Rum Vanilla Cream Pie (or Why Breadbasketcase Should Stick to Bread)

Monday, September 1, 2008
It was Pinknest's turn to choose the project for The Lazy Bakers' No-Rules Club. Even though there are no rules, we still sort of take turns. And she chose a rum-vanilla cream pie. From Martha Stewart no less. Martha Stewart is the antithesis of everything I stand for.
I can't blame Pinknest for this fiasco. I suggested that she might want to choose a pie because she is so good at them. It's because she's so good at them--and because Melinda has taken cake decorating classes and she knows how to pipe icing and because Evil Cake Lady is always willing to try anything, with good results--that I figured I'd be the weak link in this recipe's chain. But I was determined to be a good sport about it.
Frankly, I don't amount to much as a pie baker. And this recipe didn't just have pie crust, it had pate brisee, made with an ungodly amount of butter and sure to be hell to roll out.
I brightened when I remembered that I have an Emile Henry pie dish, which has nicely scalloped edges. I figured maybe I could just layer the pie crust in the pan, trim it off, and the pan would make the scallops itself. A self-scalloping pie.

As it turned out, the crust was the easy part. It rolled out nicely, more or less into a circle (instead of the odd geometric shapes that my pie crusts are wont to take on);

it didn't stick to the counter; and I folded it up into a triangle without swearing. (Usually there is at least one swearing episode per pie).

The pie crust came out of the oven looking pretty good.

I thought I was home free--I didn't even think twice about the custard. It was just a custard. I boiled the milk, cornstarch, vanilla (thanks, Evil Cake Lady, for the tip about using your fingernails--clean, of course--to get the vanilla seeds out of the pod), sugar and salt until it was nicely thickened. I beat the egg yolks and carefully added the hot milk mixture (thanks, Julia Child, for beating it into my head that you must do this very carefully lest you end up with scrambled eggs). Then I added butter, a tablespoon at a time, and let it cool.
As I poured it into the pie, I thought to myself, "This is runnier than I think it should be."

Because, I then realized, I had forgotten an important step. And, lazy bakers, if you bake this pie, you should be careful not to omit this step: after you beat the eggs and milk together, you must return it all to the heat and let it boil for another minute or so.
If you do not do this, let me assure you, it doesn't matter that your original milk mixture was the perfect texture. It will all fall apart.
Every hour or so, I hopefully touched the pie dish in the refrigerator, hoping that it wouldn't wobble. No luck.
Finally, I decided just to whip the cream and spread it on top of the liquid pie, thinking that a layer of whipped cream would at least hide the runny nature of the filling. Guess what I found out? Whipped cream doesn't spread on water, or other watery substances. It looked a little like floating island.

Except that it also looked like the islands might sink at any time. Jim muscled me out of the way, "Quick--let me get a picture before it sinks!"
Here it is: pie in a cereal bowl.

The crust, which I was most worried about, was fine. It was actually better than fine: tender, buttery, and delicious. The filling? Well, it's kind of hard to judge a filling that looks like it's been pureed to within an inch of its life. Even imagining that the filling would have turned out the way it was supposed to, I'm stilll not so sure I'd think it was worth making again.
In fact, I have another disk of pate brisee in the freezer, and I'm not going to use it for this. I think--after the trauma of this pie-baking event has worn off--I'll turn to The Pie and Pastry Bible, not to Martha Stewart, for inspiration.

Pane di Genzano

Sunday, August 24, 2008

I'm a sucker for anything Italian because it always sounds so wonderful. Doesn't pane di Genzano sound better than bread from Genzano? And much better than "bread from a small town about 20 miles from Rome"? Although I believe that part of my soul may be Italian, that doesn't extend to my ability (none) to speak Italian. So I just have to satisfy myself with the occasional loaf of bread from Carol Field's The Italian Baker. My mother always told me that when I was a toddler, I charmed the Italian ladies in our Chicago neighborhood by eating the butter off the bread they gave me, and handing the de-buttered bread back, saying, "More." Today I eat both the butter and the bread before I say, "More," and I'm pretty sure it was cuter when I was two than it is now.
As I'm pretty sure I've mentioned, we were disappointed in the bread in Italy when we travelled there, every bread I've made from Carol Field's book has been better than good. When Jim tasted the pane di Genzano, he said, "Why is this bread so good?" It was almost like he wanted to know, "Why don't you always make this bread and quit messing around with lesser loaves?"
I think there are a couple of reasons this bread is extraordinary. First, it's a wet dough.

As Carol Field says, "The wetter the dough, the better the bread." This may or may not be an old Italian saying. Second, the bread has a long, slow rise. Its first rise is three to five hours in a 70-degree kitchen; fortunately, this is the first day in a long time where the outside temperature was below 70 when I started my bread-baking, so the kitchen was the perfect temperature. Third, Genzano bakers are known to use an especially soft flour.
Now, I really should just stop after this sentence because it sounds like I know what I'm talking about. "Ah, yes, the soft flour effect," you might be saying to yourself. If you are, I wish you'd explain it to me because I don't understand why bread flour is hard, but in this case, bread is better because of soft flour. I used, as the recipe specifies, three cups of all-purpose flour and one cup of pastry (soft) flour. If I were a food scientist, I'd explain it, but it would probably be a boring explanation anyway, so it's just as well.
The other thing that makes this bread unique is that it's covered in wheat bran. After the first rise, you shape the bread into a boule, and put it in a pie pan in which you've spread about a quarter cup of wheat bran. Then you gently dab another quarter-cup of wheat bran onto the top and sides. Besides adding taste, the idea is that the bran makes an especially golden, even mahogany, crust.

I baked this loaf in La Cloche, and when I took the top off, it wasn't mahogany, or even golden. It was barely beige. Even after another 20 minutes of baking, it still wasn't magnificently dark, but it was done.

Aside from its habit of shedding wheat bran whenever it's touched, it's at its best when it's sliced and eaten.

We had some for a mid-afternoon snack, and we had more with dinner. It's supposed to have other virtues, such as keeping well and making good toast. I'll test both of those hypotheses tomorrow morning.

Pane di Genzano
--adapted from The Italian Baker by Carol Field
1 t. instant yeast
1 2/3 cups minus 1 T water
3 cups (400 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (100 grams) pastry flour
2 t. (10 grams) salt
1/2 cup bran

Mix yeast, water, flours and salt and mix in stand mixture with paddle attachment for 2 to 3 minutes. Change to dough hook and knead for 3 minutes at low speed and another three minutes at medium speed. Pour the dough into an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise in a cool room for 3 to 5 hours.
Oil pie pan and coat the bottom with 1/4 cup of bran.
On a floured surface, pour dough and shape into a round loaf. Place the dough in the pie plate and pat on the remaining bran so that the dough is covered. Cover with a towel and let rise until doubled, 1 to 2 hours.
If you have a Sassafras LaCloche, preheat that in the oven at 425 degrees F. Otherwise place pie pan on pre-heated baking stone. Bake for about 1/2 hour and remove top of LaCloche, if using. Bake for another 10 to 15 minutes (about 45 minutes all told). Turn loaf out of the pie pan onto a rack to cool.

Grilled Chapati

Sunday, August 17, 2008

A few months ago, I abandoned the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and started getting the New York Times every day. I was sorry to give up the Star-Tribune, which, as a small-town girl coming to the big city of St. Paul for college, lo these many years ago, seemed like a sophisticated newspaper to me. As many of its best reporters and columnists fell victim to budget slashes, it pretty much stopped covering national and international news--except for condensed versions of stories from the Times. Now I love getting the NYTimes every morning, especially on Tuesday (the Science section, which you can read even if you know nothing about science) and on Wednesday, when they have the food section.
I always go to Mark Bittman's The Minimalist column first, and when I saw his recipe for grilled chapati, I knew that would be my weekly bread. First, I love Indian bread, and second, it was going to be hot this weekend, so a no-yeast, no-rise, no-oven bread sounded pretty good.
Then, next door to Bittman's column on page D3 was Melissa Clark's recipe for grilled sausages and summer beans with herbs, tomatoes and caramelized onions. Maybe Mark and Melissa didn't plan it that way, but their recipes sounded like they belonged together.
Jim offered to cook today, but I was so in love with the idea of chapati, sausages, beans, herbs, etc. that I turned him down.
I caramelized the onions and was going to start mixing up the chapati dough (which is simplicity itself: 2 1/4 cups of whole wheat flour, 1 cup AP flour, 1 t. salt, and 1 cup water, mixed in a food processor)when I realized that my food processor was suddenly not working.
I was irritated, but not panicked. After all, hadn't Indian women been making chapati for hundreds of years without a food processor? I just transferred the flours to my KitchenAid--which is much more primitive--and mixed everything up. While the dough rested, I stirred the beans now and then and got the sausages ready for the grill.

As much as I like Mark Bittman, he does have a way of making everything sound easier than it really is: "When you're ready to grill, just tear off walnut- to golf-ball-size pieces, roll them out with a little flour and toss onto the grill." The word "toss" makes everything sound so cavalier and devil-may-care. I don't know about Mark Bittman's kitchen arrangements, but my grill is outside and my counter, where I roll out dough, is in the kitchen. And we eat on the back porch. So, although the "tossing" part is not so hard, the running back and forth from grill to stove to counter to porch is a workout.

But I love to bake unleavened bread that puffs up as it cooks--it always seems like a miracle to me. And that's what happens to chapati. After you toss it on the grill, you watch it puff up, then you turn it over, hoping that it hasn't burned, and brown it on the other side.

The sausages were a combination of pork sausage with fennel pollen, pork sausage with pesto, and bratwurst.

My favorite was the fennel pollen, but it might just be because it sounds so much more exotic than bratwurst.
The grilled chapati and sausages were excellent, but the star of the show was really the beans.

Picking up the subtle sweetness of the caramelized onions and the yellow cherry tomatoes, and the zing of the herbs, the beans were so delicious they could have almost passed for dessert. I can hardly believe I just wrote that sentence, but these beans were seriously good.

CrackedWheat-Honey Bread

Sunday, August 10, 2008

A few weeks ago, my faithful reader Jini and I went to an Edesia cookbook review featuring whole grains. I don't know about Jini, but I went away a chastened woman, a little ashamed of my taste for unhealthy, decadent white flour, and determined to put more fiber into my life. So this week's bread had to meet two criteria: all or part whole wheat flour and buttermilk (on account of the quart minus six ounces of buttermilk in the refrigerator).
This recipe, from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, by Deborah Madison, met this requirements. It also had cracked wheat (or bulgur) in it, which must be fiberiffic. And I also substituted one cup of white whole-wheat flour for the white flour, which further upped the whole graininess of the bread.

Despite the fact that this bread came about because of my desire to be virtuous, bread-wise, I'll have to admit it was quite delicious. (The virtue will be short-lived, however; our next Lazy Bakers project is a rum custard pie).
I started making this bread after only one cup of coffee this morning, so I didn't translate the measurements into weights, so I had to use a lot of measuring cups, including the one I had to scrape the honey out of; weighing is so much easier!). Even with that annoyance, it's a very easy bread to put together). It makes two loaves--again I had to ask myself why I don't have two matching loaf pans.
Loaf #1, the one I made in the large loaf pan, looked pretty good, but didn't really get high enough. Loaf #2, the one in the standard-sized pan, would have been perfect, but it developed a huge air bubble when I put it in the oven. I could see the bubble expanding in the oven, looking like some kid's huge pink bubble just before it exploded on his face, and so I quickly opened the door and pricked the bubble, which then collapsed in slow motion. It also left unsightly wrinkles on the top of the bread, but who cares, really.


I used bulgur from the Bob's Red Mill section of the supermarket--a brand recommended by the whole grain gurus at the cookbook review. When I first bit into a piece of bread, I thought that the bulgur was too crunchy for the bread, and that I should have ground it first. After a few
bites, however, I decided that it was okay, and Jim loved the crunchiness.

At the Farmer's Market this morning, I got the first-of-the-season red, ripe tomatoes and some gorgeous butter lettuce. It sounds like it's time for BLT's for dinner. With organic tomatoes and lettuce and with virtuous whole-grain bread, the bacon and mayo are, at most, venial sins.

Scones and Muffins for a Non-Shower

Sunday, August 3, 2008
Months ago--last April or May, I think, before we went to Australia and New Zealand, I was planning to give a shower for two women who were expecting babies around the same time. Then one of them had her baby five weeks early (don't worry; everything is fine), and so we didn't have the shower. Finally, now that both babies are big, happy, healthy kids, I decided we'd just have a non-shower, at which there are no presents and the guests of honor are out-of-utero.
Here are the guests of honor:

This is Nora. She's the one who arrived early, but she's all caught up now. Usually she's smiling and laughing, but she was a little discombobulated by Jim and his ever-present camera.

This is Alex. Come to think of it, he's usually smiling too. Jim just has that effect on people. Alex was right on time and is now in the 99% of height and weight. He is known, affectionately, in his household as "Fatty."
It was supposed to be 95 and humid today, so I planned to do the baking early in the day. I served bellinis or mimosas (or orange juice for people who don't drink at 10:00 a.m.), cranberry scones, orange blueberry muffins, cucumber salad with smoked salmon and smoked trout, and yogurt with berries and caramel.
The scones were a new recipe from the NYTimes. The reason I wanted to try this recipe is because it specifies a particular kind of flour that I didn't have. After I saw the recipe, I decided that I must have it--it's King Arthur mellow pastry flour, and it did make the most tender, mellow scones I have ever had. And a breeze to make--a few pulses in the food processor, roll them out, and they're ready for the oven. I'm definitely going to use this flour the next time I make pie.

Oops--I forgot to add the dried cranberries to the dough, but no harm done--I just kneaded them in and rolled the dough out.

They're brushed with a little cream and beaten egg, which gave them a nice sheen.

The blueberry-orange muffins are from Dorie Greenspan's big fat baking book. Guess what they have in them? Three-quarters of a cup of buttermilk. Guess how much buttermilk that leaves for me to use up? Um, I think the answer is 26 ounces, which seems like a lot. Fortunately, hundreds of people on the internet have already typed out this recipe, so I don't have to. This is from the Miami Herald
I bought some really fat blueberries, which are great to eat, but not ideal for muffins because they burst open during baking.

You can see the difference between the whole berries in the unbaked batter, and the big patches of purple after baking.


I can't show you pictures of the babies eating muffins because these young mothers are so persnickety about letting their babies eat real food. I think I was advised to give Sarah cereal and bananas when she was five weeks old, and then I'm pretty sure she moved directly on to hot dogs, which were considered an ideal food for babies because they had protein and were easy to chew. I'm not making this up, you know.

Williams-Sonoma Parmesan-Black Pepper No-Knead Bread

Sunday, July 27, 2008

I've been thinking about making no-knead bread for the past few weeks (because it's so easy and I'm so lazy), but I wanted something a little jazzier. I noticed a recipe for Lemon Rosemary NKB on the Williams-Sonoma web site, and thought that sounded good, but I didn't get around to going to the grocery store until I'd run out of time. But I saw the recipe for Parmesan-Black Pepper bread on the same site, and I had all the ingredients for that, so I got ready to bake. (This, by the way, must be the first bread I've ever made that has three hyphens in the bread title).
Well, of course, I immediately remembered why NKB has been so popular--it's so dang easy! Flour, yeast, salt, and water. Mix it up, and let it sit overnight. I added two teaspoons of freshly grated black pepper (that's a lot of pepper!), grated parmesan, and chunks of parmesan as well, so it took slightly more than three minutes. Maybe six.

After somewhere between 12 and 18 hours (I waited about 13 hours), you have a soft, spongy dough that's ready to be dumped out on a floured counter, where it can rest for 15 minutes. (Or 45 if you forget about it--I don't think that resting an extra half-hour hurts a person or a loaf of bread).

You shape it into something aproximating a boule, and place it on a cotton dishtowel that's been scattered with cornmeal. Strew some more cornmeal on top, cover it with another cotton towel, and go out and work in your garden for two hours until it's properly risen.

Obviously, you don't have to work in your garden, but you might as well.
At this point, you have already preheated a cast-iron pot. The directions say, "Slide your hand under the towel and turn the dough over, seam side up, into the pot; it may look like a mess [indeed it does], but that is OK [not really].
My other loaves of NKB have looked fine when removed from the oven, but this one looked like a mess when I put it in, and it never straightened out. I still don't understand why I have to put the ugly side up when I'm making this bread.

The recipe gets extremely optimistic at this point because it tells you that your bread will easily come out of the pan. But the people at Williams-Sonoma forgot that this variation of NKB has a cup of parmesan cheese in it, and that the lovely chunks of parmesan have browned and clung to the pan for dear life. It was a battle between me and the cheese, and the cheese was winning, but I took a break, sneaked back up on it, and I won.

This bread looks innocent enough, but it is very, very peppery, which is fine, if you like pepper. If you don't, you would probably want to cut back on the pepper.

As it happened, it was a good thing I made this bread today. I'm on the board of our neighborhood association, which just held a raffle to make money for a neighborhood art project. The first prize was at least $800 worth of wine. I sold some raffle tickets in my block. My friend Betty called me today and told me that she'd won first prize. I first said, "congratulations," then I said, "why don't you have a wine party tonight?" So she did, and I brought the black pepper parmesan bread, which went pretty well with the three bottles of wine that she opened.

PARMESAN-BLACK PEPPER NO-KNEAD BREAD
--from adapted from recipe at williams-sonoma.com

3 c. all-purpose flour
1/4 t. yeast
1 3/4 t. salt
2 t. coarsely ground black pepper
1/2 c. granted Parmesan cheese
1/2 c. Parmesan cheese chunks.
1 1/2 c. plus 2 T. water
Cornmeal as needed.

Combine flour, yest, salt, black pepper, grated cheese and cheese chunks. Add water and stir until blended. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rest for 12 to 18 hours.

Place dough on slightly floured work surface. Sprinkle dough with a little flour and fold it over onto itself a few times. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and lest rest for 15 minutes.

Shape the dough into a ball. Coat a cotton towel with cornmeal. Put the dough, seam side down, on the towl. Dust with more cornmeal, cover with another cotton towel, and let rise about two hours.

Remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under the towel and turn the dough, seam side up, into the pot. If it looks messy, shake the pan to try to distribute the dough, but be aware that it may not turn into a perfect loaf. Cover with lid and bake for 30 minutes. Uncover and continue baking until the loaf is browned, 15 to 30 minutes more.

Transfer pot to wire rack and let cool for 10 minutes. Turn pot on its side and gently loosen bread with metal spatula. It will come out, but it won't be easy.

Put cast-iron pot in oven and preheat to 450.

P.S. I just want to say that it's very hard to buy good bread, which is one argument for baking your own. Aside from a few excellent bakeries, most purchased bread is a disappointment. Case in point: I bought two "ciabatta rolls" from Whole Foods, which is a pretty good grocery store. The rolls were awful: tasteless and stale. They should be ashamed of themselves for selling such bad bread, but they're probably not.

Royal Crown's Fennel Taralli

Saturday, July 12, 2008

I was planning to bake another no-knead bread this weekend, but at the last minute, I decided I wanted something more interesting, so I turned to Maggie Glezer's Artisan Baking for inspiration. I opened the book at random to page 201, which had a big picture of beautiful, shiny brown elongated ovals.
The directions looked easy. I like fennel, and I like crunchy, cracker-like things. Most of all, I like shaping things into long, thin snakes. When I was in the first grade, I learned to make bowls out of modeling clay by making a snake-like shape and then rolling it up into a bowl. I was very careful and earnest, and I was the best snake-bowl-maker in the first grade. Unfortunately, my artistic ability peaked there. By the time I was in third grade, my friend Jennifer was using modeling clay to shape dogs and cats, and I was stuck in the snake-bowl phase.
Making the tartalli was just like being in first grade again. First you divide the dough into 32 30-gram balls, and then roll them into 11-inch-long snakes. With moistened fingers, you pinch the ends together and then hold it on your fingers so that the shape becomes a big elongated.

After the dough rests for a few hours, during which time it does nothing to speak of, there's another fun part--the dough gets boiled in water to which olive oil has been added.

They only boil for about a minute, until they puff up a little, then they're put on a rack to drain. I have no idea what would happen if you just baked them, without doing the boiling thing first. I think it makes them a little shinier than they would otherwise be because a little of the olive oil sticks to them as they're being removed from the water.

Finally, after they've dried off a bit, they go into the oven for about 45 minutes (more like 35 in the convection setting). When they're nice and brown, they slide right off the baking sheet onto a rack. (If you drop one on the floor, it shatters). Excellent with wine or tea as an afternoon pick-me-up.
All the steps make it sound like the taralli are difficult and time-consuming, but they're quite easy and fun, and they take only about four hours from start to finish.


Royal Crown's Fennel Taralli
--from Artisan Baking by Maggie Glezer
1/2 t. instant yeast
3 c. (450 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 c. (120 grams) durum flour
1 3/4 t. (9 grams) salt
3 T. (40 grams) vegetable oil
1/4 c. (60 grams) white wine
1 T. (60 grams) fennel seeds
1 cup plus 2 T. (250 grams) water
2 T. Olive oil

Add yeast, flours, salt, vegetable oil, and white wine to food processor workbowl fitted with steel blade. With the machine running, add the water through the feed tube and process until smooth, firm dough is formed. Remove dough and knead in fennel seeds by hand.
Divide dough into 32 (30 gram) pieces. Dampen your hands sand roll a piece of dough into an 11-inch rope. Pinch ends together. Hold rope ring together at the seal and let it drop into an elongated oval shape.
After all the dough is formed, cover with plastic wrap and let them rest for 2 hours.
Preheat oven to 400.
Bring a pot of water to the boil and reduce heat so the water is simmering. Add the olive oil to the simmering water. Set a rack over a baking sheet. Boil the taralli in small batches, for about one minute, or until they float and puff up slightly. Skim them from the pot and let them drain on the rack. After they've drained, move them to two parchment paper-lined baking sheets.
Bake in preheated oven until they are dry and golden brown, about 35 to 45 minutes, rotating the baking sheets after about 20 minutes. Let cool on rack and store in sealed container.

Spiced Pecan Toasting Bread

Sunday, July 6, 2008
Our July Lazy Bakers No Rules Club assignment was a pecan bread from Sunset Magazine. Melinda suggested it, but then remembered it wasn't her turn. I asked her how we could turns if we had no rules, so she typed out the recipe and sent it to the other Lazy Bakers. Who knows if anyone will get around to baking it? But as I've already told Melinda, I actually like rules, and so I want to bake the July assignment in July. Preferably early July so I can cross it off my List of Things to Do.


Spiced Pecan Toasting bread
(From Sunset Magazine April 2008)

Prep and baking time:4 hours
Makes 2 8 inch loaves

Ingredients:
2 Tablespoons active dry yeast
2 Tablespoons honey
3 eggs
6 to 7 cups bread flour, divided, plus more for shaping
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup dried low-fat or nonfat milk
4 teaspoons salt
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons ground cardamon
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
Butter for bowls and pans

Method:
1.) In a bowl of a stand mixer, dissolve yeast and honey in 1 1/2 cups warm water (90 to 105F).
Let sit until foamy, about 5 minutes.

2.) Attach dough hook and with mixer on medium, mix in 2 eggs, 2 cups bread flour, the whole-wheat flour, brown sugar, dried milk, salt, vanilla, cardamon, cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg and pecans. Add remaining 4 to 5 cups bread flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until dough pulls away from the inside of the bowl. Knead ( with mixer on medium) until smooth and elastic, adding more flour as necessary to keep dough from sticking too much. When ready, dough should feel a bit like an earlobe when you pinch it.

3.)Transfer dough to a large, lightly buttered bowl. Cover with a clean towel or plastic wrap and let sit until doubled in bulk, about 1 1/2 hours. Meanwhile butter two 8 inch loaf pans and set aside.

4.) Punch down dough, divide in half, and on a lightly floured surface, shape each half into an 8 inch oblong loaf. Put dough in pans, cover and let sit until doubled in bulk; about 1 hour.

5.) Preheat oven to 350F/180C. In a small bowl, beat remaining egg with 2 tablespoons water.
Brush dough with egg wash and bake until brown, about 35 minutes. Remove loaves from pans (they are done if they sound hollow when tapped on the bottom) and cool on wire racks.

Toasted and buttered, this bread reminds me of freshly baked cinnamon rolls. We recommend it with a cup of coffee or tea and some charming company. (Sunset's introduction about this bread. [I suppose in bad company this bread might make them more tolerable.--Melinda's words].

This is not a difficult bread to make at all, although I was puzzled by the instruction: "When ready, dough should feel a bit like an earlobe when you pinch it." What does the "it" refer to? One's earlobe or the bread? Or both? And I don't seem to have a lot of experience in earlobe-pinching because the feel I was looking for was not immediately clear to me, even though I reached up and pinched my earlobe several times, and then pinched the bread. Honestly, the dough didn't feel like my earlobe at all. I asked Jim if I could pinch his earlobe, just as a control, but he turned me down.

I was also a little wary of the two whole teaspoons of cardamom in the recipe--a lot of cardamom, which has a very distinctive taste. It actually wasn't too much, although you could certainly taste it. The other problem was that the recipe makes two loaves of bread, and specifies two eight-inch loaf pans. Although I have a number of loaf pans, it turns out that no two of them are the same size. So I made one loaf in an eight-inch pan and one in a too-large pan.

See how it doesn't quite fill up the pan?
I applied the egg glaze very liberally, and it made the loaves super-shiny.

The proof of the pudding is in the tasting, and the proof of a toasting bread is in the toasting. I can't say that the bread really reminded me of "freshly baked cinnamon rolls," as the recipe's description says. It reminded me more of toasted nut bread with apricot jam.

Not that that's a bad thing. Also, I can't say that I had "charming company" since I was eating breakfast by myself.
Although I mixed the dough in my KitchenAid with the dough hook, the pecans did not get evenly distributed, and the bread that I gave away had more pecans in it than the one I kept for myself. I also don't think that the cardamom got thoroughly distributed. I blame all this on my inability to concentrate on anything besides the earlobe comparison. If you make this bread, I recommend that you not think about earlobes.



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Dorie Greenspan's Independence Day Cream Scones

July 4, 2008
Now that I own this big fat book by Dorie Greenspan--Baking From My House to Yours--I figure I should start using it. Every 4th of July, some neighbors have a brunch to which they invite the entire neighborhood. I decided I would bring scones, even though Barb Strand, who hosts the brunch, is a professional chef, and even though she always does homemade biscuits and gravy.
It's always a good idea to have a basic scone recipe that's easy and trustworthy. I generally use one of Rose's two scone recipes in TBB, but I like to try new things. Dorie's recipe uses both cream and butter, and I'm almost always in favor of a recipe that contains both. It's a good combination. I've found that recipes that use just butter are hard to handle and recipes that use just cream aren't as flavorful or flaky, and sometimes get too soft. These, as Goldilocks said, were just right.

I don't like to write out recipes, but, fortunately, if you want to make these scones and if you don't want to buy another fat cookbook, you can just google "Dorie Greenspan" and "cream scones," and you'll find that other, more accommodating people, have already written the recipe down for you.
If you have the book, you should be aware that, although the recipe calls for 3/4 cup of currants, the recipe is missing the instruction that says "add currants." If you were feeling a little slow on the uptake, you might be left a box of currants standing alone on the counter while your cream scones were already in the oven. Not that that would be a tragedy. In my opinion, scones don't really require any fancying up, but it would be too bad, especially if you'd gone out and bought a box of currants especially for the occasion. As I had some dried cherrries on hand, I used those instead of currants.
It occurred to me later that, since I was making these for Independence Day, I should have added, perhaps, blueberries and white chocolate, along with the cherries, for the traditional red, white and blue. That that seems a little over the top, though, and the cherries alone were very nice indeed.

I love scones, especially with clotted cream, although I didn't use clotted cream, it being Independence Day and a time to celebrate our freedom from British tyranny, including, I suppose, clotted cream. But I was a little sad when I learned that I'd been mispronouncing them all these years, and that I shouldn't call them scones, but, rather, something more like scawns. Of course, when you say "scawn," nobody knows what you're talking about, but when you say "scone," with a long o, you know that you are actually incorrect. It's like forte. If you say, "that's not my forte," someone will say, you mean, "for-tay?" Which leads you to avoid the word entirely. So I may just have to make muffins instead.