Homemade Vanilla Extract!

 Have you looked at this post before? You'll notice I got rid of my old vanilla extract post. The reason for this is because it was incorrect. Well, maybe not horribly incorrect but the results were less than mediocre. After playing with homemade vanilla extract for months and months, I finally have something amazing for you.

What You'll Need:

1 - 800 ml mason jar

1 cup - vodka

12 grade B (extract grade) vanilla beans

Instructions:

Put the lid and the jar in a sauce pan with about 3 cups water and bring to a boil. Carefully pour the boiling water into the jar and let sit for 15 minutes. This will sterilize the jar. Very carefully wrap a towel around the jar and dump out the water. Before starting the following steps, be sure the jar is completely dry.

Measure out the vodka and pour into your jar.

Split your vanilla beans length-wise,, only going halfway through to keep the beans intact. Cut each bean into 3 pieces.

Put all of your beans into your jar of vodka making sure all beans are covered.

Label the jar with the date. Put the jar in a dark cool place and age for 2 months. About once or twice a week, give the jar a few good shakes. In 2 months you will have amazing vanilla extract, better than any store bought I promise.

Some of my extract after a little over two months

Tips:

You can use the extract after 1 month but the longer it ages, the better it will be.

Though 12 beans will make a decent extract, I like to use 20 beans per cup of alcohol. The more beans you add, the better the extract.

You'll notice I said to use grade B (extract grade) beans. Grade B beans are very dry and they don't look as attractive as grade A beans. The flavor however, is not affected and the low moisture in the bean is ideal for extract.

You can use other kinds of alcohol but vodka will give you the most vanilla flavor.

For cheap grade B beans go HERE. They have great prices and great quality grade A and B beans. They'll also give you some freebees in your order.

BBA Challenge #6 - Challah

So this week for the challenge I made challah. Since eggs play a big roll in this bread I was excited to do it. The thing is, I have six happy free ranging chickens that give me 4-6 eggs everyday. Using fresh eggs in bread and other desserts really makes a huge difference. Not only do they have a better flavor, but the yolks are super bright adding great color to whatever you use them for. That aside, I don't feel guilty for contributing to the abuse and torture of egg laying hens at the huge careless farms. Unlike the hens from the big places, my hens DON'T hang out in their own poop and they actually get sunlight. So, on that note, on to the bread. Right from the start there were a few changes I wanted to make. First I wanted to try adding some orange blossom water, so I added half an ounce to see if it would be noticeable. Next I wanted to add some whole wheat flour so I added 4 ounces of medium whole wheat flour. I ended up having to add 3 tablespoons of extra flour to get the dough to the correct consistency.
 I decided to make a 1 pound breaded challah using four strands to braid with. With the other pound of dough, I added about 2 teaspoons of cinnamon and 2 ounces of currents and then shaped it into a snail (sometimes called turban challlah). When I began shaping my dough, it did not want to do what I wanted it to. I had to shape and let it rest multiple time before I got the pieces to the right length. When I finally got the dough to cooperate with me, I had added about 45 minutes to the total fermentation time.

 I proofed the dough according to the book but it didn't really rise as much as it should have. I added 15 minutes to the proofing time which still didn't get me the volume I hoped for but because I added so much time to the fermentation I didn't wanna extend proofing by very much. I was excited to finally get my bread into the oven because despite the problems so far, I thought I did a pretty good job with the braiding. So after the first 20 minutes I went to rotate the pan and what I saw was not really something I wanted or expected. I only got a small amount of oven spring and both loaves lost the dramatic look I as going for with the braid and snail shape.

         Though I didn't get the look I was going for, the bread did taste ok. Definitely not the best challah I've had but not bad. The orange blossom water did add little flavor but I should have used a little more. I also should have added more cinnamon to the snail shape as the flavor was too faint. The bread came out a little dense but I'm not quite sure why. It could of been the whole wheat flour I added but I doubt it considering the little amount I used. I think I'll try this bread again sometime and hopefully it will come out better. Next up for the challenge is ciabatta.

BBA Challenge #5 - Casatiello

This week for the BBA Challenge I had to make casatiello which is basically the Italian version of brioche. The thing that sets casatiello apart from brioche is that it contains meat and cheese, other than that they are very similar breads. I've seen this recipe while browsing the book tons of times but I never thought I would actually make it, it just didn't interest me much. The first thing I noticed about the formula was that it contained meat. I'm vegetarian so I knew right away that I had to make changes. I got some great suggestions for meat substitutions  over at akuindeed.com but in the end I just decided to leave out the meat.

In the book, Reinhart says that sponge should be "batter-like" but mine was more of a nasty soupy consistency. The sponge did rise very well and for the first time ever my sponge actually fell when taped on the counter as you can see in the picture.

Above is my dough sitting for the 10 minutes to develop the gluten before adding the butter and cheese.

 I had to use about an extra 1-2 ounces of flour to get my dough to clear the sides of the bowl. For the cheese I used 3 ounces asiago and 3 ounces of a jack and cheddar blend. I fermented my dough for 1 hour 15 minutes, the dough did grow to about 1 1/2 times bigger. Up until this point things were going smoothly. I then realized that I forgot about taking my fiancee to the dentist and my timing to finish the dough did not work out at all. After fermenting my dough I shaped it into one large loaf and stuck it in the refrigerator. When I got home my dough had been in the refrigerator for 3 hours. It did rise in there of course so as soon as the oven was at temp I stuck it in straight from the fridge.

 

 I baked my loaf for about 55 minutes rotating the pan twice during this time. The exposed cheese burned on top of the loaf. I expected the cheese to burn but it got a lot darker that I would have liked.

I did not have very high hopes for this bread since my sponge was soupy and since I had to delay the proofing in the fridge for a couple hours. The bread actually turned out really nice, I was definitely happy with how things turned out. Next week (or should I say this week since again I'm behind) I'll be making challah which is bread #6 in the challenge. Look for that posted up within the next week or so.

BBA Challenge #4 - Brioche

So this week for the challenge was brioche. There were three different versions to pick from; rich man's, middle-class and of course poor man's brioche. At first I was going to go with what I thought fit me best which is definitely the poor man's brioche but I decided to skip up one level and do the middle-class version.

I fermented my sponge for a full 45 minutes. This sponge picture above is not after the full fermentation but about 3/4 of the way through. I some how deleted my good picture of the very very happy sponge after the 45 minutes.

I have not talked about flour much but there are several different types I like to use. For this recipe I used Red Rose Artisan bread flour which is milled by Central Milling, I will discuss the flours I use in a later blog so check back if you're interested.

 

I don't have the fluted brioche molds so I decided to have some fun and make some mini loaves using some little aluminum pans I had lying around and then two mini rounds. Each loaf is 6 ounces and each round is 3 ounces. I added a few things to the dough while shaping, here's what I made: 3 cinnamon swirl, 1 cinnamon swirl with currants, 1 cranberry, 1 chocolate round and then the other round is plain.

  I baked the loaves for about 20 minutes and they came out beautifully

 This morning I was excited to wake up and have a slice of toasted brioche. I popped two slices into my toaster and waited. Once they were done I realized I now had to dig these tiny little flaming hot slices out of an equally flaming hot toaster. I managed to get my toast without getting 3rd degree burns and it was definitely worth the risk. As cute as these little loaves are, I would definitely recommend making a normal sized loaf if you have the intention of making toast.