Mézeskalács - Hungarian gingerbread

Today I was inspired by the Hungarian gingerbread making at the House of Hungary in Balboa park, so I decorated our home made gingerbread cookie after our arrival home with a different technique then I usually do...
It is easy to be made with kids for Xmas.
The recipe came from a Hungarian site as I didn't find my cook book yet.. Messy me :).
You can find the original at A büfé, for those who read Hungarian it might be more enjoyable.
For those who don't, here is the English version.

Ingredients 
300 g pastry flour
50 g whole wheat flour
150 g acacia honey, I actually used ginger honey, but use any type of not so thick honey
100 g icing (castor) sugar
1 tsp cocoa powder – optional, only for color, you can make different shades of gingerbread
1 tsp baking soda (flat)
60 g butter
1 egg + 1 egg yolk (save the white for the icing/decoration on top)
1/2 - 1 tsp cinnamon (depends how spicy you like the gingerbread)
1/2 - 1 tsp clove, minced (depends how spicy you like the gingerbread) 
pinch of minced ginger – optional

Icing
1 egg white
200 g icing sugar
1 small tsp vinegar - optional, makes the icing more shiny
food coloring
2 tbsp of food starch - needed only if you want more professional looking cookies, of course healthier without

Preheat the oven to 180 C, 355 F. Mix the dry ingredients like flour, icing sugar, spices, baking soda.
Add the room temperature butter and crumble it in the flour mix.
Heat the honey to a bit higher temperature then the body temperature (approx 50-60 C, 120-140 F) and add it to the mixture.
Last, but not least, add the egg and the egg yolk, mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon.
Wrap it with cling wrap and let it cool for at least 15 minutes in the fridge. I forgot it for about 4 hours and it was still good :), so I suppose you can leave it for overnight if time is tight.
Divide it into three 3 parts (roughly, it is only for convenience) and roll it out 2-3 mm thick. You can add a little flour at the bottom and top if the dough is too sticky.
Cut it with your favorite shapes and place them onto trays covered with baking paper. Put approximately same size cookies in the same tray as the smaller ones need less, the bigger ones more baking.
Bake it for 8-10 minutes (8 min softer texture, 10 min easier to handle), and let them cool on a flat surface.
You can store them in airtight containers for weeks, with the honey they will only get softer :).
Enjoy.

PS. My suggestion would be NOT to add any cocoa powder at the beginning but rather mix all the other ingredients, divide the dough into three parts, leave one part as it is, add one half a teaspoon of cocoa powder to the second, and one teaspoon of cocoa powder to the third part.
You will right away have a nice variety of shades, and they look great on the plate.

Tomorrow we will bake the Finnish style Xmas gingerbread called Piparkakku, which has a bit different spices, more butter, and maple sirup instead of honey. If interested come back a bit later for the recipe, I can't promise though that it will come right tomorrow :).

The bread experiment results

And now it's time to announce the winner :D.

First here it comes each bread analyzed thoroughly.
The bread:
OMG..
One bread was better then the other, with a bit different structure, almost unobservable difference in taste.
The bread from Costco and Red Mill grew higher, the others were more flat, but just a tiny bit.
It didn't affect though the crumb or the crust.
The crust was crunchy for all of them, and the crumb had the lovely big holes and spongy texture.
As I expected, there is a rule of thumb though:
- the stickier (more wet) the dough the more flat the bread, and vice versa, the "harder" the dough, the more round and high the bread.

The differences
The tiny differences we observed were referring to texture or taste.
- Costco had a pale color, great texture, OK taste
- Red Mill had thicker crust (can mean that the flour is "strong" and more water would have been better for crunchier crust..), white color, great texture and taste
- Gold Medal had yellowish color, softer than the others but great texture and taste
- Sprouts flour bread was OK, but not so great, more flat than the others, color between the white and the yellow, taste good
- King Arthur, (tasted only by me later) had a not so white color, great texture and great taste.

Overall whichever you choose, you can not go wrong. The bread will be good, the taste and texture good.
You better measure the flour though instead of relying on the 700 ml, as I mentioned earlier from some flours the 450 gr made 750 ml not 700 ml, if you put 700 ml flour the dough will be more watery and the bread more flat.
If I would bake them next time (and I obviously will as I have plenty left from each flour) I would experiment with adding or taking away from the amount of flour to get the perfect crumb, crust and shape.

The winner:
The Gold Medal was the favorite of the hubby and the boys, the Red Mill was the favorite of my daughter, followed by the King Arthur, Costco and last the Sprouts..
And, to my biggest surprise, my winner is the King Arthur, followed by the Red Mill, Gold medal, Costco and last the Sprouts.

At least we all agreed that the Sprouts unbleached white was this time the worst, even if it was overall an absolutely good bread.
My winner was a surprise because the King Arthur had the most wet dough, the most difficult to put it in the pot and I've given up on it.

Now, all of them are wrapped and placed in plastic bags, and is to be seen which one keeps its texture and freshness longer, so tomorrow we will repeat the feast (binge?) on bread.

Conclusion - if you want the bread that looks more like mines, go with any of the following:
- use 450 g instead of 400 g given in the original recipe, as I wrote even with 450 g the dough was so wet that I could hardly work with it and it gave a too flat bread for my liking.. 
- put 750 ml flour from SOME of the flours, *sigh*, you have to figure out which ones if you use different types then the ones from my list, but from my list I would use 750 from King Arthur, Sprouts white and Gold Medal.
- measure it at least ones when you try a new flour
- just simply trust your fingers when you have more experience :).

Bread experiment

I was told by my friends that their bread is not necessarily rising so well, the crumb's structure is different, etc.. Anyway, all in all is not as nice as mine.

OK, I'm perfectionist when it comes to my cooking, even more when it comes to my recipes.
If I give a recipe it needs to be perfect :D.

So, I decided to start an experiment with my lovely bread, and about 5 types of flour, 'cause that was obvious to me from experience that the difference must come from the flour, and from the pot used.

I'm using two types of pots: the perfect one is the one meant for induction, has a thick bottom but lighter sidewall, the other is an Iittala Tools pot, perfect bottom, a bit thicker walls, makes good bread, but I prefer the other.. And now the flour..

I used the following flours:
- Red Mill organic unbleached white flour -
- Costo bread flour, bleached (unfortunately) the 25 lb package
- Sprouts unbleached white flour - from the bulk department
- Gold medal unbleached all purpose flour - I bough it from Target, but I found somewhere that Walmart carries it as well (feel free to try other types as well)
- King Arthur unbleached bread flour - from Sprouts, but other shops might carry it

We made a big tasting evening, baked all five breads at a time, and eat from all four breads except the King Arthur, as it was the last to go to the oven and it wasn't ready to cut before we started dinner.

Now, what I did and I learned..

The process:
First, I measured the 700 ml of each flour.
More precisely I started with the Costco.
I put it on the scale, and it wasn't 400 g as stated in the recipe, but 450 g. Whether is good or bad, you decide. I knew my bread is very good with the Costco 700 ml, turned to be 450 g, so I decided to go with the 450 g instead of the 400 g.
Next I measured the Red Mill, followed by the Sprouts and Gold medal, and last the King Arthur.
To my surprise, from the Sprouts and Gold medal 450 g wasn't 700 ml, but rather 750 ml. So, there you go.. And the dough was still more watery then from the Costco and Red Mill. I don't know how it was with the King Arthur, I lost patience to pour it back to the ml measurement bowl. 
I let them ferment overnight, about 20 hours.
Next day I started to dump the dough on the table (with two at a time as two of them fit in my oven) and let them rise for two more hours under a cloth.

The dough at mixing time:
- Costco and Red Mill organic flour behaved about the same
- all other three, Sprouts, Golden Medal and King Arthur (especially the last) were more sticky then I like my dough, but I resisted to add a bit extra flour, just for the sake of the experiment.

The dough after 20 and the +2 hours time:
They looked all nice and bubbly, with the fermented smell
- Costco and Red Mill organic flour behaved about the same, being able to form a kinda nice round loaf
- the Gold medal was OK-ish, with a bit more flour needed to make not to stick to the mat
- from the other three I didn't manage to make a roundish loaf at all, they were all deliquescent somethings, let's call the still loafs :D.
Same applies to the result after the two extra hours rising, or I would say the were even more deliquescent.
My biggest challenge was getting the loafs off from the pastry board, as they were so sticky the silicon slab was coming with them :).
I heated the oven to 440 F (435 is enough, mine is not working perfectly..).
I put the bread in the preheated oven AND pot for 30 minutes. Make sure the pot is VERY hot or the bread will stick to the bottom and it will be impossible to get it out.
Then I took off the lid, made the temperature to 550 and let it for another 20 minutes.
I took them out in 2 cloths / bread, and let the cool for at least 1.5 hour each.

Home made, country style bread

This is a must to start with.. You know why..
Well, mostly because it is just gorgeous, second because it is the most sought after recipe among the local Hungarian community.
Though the fame of the bread and the recipes goes under my name, I have to roll the ball to the one who really deserves it, New York baker Jim Lahey, the father of this gorgeous recipe.

To all my bread enthusiasts who asked for it, I found the very original bread recipe, with exact measurements. So, there is nothing left but to enjoy.

I started baking this bread in July, shortly after our arrival to Dan Diego, for the very simple reason that I didn't find any bread that we really liked.
I have since experimented with flours..
I would recommend bleached bread (all purpose) flour to get the best whiteness and rise, or if you are against it like me, buy the unbleached bread flour for best Hungarian type “white bread” results. With these two flours the bread will be white, with sponge like crust, and big holes thanks to fermentation.

Other flours work well, too, with a bit of change in texture: the crumb is more heavy, but the taste might be preferred even by some, as it has “more flavor”. We like the version with one unbleached flour combined even with 1/3rd whole wheat flour, but I advice you to experiment..

If you use 1/3 rd whole wheat or rye flour, keep the lid ON a bit longer, as the bread will rise slower.
Anyway, a good rule of thumb: the lower the protein the lighter the bread crumb.
If you like the fresh crust, my ABSOLUTE favorite, and its difficult to measure precisely the 350 ml of water, the advice would be that you use more water than less, the bread might not rise as high but the crumb is more “spongeous” and keeps its freshness longer..

If you haven't visited Jim's web site, here you have the recipe:

No-kneed bread ingredients
700 ml flour
1 teaspoon salt (without iodine)
1/8 teaspoon yeast
350 ml water

Mix the dry ingredients, add the water until the dough absorbs all the flour, but do not work on it too much, the dough is (and should be) very sticky!
Let it stay overnight, at least 12 hours, or better 16-18 hours covered with a cloth.
Then dump it to a floured surface, fold it couple of times like you fold an envelope, and let it rise for two hours, under a cloth.
At the end of the two hours, heat the oven to 225-230 C (435-440 F) with a pot & lid in it.
When the oven & pot are both very hot gently place the dough in the pot, cover it with the lid, and let it bake for 30 minutes.
Remove the lid, and let it bake for additional 20-25 minutes, until the crust is golden brown.
Wrap the bread in two table cloths, and let it cool for at least one hour.
Enjoy!