Cardamom Buns with Natural Yeast

I love my natural yeast.    I've been baking bread with it, trying to get light and fluffy bread instead of heavy and brick-like bread.   

Brick-like bread is good for a lot of things, but not eating.   For example, you can use brick-like bread for a door stop.   Or a weapon.   Or a big paperweight.   Or a mold culture.  Or a window prop.   Or to break into your car if you forget your keys.   Or instead of a clay pigeon. 

I'd just rather have light and fluffy bread.

You know?

I've been playing a lot with the natural yeast and noticed that a lot of recipes call for only 1/2 cup of starter.  That's not enough here.  I kept getting brick bread.  When I feed my start, I take out about 1 1/2 cups of the old starter to make room for the new feed.  One day,  I decided to use all 1 1/2 cups of leftover start in the dough.  What a difference!  I made a batch of light and fluffy cardamom buns that was so good that K2 begged me to make more.   Every. Day. 

So I did. 

Cardamom Buns with Natural Yeast
from www.rurification.com

• 1 1/2 cups natural yeast start  [or whatever you take out when you feed your start]
• 2 cups white flour
• 1 cup milk
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 tsp cardamom
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 Tablespoons oil
• 1 more cup white flour

Mix the natural yeast start, 2 cups of white flour, milk, sugar, cardamom, eggs,  and oil well.  It will be a wet dough.   Put it in a large greased bowl and let it rise to double.   Don't rush it. 

After it has risen the first time, mix in the last cup of flour.   Flour your hands and pull off pieces about 1/2 cup in size and roll them into balls.  Set them in a greased ovenproof pan and let them rise to double.

Bake at 400 for 25 minutes.

These are amazing with honey.   Amazing.   Worth the trip to the store to get some if you don't have it in the pantry. 

Pear Brown Sugar Cardamom Jam

 Pears are a lovely vehicle for all sorts of flavors.   They meld well. 

They're good with all sorts of spices.  They're good with white sugar and maple syrup and honey and brown sugar.   Here's a simple recipe that uses brown sugar and a bit of cardamom.  

The cardamom might knock you over when you add it, but don't despair.   After a day or so, it falls in line with the other flavors.  This was a big hit at our house.  

Pear Brown Sugar Cardamom Jam

• 4 cups cooked pears
• 1 cup water
• 4 tablespoons Dutch Jell All Natural Lite pectin
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 1/4 tsp ground cardamom

Combine the pears, water and pectin in a pot. Stir constantly.  Bring to a hard rolling boil that you can't stir down.   Boil one minute. Add sugar and cardamom and return to hard rolling boil.   Boil one minute.   Ladle into jars.

Spiced Peaches, Part 3: Peach Maple Cardamom Jam

This is the third installment of Not Your Grandma's Spiced Peaches.

This Peach Maple Cardamom Jam is one of those rare creations in life where the whole is much, much more incredible than the sum of the parts - even if those parts are pretty darned amazing to start with.
   
Food of the Gods.

Plus!  I didn't use white sugar - only our homemade maple syrup.   Bonus points!  

This is a jam that is fabulous on biscuits, but would be phenomenal as a filling in cakes or as an ice cream topping when you want something that's a bit more exotic than plain peach.

Peach Maple Cardamom Jam

• 3 cups chopped peaches
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/3 cup Dutch Jell All Natural Lite pectin  [or  3 Tablespoons Ball Low Sugar Pectin]
• 1 1/2 cups maple syrup
• 1/4 tsp cardamom

Mix the peaches lemon juice and pectin in a large pot.   Bring to hard rolling boil, stirring constantly.  Boil hard for 1 minute.    Add maple syrup and cardamom.  Stir well and bring back to hard rolling boil, stirring constantly.   Boil hard for 1 minute.   Ladle into jars and process 10 minutes for canning.  Yield 3 pints. 

Note:  I picked up the Dutch Jell All Natural Lite pectin at my local Amish store [Freedom Country Store in Freedom, Indiana].   I like that it comes in bulk.   It gels very well - almost too well.   I'm going to use it with other fruit and let you know how I feel about it later in the season.

Not Your Grandma's Spiced Peaches, Part 1: Ginger Peach Jam

It's peach season here.

For the past couple of years we've had access to the peaches on a friend's tree.  This means that we spend days and days peeling and pitting peaches.

And then we spend months and months enjoying peaches in smoothies, pies, jams, etc.

God bless generous friends with peach trees!  Thank you!!

With all those peaches, I decided to do some experimenting with spices in my peach jams this year and I came up with some really great recipes.

Really.  Great.

As in - the finished products are likely to cause you to break out in the singing of spontaneous Halleluias.  I'm totally not kidding.   

These are not your grandma's spiced peaches.

This is what I made:

• Ginger Peach Jam
• Peach Chai Jam
• Peach Maple Cardamom Jam

So, over the next few days, I'll give you the details.

The delicious, mouth-watering, halleluia inspiring details.  

I'll start here with the simplest of the spiced jams.  Ginger Peach Jam is made with chopped candied ginger.  If you make the candied ginger yourself, then you can use your ginger sugar for this jam.    It's really good!   So good, that you just might consider trying to make some.

Ginger Peach Jam

• 4 cups peaches
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/3 cup Dutch Jell All Natural Lite Pectin OR 3 Tablespoons Ball Low Sugar Pectin
• 1/3 cup chopped crystallized ginger
• 1 cup ginger sugar
• 1 cup white sugar

Mix the peaches lemon juice and pectin in a large pot.   Bring to hard rolling boil, stirring constantly.  Boil hard for 1 minute.    Add sugars and ginger.  Stir well and bring back to hard rolling boil, stirring constantly.   Boil hard for 1 minute.   Ladle into jars and process 10 minutes for canning.  Yield ~3 pints

Note:  If you don't make your own crystallized ginger, try to get it from a bulk store and then make sure you collect about a cup's worth of the sugar that falls off the ginger and collects in the bottom of the bin.   If you don't have access to ginger sugar, don't worry about it.   Use 2 cups of plain white sugar.  It'll still be great.

Cherry Jam, Three Ways

Thanks to Murphala, we were recently able to pick a whole bunch of Montmorency cherries.   It had been years since I'd had fresh sour cherries.

I love sour cherries.

We had enough to make three batches of jam, so I tried it three different ways.   Here's the basic recipe.



Batch #1
Basic Cherry Jam

• 4 cups pitted cherries
• 2/3 cup water or juice
• 3 Tablespoons Ball Low Sugar Pectin
• 2 cups sugar

Combine the cherries, water/juice and pectin.    Bring to hard boil.  [A hard boil is one you can't stir down.]   Stir constantly and boil hard for 1 minute.    Add sugar.   Stir well and return to hard boil.   Stir constantly and boil hard for 1 minute.    Ladle into jars.  Cap with clean lids and rings.  Process for canning 10 minutes in water bath or steam canner.  

***
Easy. 

To jazz it up, I decided to do a batch with vanilla. 

Here's the thing about vanilla jam recipes.   Inevitably, they call for a vanilla bean.   Which I have.   In the freezer.   And which I am more than happy to use in jam.   That's what they're for.  

You have to split the bean and scrape out the seeds.   Not a big deal.   Except the seeds get kind of gooey and then they clump and I hate that and if you've got a pale jam, then the seeds show up and look like pepper, which can be off putting to some people.   The jam is always delicious in the end, but .... you know.... maybe there's another way.

I tried 2 Tablespoons of my homemade vanilla extract instead of a vanilla bean. 

Worked like a charm.   Here's the recipe.  This one is K2's favorite.

Batch #2
Cherry Vanilla Jam

• 4 cups pitted cherries
• 2/3 cup water or juice
• 3 Tablespoons Ball Low Sugar Pectin
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 Tablespoons vanilla extract

Combine the cherries, water/juice and pectin.    Bring to hard boil.  [A hard boil is one you can't stir down.]   Stir constantly and boil hard for 1 minute.    Add sugar and vanilla.   Stir well and return to hard boil.   Stir constantly and boil hard for 1 minute.    Ladle into jars.  Cap with clean lids and rings.  Process for canning 10 minutes in water bath or steam canner. 

***

I've also been thinking about jazzing up the plain fruit jams with more spices like star anise and cardamom.    But I hate wasting fruit in crazy spice experiments so I did a little internet research first to see if such a beast as Sour Cherry Cardamom Jam existed.   It did!  Someone is selling it on Amazon.    And I found recipes for Cherry Cardamom Pie, so I figured the proportion of spice to cherries from those recipes.

I tried it and it was darn good!  Here's the recipe.   This one is Lily's favorite.

Batch #3

Cherry Vanilla Cardamom Jam

• 4 cups pitted cherries
• 2/3 cup water or juice
• 3 Tablespoons Ball Low Sugar Pectin
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
• 2 Tablespoons vanilla extract
  

Stir cardamom and sugar together.  Set aside.

Combine the cherries, water/juice and pectin.    Bring to hard boil.  [A hard boil is one you can't stir down.]   Stir constantly and boil hard for 1 minute.    Add sugar/cardamom mixture and vanilla.   Stir well and return to hard boil.   Stir constantly and boil hard for 1 minute.    Ladle into jars.  Cap with clean lids and rings.  Process for canning 10 minutes in water bath or steam canner.  


***

There you have it.  Cherry Jam three ways.

Next up, peach season is coming.    I'll be experimenting with peach jams, next.

Danish Yule Bread

Every year I make this Danish Yule Bread at Christmas time.   K1 has a late December birthday and the year she was 1, this was her birthday cake.   

It's the only bread I make at all.   Ever.  So it's kind of a big deal for the family.   See, Mom really can bake!


This bread is a traditional Danish Christmas braided bread. It’s easier than it sounds and delicious with hot chocolate on Christmas morning…and afternoon…and evening…and after the kids go to bed.

K2 spends the entire time I make it trying to steal bits of dough and then begging me to let her eat a loaf [in its entirety, by herself] as soon as it comes out of the oven. 

As. Soon. As. 

This year, I put my refusals to music.   Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

No! You can't. eat. some!   I told you no, told you no. No you really can't. [Even if you whine.] You cannot. have. any bread, any bread, No you really can't.  [Tears won't work on me.]
...

Et cetera.

OK.   It was probably more entertaining in person.

Anyway.

I got this recipe years ago from a good friend who's mom is from Denmark, where Yule Bread is an art.  They kindly gave me the recipe.   Thank you!  My family will be eternally grateful. 

Eternally.

Danish Yule Bread

• 1 1/2 cups butter
• 4 cups milk
• 1 1/3 cups sugar 
• 3 Tbsp yeast
• 2 1/2 tsp cardamom [the fresher, the better]
• 2 tsp salt
• 10-12 Cups flour

Optional Glaze:

• 1 egg
• 1 tsp water

Directions:
Melt butter. Add milk. Warm to body temperature.   The butter will be good and hot by the time it has melted and when you add the milk to it, the butter will raise the temp of the milk to just exactly what you need. 

While the butter is melting, in a very large bowl mix sugar, salt and cardamom.

Soften yeast with a large spoon full of the sugar mixture and some of the warm milk.

Add yeast and milk/butter to the rest of the sugar mix in the very large bowl. Stir well.

Add flour a cup at a time.  Start with a whisk so that the flour gets incorporated quickly.   As the dough gets thicker, use a spoon instead and incorporate the flour with a rolling motion.  When it's too hard to roll with a spoon, use your hands to roll it.  Be gentle with the dough.  Handle it as little as possible so that it will stay tender.


Cover it with a damp cloth and let it rise 1 hour.  

Divide dough into 8 balls.   Start by dividing it in half, then each of those two in half, then each of those four in half.   You'll get lovely balls of about the same size.  

Divide each of those into 3 smaller balls. Let rest. (Dividing takes some time, so by the time you’re done dividing everything, the first set has rested long enough.)  Cover as many as you can with the damp cloth you used to cover the dough during the first rise. 

Make a 15″ rope from each of the 3 small balls. Braid and tuck the ends under.   Put them on a greased cookie sheet.   It'll take 2 sheets.   

Let rise 30 minutes.   Start the timer when you've filled your first sheet. 

Optional glaze: Beat egg with 1 tsp water and brush on loaves.   Confession:   I never put the glaze on.   I'm way too lazy. 

Bake until golden blonde on greased sheet at 325 degrees for 20-30 minutes.

If you didn't use the glaze, then brush melted butter all over the tops of the loaves as soon as they come out of the over. [Translation:  Take the paper off one end of a stick of butter and rub it on the hot bread.   The butter melts immediately and you don't have to wash a brush.]   

Cool loaves on parchment paper.  

Notes:  

• You do not have to do 8 loaves.  This is America.  There are no Yule Bread Police.  You can do 4 or 6 or 12.   For smaller loaves to gift, divide the dough into 12 balls.   These loaves are a great little size that fits perfectly into a gift bag for giving away.
• If your cardamom is old, then it's OK to add more - add an extra 1/2 tsp to start with.   The cardamom is the whole reason to make this bread, so don't be stingy with it. 
• One last thing - this dough is sweet and delicious and if you eat too much it will give you painful gas because the yeast will love your inner body temp.  Trust me.    Don't. Eat. The Dough.   Not even a bit, because then you won't be able to stop.