Category Archives: Yeast

Bakes, Fruit, Western, Yeast

Cranberry Raisin Walnut Bread

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We’re lucky to have a good, artisanal bakery in the Bay Area known as Acme Breads. We bought (and devoured) a few loaves from their stall at the San Francisco Ferry Building Farmer’s Market. Recently, they debuted a cranberry-walnut whole-wheat bread that was divine. Annie tasted some during a trip to Lunardi’s and immediately placed an order for a boule.

A few days later, when that boule was but a happy memory, she decided to make her own cranberry-walnut bread, based on the “Cranberry-Walnut Celebration Bread” recipe in “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice”.

Though the recipe called for 3 cups of white flour, she substituted one cup of whole wheat flour and added some vital wheat gluten. She also added some golden raisins to the mix.

Here is the bread at the first rise after kneading.

She skipped the braiding part and just baked the dough as loaves in two bread pans. Here is the final result.

The loaf lasted just about as long as the Acme bread.

Aloha, Nate

American, Yeast

New York Times No Knead Bread

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When I heard about the New York Times “No Knead Bread” recipe, I said to myself, “I wanna try that.” Now, three months after seeing the recipe, I finally had the excuse to make my very first ever loaf of bread.

Pic 1: The dough after bringing all the ingredients together. This was started around 6 pm Friday. I covered it and put it in the oven (which was turned off) to sit overnight.

I pulled the dough out of the oven when I woke up in the morning. It didn’t look like it had risen much in the 14 hours since starting. Our house is between 60* – 64* at night so that might have had something to do with it. I left it out on the kitchen table all the morning.

When I returned around 2 pm, it had risen, but again not by much. I folded the dough. Then Annie suggested heating a cup of water in the microwave for a couple of minutes, then putting the bowl of dough in there to rise. She was right (of course).
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American, Bakes, Yeast

Monkey Bread

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Start a bread dough sponge using flour, water, honey and yeast. Combine a flour mixture containing flour, milk powder and yeast, and then sprinkle that on top the sponge and allow it to ferment for 4 hours. Mix in some softened butter then rest for 20 minutes. Knead in some salt and then allow the dough to rise until doubled, about 1.5 hrs. Turn out the dough and press it down, then let it rise again until doubled, about 1 hr.

Make a filling by boiling some raisins in rum and water, then drain the raisins and reserve the liquid. Melt some butter with brown sugar and cinnamon and set aside.

Roll dough into 1-inch balls, dip them in the butter-sugar mixture and lay them in an angel food cake pan. Sprinkle on some raisins and pecans. Keep layering until all the dough is used up.

Drizzle on any remaining butter/sugar mixture on top. Cover the pan and let the dough rise for an hour.
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Chinese, Pork, Yeast

Baked char siu bao

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Annie made some baked char siu bao last night that are really excellent. We picked up some char siu from the store next to Lion Market on King Rd and Tully. First, cut the char siu into cubes. Dice some onion and sweat it in a frying pan, then add the char siu. Mix in a sauce containing soy sauce, oyster sauce, dark soy sauce, sugar, salt, pepper, and some corn starch as a thickener.


She made a sweet bread dough consisting of flour, bread flour, powdered milk, sugar, yeast, butter, eggs, and water. Brought it together then set it aside to rise. Then she divided the dough up into 50-gram balls.
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