Za'atar Flatbread

I wasn't going to blog about this bread because it's embarrassingly easy to make, as long as you have the za'atar (or zatar--or, for that matter, zaatar, zatr, zattr, zahatar, zaktar or satar).

If you have the spice mixture, however you want to spell it, you can make a close approximation of the bread just by buying pita or other flatbread, brushing it with olive oil, sprinkling the za'atar mixture on top, and baking it for 5 minutes or so. I got my mixture at Penzey's, but it's also available at a number of on-line sources. (When I was at our local Penzey's store, I remembered that I wanted this spice, but I couldn't remember what it was called. I asked if they had any Qatar. The nice man at Penazey's didn't say, "You moron, that's a country, not a spice." Instead, he kindly led me to the za'atar and said, "I think this is what you want." The Penzey's mixture has thyme, sumac, sesame seeds, and salt, but other mixtures may also contain oregano, mint, marjoram, or savory. There are many recipes available via the internet, the source of all knowledge.

I simply used the master recipe in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. I halved the recipe, and used about two-thirds of that to make the flatbread. (The other third is being made today into a mini-boule that will be sliced and used to top some onion soup).

The dough is spread out flat, punched with your fingers, and doused with olive oil. Then you liberally sprinkle on the za'atar mixture and a little more salt (there is already some salt in the za'atar, so you want to be careful not to overdo the added salt).

I baked it for about 25 minutes at 425 in a convection oven, cut it into small wedges, and served it with hummus. Now za'atar is my new favorite taste sensation. It's salty, a little sour, herbal, and nutty. Artisan Bread in Five suggests using it in a kabob marinade or in fattoush--both sound great for summer cooking.  Alas, summer is not yet here, but I hope the zatar will keep for a few more months.

Cranberry Pecan Boule - and a Surprise Present

I made strict rules this past Christmas about buying presents for me. Not because I don't think I deserve them--no, not at all. It was because I had already picked out a whole boatload of things that I wanted. (To be perfectly honest, I'd already bought them and just gave them to Jim to wrap). But there's a limit to how many geegaws you can buy for yourself, and I had exceeded the limit. So I told Jim, no more! But three days before Christmas, a large box appeared in the mail, addressed to me. I opened it - it was addressed to me, after all, and found this:

It's a Brød &Taylor Folding Proofer. "Jim," I said, "you were not supposed to buy me anything else." He claimed he didn't. I didn't believe him. He swore that he didn't. I asked him who else would buy me a bread proofer. "Maybe it was Rose," he guessed. "That's crazy," I told him. But then I remembered that I had read something on Rose's blog about a proofer. So I called Woody and asked him if he'd ever heard of a bread proofer. "Oh, did you get yours? I just got mine too," he said cheerfully. Mystery solved. Thanks, Rose. And thanks, Brød &Taylor, too.

The proofer came with two recipes: country wheat sandwich bread and cranberry pecan boule. I voted for cranberry pecan. Since nobody else voted, I won. It starts with a poolish starter, which sits in the proofer for 4 hours at 74 degrees. I loved it that it was 74, and not 75.

Usually a poolish sits in my chilly kitchen overnight. In the summer, it ferments for a few hours in my warm kitchen and then overnight in the refrigerator. It's all very casual, which I like. But I also like knowing that I can end up with a bubbly poolish in just 4 hours at 74 degrees. If I get very brave sometime, I may try it at 75, or even 76 if I'm feeling very devil-may-care.

It's a very stiff dough. I kneaded it for almost 10 minutes in my new KitchenAid and had visions of watching another mixer go kaput. But it chugged along (it is still under warranty, so I don't really expect it to go under until 24 hours after the warranty expires).

The dried cranberries and chopped pecans seemed to have an antisocial personality disorder. They did not want to mix. (If you make this bread, I recommend that you spend more time than I did poking cranberries back into the dough--the berries on the outside of the bread were burned and inedible, while the berries that had been forced inside were tart-sweet and delicious.

Into an oiled bowl and back into the proofer it goes. This time the proofer goes up to 80. When I thought about it, I realized that my kitchen is almost never 80 degrees. (I do have a proofing setting in my oven, but it's 85 degrees, which is the high end of ideal temperatures for proofing).

After this proofing, the dough gets shaped into a ball, and put in a bowl or colander. I used a lightly floured banneton. Then it rises again - at 80 degrees exactly - for another hour.

After 25 minutes in the oven. You can see how black the cranberries got. But it's still a handsome loaf of bread. And delicious, too.

But wait, there's more! This little machine is not only a proofer, it also makes yogurt and melts and tempers chocolate. Or so it says. I may very well try it for yogurt, but I'm not sure I'd drag it out to melt chocolate. Although, in fairness, "dragging it out" is not a big ordeal. It folds into a small rectangle, so it doesn't take much space, and it's easy to put together. This gadget definitely belongs in the "luxury" category, not the "essentials." But I'm tickled to have it, and wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be something I convince myself I could no longer do without. Especially in winter, when dough sometimes is as reluctant to rise as I am to go outside.

Cranberry Pecan Boule

Poolish Starter:
3/4 cup (4.4 oz.) unbleached bread flour
1/2 cup water (4.4 oz.) (70 to 78 degrees)
1/4 tsp instant yeast
Set the proofer to 74 degrees and add 1/4 cup of water to the wawter tray. Mix all the ingredients for the poolish into a large mixing bowl. Place the bowl into the proofer for 4 hours until it inflates into a bubbly, soft, and sweet-smelling sponge.

Dough Ingredients:
All of poolish starter
1 cup (8.1 oz.) water
1 tsp. instant yeast
2 1/4 cups (10 oz.) unbleached bread flour
3/4 cup (3.6 oz) whole wheat flour
2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup dried cranberriese
1/2 cup toasted pecans, coarsely chopped

1. Increase proofer temperature to 80 degrees.
2. Add the water to the poolish and stir it around to loosen it up. Add the yeast, flours,and salt. Stir until a rough dough forms. Knead dough on counter or in stand mixer, using the dough hook, until a smooth and elastic dough forms.
3. Add the cranberries and pecans and work them into the dough until they are evenly distributed throughout.
4. Place the dough into a lightly oiled bowl and place in proofer. Let the dough rise for 60-90 minutes or until it has doubled in bulk.
5. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured counter and shape the dough into a tight round ball.
6. Place the dough ball seam side up into a well-floured dough rising basket or a bowl/colander lined with a heavily floured linen cloth. Dust the exposed bottom of the loaf with flour and place back inproofer, still set at 80 degrees. Let the dough rise 1 hour or until it has almost doubled inj bulk.
7. Prepare the oven for baking an hour before you are ready to bake. Place a bakingh stone in the middle of the oven with a skillet or rimmed baking sheet on the bottom rack. Preheat to 500.
8. Turn the dough out onto a baking peel or inverted baking sheet lined with parchment. Score the top of the loaf and quickly place the loaf onto the hot baking stone. Add 1/2 cup of water to the skillet and close the door. Bake for 5 minutes, then lower the oven temperature to 450, and continue to bake foro 25-30 minutes or until the loaf is a deep brown color and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.
9. Allow the loaf to cool completely before slicing.

From Brød &Taylor Folding Proofer Supplemental Manual, crediting Melissa Langenback, thebakersguide.com.

Cream Cheese Cinnamon Buns

This is the 15th year we've invited people in our neighborhood to casual coffee-and-doughnut hours on Saturday mornings in January. We have pots of coffee, juices for the little ones, and platters of doughnuts. I usually make something homemade in addition to the doughnuts, and last Saturday it was these cinnamon rolls, courtesy of King Arthur's web site.

The cream cheese isn't added to the dough, and it's not in the frosting. Instead, it's layered on the rolled-out dough (letting it soften at room temperature for at least two hours is an excellent idea).

Then it's folded, business-letter style, and rolled out again. This process is repeated again until the cream cheese is more or less absorbed into the dough. (I thought it could have used another turn because I could still see a layer of cream cheese, but I was afraid it would toughen the dough).

Here comes the filling. Either something called Baker's Cinnamon Filling, which King Arthur will be happy to sell you, or your own mixture of butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. (The Baker's Cinnamon Filling has shortening instead of butter). I used butter. Finally, sprinkle both chopped walnuts AND pecans over the filling, and roll 'er up.

The recipe is supposed to make nine rolls, which you place in a 9" x 9" baking dish. I put nine in an 8" x 10" pan, which, if my math skills are at all accurate, is almost exactly the same area. I don't think it gave them enough room to expand properly because they looked a little squinched when they came out of the oven.

I still had three left over, and I put those in a little round casserole.

A basic powdered sugar/milk glaze is not really very exciting, but it added just the right touch of sweetness. Despite all the brown sugar in the filling, the rolls were not very sweet, and needed just a touch of the frosting that can sometimes be cloyingly sweet. Just a drizzle is enough.

The rolls were still just the slightest bit doughy in the middle, meaning they should have either had more room to spread or I could have baked them just two minutes more. The most heavenly part about these rolls is the crusty corners, which are flaky and tender at the same time. With the nuts, extravagant amounts of butter and cream cheese, and brown sugar, these are like the best parts of both sticky buns and cinnamon buns, rolled (literally) into one delicious treat. And the nice thing is that you can make them at night and simply take them out of the refrigerator, let them warm up a bit, and bake them in the morning. When guests open your front door, they'll be hit with the welcoming scent of cinnamon rolls. They'll be your slaves.

Rustic Dinner Rolls - and a New Year's Eve Dinner

I've started watching America's Test Kitchen, and I'm fascinated by its best-recipe, try-it-again approach to cooking. It's fascinating to me because it's the opposite of the way I cook. Once I finish a recipe, I don't think about how to make it better; I think about what I'm going to try next. This is pretty obviously not the superior method since it means I never perfect anything. But I do get a lot of variety.

Because I was assigned the salad course (more on that later) for our annual progressive New Year's Eve party, I wanted to make a bread or roll that would be a good accompaniment. I'd seen one of the cooks on ATK work her little heart out on these rolls, so I figured they'd be just the thing. I also liked that they were made with a wet dough that, unlike Norm's Onion Rolls, would not burn out the motor of my new KitchenAid.

The rolls, titled Rustic Dinner Rolls, are pretty straightforward, although they do have some typical ATK quirks, born of their obsessive testing and re-testing.

For example: 3 tablespoons of whole wheat flour, no more no less. This is supposedly just the right amount to get a "nice earthiness." If I were an obsessive tester myself, I'd try again with no WW flour and once again with a half-cup.  They had a good flavor, though, so maybe there's no point to further experimentation.

The biggest quirk of this roll recipe is starting them out in round cake pans, so they grow together in their first ten minutes of baking.

Then, lightly browned, they come out of the oven and get turned over on a baking sheet, until they're cook enough to be separated. This initial baking is done at 500 degrees, to increase the amount of oven spring.  Then another 10-15 minutes at 400 degrees.

To my surprise, because of the trust I place in ATK, mine didn't spring very high. They actually look a lot like the photo that shows what happenes to a roll when you don't give it that burst of intense heat: they're flat and hockey-pucky, not tall and springy. In ATK's defense, I think this may have happened because I ran out of bread flour after measuring out about a third of the flour. (How does it happen that a bread blogger runs out of bread flour?)

Because these rolls were almost perfect, I'll admit that I'd kind of like to try them again, using all bread flour this time. But I already have a full list of breads to try for the first time, so I don't know when, if ever, I'll return to the rustic dinner rolls made with three tablespoons of whole wheat flour.

Some readers, who have been reading this blog for years (people, don't you have anything better to do with your time?), may remember that our New Year's Eve tradition is to have a neighborhood progressive dinner. When Jim remembers, he photographs the courses. I think he's only remembered once.

This dinner started out at the Niemiecs' house for appetizers. Appetizers are my downfall (I probably should say one if my many downfalls). I love having a little savory bite, or, let's face it, a lot of largish savory bites. Joan made a platter of crisp vegetables,

smoked salmon with onions and capers,

and spinach balls.

Then we moved to the soup house, which belongs to the Beiers. Master soup-maker Betty B. made leek and mushroom soup topped with brie toasts.

The third course was at our house. In addition to the rustic rolls, I made a fennel, watercress, and blood orange salad with champagne vinaigrette.

The piece-de-resistance was Beef Wellington, by Laurel Deloria, who has never found a recipe she's afraid to tackle.

She was also not afraid to tackle a Madeira sauce (delicious).

The Papanicolaous thoughtfully provided bowls of beautiful vegetables, so that we could delude ourselves into thinking we were eating healthily. (There was also an unpictured bowl of green beans).

Jim got a new timer for his camera so that he could take a picture of the whole group, including himself. However, he neglected to read the directions, and he never did get it to work, so he finally gave up and took a picture of everyone but Jim.

Unfortunately, he was so flummoxed by this photography failure that he completely forgot to take a picture of the dessert prepared by Doug Logeland: lemon tart with chocolate crust.  Too bad, because it was a memorable finale to a great dinner.

And a happy new year to you all!

Norm's Onion Rolls

My friend and (sometime) fellow blogger, Chris from Rhode Island, recently asked me if I knew about The Fresh Loaf.
Well, in fact, I do know about it, but Chris's note reminded me that I hadn't visited the site for many months. So visit it I did, and came away with this recipe for Norm's Onion Rolls.

People on The Fresh Loaf raved about Norm's Onion Rolls. And I'm going to rave about them too, but I will say that Norm could write clearer recipes. And if I were a good and responsible blogger, I would make these several more times, and I would edit the recipe until it was understandable. But I'm not good and responsible, so I will link to the recipe as is, and if you make them, you'll probably have the same questions I did, but since mine came out just fine, I'll bet yours will too.

This makes a very thick dough. In fact, my trusty KitchenAid stopped dead in its tracks. I quickly turned it off, hoping that it would recover. I haven't re-tested it yet.

Oh, this is bad. After I wrote that sentence, I decided I couldn't keep myself in the dark about whether I had a working stand mixer. So I went to my kitchen to try it out. It's not working well. Now I've put Jim in charge of seeing if he can use his duct tape method of repair to fix it right up. Otherwise I might have to tell him that he'll be getting a new Kitchenaid for Christmas. (I already have my presents picked out, so I'm afraid it will have to go on his list. That's what happens when you're slow to make your list).

But before you get to the dough-rising stage, you have made the onion mixture. Oddly, you don't want to use real onions. Instead, you buy a jar of dehydrated onions, which you would probably normally not consider using in real food. At least this is what Norm recommends, and so it's what I did. You soak the dried onions for a while, then drain them, reserving the onion-soaking water for the bread dough.

Then you divide the dough into 3-oz. or 4-oz. balls, depending on how big you want your rolls. Mine were in the neighborhood of 4 ounces, and I got 13 rolls. At this point, the recipe got a little unclear. You make mini boules, and, at some point, you let the dough rest again. I couldn't tell whether Norm wanted me to let the dough rest before shaping it into boules, or after, or at what point he thought I should cover the dough with the onion-poppy seed mixture. I shaped them first and let them rest for 20 minutes or so.

Also, the recipe says to use your thumb to make a dimple on top of the rolls. I thought that meant I should put the filling inside the dimple. But I think I was supposed to flatten the dough while pressing the roll into the onion mixture and then make the dimple. I now believe that the dimple actually has no utilitarian value (such as serving as a nest for the onions)--it's just the way it is. But I could be wrong. Perhaps if someone who is familiar with these New York-style rolls reads this, they can give me some advice, preferably not beginning with, "Breadbasketcase, don't you know how to read?"

This is what they looked like going into the oven:

And this is what they looked like coming out:

These are not ladylike rolls. Even if you made them smaller, there's something very hefty and satisfying about them. If I had flattened them more, and pressed the onion mixture into the top of them, they would have been perfect for sandwiches. But as long as I didn't wonder how they compared to Norm's rolls, which have reached a nearly mythic stature among readers of The Fresh Loaf, I liked them exactly as they were--round, savory, and toothsome.

Grape Focaccia

Time sure flies when you're not baking bread. I could not believe the last date on a blog entry--it couldn't possibly have been nearly two months since I made the Pan Cubano! And this bread had been on my radar ever since I saw the recipe in the New York Times on September 28, 2011. I picked some wild grapes in anticipation of baking this focaccia from a friend's vacation house, but they withered away in the refrigerator. Then I picked some Concord grapes from the same neighbor's city yard, and they too wrinkled and dried. Finally, I bought some red grapes from the grocery and made the bread the same day.

Really, there's no excuse not to. You're likely to have almost everything you need on hand: olive oil, yeast, flour, cornmeal, and sugar. You may, if you're lucky, have pine nuts in your freezer and fresh rosemary in your herb garden. If not, pick them up when you buy your grapes (or snitch your neighbor's grapes, if you're more organized than I am and you pilfer them at the appropriate time).

First, you gently heat some fresh rosemary in 72 grams (about 6 tablespoons) of olive oil. If you absolutely have to, you could use dried rosemary, but it won't be the same.

Then you simply mix everything but the toppings in a mixing bowl and knead for about five minutes, using the dough hook. Feel free to knead by hand if it makes you happy, but it's easier to knead this wet dough with a hook. You can take it out of the bowl and do the last minute or so of kneading by hand, making sure that you don't add too much flour.

Let it double in size. If you use all the yeast (two teaspoons) and let it rise in a warm place, it takes only about an hour. You can decrease the yeast and let it rise longer, or even let it rise twice. You'll get more flavor from the dough with less yeast and longer rising times, but it doesn't matter much in this focaccia, which has a lot of strong flavors--not just the grapes and rosemary, but also the cornmeal and sugar add different elements not usually in a flatbread.

Shape into a rectangle. No need to measure--this is supposed to be rustic.

And make sure you've dimpled the dough! Don't actually make holes in the dough--you don't want to break the bottom layer. Then scatter on the grapes, pine nuts, the reserved rosemary, a little sugar (I used turbinado), and sea salt. Then drizzle with olive oil (don't be chintzy with the oil), and bake on a parchment-lined pan. Hopefully you've remembered to put a baking stone in the oven and to preheat the oven to 400.

This bread didn't match Rose's rosemary focaccia, the gold standard of focaccia-ness. It was quicker and easier, though, and had a nice sweet/savory balance. The cornmeal was a good addition, and the big grains of sugar and salt made a fascinating mouth crunch, giving out big hits of sweet and salty in the same bite. I started making the bread at 3:15, and took it out of the oven at 5:20, just minutes before people started arriving for a Friday afternoon TGIF gathering. Cheetos and beer for one half of the block; wine and grape focaccia for the other. Who says we can't all get along?