Updated Bran Muffins

A few years ago, I posted a recipe for bran muffins. I've been mainly eating my chocolate chip and banana nut muffins lately, but a couple weeks ago, I suddenly decided to change pace. But the old recipe exhibits one major pet peeve of mine... it does not make a convenient amount of batter. It makes enough for one and a half trays of muffins (it says it makes a dozen, but when I went to make it again recently, it made quite a few more than that). Who wants to make a half tray? So, I decided I would adjust the recipe to make one dozen muffins. I figured that was easiest, because if I wanted to make two dozen muffins, I could easily double the recipe. Well, one thing led to another, and suddenly, I found myself playing with the recipe.

First, I want you to know that the original recipe is darn tasty. They are sweet and moist and yummy. The recipe I am about to post produces muffins that are a little more moist and not quite as sweet. In fact, they have no refined sugar in them. The majority of the sweetness in this new version comes from the dates themselves. Instead of adding chopped dates into the batter at the end, I thought I would see how the muffins tasted if date sugar were used instead. Date sugar is not really a sugar, but simply dried and ground dates. But dates are so sweet, that they can be used like sugar in many instances. In the muffins, I found its use has a few advantages. First, the muffins are so incredibly moist now. It also makes eating the muffins less sticky. Those large chunks of dates, while delicious can make a mess while eating them (especially when feeding them to a one year old!). The updated recipe also has no refined flour. In the previous post, I post the disclaimer that they are "good tasting muffins, not to be confused with 'health' muffins." In this case, I think we can confidently state that these muffins are good tasting and healthy. They're not low calorie, but they are packed with good stuff!

While I've decided I like these muffins a little less sweet, if you want yours to be a little more... decadent, you can simply add 2-4 tablespoons of brown sugar to the batter.

If you want to make your life easy while mixing the batter, pour the oil into a glass measuring cup first. Then eyeball the amount of honey. Lastly, add the molasses until the total amount reaches a half cup for the three ingredients. Not only is the measuring easy, when the oil is poured in first, it makes getting the sticky ingredients out of the cup easy too.

As for decorating the tops of the muffins, in the original, I tossed a few oats on top. I got to thinking about it, and that just doesn't make a lot of sense; there are no oats in these! A better option is either to sprinkle them with a little turbinado sugar, which is a coarse grained, unrefined sugar that gives a nice crust and sweet bite to the tops of the muffins, or to sprinkle a little bran on them. You can also leave them plain, but where's the fun in that? As darkly colored as these are, they can be a little difficult to determine when they are done. For these muffins, I always use a cake tester to be sure the muffins are done.

Updated Bran Muffins
Yield: 12 muffins

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 TBS honey
3 TBS unsulphured molasses
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
2/3 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup wheat bran

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup toasted wheat germ
1 1/4 cup date sugar, sifted to remove lumps

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. In a medium bowl, mix the first seven ingredients. Mix the bran in with the wet ingredients and let the mixture sit for 15-20 minutes so the bran can hydrate. In a small bowl, mix together the dry ingredients together. Once the bran has swelled and thickened the wet mixture, you can mix the dry ingredients into it. Spoon into lined muffin cups. A #16 disher slightly overfull will make 12 evenly sized muffins. Sprinkle the tops with either bran or turbinado sugar. Bake at 375 degrees for 18-20 minutes, until a tester comes out clean. Let cool slightly before serving. Keeps well in the freezer. Reheat in the microwave to enjoy at your leisure.

Farro Love

Curiosity about new foods is a key aspect of how I operate in the kitchen. Sometimes it takes a bit longer to get around to trying something than I might like to admit, but I'll get there eventually. Sometimes I get a little prompt by being presented a food while eating out elsewhere, and that's usually never a bad thing. Take this grain, for instance. I first had it about three months ago at a catered event and immediately fell in love. What a wonderfully flavorful, easy to cook, chewy, tasty delight!

Farro is a grain within the wheat family, but is botanically different enough that some people who are allergic to the modern wheat variety found most commonly in the grocery can tolerate farro. Farro is also known as emmer wheat, and while it appears to have been cultivated in antiquity (i.e. thousands of years ago), its modern resurgence is fairly recent (as in the early 1900s). Most farro available for purchase today in the United States is grown in Italy.

While farro berries look very much like wheat berries, they cook very differently because most farro you'll find has been pearled (had the outer husk and much of the bran removed). Removing this bran casing allows the grain to cook much more quickly. You can visually judge how much of the bran has been removed by looking at the color of the grain; the more bran that has been removed, the lighter in color the grain will be.

So, how do you cook farro? Easily! I usually cook about one cup of the grain at a time. This will leave you with between 2 and 2 1/2 cups of cooked farro. You can round out the taste of the farro by dry toasting the grain in the pot first before adding the water. Simply turn the heat to medium, add the grain, and stir periodically until the grain gives off a nice toasty aroma. At that point, add water to cover, about 2 cups if you are cooking 1 cup of farro. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. I have had equal success with cooking my farro covered or uncovered. Simmer until the grain is tender, about 30 minutes. It will still be chewy, but pleasantly so. Drain off any excess water and let sit for a few minutes to absorb any remaining moisture after draining.

You can then use the farro in any number of ways. I like it very much as is and there are plenty of recipes for farro salads that are really excellent. My favorite way to serve it, however, is as a side dish with a slight flavor boost. After draining, I add salt and pepper to taste. I then drizzle a tiny bit of extra virgin olive oil and a tiny drizzle of fresh squeezed orange juice into the grain and stir. Be cautious not to overdo it with the oil and juice; you want to highlight the natural flavor of the grain, not mask it. Stir and serve! Farro is another great way to include more whole grains into your diet!

Brown Rice Pudding

Phew! Apparently, I wasn't the only one getting sick of looking at whole wheat pasta! This post is gonna be a quickie, but keeps in the whole grain theme. I'm a huge fan of my rice pudding recipe. I make it as often as I dare. Not too long ago, while browsing through the selection of rice for sale in our commissary, I saw short grain brown rice. The grains are exactly the same shape as those Arborio/pearl type that I use for rice pudding, only whole grain! I was immediately intrigued. I wanted to see whether it made as good of rice pudding as the white grains.

Good news! It does! As you might imagine, the whole grain version has a bit more chewiness, which is actually quite pleasing in this dish. There's a slightly "fuller" flavor, and - overall - I was just as happy eating the whole grain version as I am the regular.

You make it virtually the same way, I just switched a little bit of the water and milk around and added a little more time to the first step. I simmered the brown rice in 3 cups of water for 40 minutes (instead of 2 cups for 20 minutes) and then only added 2 cups of milk to finish it off (versus the 3 cups in the original recipe). Otherwise, do everything else the same. Delicious!

Whole Wheat Pasta

There's just something about homemade pasta. In particular, there's really something special about homemade whole wheat pasta. In my opinion, most store bought whole wheat pasta just isn't worth a darn. Now, I won't lie to you... making pasta is definitely more labor intensive than opening a box, but I'd say it's worth it - at least some of the time. What does that mean? It means that depending on what I've got going on, either I will open a box or I will prepare a batch of noodles from scratch. The nice thing, is that you can make extra when you do make homemade noodles and freeze or dry them for future convenience.

Making whole wheat pasta surprisingly provides you with a plethora of options. Not only can you decide how much whole wheat flour you want to use... go with 100% or 25%, whatever you fancy, but you can decide which type of whole wheat flour to use. Five years ago, when I first came across white whole wheat flour, it was a bit tricky to find. Now days, however, it seems to be everywhere. White whole wheat is only different from your typical whole wheat in the type of wheat berry that is ground up. Your regular wheat flour is usually a hard red wheat. White whole wheat is hard white wheat, which is lighter in color and more delicate in taste. In the picture below, you can see the differences (from left to right) between white whole wheat, regular whole wheat, and all purpose flours. I chose to use white whole wheat for this pasta because it would have a softer, milder flavor that I think is better in a pasta. After all, for the most part, pasta is a vehicle for other flavors; it shouldn't overpower them.

I strongly advise using a stand mixer to make this pasta. While you can mix the dough by hand and roll it through a hand-crank pasta mill... phew! I've done it. it's hard work! The KitchenAid will do most of the heavy lifting for you. Mix all the ingredients in the bowl of the mixer, fitted with a dough hook. Turn the mixer to speed 2 and process until the mixture is completely wetted. Notice that it will never completely come together on its own, but will continue to look like crumbles. Once it is completely mixed, continue processing for another 2 minutes.

Because ambient humidity can lead to significant differences in the moisture of the dough, you will need to test the moisture level of the dough. To do this, turn the mixer off and grab a small handful. Squeeze it together. If it forms a cohesive mass, then you are good to go. If it falls back apart, crumble the handful back into the mixer bowl and add another tablespoon of water. Mix for 1-2 minutes before testing again. Continue until the moisture level is right.

Grab handfuls of crumbles and press them together to form balls. Shoot for 8-9 balls. Place them in a plastic bag to keep them from drying out. Let them rest for 20-30 minutes. You will be amazed what that short amount of time will do to the texture of this dough. When you first shape them, the dough will be fairly rigid and slightly crumbly. Afterwards, it will be more tender and malleable. It's still a stiff dough, but you will definitely be able to tell the difference.

After the dough has rested, pull one dough ball out at a time. Press the ball flat on the counter.

Feed the dough through the flat roller fitted to your stand mixer. Start with the widest setting. The first couple of feeds, all on setting one, are a continuation of the kneading process, so don't skip them. I run it through the first time just as the flattened disk. Then I fold the result over and feed it folded seam first back through the roller, still on setting one.

After doing that a few times, the shape is often a bit funky, so I fold it up like a tri-fold brochure.

I then feed the tri-fold brochure through the roller open end first. This leaves you with a nicely shaped piece of dough. It takes a little practice to get it perfect, but remember, even if it doesn't look perfect, it will still taste good!

Now you can start reducing the width of the rollers. Once I get off setting one, I only roll it once each through the remaining settings. In this case, I went up to setting seven; I wanted my pasta fairly thin.

The dough gets really dang long, so I cut it into manageable lengths with a pizza cutter. In this case, I cut them into 6-8 inch lengths. The dough is dry enough that it can be stacked without the layers sticking together.

The next step is to cut the pasta. I made fettuccine. I placed a large bowl underneath the cutter to catch the pieces. What is that in the bottom of the bowl, you might ask? Semolina flour, which is a coarsely ground flour works really well to keep pasta from sticking together. What is great about using the semolina in this function, is that it falls off the dough when you cook the pasta. If you use all purpose of whole wheat flour to keep the dough from sticking, it gets goopy and sticky when the pasta cooks and makes a bit of a mess of it.

Periodically, toss the pasta around to get it well coated so that it doesn't stick together.

Lay it out on sheet pans while you cut the rest of the pasta. You now have a couple of options: you can cook the pasta immediately, you can let the pasta sit on the counter until you are ready to cook the pasta, you can spread the pasta out a single layer thick for a few days until it is brittle dry, or you can gently place it into bags and freeze it.

If prepared fresh, this pasta takes almost no time to cook... 2-3 minutes at most, so be prepared!

Whole Wheat Pasta

Yield: 1 - 1 1/2 pounds of dough

3 1/2 cups flour (for proper hydration, use at least 50% whole wheat)

1/2 tsp salt

4 large eggs

water

semolina flour, for dusting

In a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, mix the flour and salt. In a liquid cup measure, break four whole eggs. Gently beat and then add enough water to make one cup of liquid. Add the liquid to the flour mixture. Process on speed 2 until it is completely wetted. Check for proper hydration by taking a small handful of the mixture and squeezing it into a ball. If the ball falls apart, add another tablespoon of water and process again. Continue in this manner until the dough forms a nice clump, then mix another 2 minutes. Press the crumbles into 8-9 balls of dough. Place in a plastic bag to rest for 20-30 minutes. The dough is then ready to be processed in a pasta mill. For details of this processes, see the above post.