Making the fake, real: yogurt onion herb bread

Last week, Annalena wrote to you of her hiatus from bread baking, and her new approach. I made a loaf of sun dried tomato/olive bread that was amazing, if I say so myself (and I do). I ate the last piece of it with cheese on Friday and was very pleased.
So, as last week, progressed, I began to look for another bread, for this week, and I found something called "buttermilk onion bread." I read the description, which said that it really worked well as a sandwich roll. The Guyman and I eat either chicken sausage, or chicken breast for lunch every single day of the work week, so something that makes appealing rolls is, well, appealing to Annalena. I knew that the buttermilk would be switched to yogurt, no big deal there, and I didn't look further into the recipe. Today, I did.

UGH. Here are some of the ingredients in the original recipe:

sugar
dried minced oinon
dried parsley
onion powder
dried dill.

With the exception of sugar, Annalena has none of those ingredients in her home, and she never will. You have read her rants about dried green herbs: they are, essentially, green confetti. Dried minced onion is ok, and in some applications, is actually better than the real thing but they are few and far between.

Onion powder is salt flavored with onion juice, and stabilizers.

This was not going to do; however, the idea of yogurt, onion, and herbs is really something that sounds good, isn't it? So, Annalena got to work. And now ,the digression.

Annalena knows that not all of you out there are bread bakers, and that it scares many of you. PLEASE get over it. Get a GOOD bread book (I can make recommendations), and make them. And as you get experienced, you can do things like Annalena does here, and change the recipes. That comes with experience, but if you do the basics, you will still have a really good loaf of bread and you will feel very good about yourself, too.

So, here's how I changed the recipe. First, I diced up a small onion, very fine. Then I went to our rooftop and collected fresh herbs: chives mostly, but also thyme, parsley, and dill. If you look at this, it's the fresh version of what the original recipe called for. I chopped the herbs, until I had a generous half cup of them (incidentally, you can use whatever herbs you like. For an onion bread, though, use mostly scallion and chives).

Now, in a bowl, combine 1.5 cups of yogurt with milk to bring it to just over 2 cups. There's your buttermilk. Add two tablespoons of butter (it can come out of the fridge), 2 cups of white flour (unbleached), and 2 of whole wheat, the onion and herbs, and a tablespoon of yeast. Either start mixing this up with your hands, or use your mixer, with the paddle, to get it combined together. When it's uniform (it won't take long, add another two cups of flour.

Here, you will have to play with liquids. Start adding cold water, a tablespoon at a time, and add it until you have a dough that is just starting to get sticky. When you have that, either use your dough hook, and go for 8 minutes, or use the letter folding technique I write about in other entries, to get the smooth type of loaf described.

Put this in a bowl, covered, for an hour and a half. Then, punch it down and form, either 8 large round rolls, or two round loaves, or as I did, four and one. Put them on a parchment paper lined baking sheet, cover them, and go away for an hour, while you preheat the oven to 350.

Get these into the oven, and bake, for about 30 minutes. The smell that emanates from your kitchen will make you want bread... NOW. Patience. As they cool, the house will continue to smell wonderful, and you can be very proud of yourself.

No synthetics, and a bread that is actually pretty good for you. Can't beat that.