Grow and Bake: Herb Bread

Ready-to-eat soft herb rolls.

A great way to make use of your edible garden plants is to improvise in the kitchen once in a while. I love the kitchen and I've made quite a few recipes with our garden fruits (and veggies), some of which I've shared with you such as a basil pesto, and arugula pesto recipe. Today I want to tell you about a bread recipe we tried. A dear friend (you know who you are and we hope you are reading this) came to visit us and he taught us how to do several kinds of bread. Of course, we wanted to use our garden herbs to make them more tasty. We initially used thyme but we have repeated the recipe several times using basil and rosemary. These three herbs are among the Top 8 Herbs to Grow for Bread Baking.

Making bread is tricky. It's not just about following a recipe. You need to familiarize yourself with certain basic concepts and have some specialized equipment at hand. Let's go over them.

Before you even start looking at the ingredients you will need the following equipment: a measuring scale, a mixer, and a baking thermometer. You will need a scale to measure ingredients because their weight is affected by humidity and elevation. The mixer is optional but preferable as it takes a lot longer to knead by hand. The thermometer needs to be able to measure up to 400ºF (200ºC). Beware that most meat thermometers do not reach these temperatures.

The bread recipe we use includes ingredients you are likely not to have at home, so make sure you have all the ingredients before starting anything.

Ingredients:

• 12.5oz (375g) water
• 0.75oz (22g) yeast, fresh
• 1lb 5oz (625g) bread flour
• 0.4oz (12g) salt
• 2oz (60g) sugar
• 1oz (30g) nonfat milk solids
• 1oz (30g) shortening
• 1oz (30g) butter

Mise en place

Perform your mise en place (Editor's note: yes, Jessica also likes the fancy words) by placing each weighted ingredient separately in small bowls. Either by hand or in the mixer start by mixing fatty ingredients such as shortening and butter. This will start breaking the fats which makes everything mix better. Add the salt, milk solids, water, and sugar and start adding little by little some of the flour. After mixing for a minute or two, stop the mixer.

Lay a bed of flour on the top of the mixture and on top of that add the yeast. Note that the recipe calls for fresh yeast but we used instant yeast with no observable differences. You can substitute for active yeast but this is not recommended as the dough will not rise much and the bread will be dense and hard (believe us, we know by experience). You want bread to be soft and fluffy. Top the yeast with more flour and start mixer again. The reason to place the yeast in between layers of flour is because the milk and salt kill the yeast. Add 1/4 of the remaining flour and then gradually keep adding flour. It is possible (although unlikely given Puerto Rico's humidity) that you won't need all your measured flour.

Pay close attention to the dough, it will start to separate from the mixer bowl walls becoming a ball around the mixer attachment. When the dough has detached completely, including from the bottom of the mixer bowl, stop the mixer and do the dough windowpane test. The dough windowpane can be verified by taking a tiny portion of the dough and stretching it between your fingers. You should be able to see the dough stretch about an inch without breaking. If the window breaks it is not ready. Keep adding flour until the mixture detaches from the bottom and the appropriate dough windowpane is observed.

When the dough is ready it is time to add your herbs. About 0.18oz to 0.28oz (5g to 8g) of your favorite herb is enough. Decide based on how strong the flavor of the herb is and the intensity you want on the bread. We used 5g of thyme, about 5g of rosemary and 8g of basil for ours.

Pinch dough while rolling

Fermentation is an important part of the process. Create a ball with the dough, folding the sides over the center towards the bottom part of the dough until you create a seam-free ball. Roll the dough in a tight circle on a flat surface such as the kitchen counter to make the surface as smooth as possible. Don't use too much flour to dust the surface, the dough must stick a little to the counter for the technique to work. Pinch the dough against a flat surface (read: kitchen counter) for better results.

Place the dough on a deep bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let it ferment for 1 to 1-1/4 hours at room temperature. If you used fresh instant yeast, the dough should double in size. Remember that with active yeast, the dough won't grow too much (yes, active sucks). When fermentation time has elapsed, punch down the dough allowing air to escape. The punch relieves stress on gluten, squeezes out excess carbon dioxide, and divides air pockets evenly which makes it easier to shape the dough resulting in softer bread.

First fermentation: 1 to 1-1/4 hour

This dough can be used to make loafs, soft rolls and even cinnamon bread. We decided to do soft rolls. Divide the dough into 2oz pieces, it will yield about 20 bread rolls. Roll each piece into seam-free balls as before.

Now we need to perform a second fermentation, better known as proofing, for 15 to 30 minutes in a high temperature, high humidity environment. Tip: You can use your microwave. Bring water to a boil in a small bowl and place your rolls inside. The steam will create enough heat and humidity for this second fermentation.

If you want your rolls to be nice and golden you can brush eggs whites or butter on top of the rolls. Bake at 400ºF (200ºC) until rolls have reached the same internal temperature. To check the temperature place thermometer (finally we get to use the thermometer!) from the side so as not to disrupt the aesthetic of the rolls. The rolls should reach the appropriate temperature in about 15 to 20 minutes.

Let them cool down a little before eating, chemical processes are still happening for several minutes after your remove them from the oven and the flavor would be different. Spread some butter or cream cheese and enjoy!

Update: Our "dear friend" came over to our house and notified us of some errors in this post. So we've made some slight corrections. We apologize for this inconvenience and thank you for choosing container gardening in Puerto Rico.

Attack of the Rotten Tomatoes

Blossom end rot on our roma tomatoes.

Dear reader, it seems we never run out of problems in our little garden (Good thing we never said we were experts). Our loss is your gain though. We planted a Roma tomato plant a few weeks ago. Everything was progressing nicely. The plant was growing, flowers were blooming, fruit was growing. How happy we were. That would soon change (yes, I'm being overly dramatic but editorializing is "in" these days).

We started noticing a small dark spot on the bottom of one of the fruits. "No big deal" I thought, probably a bird nibbled on it. It's salvageable. The next day the spot was larger. The day after that the spot was even larger and an adjacent tomato also had a similar spot. Houston, we have a problem. (Good thing I had foreshadowed this in the previous paragraph or you would be in for a surprise at this point).

The problem? Blossom end rot. Actually, if we were to go overly technical (which I tend to) the problem is calcium deficiency. "Blossom end rot" is just a description of what we see. Now at this point you are probably thinking "I'll just add calcium to the soil and fix the problem". Having proper amounts of calcium at the time the fruit sets prevents blossom end rot which is why we recommend placing crushed egg shells near the roots when transplanting tomatoes, peppers or any other member of the Nightshade family. However, more often than not the cause for the calcium defficiency is not a low amount of calcium in the soil but rather one of the following: uneven soil moisture, improper use of high nitrogen fertilizer, or high amounts of phosphorus.

This disorder typically affects the first fruits of the season and once it presents itself it is very hard to overcome. Therefore, the best strategy is prevention. If you use a high quality potting soil phosphorus shouldn't be a problem. Also, if you follow the manufacturer recommended dose and fertilize every other week excess nitrogen shouldn't be a problem. In any case we recommend light fertilization when the first fruit are being set. That leaves us with uneven moisture which is the most likely cause for blossom end rot in the tropics (sure enough this was our problem). Due to the large amounts of rainfall followed by very hot temperatures maintaining a constant moisture level is always a struggle. We offer the following three tips to help overcome this challenge.

1. Mulching - Mulch reduces evaporation and helps maintain moisture in the soil. 
2. Plant placement - Placing your plants in an area where rainfall doesn't fall on them will also help you be in control of moisture rather than being at the mercy of nature. 
3. Watering - Proper watering is very important not just to prevent blossom end rot but to achieve healthy plant growth. Watering is, in theory, simple. Don't overwater your plants and don't let them dry out. In practice, watering requires knowledge, skill, experience, and intuition. A good rule of thumb is to touch the soil. If it feels hot it needs water; if it's cool it doesn't need water. However, each plant has different moisture needs which is why we say several attributes are needed in practice.

We hope you never encounter blossom end rot but if you do we hope this post helps. Just remember to be patient. It takes time to heal after all.