavor. Converted rice is parboiled before drying, and cooks up nice and fluffy. Aromatic rices, such as basmati and jasmine, are known for their distinctive fragrances. Use 1 to 2 cups of cooked rice to 6 cups of flour for the best results. Brown rices take twice as long as white rice to cook, and have more nutrients.

In addition to using cooked whole grain rice in some of my breads, occasionally I like to use rice flour in bread machine breads. Rice flour can be ground from brown or white rice, although I always use brown rice flour. There is also a sweet rice flour used in Asian cuisine, but not for breads. Rice flour is an excellent thickener and is good for dusting (use for dusting your pizza doughs when rolling out), as it absorbs moisture slowly and has a light, sweet flavor. Use a small proportion of rice flour (a scant 1 cup of rice flour to 5 cups of wheat flour) when making bread. The crust on a loaf made with rice flour will be a delicate light brown with a fine crumb. For more information on
rice flours
.

Soy Flour

Soybean products were long thought unsuitable for breadmaking; on their own they make moist, compact bricks with a hearty musty, sweet flavor that many find to be an acquired taste. But soy flour in small amounts melds well with other flours, slows the rancidity in baked goods, and, with its high fat and protein content, adds considerable nutrition and moisture to loaves. Soy flour keeps well on a cupboard shelf for up to a year. Breads that contain soy flour are chewy, with a golden crust and delicate musty flavor.

The soy products that are available for baking include grits, soy flakes, a soy meal, and, my favorite, a finely milled flour (ground from toasted whole soybeans). Toasted soy products, labeled soya, have a nutty rich flavor while raw soy products are blander. The best tasting, most nutritious soy flour is stone-ground and full-fat. Defatted soy flour has the oil removed by a process using chemical solvents, so don’t let the fat-free craze tempt you to buy this. The proteins in soy flour complement the ones in wheat flour, an especially nice pairing since soy has no gluten. Soy flour makes a crust that tends to brown quickly, so a good rule of thumb is to set your machine’s crust setting on light. Add no more than 1 cup of soy flour per 3 to 5 cups of wheat flour, adding a tablespoon of vital wheat gluten per cup of soy flour for texture.

Teff Flour

Teff flour, available almost exclusively in health food stores and from mail-order catalogs, is a specialty flour and a staple in an ethnic cuisine not familiar to most Americans. Since the grains of teff, native to northern Africa but now grown in Idaho, are so small, they cannot be processed, so teff makes a nice whole grain flour with its bran and germ intact. Ivory-colored teff is coveted for its pure color. White breads made from it were once a sign of status in Ethiopia, as white wheat breads once were in this country. The mahogany-brown seeds have a rich, deep flavor slightly reminiscent of carob or Wheatena. Both ivory and brown teff seeds are ground into flour. Teff is known for its pleasantly sweet, almost molasses-like flavor. The mild nature of teff combines well with the sweet spices, such as cinnamon, allspice, cardamom, coriander, and ginger. It has not traditionally been used with yeast, but in combination with high-protein bread flour it can be used sparingly for a lovely bread. It is the easiest of the new grains to introduce to children, as it has a gentle palatability; try teff bread for breakfast toast.

Wild Rice

Delicious by itself or in combination with other rices, wild rice has a strong woodsy flavor and a chewy texture. It is not really a rice, but the seed of an aquatic grass native to the marshes of the Great Lakes and Canada. Some wild rice is still traditionally harvested by hand by Native Americans, but most is cultivated in man-made paddies and harvested by machine, with California being the biggest producer. Paddy rice is left to cure out in the weather, causing the characteristic shiny, dark kernels, while hand-harvested rice is parched immediately over open fires, giving it a variety of distinctly matte colors from a ruddy red-brown to a subtle gray-green. Labels usually note if the rice is hand-harvested or cultivated, but the color will tell you immediately how it was grown. Each brand of wild rice has its own particular taste, so if you have experienced a brand that was too husky for your palate, experiment with others, or use it in combination with other rices for a milder taste. All grades can be used interchangeably in bread recipes calling for wild rice, but must always be cooked first, giving breads a flecking of dark color and a deep-toned, musky flavor. A little wild rice goes a long way, but once you taste a bread that combines wild rice with oatmeal, you will know how tasty it can be.