Pan de Mallorca

On a recent visit to Puerto Rico, I tried a little powdered-sugar dusted roll called pan de mallorca at the hotel dining room. It wasn't very good, but I didn't want to let that fact stand in the way of further exploration--after all, the hotel bagels were bland and the hotel croissants were soggy.

I discovered that some of the best mallorcas were supposed to be found at a little restaurant called La Bombonera, where they serve them filled with ham and cheese. So we made a little trek to Old San Juan, and found La Bombonera. I ordered fresh orange juice and a La Bombonera Special, which I assumed would be a ham and cheese mallorca (or majorca, I've seen both spellings). Alas, it was not. It was more like a club sandwich with ham, cheese, and egg. Pretty good, but not what I was looking for.

So when I got home, I searched out a recipe. Of course, the recipes are all different, and how am I going to know an authentic recipe when I see one? All I knew is that I didn't want one that tasted like the bad hotel version, and I wanted to use it for a hot ham and cheese sandwich.

I settled on this recipe, from seriouseats.com, an adaptation from A Taste of Puerto Rico, by Yvonne Ortiz. It's a super-easy dough to mix up, especially if you have extra egg yolks on hand, which I did since I made an angel-food cake last weekend.

It's a rich, slightly sweet dough, with melted better, egg yolks, milk, flour, sugar, and yeast. After its first rising, you shape it into a rectangle.

But this is when I started having doubts about whether I'd searched long enough for the recipe. You brush melted butter on the dough and roll it up. Nothing wrong with that concept, but the mallorcas I'd seen in Puerto Rico didn't look like a cinnamon-less cinnamon roll. They were flatter in shape, with a little knot on top.

These just weren't going to turn out like that. The recipe also said to put them in a 9-inch square baking pan. I could see that this wasn't going to give them much room to spread, but I did it anyway. I should have listened to my better judgment. The problem is that one's better judgment isn't always right. I figure there's only about a 50-50 chance, so I might as well give the directions a chance. Also, if there's blame to be placed, I'd just as soon blame somebody else's recipe than my better judgment.

I wanted a flat, slightly rounded roll, but this is what I got. Why didn't I spend more time in Puerto Rico stopping in at bakeries and sampling various mallorcas? I had a perfect opportunity to do scientific testing, and I squandered it. I can see I'm going to have to return--not for fun this time. Just for experimentation.

The first taste test was eating one plain--no butter, no sugar, no jam. no ham. Pretty good. I might have baked them just a few minutes too long. The outside was a little crisp, and I don't think it's supposed to be. (I'll have to check on that aspect in my taste-testing journey). Not too sweet, not too soft. I like it.

Next taste test (which I completely forgot to photograph): the savory ham-and-cheese mallorca. I got out my super-cheap Target panini maker for its debut run. Let me say that mallorcas and panini makers are not a match made in heaven. The rolls are too high to get nicely scrunched, but they did get browned and the cheese (almost) melted. Not bad. You would think the powdered sugar and ham would not like each other, but, surprisingly, they're quite happy together. And so was the cheese. (The Puerto Ricans used Swiss or American; I used provolone. The provolone was a better choice, I think).

Despite these not being my dream mallorcas, I liked them well enough that I'd like to experiment with different recipes. But maybe that will wait until I go back to Puerto Rico to walk up and down the streets looking for the perfect mallorca. Oh, the sacrifices I make.

Flatbread with Fingerling Potatoes and Shitake Mushrooms

The full name of this flatbread, taken from epicurious.com, is "Flatbread with Fingerling Potatoes, Shitake Mushrooms, and Truffle Oil." I drizzled it with olive oil instead of truffle oil, because I don't like truffle oil. A few years ago, I splurged on a little bottle of truffle oil, and thought it had a very unpleasant taste. I figured it was just my lower-middle-class upbringing showing, and I was a Philistine who didn't appreciate the finer things in life. Then I read that truffle oil is not olive oil infused with truffles, as you might think (and as the truffle oil purveyors certainly want you to think), but, instead, it's olive oil infused with chemicals. Yes! I was vindicated. It's not that I don't like truffles--it's just that I don't hanker after 2,4-dithiapentane.

About half the comments to this recipe said it was unworkable because there was a mistake in the recipe--too much water, too little flour. Well, that was a challenge I wanted to take. I mixed the ingredients for that flatbread as directed, and came up with gruel. Definitely too much water. I gradually added flour, tablespoon by tablespoon, until I got a dough that still quite liquid but more or less manageable.

I ended up mixing it for almost 20 minutes (instead of the 10 minutes in the recipe) to get it "elastic but still sticky." It was very elastic.

A very nice thing about this bread is that you can put it in the refrigerator immediately after making it, and let it do its very rise overnight.  In fact, I didn't take it out of the refrigerator until mid-afternoon, so it would be ready around 5:00--in time for cocktail hour.
By then it had more than doubled in size.

At first blush, it might seem that potatoes and bread = carb overload. But I say there's no such thing as carb overload. I also say, what about the famous Sullivan Street Potato Pizza? And what about the classic Italian dish consisting of pasta, potatoes, and pesto?
The recipe specifies fingerling potatoes. In a pinch, you could use another kind, but a baking potato would probably be too mealy and a new potato not soft enough. The fingerling is actually just right.

Fresh thyme, sauteed shitake (or other) mushrooms, and plenty of olive oil (or truffle oil, if you like that kind of thing), and it's ready to go into a hot oven.

15 minutes later (the recipe says 20 to 22), it's ready to come out. The crust is phenomenally crusty and brown; the potatoes al dente, and the mushrooms sizzling. Most of the thyme remains green, but there are crispy bits of the herb as well.

Then the finishing touch--dabs of creme fraiche and thyme. Oops. I had half a carton of creme fraiche in my refrigerator--not yet at its expiration date--but when I opened it, I saw that there was some white fuzz on top. Thinking that white-fuzz topped flatbread did not sound very appetizing, I tossed the creme fraiche and used sour cream instead.

Creme fraiche would probably have been better, but sour cream was good enough. Or just skip the whole bits-of-cream idea and serve the flatbread as is when it comes out of the oven. Anything made with a dough this liquid requires a leap of faith: is this really going to work? But if you have faith (and modify the recipe somewhat, either using less water or more flour), you're rewarded with a wonderful appetizer. Be careful, though--you may eat so much that you've no appetite left for dinner.

Scones--Two Ways

I make scones about once a year, usually for our January coffee hours, and looking back over the years, I see that I nearly always declare that these scones are the best I've ever made. In all honesty, I think this must be because I love scones so much that I'm always pleased with myself for having made them.
This year I made two variations on the Cook's Illustrated basic theme. And once again, I think that they may be the best scones I ever nade, especially the pecan scones with maple-cream glaze. I suppose if you were violently allergic to nuts you wouldn't like these; otherwise, there's no hope for you if you turned up your nose at them.

I doubled the recipe and made apricot scones with grated lemon peel and the aforesaid pecan scones. The doubled amount--with four cups of flour and 10 tablespoons of butter, was a bit much for the food processor to handle efficiently. If I made this recipe again and doubled it (which I had to do to provide enough scones for the neighbors), I think I'd just make the single recipe twice.

After mixing in the cream, you pat or roll out the dough into a circle. No one will know if your circle isn't perfectly circular. As usual, I rolled mine out too thin because I always think that otherwise the scones will be too fat. I'm always wrong. I may get it right sometime, but I'm not counting on it.

A dough scraper is the easiest thing to use to cut the dough into eight wedges. If you don't have a dough scraper, I highly recommend that you get one posthaste. (My daughter just used the word "posthaste" on her Facebook page, and I thought to myself, "what a good word! I will have to use it myself.")

These scones have only two tablespoons of sugar per two cups of flour. That is much less sweet than typical American coffeehouse scones. If you want them sweeter you can increase the sugar. Alternatively, you can brush cream on top of the unbaked scones and sprinkle them with sugar; that's what I did with the apricot-lemon scones. Or you can wait until they're baked and drizzle a glaze on them. For the pecan scones, I made a glaze of cream, maple syrup, and confectioners' sugar. (I didn't measure--just add sugar until you get the consistency you're looking for).

These scones were a huge hit. Only the children ate the doughnuts. The adults all dug into the scones. Two of the neighbors are scone aficianados, and claimed that these were as good as (or possibly better than) the best bakery scones. Of course, they do have an interest in encouraging me to bake for them, so it wouldn't be politic for them to criticize my baking, would it?

Cream Scones
--from America’s Test Kitchen Cookbook

2 cups (10 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour, preferably a low-protein brand such as Gold Medal or Pillsbury
1 tablespoon baking powder
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons chilled, unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch cubes
3/4 cup fruit or nuts (Toasted pecans, chopped dried apricots, dried cranberries, currants, etc.)
Grated lemon or orange rind (optional)
1 cup heavy cream

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 425°F.

2. Place flour, baking powder, sugar and salt in large bowl or work bowl of food processor fitted with steel blade. Whisk together or pulse six times.

3. Remove cover and distribute butter evenly over dry ingredients. Cover and pulse 12 times, each pulse lasting 1 second. Add any fruit/nut additions and pulse one more time. Transfer dough to large bowl.

4. Stir in heavy cream with a rubber spatula or fork until dough begins to form, about 30 seconds.

5. Transfer dough and all dry, floury bits to countertop and knead dough by hand just until it comes together into a rough, sticky ball, 5 to 10 seconds. Form scones by turning the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface, cutting the dough into 8 wedges with either a knife or bench scraper. (You could also roll or pat out and cut pieces with a biscuit cutter).

6. Place wedges on ungreased baking sheet (I covered the pan with parchment paper) and bake until scone tops are light brown, 12 to 15 minutes. Cool on wire rack for at least 10 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Almost Easy to Make "Bostock"

This is not authentic Bostock. But then it's not authentic Brioche either. It's 5-Minutes-a-Day Brioche, which is essentially dump-and-stir bread. A real Bostock is a twice-baked brioche; before bostocks became trendy, they were a way to use up day-old brioche. The thrifty French topped the practically over-the-hill brioche with almond cream and baked them.
Perhaps it was devised by a baker named Bostock, but no one seems to know.



The "5-Minute" brioche recipe is certainly the easiest I've ever made: just mix up water, yeast, salt, eggs, honey, and melted butter; then mix in the flour.

This recipe has a very casual attitude toward the brioche dough: never mind about mixing it thoroughly! Don't let a few floury lumps trouble you! I wasn't troubled, but I ended up having to pick some lumps out of the dough after I rolled it out, so I think I shouldn't have been so quick to adopt the authors' carefree attitude.
I wanted to make this Bostock on Saturday morning, so I mixed up the dough Thursday evening, let it rise for a few hours, and then put it in the refrigerator until I was ready for it.

I made the almond cream on Friday night. Again, just a matter of mixing a few ingredients: almond paste, butter, egg, flour, almond extract, and orange-flower water (I used Fiori di Sicilia). It smelled heavenly.

Saturday morning, all I had to do was roll out the brioche dough to an oblong, fill it with the almond cream, and roll it up, jelly roll style. It looked like cinnamon rolls without the cinnamon; everything was very white.

Because there's almost no color difference between the almond paste and the brioche dough, you can hardly see that something is rolled up--it looks like blobs of uncooked dough.

Even the topping--sugar, almonds, and grated orange peel--didn't give it much color differential.

Ready to bake.  It still looks pretty white.

Only if you look at the bottom can you see that these are actually nicely browned rolls.

By 9:30 Saturday morning, they were out of the oven, and I was able to serve them warm to the neighbors who come to our house on Saturdays in January for our annual coffee and doughnut hours. They tasted very good, but not as good as the Bostock I've had from good bakeries. The almond cream layer kind of baked into the brioche, so there wasn't that lovely, gooey, almondy topping that you get on a proper Bostock.
On the other hand, a proper Bostock can't be whipped up on Saturday morning and be ready to serve just a few hours after the second punch of the snooze alarm.


Almond Brioche Bostock
from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.

Brioche
3/4 cup lukewarm water
2 1/4 tsp. instant yeast
2 1/4 tsp. salt
4 eggs
1/4 cup (80 g.) honey
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, melted
3 3/4 cups (541 g.)flour

Almond Cream
3/4 cup almond paste
6 Tbsp butter (at room temperature)
3/8 cup flour
1 1/2 eggs
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp fiori di sicilia (optional)

Topping
3/8 cup sugar
zest from a whole orange
1/2 cup sliced almonds

1. Make the brioche: mix the salt, yeast, eggs, honey and melted butter with the water in a large bowl. mix in the flour without kneading. The dough will be loose but will firm up when chilled. cover the dough and allow to rest a room temperature for 2 hours. Cover the dough bowl with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator until ready to use.

2. Make the almond cream: cream together the butter, almond paste, flour, egg and almond extract in a food processor until smooth and set aside.

3. Dust the surface of the refrigerated dough with flour and cut in two even pieces. Dust the piece with more flour and quickly shape into a ball. Roll the dough out into a long rectangle (about 1/4 inch thick), using enough flour to prevent it from sticking to the counter. Spread the almond cream evenly over the rectangle and roll the dough up like a jelly roll, starting at the long end. Repeat with second ball of brioche dough. Chill the log in the freezer for about 15 minutes. Grease an 8 inch round cake pan with butter and sprinkle liberally with sugar.

4. Cut the chilled dough into 8 equal pieces. Place them evenly in the cake pan so the swirled edge is facing upward. Allow the dough (covered) to rest in the pan for an hour. Twenty minutes before baking time, preheat the oven to 350 F. Just before baking, combine the sugar, orange zest and almonds and sprinkle over the brioche. Bake for about 40 minutes or until golden and well set in the center.

6. When you remove the brioche from the oven the run a knife around the inside of the pan to release the bread from the sides and invert it onto a large plate. Eat while warm.

Craig Ponsford's Ciabatta

Who is Craig Ponsford, you ask?
I would ask the same question, except that I have Maggie Glezer's book, Artisan Baking, and she tells me that Craig Ponsford has a bakery in Sonoma, California. Lucky man.
And lucky us, because he was willing to give Maggie Glezer his recipe for ciabatta.

Before I start in on the bread, however, I'd like to thank Tara Snyder for listing this blog as one of the top 50 bread blogs. Although as #50, I may have been somewhat of an afterthought, I'm still honored to be in such great company. And you'll want to check out some of these blogs: the listing includes both the tried and true, and the (probably) new to you.

Back to bread. After I make a soft-crusted sandwich loaf, I often have a hankering for something with crispy crust and big holes. This ciabatta fills the bill.
Making this ciabatta is a two-day affair. The first day, however, takes just a few minutes. You mix four different flours (all-purpose, bread, rye, and whole wheat) with some water that's been merely kissed by yeast--the most minute amount of yeast possible. After 24 hours, this little lump of dough has tripled in size, and you're ready for Day 2.

On the morning of the second day, (sounds kind of Biblical, doesn't it?), this multi-grain starter is mixed in with more flour, yeast, salt, and a lot of water. It's a wet dough, and would be difficult to handle if you tried to make it by hand. The KitchenAid is a life saver here.

After five minutes of mixing, the dough is easier to handle, but still sticky.

The technical term is "gloppy."

You pour this gloppy mixture into a bowl, and let it rise for about 3 hours. But don't go away. Your work is not done.

This dough requires you to turn it every 20 minutes, until it's been turned four times. Turning simply means that you turn it out on the counter, gently stretch it into a square, and fold over all four sides. After being turned four times, the dough is still soft, but considerably easier to handle.

Finally, after about 3 hours, the dough is ready to be stretched once more, floured, and covered in a floured tea towel (or couche) for another 45 minutes. There are no pictures of the tea towel hiding the dough.

Although this bread may look misshapen, I'm actually very pleased with the way it turned out. I knew that "ciabatta" means "slipper" in Italian, and I always assumed it was a pretty satin dancing slipper. But, according to Glezer, it's meant to look like an old grandpa's slipper. I think mine definitely bears a resemblance to Grandpa's beat-up slipper, especially if Grandpa was inclined to dump flour on his slippers. No, I don't know why he would.

In order for the crispy crust and full flavor to develop, this bread needs to be completely baked, so set the timer for another five minutes after you think it's done. Then it will be perfect.

This is an excellent bread--the kind you could just keep on eating. Plain, buttered, slathered with cheese, dipped in olive oil, used to sop up spaghetti sauce--however you want to enjoy it, that's the way it's meant to be enjoyed.

The recipe in Artisan Baking makes two loaves. I made only half a recipe, which is the recipe I'm including. Obviously, it would be easy to double.

Craig Ponsford's Ciabatta
--from Artisan Baking, by Maggie Glezer

Biga
1/8 tsp. instant yeast
1/2 cup water (110 to 115 F)
100 grams unbleached bread flour
50 grams unbleached all-purpose flour
7.5 grams whole-wheat flour
7.5 grams rye flour
92.5 grams water

Sprinkle the yeat over the warm water, stir, and let it stand for 5 to 10 minutes. Mix the flours in a bowl. Measure 1/4 teaspoon of the yeasted water into the flour mixture. Then add the rest of the water, using warmer water in winter and cold water in the summer.
Mix by hand until the flour is absorbed. This is a very stiff biga. It's ready in about 24 hours, when it's tripled in size. It may spend the day looking like it's doing nothing, but it will expand eventually.

Dough
162.5 grams unbleached AP flour
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
1 3/8 teaspoons salt
171 grams lukewarm water
The biga

Combine flour, yeast and salt in bowl of stand mixer. Add the water and biga and mix the dough on low speed with paddle attachment until it forms a rough dough. Raise speed to medium and mix for another five minutes. If the dough doesn't seem wet enough (it's "gloppy"), add a little water.

Scrape the dough into a container and cover tightly. Let it ferment until about doubled in bulk, 1/2 to 3 hours. Turn the dough 4 times at 20-minute intervals; after the fourth turn, let dough rise for the rest of the 2 1/2 to 3 hours.

Flour a tea towel. Gently stretch out the dough and fold loosely into thirds, using a business-letter turn. Place seam side down on the floured cloth, sprinkle more flour on top, and cover with another towel. Proof about 45 minutes, or until the dough barely springs back when pressed.

Preheat oven to 450, putting a rack in the top third of the oven. Place a baking stone on the top rack.

Place a sheet of parchment paper on a peel. Flip the loaf onto it so it is seam side up. Carefully stretch to make the dough "vaguely rectangular." Dimple the dough all over with your fingertips. Slide bread onto the baking stone with the parchment paper. Bake for 35-45 minutes, or until very dark brown. Rotate loaf halfway through bsking.

Cool on a rack.

Dan Lepard's Sour Cream Loaf

Although I was initially taken by this bread because of King Arthur's story about a British home baker named John Dyall, who wrote out this recipe and mailed it to King Arthur, it turns out that the bread should actually have been attributed to Dan Lepard, a noted British cook/baker/writer.

King Arthur has since added a parenthetical attribution to Mr. Lepard. I received several comments telling me about the mis-attribution, and a nice letter--not threatening to sue me--from Mr. Lepard's partner and business manager, inviting me to consider editing my post to clarify the genesis of this recipe.

The internet can be a morally iffy spot. While it's an amazing advance to be to have so much information at one's fingertips, a lot of the information is wrong, or, as in this case, incomplete. Baking is
both an individual and a collaborative effort; there is probably very little that is actually new under the sun. Still, I'm glad to credit Mr. Lepard for printing this recipe in The Guardian. But I would never have tried it were it not for King Arthur, which wouldn't have published it without its relationship with one John Lyall. So thanks to all, and I encourage you to try this bread. (By the way, I've now got a link to Dan Lepard's engaging blog on this site, and I encourage you to take a look at it).

The recipe is a modified no-knead loaf, although it takes a modicum of kneading, and it's even easier, as it doesn't require all the hours of resting that no-knead bread does. It contains both cold water and boiling water, a little sugar, and a half-cup of sour cream--this mixture apparently provides a welcoming atmosphere for the yeast.

Flour, either white or whole wheat, is added to the mix and kneaded by hand--very briefly--until it makes a rough dough.

The dough rests for about 10 minutes. Then minimal kneading again (really minimal--about 10 seconds); rest; repeat. The three sets of brief kneading are enough to make it look like proper bread dough.

It takes only about an hour for the dough to double in size. The mixture of boiling water, cold water, and sour cream must be one where the yeast thrives because, even in a cold kitchen on a cold day, the dough is unstoppable.

And it continues rising enthusiastically for another hour, until it domes over the top of the loaf pan. The oven spring is just as enthusiastic. Midway through the baking, I realized I'd better move the top oven rack up one notch or the bread was going to run right into it.

In addition to being easy to put together and relatively quick (it is a yeast bread, after all), this recipe makes an exceptionally good basic white sandwich loaf. Jim is a very good audience for freshly baked bread. The goodness of bread still containing a hint of warmth from the oven always seems to take him by surprise; his reaction was, "This is REALLY good bread--it doesn't even need butter."

It's not the crusty artisan bread that we all crave, but it doesn't pretend to be. And sometimes you just need an ordinary loaf of bread.

Cloverleaf rolls

I believe that the butter-topped rolls in The Bread Bible are the best I've ever tasted. They're certainly the best I ever made. But this wouldn't be much of a blog if I just kept repeating the same old recipes, so I tried the "soft butter rolls" from Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread. Better than store-bought rolls, to be sure, but they don't measure up to Rose's version.

The directions say that the first rise only takes an hour. The dough eventually got nice and fluffy, but it had barely moved after an hour. I put it in the refrigerator overnight, took it out immediately in the morning, and let it rise for another three hours. Only then did it double in size.
I should have wondered--there are four cups of flour in this recipe, but only one teaspoon of yeast. In Rose's recipe, it's more like a teaspoon and a half of yeast for two cups of flour. There was no way this was going to take only an hour to proof.

For some reason, I find it very relaxing to divide dough in numerous pieces, weighing each piece to make sure it's exactly the right size. I was supposed to divide the dough into small enough pieces that I'd get two dozen rolls, but it looked like I'd have two dozen bite-sized rolls, so I increased the size and made 18. Once they were shaped, they were supposed to rise again. Hours later, I was running out of time, so they were going to have to go into the oven, risen or not.

They look a little bit puffy, but certainly not like they're going to turn into giganto-rolls.

And they didn't. Bigger than bite-size, but not by much. And because they didn't rise enough, they were heavier than Rose's version, not so light and tender. Since they were brushed with butter, both before and after coming out of the oven, they had a lovely buttery taste and the crust had a slight crispness that was very attractive. So definitely not a failure, but neither did they become the new gold standard.
If I tried them again, I'd either add more yeast or allow for a lot more time for proofing. But, since I like to try out new recipes for this blog, I guess I'm not likely to try them again.