Whole Wheat Pitas

Sunday, October 21, 2007
After weighing myself on Friday morning, I decided it was time to get serious about losing a few pounds. In the last 48 hours before the Friday weigh-in, I'd eaten a creme brulee Danish (excellent), a doughnut (so-so), a bagel (mediocre), a piece of peach tart (quite good), and apple crisp with creme fraiche (delicious). After self-indulgence, time for a little self-control. Of all the diets I've tried, the Sonoma diet makes the most sense to me, mostly because it encourages drinking wine (only after the first ten days, though), and it allows carbs, if they're whole-grain, even in the first ten days.
I planned to make some whole-wheat pita sandwiches for lunch. I put whole-wheat pitas on my grocery list, feeling sorry for myself because I would have to eat the tasteless, cardboard-y store-bought pitas instead of my own. Through the self-pity came a brilliant thought--I could make whole-wheat pitas. I could just substitute whole wheat flour for white flour. And so I did. I just used Rose's recipe for pitas, with all whole wheat flour. Rose recommends using only half whole-wheat, but these turned out just fine with 100% WW.

I love rolling things out with my new rolling-pin stocking! Without thinking about it, I made a few that were perfectly round. Then I started trying, for perfection, and I just got funny-looking ones. Such is the Zen of baking.
I baked them a few at a time, directly on the oven stone. A few of them ballooned so completely that I was afraid they would explode in the oven.

They didn't. Here's a picture of my best one:

I made a sandwich with smoked turkey, olive hummus, and greens. Fortunately, it tasted so good that I didn't feel like I was dieting. A good thing, because if I feel deprived, I get extremely grumpy. Just ask Jim.
I may not be blogging for a while. Next week I'm going to Washington D.C. to see one of the very junior lawyers in our office, Ben Butler, arguing a case at the U.S. Supreme Court. Don't even bother to ask what the case is all about; it's about as boring a topic as you can imagine. If you don't believe me, let me just say that it's about the retroactivity standard set forth in Teague v. Lane, and whether it applies to state supreme courts or just to federal courts on habeas. Also, don't ask about our client. Hey, everyone's entitled to a lawyer, right?
And after that, I've signed up to write a 50,000-word novel in November. I don't know how much time I'll have to bake bread. I guess it will depend on whether I get writer's block. If anyone wants to join me in this foolish endeavor, check the details on nanowrimo.com.

Tom Cat's Semolina Filone

Sunday, October 14, 2007

This is another bread from Maggie Glezer's book. The "Tom Cat" part of the name doesn't refer to any attribute of the bread, but is just the name of the bakery in Long Island City in New York. The Filone is made with semolina flour, and covered with lots of sesame seeds. As soon as I saw a picture of it, I knew that I had to try it--I have yet to try anything with semolina flour that I haven't loved. I suppose I could put semolina flour into everything, but that wouldn't be much fun. Glezer says this takes 13 hours, "with about 15 minutes of active work." I think that 15-minute estimate is extremely optimistic, but maybe when the recipe says "let rest for 5 to 10 minutes," she thinks that you can go read a chapter of War and Peace or something, instead of hanging around the kitchen watching the bread rest.

This Filone bread, like the roasted garlic bread that I made last week, made me feel like a real baker. When I sliced into it, and looked at the lovely uneven holes, I offered up a little hymn of praise to Rose Levy Beranbaum because if I hadn't made my way through her book, I would never have the confidence to take on a four-page recipe from a book called Artisan Baking. At least this bread didn't threaten to explode during baking.

I was going to use my bread steam baker, but the loaf got too big to fit under the metal cover. Now I'm going to have to get a full-size steam baker, not to mention a couche, which I don't have. But even without the recommended appurtenances, it still turned out to be a fine-looking loaf of bread.

Grandma for a Day

Sunday, October 7, 2007
While the roasted garlic bread was undergoing its second rise, Clea, one of my very favorite 2 1/2-year olds, and I baked a cake. Clea is very taken with the book In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak, where the hero is mixed into a Mickey Cake. In the Night Kitchen, by the way, is one of those children's books that's perpetually being banned by someone or another because an unclothed Mickey falls through space and his innocent little penis is clearly visible. You might think that people would have other things to get exercised about, but apparently you would be wrong.
Anyway, Clea wanted to bake a cake. Clea's mother Teddie, my colleague, has many talents, but baking is not one of them, or, at least, baking is one of her undiscovered talents. I begged her to let me bake a cake with Clea because I like Clea and it seems like the kind of thing I would do with a grandchild if I were ever so fortunate as to have a grandchild. Actually, I'm not much of a cake-baker myself (I should have called on Evil Cake Lady for advice), but I led Teddie to believe that I was. Here is Clea adding butter to the cake.

We used Rose's Favorite Yellow Cake recipe, and things were going swimmingly until we came to the part where we separated four eggs. I take responsibility for the little egg mishap because I did not demonstrate clearly enough that once you cracked the egg, you separated it and put the yolk in the cake rather than on the floor. But no harm done--all we had to do was crack another egg.


We were all very pleased with the way the cake came out. Clea turned out to have a real knack for sifting flour and, once she got the hang of it, was quite good at breaking the eggs, too.
But of course a cake must have frosting, and I choose a simple chocolate buttercream. Our second of two mishaps occurred with the frosting. Clea was in charge of turning on the mixer. She was very careful with this, and always turned it to its lowest speed. Unfortunately, she was perhaps feeling a little cocky because she turned it to its highest speed to mix the frosting. One second there were six cups of powdered sugar in the mixing bowl; the next second there were five and a half. The other half-cup was spattered over the kitchen, including on Clea's hair.

But we managed to finish making the frosting, and Clea carefully smoothed it over the sides and top. (Luckily, the cake was just one layer, made in a spring-form pan. If we'd had to stack the layers and fill them, my lack of expertise would have been clearer).


Success!

Rustic Roasted Garlic Bread

Sunday, October 7, 2007

I got a beautiful new bread cookbook, Maggie Glezer's Artisan Baking, in which she visits various bakeries around the country and then shows how to recreate their specialties. I told Jim that as a birthday present, I would bake him anything he chose from the book. He looked through it and chose Della Fattoria's (a small bakery in Petaluma, California) Rustic Roasted Garlic Bread. Petaluma is the town Jim and I chose years ago as the town where we were going to retire. We decided it was an affordable alternative to living in San Francisco. It's no longer affordable--we missed our chance--but we are still fond of it, and now we're fond of its bread.
Glezer lets you know whether the recipes are beginning, intermediate, or advanced. This one is advanced. I complained that he might have chosen an easier one, but he pointed out that I had made no conditions on my offer, so, after grumbling a while that it wouldn't be my fault if it turned out to be a dud, I set out to buy garlic--a lot of garlic.
One of the reasons the bread is "advanced" is that it takes at least three days--at least one to refresh the starter (I guess that calling for a starter is another reason for its being advanced), one to make the levain, and one to pull the whole thing together. I kept reading and re-reading the recipe, trying to figure out where you add the yeast, but I finally understood that there was no yeast--only a measly tablespoon of sourdough starter to make two loaves of bread. I didn't have enough confidence in my starter for that, so I added a quarter of a teaspoon of instant yeast. That seemed like enough to pump up the starter without really cheating. Here's another reason the bread is labeled "advanced": it takes a good half hour of mixing the dough in the KitchenAid before it comes together on the dough hook and becomes "very silky." Glezer says to forget about making this bread if you don't have a stand mixer.
After the dough turned silky, which it did, it still took about three hours for it to not quite double in size. Meanwhile, I roasted three big heads of garlic and made a puree with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Then I divided the dough in half, shaped it into a round, and pressed it down. I spread half the garlic puree on each round of dough and sprinkled that with Asiago cheese. Then I pulled the edges over the garlic and cheese, turned it over, and shaped it into a round loaf. The instructions say to be careful here--if you shape it too much, it will explode during baking. (Probably all breads that threaten to explode during baking should not be considered recipes for beginners). Then I stuck another clove of garlic in the middle and decorated the loaves with sprigs of Italian parsley. (You're going to be very impressed when you see this picture).

Turned upside down into a banneton, the shaped and decorated breads had to rise for another three or four hours. By now, we're getting very hungry.

The bread looked and smelled so good that we couldn't wait more than 15 minutes to cut into it. I'm sorry to brag. It's not how I was raised. But I could not believe that I had made this incredible bread myself, so crusty, so delicious, with that layer of cheesy roasted garlic.


If you don't want to buy a copy of Glezer's cookbook and bake it yourself, you might consider a little trip to Petaluma, where you can buy the bread at the Della Fattoria bakery.

Caramelized onion, spinach, and feta pizza

Friday, October 5, 2007
This is my fourth try at pizza using Peter Reinhart's recipe. I think I'm finally getting the hang of it. The recipe makes enough dough for six small, very thin-crust pizza; I made one and put five in the freezer. This time I was able to stretch the pizza dough paper thin without making big holes in it (lots of resting time seems to be the key here), and the crust was crispy all over, even in the middle (baking it directly on the pizza stone is the secret for this).
My last box from the Crop Share program brought a plenitude of onions and spinach, so I caramelized four onions, and then, when the onions were brown and very reduced, I added some garlic and spinach, cooking the spinach in olive oil until it too had reduced. I scattered that all over the dough, and topped with oil-cured black olives and diced feta. Then I sprinkled a little pecorino romano on top of that. Instead of the "bake stone" setting, I used "convection-bake." In just eight minutes (550 is very hot!), it was done. In fact, it was almost overdone, and moving quickly toward burnt. But, although it was a little too dark to be truly photogenic, it was the best so far. Jim and I had to fight each other over the last piece. Never mind who won.

Use-up-the-buttermilk Scones and Bread

Monday, September 17, 2007

Yesterday I wrote a whole blog entry about baking buttermilk currant scones and buttermilk bread to use up the rest of a quart of buttermilk. Today I read a comment from Melinda, asking for the recipe for the bread, so I was obligingly typing away an addition to the post, and talking to Elizabeth on the phone at the same time, and suddenly the whole post--pictures, comments, and all--disappeared.
Now I am very irritated at my computer, and at Blogger, but I am still going to try to type the damned recipe.



BUTTERMILK SANDWICH BREAD
(I'm just writing the recipe as given, but I modified it by using instant yeast, giving the dough a business-letter turn after the first rising and letting it rise a second time before shaping it).

1 envelope active dry yeast
1 1/2 c. warm water
1/2 t. sugar
1 c. warm buttermilk
1 T. honey
1/4 c. vegetable oil
2 1/2 t. salt
2 c. all-purpose flour
3 to 4 c. bread flour
Egg Glaze

In a small bowl, stir 1/2 c. of the water and the yeast together, add the sugar, and set aside until foamy. In a larger bowl, combine the buttermilk, remaining water, the honey, oil, and salt, then stir in the yeast mixture. Using the paddle attachment of an electric mixer, work in the flour a cup at a time until you have a shaggy, heavy dough that leaves the sides of the bowl. Turn it out onto a lightly floured counter and gradually knead in the remaining flour until the dough is smooth and resilient. Put it in a deep oiled bowl, turning it so that the top is oiled too. Cover with a towel and set in a warm place to rise until doubled in bulk,.

Deflate the dough by pressing down on it, then divide it into two equal peices and let rest for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, oil two bread pans. Flatten the dough into two rectangles the length of the pan. Roll it up tightly, pinch the seams together to seal the ends, and place in the pans, seam side down. Cover again and let rise
until the dough is just above the edge of the pan,. Preheat the oven to 375. Brush with the egg glaze (whisk one egg together with 1 T. cream) and bake until browned and pulling away from the sides, about 40 minutes. Set on a rack to cool.

The egg glaze makes the crust nice and shiny.

Better Than Wonderful Focaccia

Saturday, September 8, 2007
First, a word about vegetables. As I've mentioned, I'm in a Crop Share program where I pick up half a box of vegetables every Thursday. I always thought I ate a lot of vegetables, but I have to say it's been a trial to get through all the ones I've picked up so far this summer. The boxes seem to be getting bigger every week, and it's getting harder and harder to make my way down to the bottom of the vegetable bin before I'm hit with another half-ton of organic wonders. Thus, we had end-of-the summer vegetable soup with pistou. I used broccoli, onions, carrots, potatoes, scallions, three kinds of peppers, tomatoes, parsley, kale, and basil. After all that, I still have eggplant (a challenge to disguise since Jim claims to hate eggplant), cabbage, more potatoes, more onions, and a butternut squash.
Well, of course, with soup, one must have bread.

I'm always looking for new recipes from Rose, and found one on her website that I haven't made yet. (She really is going to have to get going on another bread cookbook). She calls this "fantastic focaccia." It's pretty much like a regular focaccia except it's made with sourdough starter, which I happen to have in my refrigerator, and caramelized onions, which I adore, and which offered a means of using up two onions. The recipe actually calls for a soft starter, but I just added a little more liquid to my dough and it was fine. It's really quite easy, and it has a great texture, with lovely, unevenly shaped holes.

Rose's technique for caramelizing onions is to steam them in olive oil on very low heat for a good half hour, then take off the lid, and slowly let them brown. Two largeish onions become reduced to less than half a cup of beautifully golden essence of onion-ness. The bread went perfectly with the soup, which I served with a big dollop of pistou (just like pesto only without the nuts). Jim ate a few bites of soup and pronounced it "wonderful." Then he bit into the bread and said, "This is better than wonderful."


Now what the hell am I going to do with that eggplant?

Three-Bread Weekend

Saturday, September 1, 2007
Potato-Onion-Rosemary Pizza
I still had four pieces of pizza dough in the freezer.

I had made one soggy pizza and one perfect one (no photos of the perfect one, alas--it's like the one that got away). After baking two pizzas, it was clear to me that I should not use a pizza pan if I wanted a crispy bottom crust. And yet, when I made this third one, I foolishly put it on the pan again. Why? Well, I'd run out of parchment paper, and the topping was so lush with olive oil that I was afraid to put it on the baking stone. I knew what was likely to happen, but I convinced myself that soggy pizza bottoms were a thing of the past.
This pizza is so simple--one new potato, sliced as thinly as possible, about half an onion, also sliced very thinly, some fresh rosemary, and olive oil, all tossed together. Spread on the pizza dough and sprinkle with sea salt. No cheese, no sauce, no tomatoes. And it would have been perfect, too, if I had not ignored my inner voice saying, "Don't use the pan! Don't use the pan!" The edge was so perfect, so crisp, so crusty. Limp in the middle, however.

Remember, BAN THE PAN!

Sunday, September 2, 2007

Segale con Pancetta (Rye Bread with Pancetta)

I've grown to be very fond of Carol Field's The Italian Baker. It's probably my favorite, except for The Bread Bible, of course, which is, after all, a bible. But Field's breads are all very hearty and flavorful. This rye bread, studded with bits of pancetta, is no exception. It's about half-rye, half-white flour, which makes it very dense--really more like a whole-wheat bread than a rye. When I tasted this bread, I realized how much I associated caraway seeds with rye--this has no seeds, and, hence, it doesn't taste much like traditional rye bread.
I used my bread steamer, and, since I had two loaves to bake, I experimented. On the first loaf, I steamed for only five seconds and kept the lid on for 20 minutes. On the second, I steamed longer (15 seconds) but kept the lid on for only 10 minutes. They look quite different--the second one (to the right) got browner and the flour pattern from the banetton doesn't show as much, although I put equal amounts of flour in both. I put the second loaf in the freezer, so, as Jim pointed out to me, it wasn't much of a taste test, but there was no way I was going to cut up two loaves of bread for two people. I do have some sense of propriety.

This bread is excellent with gouda, goat cheese and Zinfandel, which is what we happened to have on hand.
I wasn't sure how it would toast, which is always my second criterion for bread, but I had some this morning with an egg. Very nice! It was like having a bacon and egg breakfast without the bother of cooking the bacon.

Monday, September 3
Multigrain Bread Extraordinaire

Monday's bread is from The Bread Baker's Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart. This "extraordinaire" bread is supposed to be the new, improved version of his struan bread, which seems to be a favorite bread with everyone. Rose's version of struan bread, which she has on her blog, caused her to write to Reinhart that this bread made her proud to be a bread-baker. It's not a complicated bread at all--it just has a little cornmeal, rolled oats, and wheat bran mixed in with a basic white bread recipe. I think the "improved" part just involves mixing the grains the night before with enough water to moisten them. This is supposed to make excellent toast, but, as of Monday night, I haven't tried that version. Because the tomatoes are plentiful, and because of the promised splendid toast, BLT's seem to be in my future.

Here is what I learned about a three-day weekend. I can never retire! I baked (and ate) an insane amount of bread this weekend. Where I usually make one thing per weekend (manageable), I made three (messy and gluttonous). Work saves me from myself.

The I-Don't-Know-How-to-Braid Challah

Saturday, August 25, 2007
When Sarah was a little girl, she asked me to braid her hair. I did, and she was satisfied, but when I saw pictures of her in braids, I realized that I did a sadly inadequate job. I missed big tufts of hair, and I tied the rubber bands around the ends so loosely that the braids got very saggy. I also failed to make a nice, neat part. When Elizabeth asked me to braid her hair, I was no better. She took one look at herself in the mirror and said, with a look of combined pity and scorn, "I think I'll just do it myself."
I remembered this when I was braiding my challah. I saw a lovely loaf of challah in a bakery a few weeks ago, and that reminded me that it was about time to try it again. Challah was the last bread I made in my 82-bread challenge of 2006. That version got pretty saggy too, but it didn't occur to me at the time that the less-than-picture-perfect outcome might have something to do with my braiding technique. I remembered that Rose had a recipe on her web site for a challah that she considered superior even to the one in The Bread Bible, although that one was quite good (if not especially lovely to look at). So I found the recipe, My New Favorite Challah, and started in early this morning. This recipe is quite similar to the one in TBB, except that it has about 85 grams of sourdough starter in it.
Everything was going swimmingly until I started to braid. The abbreviated instructions on the web site just said to divide the dough into four strands and braid them. Hmm, I said to myself, I don't remember ever braiding four things together, but, undismayed, I got down The Bread Bible, which has a nice diagram for four-strand challah.
First, pinch all four ropes together. Then "slip 1 under 2 and 3 and cross 1 over 3." Huh? Okay, I guess I get that. "Slip 4 under both 3 and 1 and cross it over 1." But 1 is no longer 1, it's 2. And 4 is 3. "Slip 2 under both 1 and 4 and cross it over 4. Slip 3 under 4 and 2, and cross it over 2." Are you beginning to see my problem? By this time, I was less than half way through the braiding, and I no longer had any idea what strand was which number. I thought maybe I could just fake it, but strands 3 and 4, which may actually have been 1 and 2, went off on their own. Also, I was no longer in a cheerful mood.
What I should have done (maybe) was to put small post-it notes on each strand, so I'd know the numbers, and I may try that sometime, but today what I did was to give up on the four strands, put them back together in a lump, and separate them into three strands. This I could do. Or so I thought.
The dough was a little the worse for wear, and one of my strands fell apart mid-braid. I swore. I was not at all cheerful. But I persevered and I ended up with something that might pass as a braided loaf, if you had very poor vision and weren't wearing your glasses. I brushed it with egg yolk, getting all the crevices, as Rose instructs, and covered it with plastic wrap. After an hour, it had risen pretty well, and except for the one strand that fell apart, it actually didn't look too bad. As I pulled the plastic wrap off, I remembered that I had forgotten to oil it. As you might not be surprised to hear, most of the top layer of the bread stuck to the wrap. At this point, it looked like only a big blob of dough with little points sticking up from where the plastic had pulled.
Jim asked me if I wanted pictures. I said, "Oh, sure, why not."

WHAT NOT TO DO




But look! If you only see the sliced bread, it's quite pretty. It could pass as a success. And, even though I messed around with the dough for too long, the bread turned out to be quite delicious. I think it's my new favorite challah, too, and who knows? Maybe one day it will actually look like challah.

And now I must humor Jim, who saw another architectural parallel:


"Heelstone" at Stonehenge

My Challah

Turkish Simit

Saturday, August 18, 2007

When we were in Istanbul several years ago with our friends Fred and Betty, we discovered the snack bread called simit. Vendors carry baskets of them balanced on their heads while they wander through the streets. They're round and covered with sesame seeds, so I expected them to taste like bagels, but they're completely dissimilar to bagels. Although they're often referred to as Turkish croissants, they're not even yeast breads, and, in fact, they don't taste like croissants either, although they're fairly buttery.
I liked the ones I ate in Turkey and thought I would eventually try my hand at them, but they weren't at the top of my list. I didn't have anything else planned for today, though, and it seemed like a good day to give it a try. First I had to find a recipe that might be at least marginally authentic. I discarded all the ones that called for margarine because my kitchen is a margarine-free zone. I settled on a recipe from the U.K., which is closer to Turkey than we are, and had 150 grams of butter and no margarine, which must be better.
The dough is easy--mix flour, baking soda, and salt, and make a well in it. Then add beaten egg, melted butter, olive oil, and some water. Fold the ingredients together until you have a dough. Pinch off some fairly hefty pieces, roll them out into a snake, then turn them into a circle.

Brush them with more beaten egg, and then strew them with sesame seeds.

They bake for about 30 minutes. I've been using my convection oven lately, which I like a lot. For some reason, and I'm sure there is a reason, you can set it at a slightly lower heat than the recipe specifies, and it browns beautifully. I haven't burned anything yet that's been on the convection setting, although I'm sure I will eventually.


The simit were not how I remembered them, but my simit memory has probably dimmed over the past two years. They're almost like a pastry--buttery and crumbly. Spread thickly with jam, which is a good way to eat them, they're almost like eating a jam tart. A native of Turkey might scoff at my simit, but I thought they were very nice.
Afiyet olsun!

Real Women Eat Quiche

Tuesday, August 14, 2007
It was my turn to host book club, and, since we were reading a book where the action takes place in France, I decided to bake a few quiches. I read Rose's The Pie and Pastry Bible on quiches, and, since Rose recommends a lard crust for a quiche, that's what it had to be.


When I was growing up, I heard about lard pie crusts. My reaction to putting lard in anything was "Eeewwww--lard. How gross!" I was thankful that I was in a modern household and that my mother used Crisco instead of disgustingly old-fashioned lard. Lard--the look and sound of the word itself was repellent. Then, when I started baking myself, I gradually changed from Crisco to butter (on the rare occasions I tried to make pastry). I was very pleased with myself that I now used butter instead of disgusting lardy-looking Crisco. But, as you know, lard is becoming fashionable again, but I didn't want just any old lard. I wanted fine lard--lard de cuisine. I went to Clancy's Meat Market, which not only has fine lard, it has locally produced lard from happy pigs.
I was so thrilled that I went around all last week telling people about my upcoming lard crusts. Oddly, many people, especially those picky vegetarians, did not share my enthusiasm.
I made the tart crust last night (not just pie crust, you may note, but tart crust) when Sarah came over to watch Big Love with me. She watched me put it together, but was not impressed with my technique, which did leave something to be desired, I'll admit, or with the bacony smell of the lard. "Don't get me wrong, Mom, I love bacon--I'm just not so sure I love it in my pie crust."
Heat and humidity are enemies of good pie crust--that's what Rose told me when I emailed her to ask if there were any special tips. "Work quickly and freeze your flour." I did freeze the flour, but nothing was going to make me work quickly. I am a novice, after all. I did come up with two very soft discs of pie dough, which I refrigerated overnight, hoping that they would firm up a bit overnight.
Today I came home early from work to make the quiches. Rose also recommended a rolling pin sleeve, so I went to Kitchen Window to make that purchase. Unlike most special purchases, the rolling pin sleeve was dirt cheap--about $2.00. In order to make the trip worth my while, I also bought another tart pan, some ceramic pie weights, and a pastry cloth. (I told the clerk at Kitchen Window that these purchases were meant for making lard pie crusts. She was unimpressed).
The rolling pin sleeve was well worth the money, but the pastry cloth was a loser; instead of sticking to the counter, the crust stuck to the cloth. I had to scrape it off, shape it into another disc, and put it back in the refrigerator. At this point, it was starting to look like only disaster was in the cards, and I thought about making a quick run to the grocery store to pick up some Betty Crocker pie crust, but I thought I might as well make sure that nothing could be salvaged before I took such a drastic step.
And a good thing I kept at it. Not only did the quiches turn out to be delicious, but they also didn't look too bad. I made one caramelized onion quiche and one spicy spinach quiche, both from TP&PB.

The crusts were decent, but it was the fillings that were fabulous. Both are easy to make, although it takes more than an hour to properly caramelize the onions. And making two things at a time is always confusing to me because I tend to get the two recipes mixed up. Again, though, nothing bad happened. My book club was properly in awe of the two beautiful quiches. I did not announce that the pie crusts were made of lard because I have finally come to understand that hardly anyone thinks this is a good thing.

Here are some conclusions I have drawn after my two-day quiche-making adventure: pastry is much more difficult than bread. Bread pretty much does what you want it to do, and if it doesn't, you can just tell yourself that it looks rustic. You have to be much more skilled, practiced, and artistic than I am to make pastry look good. Also, it is very easy to justify baking at least one loaf of bread every week. Bread is the staff of life. No one has ever called banana cream pie the staff of life. And if I tried to bake every pie in The Pie and Pastry Bible in one year, I'd probably get better at baking pies, but I'd also get considerably fatter. (After all, the pejorative term is "lardbutt," not "breadbutt.) I don't know how Rose manages to keep so slim.

Ricotta Bliss Loaf

Sunday, August 12, 2007
I found this bread on Rose's blog last week. She explained that this loaf is what her original ricotta loaf in The Bread Bible was supposed to be, but she tweaked the original into one baked in a loaf pan in order to round out a chapter. She recently decided to make the original, and was enthusiastic enough about it that I knew I had to try it.
I made the original in February, 2006, and it was a fine loaf of bread. I think that this one is even better, but then I prefer free-form to bread made in a loaf pan. Is it bliss? Well, that may be a slight exaggeration, but you certainly won't be unhappy biting into a piece of this bread.

The ricotta loaf is one of the few breads in The Bread Bible that Rose recommends the food processor for. This makes it extremely easy to whip up. It's also one of the few that you can make it one day, although you can also refrigerate it overnight, which I did. I used a lovely, thick Italian ricotta that I bought at Broder's Italian Deli, which made the texture almost meltingly soft.
This is what it looks like just before I went at it with the slashing knife and put it in the oven.
This recipe makes two loaves, so I was able to take one, still warm from the oven, to my dear friend and neighbor Betty, who just got home from the hospital after having hip replacement surgery and a number of misadventures that kept her in the hospital for longer than expected.

(Jim was experimenting with the morning light coming through our kitchen window).
I decided that this bread, with its soft texture and slightly sweet taste, would be better with cappuccino than with wine, so I picked up some strawberry and brandied apricot preserves, and Jim made some cappuccino. We had just seen a $4,000 machine at a kitchen store, so our little $30 machine looked kind of sad, but it makes a decent cup of coffee, and the bread was perfect.

I know there should be a picture of the bread spread with the preserves, but we were too greedy to stop to take pictures.

Farmer's Market Pizza

Sunday, July 29, 2007
Even though I have made both pizza crust recipes in TBB several times, to excellent results, I tried something new this weekend: the Neopolitan pizza dough recipe from
The Bread Baker's Apprentice. As an apprentice, I did not do so well.
The good news is that the recipe makes enough for six pizzas, so I have five in the freezer. The bad news may be that there are still five in the freezer. I'll see after next time.
Peter Reinhart gives instructions for stretching the pizza dough by tossing it in the air. Like anybody could do it. So I tossed it for a while, but after a few tosses, I started getting big holes in the middle of the dough. I'd shape it back into a nice patty, and start tossing it again. Again, I got big holes in the middle. Finally, I resorted to a rolling pin, which worked fine, although it didn't have that same air of savoir faire.
Then he suggested putting the stretched-thin pizza dough on a wooden paddle and sliding it onto a pizza stone. I figured that the sliding was going to go about as well as the tossing did, with far more disastrous possibilities, so I put the dough on a pizza pan.
Reinhart says you should bake it at as high a temperature as your oven can go--800 degrees if possible. I set my oven at 800, being very impressed that it would go that high. But instead of turning on, the oven flashed the number "800" and bleated pathetically. I finally understood it was telling me that it did not understand this number. It didn't understand 700 or 600 either, but settled down at 550.
For the topping, I sauteed summer squash, fennel and onion in olive oil. Then I added some sliced cherry tomatoes and a sliced Italian pepper. I topped it with fresh mozzarella, goat cheese, and grated parmesan, and stuck it in the hot oven (burning my arm in the process, which made me think they knew what they were doing when they decided not to allow their ovens to go up to 800 degrees).
Within six minutes, the outer crust was browned nicely, and the cheese were melted, and I strewed on some fresh basil. Things were looking up. Unfortunately, when I cut into the pizza, I realized that the bottom crust was not cooked through, so we had some really excellent pizza until you got into the middle. Then we had something soft and soggy, topped with a lot of vegetables.
I think that things might improve if I put the oven rack at the very bottom next time, so that it will cook through. I think maybe I shouldn't put so many vegetables on, especially rather wet vegetables like summer squash. It would also probably be a good idea not to bump my arm into the preheated pizza stone.

Half Wheat Bread

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Pondering what bread to bake next, I looked in the cupboards with my bread-making equipment and noticed bread pans. Hmm, I said to myself, I haven't made a plain loaf of bread for many months. I also said to myself, I haven't used this whole wheat flour for a while. (In fact, when I looked at the flour, I saw that it's "best if used before" date was sometime last year. I know how Rose feels about old flour, but I decided to use it one more time before I threw it away).
I looked at a bunch of recipes, but nothing quite struck my fancy. The whole wheat breads all looked too dense and hearty, and I was in the mood for something lighter. I finally decided to use Rose's basic white bread recipe and just substitute half whole wheat flour; hence the half wheat. Or it could be half white, I guess. (No, not half wit).

This bread came out very well, especially for being rushed into shape. We had to leave at 5:00, so I wanted the bread to be ready by 3:00. I started mixing the sponge around 9:30, but when I read the recipe carefully, I realized that if I used all the maximum rising times, the bread would not come out of the oven until 6:00. So I used the minimum rising times, and shaved some more time off. It didn't seem to matter one bit. I probably wouldn't have needed to throw the elderly flour away after all.
But the real star of this bread was the butter. You may have seen the article in the NYTimes about making your own butter. I cut it out, but didn't really intend to try it. I mean, how Little House on the Prairie is making your own butter? If you start that, soon you'll be weaving your own yarn, or putting a henhouse in your garage. But the lure of home-churned butter is too great to resist.
Well, off course, it's not home-churned. It's home KitchenAided with the whisk attachment. I have always loved to whip cream. It was my job as a child whenever we had dessert with whipped cream, which was never often enough. But my mother always cautioned me not to beat it for too long "or it will turn into butter." So I grew up with this idea that one millisecond too long, and your nice whipped cream would turn into a big chunk of butter. If my mother were still alive, I'd tell her not to worry: there is a long, long period of time before the whipped cream becomes butter. But that's all there is to it. Whip it long enough (like ten minutes) and suddenly, immediately after attaining a curdish consistency, it starts sploshing liquid onto the plastic wrap that the directions have helpfully told you to cover the bowl with, it does what it's supposed to do. The thick stuff is butter. The milky stuff is--you'll never guess--buttermilk.
I like my butter unsalted, but Jim doesn't, so, like the good wife that I am, I sprinkled a little sea salt into most of the butter.

If I had had more time, I might have shaped the butter into something cute. As it was, we barely had time to cut into the still warm bread, slather it with incredibly fresh and delicious butter, and eat three pieces each.
Then we had to leave to go to a party. It's a hard life, but someone has to do it.

I've Been Tagged

Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Melinda, baker par excellence, blogster, and faithful reader, tagged me to list seven things you might not know about me. Honestly, there are many things that people might not know about me, but they are all supremely uninteresting. Melinda said she hoped that I would have some secret like maybe teaching belly dancing while I was in law school. Afraid not. My list would be more interesting if Melinda had just made up seven things about me.

1. I had a pet lamb when I was a little girl. The lamb recognized me by sniffing knees. When she came to my knees, she got very excited, and bounded around. No one else has ever been excited by my knees.

2. When I was in high school, I won the “best actress” award, for playing Miss Pidgie McDougall, an old maid (back in the day when no one objected to the term “old maid”), in a very bad play called “Off the Tracks.” Guaranteed laugh line: “My name is Pidgie McDougall. I’m in men’s underwear.”

3. I love grilled bologna sandwiches. These sandwiches have absolutely no culinary redemptive value, and I should be ashamed of myself for eating them, much less admitting to it.

4. I won the patriotic essay contest sponsored by the American Legion two years in a row, in 7th and 8th grade. My masterwork was entitled “What America Means to Me.”

5. Bats terrify me. I wish they didn’t exist. On several occasions, bats have gotten in our house, and awakened me by swooping around our bedroom in the middle of the night. This is the drill: I scream and cover my face with the sheets. Jim wakes up and realizes there’s a bat in the room (because I’m screaming, “There’s a bat!”). He gets up and chases after the bat. He finally catches it and releases it outside. We argue about whether he should have killed the awful thing. He goes back to sleep. I don’t.

6. I have always wanted to sing torch songs in a piano bar.

7. When my office had a case that went to the United States Supreme Court, I worked on the brief and sat at counsel table. I was given a souvenir quill pen, which I have never used. I learned that Justice Scalia likes to tell jokes during oral argument and seems miffed if no one laughs. I also learned that no one on the Court thinks it’s amusing if one of the lawyers tells a joke.

Green Olive Bread - Two Ways

Sunday, July 15, 2007
I've had a hankering for green olive bread ever since I saw it at a bakery in Vancouver. I've intended to bake it for the last few weeks, but each weekend has been miserable--the kind of weather that makes you understand that "warm" is much too soft and cozy a word to describe global warming; that it means the weather could be godawful: hot, humid, and tropical. And this is Minnesota.
But this weekend the weather was wonderful, and it didn't feel sinful to turn on my oven, so I did. I used Rose's olive bread recipe, except that I substituted green olives (a combination of Sicilian, Picholine, and Cerignola) instead of black olives. Also, as I've been doing since I got my starter started, I add a glop or two of starter to the dough. I don't know how much difference it makes, but it doesn't do any harm.
On Saturday, I shaped a boule in my new banetton and baked it in the SteamMaker. A boule is supposed to have less of a blast of steam than a baguette, and more time under the metal cover than a baguette. This supposedly makes a crust that is crisp, yet chewy, rather than the baguette's shatteringly crisp crust. I didn't get my blast of steam immediately because Jim, who is in charge of the steam, wasn't ready when the bread was. I still have no complaints about the bread. We went to our friends the Millers' house for dinner, and brought a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine. The bread was more popular than the wine.

Today we needed a celebratory loaf of bread to go with the lovely French champagne we got to celebrate Sarah's graduation from college. As we like to say, she took the scenic route toward graduation, and, even though it took slightly longer than the traditional four years, she did it her own way, and cheers to her, I say. I decided to make a torpedo-shaped loaf in my new La Cloche Italian-bread baker. The olive bread does very well in this shape as well, and it popped right out of the floured La Cloche.

The bread baked in La Cloche may not get quite as golden brown as the one baked without it, but the texture may be slightly better, although it may also just be that this size is easier to slice than a round loaf. To go with the champagne, we got a few of Sarah's favorite snacks--Cambozola cheese and mascarpone with smoked salmon. James, Sarah's boyfriend, also dropped by and helped us celebrate. Sarah and I are very taken with our new game: if you had to change your name to anything other than what it is now, what name would you choose? Sarah and I keep changing our minds, as we think of new considerations. For some reason, Jim and James both think it's silly, and respond by saying, "But I like my own name and I don't want to change it." But by the time we'd downed the champagne and eaten the last crumb of bread, even they were feeling expansive enough to get in the spirit of the game.

Baguettes--the Steamfast way

Saturday, June 23, 2007
Somewhere in her blog, Rose recommended the Steam Maker , and I mentioned to Jim that I wanted to get one someday when we were rich. Instead of waiting for wealth, however, he wanted to get one for my birthday last month. I told him it was a frivolous purchase, but he bought it anyway. I just made amazing baguettes with this contraption, and I'm now so glad that I have it.

It's a little bit Rube Goldberg-ish, and I was kind of scared to do the big swish of steam myself because I thought I might burn myself. "Danger," the instructions say. "This unit is not a toy." "Never point nozzle at people or pets."
Here's what you do--you just make your baguettes (I followed Rose's recipe, which somehow seemed much easier than the first time I did it). You put them on a baking stone in a 450-degree oven. Then you cover them with the lid to the Steam Maker, and you get your spouse to spray steam in the hole in the cover for 30 seconds. This is really fun, especially if you're not doing it yourself. Then you bake it, covered, for six or seven minutes.

Then you take the lid off and bake it for another 23 minutes or so, turning the oven stone once during the process.


When the loaves come out of the oven, the look pretty good. But it's not until you tap them with your fingernail that you realize that they have an extraordinary crust--the kind that you get only in the very best artisan loaf. Honestly, I may have eaten baguettes that were this good, but I have never eaten one that was any better. And I have never eaten one that was so fresh out of the oven. I feel that all of my work last year, as I was making my way through The Bread Bible for the first time, led to this point, and I may never bake another bread that (to me, at least) is this satisfying.

You know that game where you have to pick three foods that you'd want if you were stranded on a desert island and you could have three things each day? This bread would be one of mine. The only problem with that is that it really couldn't be a humid island. Jim and I ate the first loaf in about 15 minutes. Then we couldn't eat any more. I thought about freezing the second one, but decided we could just eat it for breakfast. The lovely crispy, crackly crust did not make it through a humid Minnesota summer night unscathed, however. The bread was still good the second day, but the crust became chewy rather than crisp. I will therefore have to specify that my bread must be delivered to my desert island immediately after being baked. No day-old bread in my fantasy.