Basic Hearth Bread - Again

November 25, 2007
I love this bread.

It's one of the few from The Bread Bible that I've repeated--it's worth repeating because it's just about a perfect basic loaf of bread. It's chewy and crusty, and, especially with sourdough starter substituting for some of the yeast, as it did this time, very flavorful. It's also quite pretty.
The first time I made this bread, in March of 2006, I was just getting started on my year-long bread-baking project. I liked it then, even though I didn't shape it very well. I made it a second time just after our kitchen was completed--I think it was the first bread I made in the new oven. It got a little too dark, but I still liked it. This time, it was almost perfect. In fact, I doubled the recipe because I knew how much I liked this bread. (Doubling was not such a great idea, as it turned out, since the amount of dough really taxed my KitchenAid's powers. I smelled something burning and couldn't figure out what it was, since I hadn't turned on the oven. Then I realized that my mixer was working its little heart out for me.)

This hearth bread is just flour, water, and yeast, with a little honey added for a very subtle sweetness. Most of the flour is bread flour, but there's a little whole wheat--enough for color and taste. One of Rose's variations is to cut down the yeast and add some sourdough starter. I like to add some sourdough to most breads anyhow, but this one especially benefits from it. Not enough to make it sour, but just enough to deepen the flavor.
We had it with cheese and wine this afternoon.

Jim brought some cheese back from the grocery store that described itself as having a "subtle barnyard taste." I asked him why he thought that sounded inviting, but it turned out to be fine.
(It's amazing how much time I have on Sunday when I'm not writing a novel, by the way!)
And I'm making spaghetti with bacon, tomatoes, and tarragon for dinner; I expect it will go very well with that, too.

Thea's Mother's Cream Scones

Sunday, November 25, 2007


First of all, I'm done with the novel. After an all-day stint of writing yesterday, I got to "The End" and to 50,276 words at the same time. I can now cross "Write a Novel" off my list of life's goals.
I had a secret plan in case I couldn't make it quite to 50,000 words. Two of my main characters are amateur bakers (what a surprise!), and they bake various things throughout the book. I figured that if I didn't make the word count by November 30, I'd just add the recipes. The more I thought about it, the more integral the recipes seemed. As it happened, I didn't need the extra words, but I'm still including the recipes in the novel.
I thought I'd already decided what recipes I was going to use. To my surprise, though, Thea's mother entered the story, and she decided to bake scones. I didn't know that was going to happen. You know how writers are always claiming that their characters just do things on their own? That always seemed pretty unbelievable to me, yet there she was, this new character who just barged into Thea's kitchen and made scones. She doesn't even have a name. She's just "Thea's mom." (Like mothers often are--mere appendages to their children).
When I woke up this morning, I was disappointed that there were no scones for me to eat. After all, I'd invented the damn character; did I have to bake the scones too? It seems that I did.
When Jim walked into the kitchen, he was delighted to see me mixing up scones. "Scones! What a wonderful idea!" "They're Thea's mother's scones," I told him. He nodded knowingly. "Ah," he said, and walked out. He may not be sure who she is, but he thinks that Thea's mother makes a mean scone.


Thea's Mother's Cream Scones

1/3 c. currants
2 c. flour
2 t. baking powder
3 T. sugar
1/2 t. salt
4 T. cold butter, cut into small pieces
2 eggs
1/2 c. heavy cream
1/2 t. vanilla
1/3 c. chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)

1 T. heavy cream to brush on scones
Extra sugar to sprinkle on scones

1. Preheat oven to 425.
2. Mix flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt; then cut in butter until the mixture resembles meal.
3. Combine eggs, cream, and vanilla, and stir it into the flour mixture, along with currants and nuts.
4. Turn dough onto floured counter and knead lightly about 10 times.
5. Pat dough into circle about 3/4" thick. Brush with cream and sprinkle with sugar.
6. Cut into 8 to 12 wedges, depending on how big you want the scones to be.
7. Place wedges on baking pan lined with parchment paper.
8. Bake until golden, about 15 minutes.

Adapted from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, by Deborah Madison

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Thursday, November 22, 2007
"Mom, I have to bring bread on Thanksgiving."
"I thought you were making a Key Lime pie."
"I am, but my friends told me to bring bread. They know about your blog, and they think I should bake bread too. So send me a recipe, but it has to be easy. And the ingredients can't be expensive. I'm very poor. And remember--I don't have anything!"
I mulled this one over for a while, then thought about the first bread I ever made. I was about 16, and "Dilly Bread" was the rage. I think it had won the Pillsbury Bake-Off, back in the day when the Bake-Off was something more than a showcase for pre-packaged, highly processed food. I remembered it being very easy, with very little kneading, and it didn't even need a loaf pan.
To my surprise, it was easy to find a recipe. And it was easy to make too. The only minor almost-glitch was when Liz and I were IM-ing about making the bread, and I told her to find a warm spot in the kitchen. She said, "You mean you're not supposed to put it in the refrigerator?"
I said, "Yikes!" "Okay, okay, it's out of the refrigerator now. Don't panic."

LIZ WITH DILLY BREAD

She was very pleased with how the bread turned out, as well as the Key Lime pie. There had been a moment of distress the day before when she was shopping. "Mom, I'm at the grocery store, and they don't have any Key Limes." I told her just to get regular limes, and not bottled key lime juice, which I think has a nasty, artificial taste. I told her not to forget the whipping cream. "It's got to be Reddi-Whip. I don't have a mixer." Silence. "Don't worry, mom, it'll taste great."

LIZ'S KEY LIME PIE
She took her bread and pie to her friend Sarah's condo, and these soon-to-be doctors (and one lawyer) put on a nice spread.

They gave the job of carving the turkey to the only non-doctor. But he did a nice job.


None of them look too unhappy about the idea of spending Thanksgiving away from the bosom of their families.



LIZ, KAT, SARAH, NATIS, MIRANDA, AND JUSTIN

Liz's Thanksgiving Dilly Bread

1 T. active dry yeast
1/4 c. warm water
1 c. small-curd cottage cheese
1 T. butter
2 t. dried or 4 t. fresh dill
1 T. minced onion
1 t. salt
1 egg
2 1/2 to 3 c. all-purpose flour

1. Dissolve yeast in warm water in a large bowl. Set aside until foamy, about 5 minutes.
2. Warm cottage cheese and butter in a saucepan over low heat. Add to yeast mixture, along with dill, onion, salt, and egg. Mix well.
3. Add flour and mix well.
4. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead for a few minutes.
5. Place in oiled bowl, turning to coat all the dough with oil.
6. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise (in a warm place) until doubled, about 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350.

Turn out, knead slightly, and shape into round loaf. Place in oiled casserole dish or pie pan. (If you've already used your one and only pie pan to make Key Lime pie, use oven-proof skillet.)
Bake 30-35 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

Adapted from Baking With the St. Paul Bread Club, Kim Ode, ed.

The Pearl's Walnut Levain

Sunday, November 18, 2007
Novel or no, I felt the need to bake bread this weekend, so I tried another bread from Maggie Glezer's beautifully photographed book, Artisan Baking. This bread is labeled "advanced," but it's not difficult, although it does require a sourdough starter which you use to make the levain.

My friend Bridget told me that she had this book, but she had never used it because making a levain or poolish the night before always seemed kind of scary; she also said that when she wants bread, she wants it now--not 48 hours later.
I pooh-poohed her levain fear, and told her that it couldn't be easier.
When I looked at this recipe, I had to admit that it didn't exactly fit in the "want it now" category. A levain has to be stirred up the night before, and for the levain, you need about a tablespoon of sourdough starter, which, of course, had to be refreshed at least twelve hours before you put it in the levain. And if you don't happen to have sourdough starter in your refrigerator, you're not going to bake this bread. Or at least not this version of it.
I ended up adding a minute amount (about 1/8 teaspoon) of yeast to the dough when I mixed it up because the levain was supposed to have quadrupled overnight. Maybe it doubled, but it certainly didn't quadruple. I was afraid it just didn't have enough oomph to make two loaves of hearty bread. Maybe I should have had more faith, but it turned out very well with the addition of a small amount of yeast.
I like the mixture of flours for this bread--all-purpose unbleached, bread, rye, and whole wheat--much better than I like the straight whole-wheat that I made last weekend. And the addition of lightly toasted walnuts gives this bread a terrific, earthy flavor.

Jim made bacon, onion, and blue cheese omelets for dinner. Although the bread and the omelets weren't planned to go together, it was a match made in heaven.

The Cupboard is Bare Pizza

Saturday, November 17, 2008

One really nice thing about having frozen pizza dough on hand is that you almost always have a few things on hand that you can put on top of a crust, and, after it's been baked on high heat on top of a pizza stone for five or ten minutes, it doesn't look like a meal born of desperation. Well, more like laziness actually.
I had fallen behind in my novel writing, what with book club and a fundraiser that I felt that I had to go to, and work, of course, which always seems to get in the way of my projects.
I took the pizza dough out of the freezer in the morning and figured I'd go grocery shopping later. At dinner time, I was still trying to get up to 33,000 words, so I just looked around to see what I had. It turned out that I had onions, a few olives, sun-dried tomatoes, some wilty-looking basil, and Monterey Jack and Parmesan cheeses. Peter Reinhart recommends no more than three or four ingredients atop a pizza, and he's probably right. I may have had more weight than I should have asked this thin crust to hold, but I don't know what I would have taken off. I caramelized the onions, chopped the olives and tomatoes, chiffonaded the basil, and grated the cheeses--you can do all that in the time that it takes for the oven to get up to 550. Put together a salad and pour some wine while the pizza bakes and hey presto! Dinner is served.

King Arthur's Whole Wheat Bread

November 11, 2007

Today I came up for air from this crazy novel-writing escapade long enough to bake a loaf of bread. Jim has not complained at all about my being stuck at the computer all night every night typing away. In fact, now that I think about it, he seems quite cheerful about rarely seeing me.
But he has complained, in an increasingly bitter tone, about not having fresh bread. Since I hit 18,000 words yesterday, I thought I could bake some bread. Nothing fancy, though. I remembered I've been meaning to try the recipe on the King Arthur Whole Wheat Flour bag, and when I read the directions, I saw that it was just dump all the ingredients in a bowl, mix them, let the dough rise, shape it, rise again, and bake. Simplicity itself.
I've found that I prefer a mixture of whole wheat and other flours instead of straight whole wheat, but the King Arthur bread is a pretty decent loaf of bread. We both had two slices while it was still warm (and it's hard for warm bread to be bad), and I had some toasted for breakfast. Tonight, I'll use more for grilled cheese sandwiches.
In my novel, the main character, who's a vegetarian, goes into a restaurant called Sir Beef, looking for the owner, who may or may not turn out to be a bad guy. The only thing she can eat on the menu is a grilled cheese sandwich. Since she's also kind of a food snob, she talks them into adding some sliced tomatoes and fried onions to her grilled cheese. That sounded good to me, so I decided to try it myself, along with some soup that doesn't take more than about five minutes to put together.
I'm hoping to get up to 22,000 words today. I need to get ahead so I can take Thanksgiving off and go to Chicago for a couple of days at the end of the month. If I could manage to get up to the magic number of 50,000 by Thanksgiving, I'll tell you what I would be thankful for: I would be very, very thankful that I was no longer writing this damned novel.

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!