Smoked tabouleh chicken salad

What started as a grille setup to smoke some jalapeño  peppers ended  up as a smoky salad combination for some bulgar wheat and chicken thighs with radicchio and bok choi.

After I finished smoking the jalapenos two chicken thighs were lowered into the smoker about midway from the top grate to the charcoal level. On the top grate some bok choi leaves and two quartered pieces of radicchio were placed and the smoking began with some mesquite pellets added to the charcoal. Meanwhile a box of tabouleh mix (wheat salad) was prepared. As I like bulgar wheat this is the only product I could find at the superstore that is bulgar wheat sold under the Near East brand. As they have couscous in many styles, bulgar wheat is not readily available alone by name.Once the chicken was sufficiently cooked and the radicchio and bok choi was wilted  and smoked they were cut to salad size. Reserving the bok choi leaves. The whites of the bok choi was still crunchy and sliced.

Added to the mix was chopped tomato, and cucumber. The leaves of the bok choi are spread on the serving plate, then the rest of the chopped mixture added.

Now top with the tabouleh and sliced chicken, also feta cheese was added as garnish.

A different taste with a smoky blend of ingredients.

A sunny Sunday breakfast

Whole wheat, white spent grain toast

Poached egg

Cubed chicken (leftovers)

Brussels sprout greens

Orange juice (one large orange squeezed)

Coffee, (Sumatra )

Sour cream 

Dried hot red pepper

Cracked black pepper

An effort at a balanced breakfast

Considered a bechamel sauce but opted for sour cream.

Enjoy the last day of the weekend!

Grains of the day

     

Recent baking from last night, a blend of white, whole wheat, and spent grain flour. 

Cup of the day is Sumatra Aceh Gold.



Wus sup(per)?

As the greeting of the day goes “wus up” or simply “sup ?” ? A simple fare for sup-per.

Cubed chicken thigh, roasted / grilled from a previous day. ( cold)

Risotto, onion, Parmesan cheese.

Broccoli , steamed , garlic butter.

Bread, whole wheat/ white flour.

Beverage , IPA, off the topper home brew, not shown.

bonus pictures

meanwhile, back in France, via Periscope from time to time, bread continues !

Barley ,rye , and wheat bread.

Barley ,rye , and wheat bread.

Grind flaked barley, flaked rye, and unmalted wheat. These amounts were not measured but about 1/3 each.

a coffee grinder, burr type , was used , giving the grinder a break after grinding about 1/2 cup, to avoid over heating, the raw wheat is especially hard on the burrs. More on this later *. It’s not exactly flour but what I would call medium ground grain.

About 1 cup of the ground grains mixture, added to 2 cups of white flour, 4 teaspoons of yeast, sugar and salt to taste is mixed with about two cups of water at 130 degrees, mix and add additional white flour. This dough was made on the wet side and let rise till about double.

Another use for ground spent grain is for dusting work surfaces and hands so the dough doesn’t stick. Also, if you need to grease and flour baking pans, ground spent grains can be used and give the crust a nice color and flavor. Some may not be used to the grainy ness and the fact that the ground spent milled grains still have some of the husks intact possibly because I have used a coffee grinder to mill the grains.
All in all, the idea is to substitute dried spent grain, ground or not , in the place of or to augment white flour in recipes.

Getting back to this recipe, the grain additions are not spent grain but unmalted or flaked grains. Most of these can be purchased from a shop catering to home brewing of beers or possibly a health food store or online search.

The dough rose fairly well in the bread pans , noting that milled spent grain was used to coat the sticky dough.

And then to the oven , lately the technique of starting the baking in a cold oven has improved the uniformity of the crumb as with the dark well used pans and very hot oven gave a denser crumb at the bottom. Usually I bake at a temp of about 400 degrees or better but the wet grainy doughs probably would benefit from a lower and longer baking period.
But the most of the bread baking including the the amount of yeast is geared for a quick production of bread, the modification of a longer time frame like letting the dough ferment in the fridge and using less yeast is a technique that needs to be worked on.

Freshly cut needs more resting time to cool.

The loaves are surprisingly light and springy.
Does this batch of bread taste any different than bread containing ground spent grains?
Update addendum :
After baking another batch with spent grains and comparing them the answer is yes, it is much more grain gritty than the spent grain and possibly one of the future batches will use the milled ground grains after they are soaked a while. That is make a soaker of the raw milled gains then incorporate them into the recipe.

With the baking complete, the taste is ok, maybe needs more sugar, the definite taste of grains is apparent and the long lasting taste and gut filling feeling. If you find store bought sliced sandwich bread to be as adequate, then you may be satisfied with 1/2 a slice of this. It’s one of those breads that will stay with you well after consuming it. Over all spent grain additions has a lighter taste than using raw grains, I would add less raw grains in the future. The spent milled grains additions has a lighter flavor and texture.

Adding milled grains whether raw or spent continues….

*A note about the grinder, a Cuisinart Model DBM8, is used often to grind coffee and is several years old. Parts for this are still available as the top hopper assembly has been replaced recently and consist of the upper stationary burr. It has lasted longer than previously powered coffee burr grinders and sometimes can be found online as a reconditioned or overstock model at a reasonable price. It is worth the price as long as replacement parts are available. Am considering a hand grain grinder though as it might yield a finer grind. Most electric powered grinders for grain are very expensive ( new) though I haven’t searched other sources like EBay .

Really crusty bread

I read a post about Daring Bakers: Dutch Crunch Rolls and wondered how it would be a full loaf of bread vs. the rolls. The recipe is here http://korenainthekitchen.com/2012/03/27/daring-bakers-dutch-crunch-rolls/ for rolls the bread recipe is http://baking-jds.blogspot.ca/

none the less here is my results on two white with wheat loaves.

 

 

If you ever wanted a really crusty finish to to your loaves and tried different methods of coating the crust, milk, water etc., then this is the way to go! Soft crumb interior and crunchy almost cracker like crust, reminiscent of a crusty Italian bread. The only thought I had was if there was an alternate method of getting the crust, as the recipe for the slurry like frosting that’s applied to the bread just before baking calls for yeast, a tablespoon. I used 1/2 the topping recipe and substituted potato starch instead of the required rice flour (it’s supposed to be  a non glutinous flour). To me that’s  a lot of yeast for just the small amount of topping and would try in the future different combinations. Why the yeast if it doesn’t really rise at all?

Aside from that, an awesome impressive crusty loaf …..