Desert or Dessert

I am talking about the time when all will be revealed.
With all I mean the breads that the baking enthusiasts over at Michelle’s blog “Big black dog” have created from the HBin5 (Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day) baking schedule.
With Saint Patrick’s day practically at our door steps what goes better with it than some bread.
I read up a little on Saint Patrick and found out that he was taken prisoner when he was just 16 years old by Irish Raiders and that for 6 long years.
Now when I think of Prison in those times I think of a cold hole in a tower somewhere with a diet of water and bread. I was glad to read that he was not in a hole but nevertheless had no easy time because he was in solitude far away from people herding sheep.
While I  have no clue what his diet consisted off I can imagine that bread was the main part of his daily diet other than maybe porridge and that he might have been day dreaming while herding those sheep of Avocado-Guacamole Bread. That’s the bread that was on the baking schedule for me today.
I joined Michelle’s group because I need a challenge to follow through with anything long term (my husband can attest to that, he is my biggest challenge yet lasting some 20 years….I am kidding….a little) and I wanted to make sure that this is not one of the books in my bookshelf collecting dust.
I love cookbooks of any category but have never made every single recipe out of either one of them.
So this is a first and I am determent to follow through with baking each and every one of the dough’s in this book. As a reminder to myself and to keep a log of my progress I started this blog.
It’s an undertaking that will last about a year and a half so there is plenty of time to still jump on the band wagon. All you need to do is get the book and jump over to "Big black dog" and get all the info there.
Sorry due to the fact that I will be making every single one of the bread dough’s in this book I can not post recipes. If I do find them from time to time on other blogs I will link to them but I will not post them myself. Enough about that i will not mention it again.
Let’s start baking!

1/2 recipe Avocado-Guacamole Bread pg. 160-161 in
changes:
I did not use garlic instead I added roasted onions.
I also did not add the fresh tomato because Winter still has Germany in it’s fangs. I could have used some canned but was unsure about the moisture it would add. I was tempted to add some of the  tomato powder I made last summer but opted against it. So no Guacamole, sorry!
I did however use some of the tomatoes I dried last summer in another way on this bread (you will find out in a moment).
I whipped up this batch last night and despite the avocado being in my fridge for a while it was not soft.
Oh, oh I just outed myself as a total avocado novice. Yup, you heard that right. I have no idea what to do with an avocado. I blame it on having grown up in Germany where I have yet to see an avocado tree and I was an adult long before I ever tried an avocado in form of Guacamole.
I guess I should have taken it out of the fridge a few days prior. If I really wanted to know I could search the internet for an answer….nah…My defense here is that I had no idea when I was going to bake that bread.
Last night it was do or die because the bread is due today. Ok, the group is not that strict and I have yet to make the pesto bread but I do have a good excuse for that one too. More about that later.
There is usually three to feed at our house but at this time my husband is working long, long hours and receiving all his meals at work so he is out. My son is in school all day and prefers to take a hot meal with him rather than what used to be sandwiches. This was the case for the longest time but last fall when I started to go back to school fulltime (that has stopped again since we received sudden notice after I started that we will be moving back to the states in June) and started to take warm meals with me that he found out he too preferred a warm meal at lunch. So no sandwiches for lunch and none for dinner that leaves the weekend or breakfast. Breakfast is not a time he would eat a savory sandwich so he is out too for the most part. In other word it’s pretty much me eating savory kind of bread right now.
So here is my take on this part of the challenge.
Of the four rolls below two will become dinner (for my son and me) tomorrow night with a bowl of goulash soup and the other two will be turned into bagels.

                     For the bagels this was the first proof before forming.
                                For the rolls it was the one and only

After the rolls proofed I placed a slice of dried tomato in the middle, brushed them with water and baked on a hot stone for 20 minutes.
                               Here are the results of the rolls

Now back to the bagels, after 20 min. proofing I formed the bagel and placed them in a covered dish to proof another 20 min. They are now in the fridge for an overnight chill and to proof some more. They will be baked up tomorrow morning and I will than update this post.

I made half a recipe of this dough so after 2 rolls and 2 bagels I still have plenty of dough left over. What to do with it, that’s the question.
              I felt like croissants. I just wanted to form them. So I did.
I rolled out the dough and to create a little flakiness put some butter on it.
Next I quartered it and rolled them up into croissants and let them proof for about a hour. 

 

I could hardly wait for them to cool down. When they finally did there was nothing holding me back. I sliced one open, buttered it and …OMG… these are amazing!
These Croissants are my favorite thing from the book so far. They are crunchy like a Croissant but of course not as flaky (maybe some layering with butter and folding the dough a few times would do it). They are however so very good.
Two of these with some butter was all I needed for a good lunch!
                                           I am in Croissant heave!
I still have a little bit of dough from that half batch left over. Not quite sure what to do with them yet. maybe some more Croissants?
Tomorrow night I will mix up the Pesto Pine Nut dough and bake it up for Saint Patrick’s day on Wednesday. That is the excuse why I have not made it yet. I want to serve it on St. Patties day.
                           Stay tuned and come back Wednesday or Thursday.

These croissants will be Yeast spotted
Yeast spotters: If you don’t have the book and are not sure if you would like to get it try out this master recipe for the ABin5 which uses all white flour. You can find a link to the whole wheat recipe version here. From there add what you like. I added roasted onions and avocado.