Lots of things have happened since the last time I wrote a Cooking Eorzea column. I have traveled to Oklahoma and back to Florida, and I have managed to (mostly) recover from the burns on my left hand from a prior Cooking Eorzea attempt.
I am also doing something incredibly crazy, and more than a little reckless, and I am having an internet stranger that I’ve known for 25 days visit me for six days this Thursday. There are lots of different plans in and about California that we are doing, and I am incredibly nervous about this. She and I have become quickly connected, however, and she actually was the one who said she wanted to come.
I am definitely taking a risk, but I need to take more risks. I am trying to explore more things, whether it be through kendo or Cooking Eorzea or by making new friends. I am incredibly nervous, to be honest. I don’t know how any of this will turn out, but I will try my best to have fun in the meantime.
And of course, Cooking Eorzea will continue on.
If you’ve missed an installment of Cooking Eorzea, you can check out all the prior recipes here.
Recipe of the Week
This week’s Cooking Eorzea recipe hails from the Coerthas region of Eorzea. The 26th recipe in The Ultimate FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook with a difficulty rating of ‘Easy’, it is also the second-to-last bread recipe that I will have to make. I have definitely gotten the hang of making breads by now, and so I am fairly optimistic about how this attempt will turn out.
Here is what Knight’s Bread is supposed to look like:
Featured Ingredient of the Week
This week’s Cooking Eorzea featured ingredient is Dark Rye Flour! This type of flour is milled from the entire rye kernel, and so it really is a whole grain rye flour. It felt definitely different to work with than other types of flour- especially all-purpose flour- and I was surprised at how basically dense it is. This flour really didn’t spill everywhere or have a tendency to get into everything like all-purpose flour did.
My Cooking Attempt
This week’s Cooking Eorzea recipe for Knight’s Bread utilized surprisingly few ingredients compared to prior bread recipes:
I first added the dark rye flour, the all-purpose flour, the salt, the basil, the yeast, and the honey together into a bowl.
It was then that I looked back at my recipe, and I saw that I wasn’t supposed to add in the honey into the dry ingredients. I also realized that I would have to toss all of those ingredients out and try again. Unfortunately, I was out of all-purpose flour and so I had to go make a late-night grocery store run.
The next day, I tried again. I added in the dark rye flour, all-purpose flour, salt, dried basil, and yeast to a bowl and then mixed it all together.
Setting aside the blended dry ingredients, I measured the temperature of the cup of warm water to make sure that it wouldn’t ultimately kill the yeast.
I then poured it into a small bowl, added in the honey, and then whisked it all together until the honey was dissolved into the warm water.
Once the honey was dissolved into the warm water, I added it into the blended dry ingredients, and I mixed the dough all together by hand.
I then kneaded the dough for a few minutes.
After kneading the dough, I covered the inside of a bowl with olive oil.
I placed the dough inside of the bowl, covered it up, and I let it rest for a couple of hours at room temperature in order for the dough to rise.
After a couple of hours, the bread had really risen up. I then placed the bowl into the refrigerator to rest for 24 hours.
The next day, I pulled the dough out and I saw that it had risen a bit more.
I kneaded the dough for a bit, and then I balled the dough into a ball.
I pulled out a sheet of parchment paper, placed the dough ball onto it, and then covered it with a kitchen towel. I then let the dough rise again for another hour.
I preheated the oven to 425 degrees. Once that was done, I placed the dutch oven into the stove, and I let it heat up as well.
As the dutch oven heated up, I took a knife and crisscrossed the top of the dough ball with two perpendicular lines.
I then placed the dough ball, and the parchment paper, into the heated dutch oven before placing the lid on top.
After a half-hour, I took the lid off and let the bread bake for another 15 or so minutes. Once it was done, I pulled it out and let the bread cool down on a wire rack.
And here is the final Knight’s Bread for this week’s Cooking Eorzea column!
I then sliced off a quarter of the Knight’s Bread and ate it! It was actually really good. I could definitely taste the rye flavor and the basil, but neither were completely overpowering. The outside was a bit too hard for how I like it, and I ended up just eating the insides as a result. The bread itself was definitely a denser bread and it was not very fluffy or airy. Knight’s Bread would be an excellent bread for dipping in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, I think.
Afterword
If I was to make this Cooking Eorzea recipe again, I would definitely make sure that I follow the instructions correctly the first time around. I was honestly not a fan of having to make the dry ingredients twice and having to make a shopping run to buy them. The outside of the Knight’s Bread was a lot tougher than I liked, as I mentioned above, and so I would probably lower the overall cooking time for this dish so that the outside would be more edible for me.
Thank you’s! Thank you’s, thank you’s, thank you’s…
As always, I want to thank Victoria Rosenthal for writing The Ultimate FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook. I also want to thank the staff over at Insight Editions for giving me permission to use the photos from their book to show how these recipes are actually supposed to look. While Knight’s Bread looked fairly close to how the cookbook’s photograph does, it is always nice to have a professional food shot. Furthermore, I also owe Brandon Rose a special thanks for creating the logo for this series on short notice. You should check him and his works out over on Twitter.
Finally, I want to thank both Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida for producing FINAL FANTASY XIV Online in both iterations of the game.
Next Week
I will be blunt- I don’t know if next week’s recipe for Walnut Bread will be occurring. I unexpectedly have a guest coming on Thursday night, and I don’t know if I will be able to get this Cooking Eorzea recipe made and written up before I have to hop a flight to see my family in my home state for a long weekend.
Regardless of what happens, please stay tuned~.
Have you ever worked with dark rye flour before? What do you think of my ever-growing bread baking skills?
Let us know in the comments below!
