06.29.08
Posted in Bread, Breakfast, Dessert, Dinner, Foodblog Events, Fruits at 10:45 am by julie
I was excited when I found out that this month’s Daring Bakers challenge would be Danish braids, but the time commitment of making laminated dough must have been more intimidating than I was willing to admit, because I procrastinated until almost the last moment to make it. Finally, impending hot weather made me spring into action this past Thursday.
I took advantage of Nolan’s early afternoon nap to make the dough, or detrempe, using clementine zest and juice, vanilla paste, and ground cardamom from an elderly bottle that I know I should replace. The dough was not kind to my stand mixer, and kept trying to escape out the top of the bowl, so I had to babysit it. It came out rather firm and very slightly tacky, and went in the fridge while I made the butter block, or beurrage.
Then I remembered that my stand mixer bowl always screws itself up tight when I make dough, so much that I can’t actually unscrew it myself. Jeremy was still at work, so I ended up having to wash out the bowl while it was still attached to the mixer. Bah. I left everything for half an hour to go pump and feed the little guy (who, I have to brag, was having an incredibly cheerful day, probably to make up for the post-vaccination shriekfest of the evening before).
The actual lamination process took much less dedicated time than I had expected: four turns half an hour apart, each requiring no more than about 5 minutes at once. Piece of cake… or Danish, as the case may be!
The next day, around the same time of afternoon, I sauteed up some Fuji apples and pondered my other filling options while making the braid. This process was pretty straightforward, and I took other Daring Bakers’ advice to make sure that my cut slices were long enough to completely cover the filling and anchor with a little pressure on the opposite side.
Two hours and an egg wash later, my braid went in the oven, only slightly enlarged from its original state. I baked for 5 minutes at 400F as the recipe called for, then turned down the temp to 350F and left it in for just another 5 minutes, after which it was nicely browned. Once it had cooled a bit, we ate slices with vanilla ice cream and a drizzle of the syrup from the sauteed apples.
The leftovers were polished off for breakfast yesterday morning, graced with a drizzle of simple powdered sugar icing. I was pleased to note that the bread softened up a bit to that ideal Danish texture after its overnight rest.
Fortified with apple Danish, I settled on using the remainder of the dough on smaller pastries with a variety of shapes and fillings. This was really fun to play with, and I didn’t even have the energy to get as creative as many of my fellow Daring Bakers did. I made 3 small Danishes with dollops of leftover grape pie filling I pulled out of the freezer, and a few mini chocolate croissants. I also made two types of bear claws. The first four had the traditional cinnamon-almond filling, made with homemade almond paste; for the rest, I added some golden raisins and my leftover sauteed apples, finely chopped, to the almond filling at Jeremy’s request. I got everything made up, egg washed and proofing in my 85F-degree house (it was 100F outside at this point), and we tried vainly to cool down with scoops of ice cream; I topped Jeremy’s scoop with the last few spoonfuls of apple-almond-raisin filling, and he was in heaven.
I couldn’t be happier with the way this dough turned out, especially after being so intimidated at the prospect. I envisioned butter squishing out the sides like toothpaste, but it was actually very easy to work with. It might have been a different story if I had attempted to laminate it in yesterday’s heat, though; as it was, I was very careful to roll out the portions for my small pastries in two batches to keep it from melting. The baked pastries were light and flaky with clearly discernible layers; the flavor was predominantly of orange, which I blame solely on my old bottle of cardamom (Penzeys, here I come!). The dough was so fun to shape, and made me feel almost like a professional baker. I definitely hope to make it again and play with flavors, shapes and fillings, now that I know it isn’t nearly as hard to make as it appears to be. Plus, those bear claws were awesome!
Thanks so much to Kelly of Sass & Veracity, and Ben of What’s Cookin’? for choosing this recipe, which came from Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking
Be sure to check out all of the gorgeous, creative Danishes at the Daring Bakers blogroll here.
Bearclaw Almond Filling
1/4 C butter
1/3 C firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 C almond paste (I used homemade; see below)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp grated lemon zest
Melt and simmer for about 2 minutes the butter and brown sugar. Remove from heat and stir in the remaining ingredients. Cool slightly before using.
Almond Paste
8 oz whole blanched almonds
8 oz powdered sugar
1 egg white
1/8 tsp almond extract
Combine almonds and sugar in a food processor and pulse until finely ground. Add egg white and extract and continue to pulse until mixture comes together as a thick smooth dough. Unblanched almonds can be used, but will affect the color of the paste. Makes about 2 cups.
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02.29.08
Posted in Bread, Foodblog Events at 5:05 am by julie
I’ve been so occupied with plans for March that I almost didn’t realize that February was nearly gone. This past Sunday, I was blithely sitting down to breakfast, when all of a sudden it struck me: March 1st is Saturday, and I hadn’t completed my February Daring Bakers challenge yet. This was no small quandary, because Breadchick Mary of The Sour Dough and Sara of I Like to Cook had set before us a very time-intensive (but exciting!) recipe: Julia Child’s own French bread. Although, as a slow-rising yeasted bread, it would not require a great deal of active attention, this was clearly not a recipe I could pull off during the work week. I did some quick calculations to determine if it was already too late, decided I had just enough time to finish at a reasonable hour, and dashed into the kitchen.
Le Fraisage et Petrissage
As always with my Daring Bakers projects, I tried very hard to stick exactly to the recipe. In this case, I used the stand mixer variant, because I knew immediately that my 9-months pregnant body would not thank me for the effort of handkneading. (I’d like to try handkneading with Julia’s method sometime, however, because it was different from my usual two-fisted method, and I was curious to see how it works.) I did have to add an extra half-cup or more of flour to get a dough that wasn’t unmanageably sticky. Also, I was particularly proud of myself for following the step that called for removing the dough from the bowl after initial mixing, washing the bowl and dough hook, and continuing on from there—I wasn’t sure of its purpose, and every minute that ticks by seems crucial when you are afraid of running out of time, but I did it anyway.
Pointage Premier Temps
I let the dough rise in my most vertically-oriented bowl, carefully determining via water volume that the dough should rise to within an inch or two of its rim. My house is always just cool enough that yeasted doughs need a little extra boost of heat to rise in a timely fashion, so I employed my usual method of warming and then turning off my oven to use as a proofing box. Three hours later, I was good to go.
Rupture et Pointage Deuxieme
I’ve never deflated bread dough by dislodging it from the bowl with a rubber spatula before. It turned into a wrinkly, rubbery mass that kind of cracked me up for some reason, so I had to take a picture. Two hours later, my dough had risen back up to virtually the same level as the finished first rise, and was turned into a wrinkly skin flap yet again.
La Tourne; La Mise en Forme des Patons et L’appret
I decided to make three loaves from my batch of dough. I’ve never shaped batards before, just boules, so I knew that had to be part of my personal challenge. Of course, they also had to be short enough to fit on my pizza-shaped baking stone, so they ended up being rather stumpy batards. My husband has used floured canvas for shaping bread in the past, so I had two canvases all ready to go, which saved me a bit of time. He used scraps of raw linen leftover from stretching canvases for paintings; the fabric has quite a bit of body, so I didn’t find it necessary to brace the folds. I had just enough time for shaping before we headed out for a childbirth prep class, so the shaped loaves—two batards and a small boule—wound up getting nearly three hours for their final rise.
Le Demoulage et La Coupe
As soon as I got home, I started the oven preheating, and decided how to go about getting the loaves onto my baking stone. What ultimately worked best for me was unmolding the dough onto sheets of parchment paper lightly sprinkled with semolina flour and transferring them to the stone via our baker’s paddle. They unmoulded without a hitch, though I didn’t deposit my boule very centrally on the parchment and ended up having to shift it over. Slashing was not the easiest proposition because I don’t really have an appropriate tool for the job. I sharpened a knife and did my best, but I was concerned about tearing and deflating, so my slashes were all on the faint side.
Baking and Cooling (for which we were given no French terminology)
My loaves baked up perfectly. I did the boule on its own, and the two batards together. For the boule, I went to the trouble of removing the parchment from under it after I had finished the three water spritzing sessions, but had a heck of a time getting the baked loaf on the paddle afterwards (it was so light that it just slid off the stone into the back of the oven when I tried to get it), so I left the batards on their paper. My biggest concern during this step was breaking my beautifully seasoned baking stone because of the cold water/steam action, but it held up just fine.
I ended up removing the loaves from the oven a few minutes earlier than called for, once they had a deep enough color; I think this was the right move, because they were definitely done when we sliced into them. I often don’t care much for French bread because it can be quite crusty and hurts my hard palate after a while. Perhaps the baking time as called for would have produced such a crust, but my loaves came out just to my tastes: sturdy yet squeezable.
Cooling was indeed one of the most difficult aspects of this recipe. The bread was finished much too late for dinnertime once Igave it the two hours of cooling specified by the recipe, but we couldn’t resist slicing up the boule for a late night snack at 11:00pm, (with olive oil and balsamic for dipping, of course!). It was absolutely delicious. The interior was aerated and fluffy, and the crust was toothsome and full of caramelized flavor. I know some folks felt that their loaves came out salty, but we didn’t notice that at all. Jeremy is a something of an elitist when it comes to baking bread—when making it himself, he favors recipes that involve delayed fermentation, sometimes over the course of several days—and I think this was the first one-day bread I’ve made that genuinely impressed him. Twelve hours of combined rising and prep time still counts as one-day bread, right? Anyhow, we found Julia Child’s bread recipe to be a complete success, despite—or, more likely, because of—the lengthy preparation and incredible detail it requires. It may not have been a Valentine-specific challenge for February, but that doesn’t make this recipe any less a labor of love to complete.
As you know, my effort was just one of hundreds, so make sure you visit the Daring Bakers Blogroll to see how everyone else fared. If you’d like to try your hand at making Julia’s French bread as well, the (very long) recipe is available at The Sour Dough here.
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02.11.08
Posted in Bread, Breakfast, Foodblog Events at 3:05 pm by julie
Even though, for all these years, I have apparently been oblivious to the famous “Time to make the doughnuts” commercial campaign, when I heard about Helene’s and Peabody’s similarly-named challenge, I wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to try my hand at doughnut-making again. The only question was what sort of doughnut to make. We didn’t eat many Dunkin’ Donuts when I was growing up, but I still have a few fond doughnut memories. The first one that sprang to mind was eating plain cake doughnuts with hot chocolate on top of Pike’s Peak, but unless we drove up to Mount Hood to eat them, I just don’t think it would be the same. I decided to go with a childhood favorite from the grocery store: chocolate long johns.
Apparently, long johns are a regional thing—who knew? I can find unfilled chocolate bars and cream-filled round doughnuts, but the filling is always too much like pudding or custard. The filled bars I grew up with are non-existent in Oregon, though, and have consequently been added to my “unavailable cravings” list, along with funnel cakes and chicken nuggets from Chick-Fil-A. So, for this event, I decided to try my hand at Alton Brown’s yeasted doughnuts and make a few into long johns for my own personal gratification. (Jeremy doesn’t understand the attraction of long johns or funnel cakes, so the latter will have to get their own post as soon as I make acquaintance with a funnel of my very own.)
This was my first experience with making yeasted doughnuts, but the dough was easy to make and very cooperative. I started early enough the day I made them that we even ended up eating breakfast several hours before lunchtime, which may be a first for homemade yeasted breakfast foods in our house. I’m still having some issues with getting my frying temperature right to avoid greasiness, but I think that will continue to plague me until I break down and at least buy a deep fry thermometer, or even an honest-to-goodness fryer. Because there are only two of us, I cut the recipe in half, and still got 10 round doughnuts, 3 bars, and a few doughnut holes from the batch. Everything got dipped in the chocolate glaze, which was absolutely luscious stuff: thick and shiny and well-behaved.
For my three long johns, I picked out a filling recipe that sounded very much along the lines of what I remembered from childhood: nothing remotely dairy about it, just sugar and fat made up into a fluffy sort of frosting (mmm, I can’t imagine why Jeremy wouldn’t want one!). I do think I was in the right vein, but the particular recipe I tried ended up staying gritty even after 15 minutes in the stand mixer, so it wasn’t quite right. Still, it was close enough to tide me over until the next time we go back to Colorado for a visit, and now I can let myself periodically buy the yummy fresh doughnuts from King Donuts—just a few blocks from our house—without resentment or regret at their decided lack of long johns. (Oh, and just for the record… I’ve never eaten a Krispy Kreme doughnut, and I’m kind of proud of it, too!)
Yeasted Doughnuts
3/4 C milk
1 1/4 oz vegetable shortening
1 package instant yeast
3 T C warm water (95 to 105 degrees F)
1 egg, beaten
2 T sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
12 ounces AP flour, plus more for dusting surface
Peanut or vegetable oil, for frying
Place the milk in a medium saucepan and heat over medium heat just until warm enough to melt the shortening. Place the shortening in a bowl and pour warmed milk over. Set aside.
In a small bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the warm water and let dissolve for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, pour the yeast mixture into the large bowl of a stand mixer and add the milk and shortening mixture, first making sure the milk and shortening mixture has cooled to lukewarm. Add the eggs, sugar, salt, nutmeg, and half of the flour. Using the paddle attachment, combine the ingredients on low speed until flour is incorporated and then turn the speed up to medium and beat until well combined. Add the remaining flour, combining on low speed at first, and then increase the speed to medium and beat well. Change to the dough hook attachment of the mixer and beat on medium speed until the dough pulls away from the bowl and becomes smooth, approximately 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer to a well-oiled bowl, cover, and let rise for 1 hour or until doubled in size.
On a well-floured surface, roll out dough to 3/8-inch thick. Cut out dough using a 2 1/2-inch doughnut cutter or pastry ring and using a 7/8-inch ring for the center hole (I used a biscuit cutter and an apple corer to make my doughnuts). Set on floured baking sheet, cover lightly with a tea towel, and let rise for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oil in a deep fryer or Dutch oven to 365 degrees F. Gently place the doughnuts into the oil, 3 to 4 at a time. Cook for 1 minute per side. Transfer to a cooling rack placed in baking pan. Allow to cool for 15 to 20 minutes prior to glazing, if desired.
If you plan to fill your doughnuts, cut the dough into either rectangles or non-perforated circles before frying. When cool, use a sharp knife to cut a pocket inside each doughnut, angling it as you cut so that the opening is smaller than the pocket itself (like stuffing chicken breasts or pork chops). Make your desired filling and pipe it into the pockets, making sure to use enough filling to entirely fill the pocket.
Source: Adapted from Good Eats, with Alton Brown.
Chocolate Doughnut Glaze
1/4 C unsalted butter
2 T whole milk, warmed
1 1/2 tsp light corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 C confectioners’ sugar, sifted
Combine butter, milk, corn syrup, and vanilla in medium saucepan and heat over medium heat until butter is melted. Decrease the heat to low, add the chocolate, and whisk until melted. Turn off heat, add the powdered sugar, and whisk until smooth. Place the mixture over a bowl of warm water and dip the doughnuts immediately. Allow glaze to set for 30 minutes before serving.
Source: Adapted from Good Eats, with Alton Brown.
Creme Filling
1/2 C shortening (I used Spectrum)
1/2 C confectioners’ sugar
1/2 C white sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Using an electric mixer, whip shortening in a medium bowl with confectioners’ sugar and white sugar until creamy and no longer gritty, 5 to 10 minutes.
Source: Adapted from AllRecipes.
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12.11.07
Posted in American, Beef, Bread, Cuisines, Dinner, Lunch, Meats at 12:02 pm by julie
We brought home a brisket for dinner on Sunday afternoon, and I immediately started thinking about braises. But after paging through my braising bible and browsing one uninspiring recipe after another online, I ended up changing tactics and going with a dry-rubbed, slow-roasted barbeque brisket recipe instead. It turned out to be the perfect solution because I had everything I needed on hand, and even got to try out my new chipotle powder and alder-smoked sea salt. Note to self: That chile powder is hot stuff; it was nearly too spicy for us even though I cut back from a tablespoon to 2 teaspoons, so if I make this again, I’ll just use one teaspoon.
I also made the suggested barbeque sauce to go with the meat, but had to improvise a little because I don’t keep chili sauce on hand. What I did have was some sweet ginger chili sauce from Ginger People that I bought as a dip for potstickers. It was way too spicy for the potstickers, at least for my sensitive tongue, but a quarter-cup of it was just enough to give the barbeque sauce a kick and a slightly exotic sweetness.
I was most proud of the buns, though. We of course had no hamburger buns, so when I popped the foil-wrapped brisket in the oven, I had to scramble to come up with a suitable barbeque-beef vehicle in the space of three hours. Turning right to my trusty Bread Baker’s Apprentice, I plunked my finger down on the first white bread recipe that didn’t require overnight fermentation and started throwing ingredients in the mixer. With a little help from some heating pads, I was able to coax the dough through both of its rises just in time to pop a dozen egg-washed rolls in the oven when the brisket was done (along with two par-microwaved baking potatoes). The rolls came out beautifully: perfectly sized and shaped, shiny and golden brown, with a soft texture that was still hearty enough to hold up against the moist beef. I will totally make these again, and will probably sneak some of my favorite white whole wheat flour in the next batch for the heck of it. There’s also a buttermilk variant in the book, so there could also be some fresh cinnamon swirl bread in our future.
Classic White Bread Burger Buns
Makes 12 burger or hot dog buns (or 2 1-lb loaves or 18 dinner rolls)
4 3/4 C unbleached bread flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/4 C powdered milk
3 1/4 T sugar
2 tsp instant yeast
1 large egg, slightly beaten, at room temp
3 1/4 T butter, melted or at room temp
1 1/2 C plus 1 T (up to 1 3/4 C) water, at room temp
1 egg, whisked with 1 tsp water until frothy (for optional egg wash)
Sesame or poppy seeds (for optional garnish)
Mix together flour, salt, powdered milk, sugar and yeast in the bowl of a 4-qt stand mixer. Pour in the egg, butter and 1 1/2 C plus 1 T water, and mix on low speed with the paddle attachment until all the flour is absorbed and the dough forms a ball. If the dough seems very stiff and dry, trickle in more water until the dough is supple.
Mix on medium speed with the dough hook, adding more flour if necessary, to create a soft, supple dough that is tacky but not sticky. Continue mixing for 6-8 minutes, during which the dough should clear the sides of the bowl but stick slightly to the bottom. When ready, the dough will pass the windowpane test and register about 80F. Oil a large bowl and transfer the dough to it, turning to coat in the oil; cover the bowl with plastic wrap and proof in a warm room for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until the dough doubles in size.
Remove the dough from the bowl and divide evenly into 12 3-oz pieces (or 18 2-oz pieces for rolls, or in two for loaves). Shape into tight boules for burger buns or pistolets for hot dog buns. Transfer to parchment-lined sheet pans, mist with spray oil and cover with plastic wrap or a towel; proof for an additional 60-90 minutes, until nearly doubled in size.
Preheat oven to 450F (or 350F for loaves). Brush buns with egg wash and sprinkle with garnish, if desired. Bake for approximately 15 minutes (or 35-45 minutes for loaves), rotating halfway through for even heating if necessary. The tops should be golden brown. Remove from oven and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes on a rack before serving.
Source: The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart (p. 266-267)
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12.10.07
Posted in American, Bread, Cuisines, French, Lunch, Nuts, Grains & Legumes at 11:56 am by julie
(Some days a creative title is just too much to ask…)
This weekend continued to be all about the breads here at the Persnickety Palate (or quasi-breads, as you may prefer to categorize my holiday quick breads and the biscuits I’m about to rave about below). Once again, we found ourselves sans milk and bread and perilously low on eggs, so I had to get creative with our meal options on Saturday. We ended up having lentil salad with bacon, and thanks to the half-full carton of buttermilk staring back at me from the fridge, a batch of hot buttermilk biscuits to go along with it.
I’ve now tried a few different recipes for biscuits, but when I have buttermilk to use up, this recipe is the clear winner. It is very easy to make, if a bit messy; I’m thinking a quarter-cup cookie scoop would be the perfect tool to streamline this recipe…I’ve been wanting one for doling out muffin batter and big wads of cookie dough anyway. 
Back to the subject at hand, these biscuits are super-fluffy and light inside, with a perfectly crisp golden-brown exterior. I adapted them slightly, as has been my wont lately with most baked goods, to use 50% white whole wheat flour instead of just AP. This results in a minor difference in color and absolutely no change in taste, while making me feel slightly less guilty about the melted butter you slather all over the dough before it goes in the oven. No wonder these taste so good!
Buttermilk Biscuits
1 C unbleached AP flour
1 C white whole wheat flour
1 T double-acting baking powder
1 T sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
4 T cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch cubes
1 1/2 C cold buttermilk
1 C unbleached all-purpose flour, distributed in rimmed baking sheet
2 T unsalted butter, melted
Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 500F. Spray 9-inch round cake pan with nonstick cooking spray; set aside. Generously spray inside and outside of 1/4 cup dry measure with nonstick cooking spray (or get out a large cookie scoop).
In a food processor, pulse the flours, baking powder, sugar, salt, and baking soda to combine, about six 1-second pulses. Scatter butter cubes evenly over dry ingredients; pulse until mixture resembles pebbly, coarse cornmeal, eight to ten more pulses. Add buttermilk to dry ingredients; pulse a few more times just until incorporated (dough will be very wet and slightly lumpy).
Using 1/4 cup measure and working quickly, scoop level amount of dough; drop dough from measuring cup into flour on baking sheet (if dough sticks to cup, use small spoon to pull it free). Repeat with remaining dough, forming 12 evenly sized mounds.
Dust tops of each piece of dough with flour from baking sheet. With floured hands, gently pick up piece of dough and coat with flour; gently shape dough into rough ball, shake off excess flour, and place in prepared cake pan. Repeat with remaining dough, arranging 9 rounds around perimeter of cake pan and 3 in center. Brush rounds with hot melted butter, taking care not to flatten them.
Bake 5 minutes, then reduce oven temperature to 450F; continue to bake until biscuits are golden brown, about 15 minutes longer. Cool in pan 2 minutes, then invert biscuits from pan onto a rack or towel; turn biscuits right side up and break apart. Cool 5 minutes longer and serve.
Source: Cooks Illustrated, via The Amateur Gourmet.
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12.07.07
Posted in Bread, Breakfast, Cake, Dessert at 11:04 pm by julie
Every year since 2003, I’ve participated in a volunteer holiday choir on campus. We’re a small group of staff and students with varying levels of experience, and only have about four rehearsals before our performance at the Lessons and Carols convocation, but I think we always do a nice job. This year we even played with handbells. I like it because it gives me an opportunity to sing once a year without too much pressure, although for the past two performances I’ve somehow been talked into doing a solo at the beginning of “Once in Royal David’s City.”
I only mention this little event on my foodblog because Lessons and Carols always triggers the start of the Christmas season for me. It usually coincides with my library’s staff and student holiday party: this year, Lessons and Carols was yesterday, and the party was today. Although the party has some catering, the staff always bring plenty of sweet and savory goodies to share, so last night was a big baking night for me. Next will come the cookies—oodles of cookies, hopefully, because it’s so hard to narrow down the choices—and of course Christmas dinner, which has yet to be considered.
Anyway, since I still walk in to work most mornings, I’ve found that loaves are the most efficient baked good for carrying to events. I can pack an awful lot of slices into a Tupperware container without worrying about them getting too squished or deformed during travel. They also hold up nicely while sitting out for a few hours of party grazing, no refrigeration required. I wanted a few different options this year, so I went with a banana gingerbread loaf (no nuts), a pumpkin pecan loaf with orange zest, and Almond joy bread, because I had to have at least one chocolatey option.
I had to read over the banana gingerbread recipe several times to make sure I wasn’t missing something: It doesn’t contain any eggs. The result is a very dense, moist bread with a nice spicy profile underscored with the sweetness of banana. My cinnamon and ginger were both fresh from Penzey’s, so they really packed a punch; the bananas were not yet as ripe as they might have been, but their flavor was still noticeable. I topped my loaf with a sprinkle of Sucanat for fun. This one wasn’t all that popular at the party, but gingerbread never seems to be, for some reason. It might benefit from a cream cheese spread or a bowl of sweetened whipped cream…we’ll have to try that out, since we have quite a bit leftover.
This pumpkin pecan loaf was a Carole Walter recipe, and its use of the stand mixer’s whip attachment, rather than the paddle, gave the batter a very aerated texture. I’ve been eating through a box of clementines since Thanksgiving (which, I might add, the baby seems fond of, as he kicks up a storm whenever I have one), so I used clementine zest in the batter. The resulting bread has a perfect texture and nicely balanced flavors. Orange isn’t my favorite flavoring in general, so it’s a little on the strong side for me; I particularly noticed it when I pulled the hot loaf from the oven. It went over well at the party, however, and I look forward to having some for breakfast tomorrow morning.
The hands-down favorite among my breads this year was Peabody’s Almond Joy bread. I should note here that the candy bar is one of my favorites, and I have been wanting to make this bread ever since our bag of mixed Halloween candy didn’t contain any Almond Joys as advertised. This was the last loaf I made, and it didn’t come out of the oven until about 11:00pm, so I stabbed and glazed it, and left it loosely covered overnight to cool. In the morning, I got some cream heating, ran off to the bathroom to wash my face and such, and made it back to the kitchen just in time to pour the boiling cream over the chocolate chips. After my breakfast, I gilded the loaf with its ganache drizzle. It barely had time to set before I needed to slice and pack it up for the party. It came out deliciously: an uber-moist coconut loaf studded with almonds and milk chocolate chips, with that decadent dark chocolate ganache and a bit of crunch on top from the glaze. I cut the recipe in half because I had two other loaves on deck, but I’m already regretting it because it’s almost gone! I definitely see this recipe in our future.
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12.02.07
Posted in Bread, Breakfast at 10:33 pm by julie
On Saturday morning, I got up, looked out the window at the miserable rainy weather, and decided that some yeasty, sugary monkey bread was in order for breakfast. For some reason, I never consider this sort of thing far enough in advance to make the dough and retard it overnight. So when I say I made it for breakfast, what I really mean was that I started working on it around 8:00am, and proudly produced a finished product around about lunchtime. Jeremy was able both to take Freyja on her morning walk and make a Costco run for me before the dough had even risen enough for shaping.
I used a chocolate pecan monkey bread recipe from The Essence of Chocolate that Danielle of Habeas Brulee was kind enough to post, and I made minimal adjustments to it. I did use some white whole wheat flour in the dough, and a combination of some milk chocolate chips and part of a bar of Green & Black’s Maya Gold chocolate. The dough was a lovely one, very smooth and malleable (and not at all sticky like a certain potato bread dough). As suggested, I used the paddle on my stand mixer to knead it, but I’ll stick with the hook next time because my dough crept straight up to the top of the paddle and made a bit of a mess.
Lacking a bundt pan, I used the mock bundt insert in my 9″ springform pan instead. It doesn’t hold as much as a real bundt, so I had a small amount of unused dough leftover, as well as some remaining butter and filling. There was more than enough bread for the two of us, however; never fear! The resulting monkey bread (or bubble bread, if you prefer) pulled apart easily and wasn’t as sweet as I expected based on the ingredients. If I make it again, I might use just half the dough for breakfast and reserve the rest for a garlicky version to go with dinner.
Even though it was virtually lunchtime yesterday when the monkey bread finally emerged from the oven, we were only able to eat about half of it between the two of us. This morning, I used the leftovers to make an improvised monkey pan perdu. Although I didn’t use a recipe for it, I whisked up a custard of eggs, cream and some runny vanilla yogurt, honey and vanilla in my square pan, and left the remaining bread in it to soak for 20 minutes or so. Then I sprinkled everything with sugar, and baked the pan in a 400-degree oven for about 25 minutes, until the custard was set. Topped with a sprinkle of powdered sugar, it was a perfect way to breathe some life back into the staled bread.
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11.26.07
Posted in Bread, Foodblog Events at 8:23 am by julie
It’s that time of the month again! The Daring Bakers challenge for November was my very first savory challenge since joining up: Tender Potato Bread. I’ve never used this recipe before, but I have made potato bread in the past, from a Nigella Lawson recipe in How to Be a Domestic Goddess. In addition, Jeremy has made the rosemary potato bread from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, so we had a reasonable baseline for comparison. To make things a bit more interesting for myself, I was one of the crazy bunch that decided to make this bread fresh as part of our Thanksgiving meal.
I got my start on the challenge last Wednesday evening, amid a bunch of other Thanksgiving prep activities. I used about 12 oz of russet potatoes for the batch, the equivalent of two rather small peeled potatoes. To save myself a bit of time, I got the dough started on the stand mixer, and finished off kneading by hand. I found that, although the dough was very soft and sticky, it was manageable as long as I kept my hands and the surface well floured. By the time I decided to call it good, I had gotten up to around 8 cups of flour added in total.
The oiled and covered dough was set aside to rise while I went about roasting pumpkin and making pies and boiling apple cider brine and such, so my kitchen was pretty warm for a change. It was a good thing I picked my largest bowl to proof in, because in a few hours, the dough was about ready to bubble over the sides of the bowl. I shaped half of it into a loaf of focaccia and half into rolls, and both got squeezed into the already-bursting fridge to retard overnight.
The next morning, after starting my stuffing and getting my apple pie in the oven, the focaccia dough came out of the fridge for its second proof so that it would be ready to bake by lunchtime. Soon it was pillowy and light again, ready to dimple and drizzle with olive oil. I topped my focaccia with red onion rings, fresh rosemary, and a scattering of feta and fleur de sel.
Then it was a bit of a waiting game, thanks to demands on my oven. Once the apple pie was done, I needed to roast some cauliflower to make soup for lunch. I went ahead and roasted that at 450F instead of the usual 400F, so that the focaccia could join it in the last 10 minutes. I finished off the soup while the bread rested, and we had a lovely light lunch to fortify us against the final Thanksgiving preparations. (The soup recipe will be forthcoming tomorrow.)
We both enjoyed this focaccia, which came out with a tender, fluffy crumb and lots of flavor thanks to the toppings. And, I might add, it paired really nicely with the soup, sliced into rectangles. But there’s no rest for the wicked. While our lunches were still settling, I flung myself into turkey preparations and pulled the muffin pan of cloverleaf rolls from the oven for their second proof.
The rolls were rather more challenging to shape than the foccacia because the dough was still very sticky. Twelve cloverleaf rolls meant 36 little balls of dough that had to be shaped, each of which stuck tenaciously to my hands even with frequent reapplications of bench flour.
When the turkey was done, the rolls (and some green beans and shallots for roasting) went in the oven. Somewhere in between making gravy, mashing potatoes and pureeing yams with vanilla-scented cream, I pulled them out to cool and rubbed their browning tops with a pat of butter. Then we loaded up our plates and dug in. Everything tasted great, but unfortunately the cloverleaf rolls came out more like bread-shaped building blocks than actual bread. I think it may have had something to do with the metal muffin pan, which I don’t use much anymore. The good news was that we had so much other good food to eat, including the remains of the focaccia from lunch, that we didn’t miss the rolls at all.
Because of the way the rolls turned out, I didn’t quite feel that I had done the challenge justice, so yesterday I decided to give it one more shot. This time I made a half batch of dough with 4 oz of potato in order to bake a single loaf. I used bread flour by choice (and because I am fast running out of AP), but accidentally grabbed white whole wheat flour instead of the normal stoneground variety. I kneaded entirely by hand for about 15 minutes, and added about a cup of flour. Again, the dough rose phenomenally well, and when I punched it down to reknead, I added in a tablespoon or so of chopped fresh rosemary, and shaped it into a tight little boule.
When I came back to check on the dough again about an hour later, it was easily more than doubled in size. Visions of The Blob were starting to run through my head, but fortunately it hadn’t quite outgrown the square of parchment paper I proofed it on. I gave it a few slashes and some decorative sprinkles of flour, and slid it from the baking peel onto the hot baking stone. Forty minutes later, it was golden brown and crisp with an internal temperature approaching 200F, and I had a hard time waiting for the allotted half-hour before slicing into it.
As you can see, the loaf had a light, even crumb and a sturdy crust. We sliced it up and taste-tested it with a bowl of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Although it was very pretty and had good texture, I couldn’t help but feel that it was somewhat lacking in flavor; it needed more salt or something. I thought I had added quite a bit of rosemary, but the loaf expanded so much during the second proofing that you could hardly find the specks of herbs in the finished product. Jeremy said it tasted alright, then noted that he should really make some more bread himself—last year he was quite the breadbaker. I totally agree, because I thought his potato rosemary bread was fantastic. Maybe I could even get him to make another loaf of it and write a guest-post here…
This was a relatively straightforward recipe: I had few problems in working with the dough, and no trouble at all in getting it to rise. My dough was a little too soft and sticky to sustain shaping, hence the big flat boule. I’d say this recipe is best suited as a palette for focaccia, and that doesn’t need much in the way of shaping. The other option would be to continue adding flour until I get a different consistency of dough, but that might affect the chew. Make sure to check out the Daring Bakers blogroll to see everyone’s creations. And thanks to Tanna of My Kitchen in Half Cups for choosing a savory challenge this month, since we’ve got desserts to spare around here already! You can find the potato bread recipe on her website here.
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10.08.07
Posted in Bread, Breakfast, Foodblog Events at 11:22 am by julie
Before moving on to the top secret October challenge for the Daring Bakers, I had to make one more batch of cinnamon rolls, and I know they won’t be my last. In this particular case, though, I had offered to bring treats for a staff meeting the Friday before the challenge was posted, knowing I would be able to bring fresh cinnamon rolls and sticky buns. Because the meeting was postponed until the 5th, I ended up making a fresh double-batch of cinnamon rolls Thursday night. No longer under the constrictions of the Daring Bakers guidelines, I made a few slight tweaks here and there, and thought I would document the differences between my first batch of rolls and these.
As I mentioned above, I made a double-batch of the dough. I got it started at lunch-time so that it could rise over the course of the afternoon, but that meant a bit of time constraint in the preparation as well. I didn’t bother heating the buttermilk this time, but otherwise used all the same ingredients in the dough, and mixed it in my stand mixer until it came time to switch to the dough hook. I don’t have a huge mixer, and it quickly became clear that the amount of dough was going to overwhelm the hook, so I had to pull it all out and knead by hand. I added quite a bit of additional flour as I was kneading to prevent stickiness, and recruited Jeremy for some muscle. By the time we were through, I had a dough that felt similar to the first, if a bit less silky, and which windowpaned only with a bit of tearing; the original dough was ultra-smooth and pliable, windowpaning without even threatening to tear. I separated the dough equally into two bowls, got the dishwasher running, and left for the afternoon.
When I returned, the dough had risen very little. I did some proofing in the oven (and then on top of the oven, as I had a sirloin tip roast waiting for its turn), and by the time I was satisfied with the rise, the dough was nicely warm under my hands. I proceeded to try and roll out one ball into a rectangle, and found that it was much more difficult to do this time around. I think the overnight rise of the first batch allowed the gluten in it to relax completely, and it rolled out with absolutely no problem. This second batch kept snapping back, and my rectangles were more small and misshapen than I had anticipated, not to mention full of air bubbles that got in the way. I started getting anxious that I would overwork the dough and make my rolls tough, so eventually I gave up and spread on the filling.
This time around I adjusted the filling, because the rolls weren’t as gooey as I could have hoped. I just softened up some butter and spread it on with a spatula before sprinkling on my cinnamon-sugar. The sugar mixture ended up as part granulated white and part organic sucanat, because I ran out of the former. I pinwheeled the dough without too many problems, and lost less filling to the counter-top, a result of the butter’s adhering properties. At the same time, the rolls didn’t seal themselves shut as well as the first batch, which I chalk up to the butter as well. I arranged 15 slices on a silpat for their second rise, and tucked the last 6 into a glass casserole in the fridge for Jeremy on Saturday morning.
When the roast beef was done and the oven had cooled back down to a reasonable proofing temp, I popped the tray back in to facilitate the rise, which again seemed to take longer this time around. Eventually I was satisfied and baked off the rolls. They were nice and fluffy out of the oven, if not quite as large as my first batch. I rubbed their tops with a bit more butter, let them cool a bit, and packed them away. In the morning I made up some glaze (vanilla instead of lemon extract this time, for Jeremy) and drizzled the rolls thoroughly, hoping to impart a greater goo factor to them because they stiffened up quite a bit overnight. They went over well at work, and were nearly all eaten up, but when I sampled one, it was definitely on the dry side and consequently not as decadent as last weekend’s batch. A visit to the microwave made a vast improvement.
I think the biggest difference was in the kneading. My stand mixer, despite its mellowdramatic suicide attempts, did a much better job of kneading the dough than my husband and I could. I think all of my difficulties and the resulting texture flowed from that source, though warming the buttermilk may indeed have affected the dough’s initial rise as well. I’ll stick a little closer to my original method of making these rolls when I make them next, but I might play around with increasing the percentage of sucanat in the filling, because I think it added a complexity of flavor to the rolls. Now if I could only persuade myself to get up early enough in the morning to have fresh cinnamon rolls ready before lunchtime…
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09.30.07
Posted in Bread, Breakfast, Foodblog Events, Persnickety Bits at 11:47 am by julie
This month has been cinnamon roll heaven. I already had plans to make sweet potato cinnamon rolls with my leftover sweet potato puree when the Daring Bakers September Challenge was announced: the Cinnamon Rolls and/or Sticky Buns from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart, one of our favorite bread books. I decided to go ahead with my sweet potato recipe and call it a warm-up round for the real thing, but it made an enormous panful of rolls that we were eating for nearly a week, and we needed a break before I dove back in for another batch or two.
The original plan was to do them last weekend, but I had no yeast left, and we ended up going to Ikea and Whole Foods instead. (And why on earth was there only tiny little packets of yeast at Whole Foods? Was I just looking in the wrong place or what?) I decided to bring a batch to my staff meeting on Friday the 28th instead, but we learned on Thursday afternoon that a VIP/force of nature was going to be visiting the library, and the staff meeting was postponed a week. This after I had already signed up to bring treats to the meeting and mentioned to several people that the plan was for cinnamon rolls…so I see another batch of these in my future later this week.
Since I was just making rolls for my husband and myself after all, I didn’t rush and got the dough started on Friday evening after a long walk at the park with our puppy. The dough came together nicely: I used active dry yeast (vs. instant), warmed buttermilk (vs. powdered milk), unbleached bread flour (vs. AP), butter (vs. shortening) and lemon extract (vs. zest). I did have to add quite a bit of extra flour to get the dough to form a ball as described; it had been so wet that the dough hook wouldn’t have had much effect, so I added in half a cup at a time until it looked right, perhaps as much as 1 1/2 C extra.
After switching to the dough hook, I set the timer and went in the other room to gather dishes for loading the dishwasher. Now I should explain that our stand mixer and Cuisinart sit on top of our portable dishwaser, because our kitchen is old, ill-arranged, and seriously lacking outlets and counter space. When I came back to check on the dough, the mixer was on the verge of attempting suicide by leaping onto the floor. It had walked forward at least a foot. I talked it down off the ledge, loaded some dishes (all of which were rattling wildly because of the mixer), and then rescued the suicidal mixer from another leap. By the time 10 minutes were up, I was exhausted, the mixer was thinking about overheating, and the dough was gorgeously pillowy and elastic, with a satin sheen. It was the first dough I’ve ever made that windowpaned perfectly, and if I’d had three arms or a husband who wasn’t playing a video baseball game, I would have captured that proud achievement on the camera.
I have to admit that I diverted from the recipe a bit here. After the dough was safely ensconced in a greased bowl and deposited on the running dishwasher (for some moist heat in my cold, cold house), I gave my husband instructions to pop the bowl in the fridge before he came to bed and retired for the night. I knew it was going to take longer than two hours to double, and I wasn’t about to stay up that late, so the dough was retarded after the first rise rather than the second. It worked out just fine, though, as you can see. When hubby took the dog out for her morning constitutional, I pulled the dough from the fridge again to warm up, and got back in bed.
From there it was a simple matter of rolling out the dough, sprinkling on the cinnamon sugar, and rolling it back up into a log. I used the old dental floss trick to cut it into 10 rolls, saved three in the fridge for sticky buns tomorrow, and arranged the rest on a baking sheet for their second rise.
Since my house was still cold and my tummy was hungry, I used the warm-oven trick to help facilitate the second rise, turning the oven on just for a minute or so to make it an insulated proofing box. I was satisfied with the rise after 45 minutes, in part because by then it was 10:45am. But they look nice and puffy, don’t they?
The sad thing was that the 7-hour lamb from earlier this week overflowed in the oven, so instead of perfuming the house with the smell of cinnamon rolls, the kitchen smelled like burning lamb jus. But twenty minutes later, we forgot about the acrid scent, because our cinnamon rolls looked like this:
Mmmm, cinnamon rolls! I told Jeremy that the book said they had to rest for at least 20 minutes before we could eat them. He made sad eyes at me and basically told me I was starving him to death, so we started eating about 3 minutes after they came out of the oven. What can I say? I tried!
I’ll admit to one more slight tweak to the recipe, out of necessity. I made a half recipe of glaze, and because we were out of milk, I used heavy cream (warmed in the microwave) instead. Also, after taking the pretty photo above, I thought to myself, who am I kidding, and loaded that sucker up with frosting.
Much better! We made short work of these cinnamon rolls. They were soft and fluffy, and the sticky glaze made up for what we perceived as a lack of cinnamon-sugar goo in the interior of the rolls. Jeremy didn’t care for the citrus element of the rolls, so if—correction, make that WHEN—I make these again, I’ll use vanilla instead of lemon in the glaze. Personally, I didn’t mind the hint of lemon after a bite or three to get used to it.
Since I’ve made cinnamon rolls several times before but never sticky buns, I knew I needed to give those a try in order to continue calling myself a Daring Baker. I put aside three rolls for that purpose because I still wasn’t convinced that I’d like sticky buns, and they fit nicely into my ceramic loaf pan. This morning, I pulled the plastic-wrapped buns out of the fridge in their pan and made the caramel glaze, which was an entirely different process than I had expected. A scattering of pecans (no dried fruit for me, please), and the rolls were nestled into the pan for their second rise. They baked for about 35 minutes, rested for 5, and we dug in.
I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that I liked the sticky bun variation nearly as much as the cinnamon rolls. I’ve never had them before, but the caramel seemed to have just the right amount of flow and tackiness, and the flavor was more to Jeremy’s taste becaue I used vanilla instead of lemon extract this time. I would definitely consider making this variation again, and I’m very glad I tried it.
Please be sure to stop by the Daring Bakers blogroll and check out everyone’s fabulous creations. For this fantastic recipe, visit Pip in the City, the blog of September host Marce in Argentina.
You may be wondering why, since I only made two cinnamon roll variations for this challenge, I titled the post the way I did. Well, the third bun in the oven is the proverbial sort: I am now 16 weeks pregnant. Hopefully that will account for all my recent laziness in both cooking meals and writing up posts about them, not to mention the sudden tendency toward comfort foods and emphasis on calcium and protein and fiber and whatnot. At least I’ve been very lucky, as a foodblogger, in that I haven’t been subjected to any morning sickness or weird food cravings!
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