Dinner party

Saturday, February 23, 2008
I have three dear friends, Beth, Karen, and Susan, from my law school class ('Class of '81). I continue to see them, over 30 years since I first met them in the law school library, complaining about The Case of the Thorns, our first assignment. We were long past due for a get-together, and I finally got around to arranging a party.
The first thing to consider was, of course, what kind of bread to bake. I'd had such good luck with the reprise of Rose's ciabatta that I decided to try her pugliese again. This is one that requires a stretching and folding technique while it's rising, which is a pleasure because the dough is so smooth and shiny.

I didn't have a banetton the first time I made this bread, but now I do, so it looks even prettier. It's a small loaf, and didn't fill up the entire banetton, but I love the distinctive flour circles. I remember buying these loaves from a bakery, and thinking the bakers were so talented to make these flour designs. Now I know that anyone can do it, but that doesn't lessen the pleasure in admiring it when it comes out of the oven.

For dessert, I got out The Cake Bible, and leafed through it until I settled on Chocolate Oblivion Truffle Torte, which Rose describes as "like the creamiest truffle wedded to the purest chocolate mousse." Well. Hard to pass that up. It's just chocolate (a lot), butter (a lot), and eggs (a lot). Melt the chocolate and butter together, beat the eggs for five minutes, and fold the egg mixture into the chocolate mixture.

I had to send poor Jim out to buy an 8-inch springform pan, because I didn't have that size. It looks quite tiny. He was very pleased with his success on this errand, but it must have rattled him, because when I sent him out later to buy two bunches of tulips, he came back with two bunches of roses. "Jim," I said, "These aren't tulips. They're roses." He looked at them. He wanted to argue, but he couldn't. He swore he knew the difference between roses and tulips.
The dinner was roast pork with ruby port jus,

with chipotle glazed apples. These recipes are both from epicurious.com. The apples were the star of the show, in my opinion. Minced chipotle peppers sauteed with sliced applies that have been mixed with cinnamon and sugar. A very simple concept made interesting with the addition of the peppers. It takes about a second for the chipotle's kick to register, which makes it surprising and delightful.

plain old mashed potatoes (but made from organic potatoes from Wisconsin)

plain old green beans, (so plain that it looks like Jim didn't take a picture of them)
salad with baby greens, blueberries, pecans, and grated Pecorino.

And, of course, bread.

Joining the Pugliese in the bread basket was the Italian herb bread I made a month or so ago, which has been waiting in the freezer for just such an occasion.
And, of course, lots of wine. We think we're an awfully witty group, but we seem to get wittier, and much louder, after several bottles of wine. Very odd how that works.


Against my better judgment, I made raspberry sauce to serve with the Chocolate Oblivion. Rose says there's some attachment to the Cuisinart that purees raspberries quickly and painlessly, but I did it the old-fashioned way, spending about 45 minutes pushing two packages of thawed raspberries through a sieve. And reminding myself why I don't like to do this. And reminding myself that I always say I'll never do it again, and why can't people just eat the damn seeds. But I'll have to admit that the combination of chocolate, raspberries, and whipped cream is the dessert trinity.

Healthy Whole Grain Bread

Sunday, February 17, 2008

I've been talking about losing ten pounds ever since I started this blog. Sometimes I think I'm just fooling myself, and other times I get inspired and determined. This was an inspired and determined weekend. I decided I could eat bread, but only good-for-you bread. I don't really like 100% whole wheat bread, but I thought I could modify a light wheat bread by cutting down on the white flour, so I modified Peter Reinhart's Light Wheat Bread, which calls for about 2/3 bread flour and 1/3 whole-wheat flour. I used 1/4 bread, 1/4 whole-wheat, 1/4 white whole-wheat, and 1/4 rye flour.
I know I'm not supposed to say this, but I really like white bread better than whole-wheat. This loaf just wasn't that great--especially not when compared to the wonderfully flavorful ciabatta that I made last week. I can see why the peasants, with their solid, healthy loaves of whole-wheat bread, moved up the bread ladder to white bread as soon as they got a chance. I would have been better off reprising Rose's Honey Oat Bread, or trying a recipe that gets more flavor from nuts or fruits. It didn't help that I didn't put any butter or jam on the bread either. On the good side, I lost a pound.
Also, when Jim photographed this bread, he insisted on taking only pictures of the ends, which--again--are rather odd looking. The last time I tried whole-wheat bread, the ends turned out looking like navels. This time, as Jim was more than happy to point out, they look like a plumber's butt.

Sounds really appetizing, doesn't it?

Ciabatta

Monday, February 11, 2007
I was planning to make another batch of dough from my new Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book, but I kept thinking about all the breads I'd made from The Bread Bible, and how I'd repeated so few of them. I wanted to go back and make some of my favorites again.
I've always loved to try new recipes. The problem with being driven to try the new is that I never get the chance to develop an old, familiar repertoire of recipes. Sometimes when I make something that turns out especially good, Jim looks up and says, sadly, "I don't suppose we'll ever have this again."
I looked back through my blog and saw that when I made ciabatta the first time (in October of '06!), my oven stopped working mid-bake, and I had to rescue the bread from my rapidly cooling oven and run it over to my neighbor's house. With a new oven, it seemed like it might be nice to see what it turned out like if it spent its 25-minute baking time in just one place.

I knew it was going to be fabulous when I saw how wet the dough was. But it wasn't too hard to handle at all. I just put it on the countertop and made dimples in it until it stretched out to its proper length and width. I thought it might be hard to pick it up and put it on the baking sheet lined with parchment paper, but it came right up and didn't lose its shape.

You probably know that ciabatta is Italian for "slipper." I don't really get this. It doesn't look like a slipper to me, although I guess it looks more like a slipper than it looks like flip-flops or boots. But really. I can see that orecchiette look like ears, but the slipper resemblance escapes me. Of course, it could be that my ciabatta is not an authentic-looking ciabatta.
I made this bread over the course of two days, because I was having friends over for dinner, and I wanted to have fresh bread and also wanted to go to work on Monday. On Sunday, I made the biga and let it rise for about six hours. I put it in the refrigerator overnight, then made the dough Monday morning, let it rise, and told Jim to put it in the refrigerator when the timer went off. Then, when I came home, I shaped it, let it rise again, and baked it. It was just out of the oven when the doorbell rang.
As I've been experimenting with various no-knead recipes, I've sometimes asked myself if the more complicated breads are worth the greater effort. When I took a bite of this ciabatta, it was clear that the answer is yes. You may not always have the time or the energy to read the long recipe and go through all the steps. But when you do--what a reward! This ciabatta was so delicious that all of us at the table could have made a meal of the bread alone. It wasn't just good as an accompaniment--it was the star. (Even though the rest of the meal, I'll admit, was quite good).
When I ate my first piece of this ciabatta, I thought that I should make this bread once a week, and then I'd always have some around. But I know I won't--there are just too many other new breads to try.
Reminder for Twin Cities people: Stop by the Galleria Barnes & Noble at 7:00 on Feb. 25 and see Kim Ode, Minneapolis Star-Tribune writer and editor of Baking with the St. Paul Bread Club, Solveig Tofte, head baker at Turtle Bakery and member of the American National Team that will compete in France next month for the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie, aka the Baking Olympics, and me. I am the enthusiastic amateur on the panel.
I'm going to bake something from The Bread Bible to give out as samples. Any ideas?
By the way, when I googled "orecchiette" to make sure I was spelling it right, I learned that there is also a pasta called "strozzapreti," which means "priest strangler" in Italian. It looks kind of like a long rolled-up towel, which could be used to strangle anyone, I guess, but why did they decide to pick on priests? When you ponder that question, it no longer seems so odd that they named this bread after a shoe.

Judy's Board of Directors' Cinnamon Raisin Bread & Buttermilk Boule

Saturday, February 9, 2008
Just a few days ago, I had two plastic containers of buttermilk bread dough in my refrigerator. Now I have none. On Thursday night, I decided to use one batch of dough to make cinnamon-raisin bread, which is named after Judy, a friend of the author Jeff Hertzberg's, who is a CEO of a large company who supposedly brought her Board of Directors into line by plying them with this bread. I thought I would take it into work, even though there is nobody at work that I must bring into line.
I took it out of the oven around 10:00 Thursday night, and thought I would have one (or two) slices for breakfast on Friday; then I'd take the rest into work, where it could go to rest on somebody else's hips for a change.

But when I took it out of the oven, it was so comical-looking that I decided I might keep it myself. I must have rolled out part of the dough too thinly, so the plump raisins burst through the dough, making one side of the bread all dark and caramely looking. I told Jim to try to find an angle that didn't look deformed.

But he failed.

The decision to keep the whole loaf at home was strengthened after I ate a few pieces, and decided it was too good to waste on the hoi polloi at work.
The general homeliness of this bread made me start wondering about what happens to funny-looking breads at a bakery. Why do you never see them? Shouldn't they be offered as seconds? Do employees just get to eat them? Do squirrels? Surely every loaf cannot turn out perfectly. Aren't some of them overdone? Underdone? Misshapen?
While I pondered this, I ate a third piece of raisin bread, and realized that I had forgotten about Jim. By the time he ate his breakfast, the loaf was half gone and there was no longer any no point in taking it in to the office.
Then on Saturday, our friends David and June Miller came over for dinner before we went to see The Syringa Tree at The Jungle. This is a one-woman tour de force, with Sarah Agnew playing about 40 different characters, male and female, black and white. I highly recommend it.
I made pork tenderloin with apples and calvados sauce, fingerling potatoes with parsley, roasted brussels sprouts, and spring greens with avocado, goat cheese, and almonds. Why are there no pictures of this dinner? I blame Jim. He did take some photos of the third bread from the master recipe, which was just the buttermilk bread dough shaped into a boule.

After a week, the dough picks up a definite tang. I baked this loaf in my steam contraption, and it picked up a lovely brown color and a very nice crust. It worked quite well at sopping up the calvados, cream, shallot, and thyme sauce.

While we were at J.P.'s restaurant after the play, June and David got a phone call from their daughter Catherine, saying that she was in labor. Congratulations--it's a boy! Why do I have no grandchildren? I blame my children.

Five-Minute Buttermilk Bread

Saturday, February 2, 2008
As Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, meaning six more weeks of winter (in Minnesota, this is good news), I leafed through my new Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book.

So many possibilities! I finally decided to make the buttermilk bread--just because I had buttermilk in the refrigerator. (Buttermilk in the refrigerator is a perpetual problem--first, you're required to use it up, because you've been brought up not to waste food; second, as you've almost made it through the quart, you realize that you don't have enough to make the fourth buttermilk recipe, so you have to buy more; third, back to step one. I decided to throw away the rest of the buttermilk after I finished with this bread, ignoring the voices of my mother and grandmothers).
I was more impressed with this bread than I was with the semolina bread. I liked the texture and flavor a lot, and I got the salt right this time.
A brief segue to the virtues of weighing instead of measuring: The first thing I did, after deciding what bread to try next, was to convert the cups to grams. As I suspected, the whole oversalting issue would have been avoided if the recipes in this book were in ounces or grams instead of cups or tablespoons. I carefully measured out 1 and 1/2 tablespoons of kosher salt--22 grams. Then I weighed 22 grams of table salt--1 tablespoon.
In other words, if the master recipe specified 22 grams of salt instead of 1 1/2 tablespoons, it wouldn't matter what kind of salt you used. This time I used 22 grams of kosher salt, and I thought it was just right.
I can't really blame the authors for this. In fact, I noticed that Zoe Francois's web site notes that they considered using weights and decided against it because so few Americans weigh ingredients. I agree. I am a dedicated convert, but I have yet to convince a single person that weighing ingredients is not only more accurate, but much EASIER and NEATER. (No more scraping a quarter-cup of honey from a measuring cup and then washing the cup). When I say this, people just look at me, gimlet-eyed.

Like the first bread I made from this book, mixing the dough up is ridiculously easy. Put water, buttermilk, salt, yeast, sugar, and all-purpose white flour in a mixing bowl; mix with a dough hook (or just stir) until everything comes together; let rise for a couple of hours, then refrigerate for future use. Or make one loaf immediately, as I did.
The buttermilk bread recipe makes three 1 1/2-pound loaves instead of four 1-pound loaves. The 1 1/2-pound loaf is a nicer size, I think, so I'll probably continue to make my loaves bigger than the specified one-pounders.
Even though I cut slices while the bread was still warm, the bread stood up to the knife without being squashed, yet it had a tender crumb. Although I used all white flour, I'm sure you could substitute part whole-wheat with equally good results. While I thought the five-minute semolina bread was good, it wasn't as good as a more complicated recipe. This bread, however, compares favorably with any other white sandwich bread I've made. The authors also include a cinnamon-raisin bread recipe used with this bread dough and suggest that you can use the dough for any of the boule recipes in an earlier chapter.
My daughter Sarah came over for a visit just as this bread was coming out of the oven. Although she's lost twelve pounds on the South Beach diet, and has been steely in her resolve to cut back on carbs, this bread was more than she could say no to. I was sorry to be responsible for her breaking her diet, but like any mother, I was happy she said yes when I said, "Would you like another slice?"

P.S. Local readers may want to check out the Edesia Cookbook Review that will be held at the Galleria's Barnes & Noble in Edina on Monday, Feb. 25 at 7:00. Kim Ode has started a monthly cookbook review, and the February session is on bread. Kim, who built her own bread oven and is active in the St. Paul Bread Club, Solveig Tofte, head baker at the Turtle Bread Company, and I will talk about some of our favorite bread cookbooks. It will be very informal and, I hope, fun. Of course, my topic is The Bread Bible.

Raspberry-Lemon Muffins

Sunday, January 27, 2008

For the January coffee hours, I had, so far, made two different kinds of coffee cakes and one kind of scone, so it seemed that it had to be muffins this week. Jim almost forgot to take pictures of these, so he had to swoop the plate off the table and take some pictures before they were eaten. I made a dozen regular-sized muffins and another dozen adorable mini-muffins with a single raspberry on top. (The mini-muffins were all eaten before the regular ones were, so I never got any pictures of them.)
Every year I bake muffins at least once, and every year, I realize that muffins are actually people's least favorite treat. They like them fine, but they don't pounce on them. I actually liked these muffins myself, and would make them again, and most of them did get eaten, but no one demanded the recipe.
In case you would like the recipe, it's available on epicurious.com and on smittenkitchen.
These are buttermilk muffins with a lemon-sugar mixture--the zest of two lemons stirred into about a half-cup of sugar--added to the batter, and raspberries placed artfully on top of the muffins. The epicurious.com version also sprinkles some of the lemon-sugar mixture on top of the muffins after they're baked. I used this version because I thought the lemon-sugar topping would make them a little different than your average muffin.

I think this was the right choice, although, as I said, nobody exclaimed, "Wow! Crunchy lemon sugar on top of mellow buttermilk muffins studded with fresh raspberries! Amazing!" But maybe they were just being reserved.

Five Minute Semolina Bread

Saturday, January 19, 2008 and Sunday, January 20, 2008

The biggest-selling cookbook around these parts is Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. Both authors are from Minneapolis, and the book got a lot of press, not just locally, but also in the NYTimes. But it sold out locally--Jim tried to get it for me for Christmas, but he couldn't find it.
The idea is that you make a basic dough, enough for four, one-pound loaves of bread. You let it rise for a few hours, and then put it in the refrigerator. Then, whenever you feel like it, you take the dough out of the refrigerator, pull out about a one-pound hunk, let it rest for a while, turn it into a free-form loaf, and stick it in the oven. Well, you can see right off that five minutes a day is not exactly accurate, because of the resting and baking. It's more like an hour and a half to two hours. But still.
I love the concept of having bread dough at the ready, so I borrowed my friend Mary's copy, which she borrowed from another friend. I told you--these books are like gold around here.
There are a number of basic bread recipes: the regular "artisan," the brioche, the semolina, the American white, the rye, and probably some others. I had a new bag of semolina flour, so I made the semolina variation. I took only some brief notes, and gave the book back to Mary, so I don't have the recipe, but, as I recall, it was about 3 cups semolina flour, 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, 3 cups water, 1 1/2 T. salt and 1 1/2 T. yeast. It's unlike the no-knead bread, which had a minimal amount of yeast and rises very slowly. This dough, with its large amount of yeast, rises quickly, and, by the end of two hours, is ready to put in the refrigerator.
The first day, I made red pepper fougasse for dinner. You take a piece of refrigerated dough, roll it a circle and make slashes in half the dough. On the other half, place about one roasted red pepper, and sprinkle on sea salt and thyme. Then fold the dough in half, covering the peppers with the slashed side, and pinch the moistened edges together. Brush olive oil all over the top, and bake for about a half hour. Slice and serve.

The book says it makes six appetizer servings, but one slice would be a very hearty appetizer. We had it for dinner, so we didn't feel guilty about eating two slices, but neither of us could manage any more than that. I sauteed some zucchini and spinach, so it felt like a fairly healthy dinner, even if it was mostly bread.

The fougasse was good, but not really a test of the bread's quality, since it was rolled thin, and just turned out crispy. Not a bad thing at all, but not a loaf of bread.
So on Sunday, I took another pound of dough out of the refrigerator and worked it into a torpedo-shaped loaf. A very small torpedo-shaped loaf. It was supposed to rise for 40 minutes, but in the space of an hour, it had barely risen, and it looked like a very solid, very petite loaf of bread. I had my doubts about it, but there was enough oven spring to turn it into a respectable-sized loaf of bread.

We had it for dinner, along with roast chicken stuffed with cherry tomatoes and rosemary and a salad. Jim tasted it first. He said, "Well, it's good, but it's not the best bread you've ever made." If you knew Jim, you'd know that's dire. "It's not the best bread you've ever made" is Minnesota-speak for "I can barely choke this down." I looked so alarmed he had to assure me that he was not speaking Minnesotan, and he just meant that it was good, but not the best. After I tasted it, I thought that was pretty accurate.
First, 1 1/2 tablespoons of salt is too much salt, and I don't have an aversion to salty food. I have a vague idea that the recipe specified kosher salt, and that might make a difference, but I would definitely not use that much salt again. Second, the texture was a good basic bread texture, but not like Italian semolina bread.

If you compare this with the October 14, 2007 pictures of Tom Cat's Semolina Filone, from Maggie Glezer's cookbook, you'll see the difference between five-minute and two-day bread. The five-minute bread is good--better than most bread you can buy in a grocery store and even better than most bread you can buy in bakeries, but it's not really artisan bread.
With those provisos, though, I think it's a book worth having. I ordered it myself (it's still in short supply locally, but amazon.com seems to have an unlimited supply). I like the idea of being able to come home from work, shape the bread, have a glass of wine while it's rising, and then make a quick dinner while the bread is baking. The book also has some non-bread recipes that look good. But I don't think that this is a book that will replace more traditional cookbooks like The Bread Bible. I do think that books like this, as well as the recipe for no-knead bread, have introduced more people to the wonders of taking a homemade loaf of bread out of their own oven, and that's good.

Sour Cream Streusel Coffee Cake

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Today was the third Saturday in our annual coffee-and-doughnut open houses, and it was a terrible scramble. The coffee cake, from Rose's The Cake Bible, was late coming out of the oven. (Well, more accurately, I was late putting it into the oven). It was the coldest morning of the year so far--I didn't go outside at all because I was intent on denying how many degrees below zero it was--and we underestimated the number of people who would be here. Hence, we underestimated the number of doughnuts to buy.
The doughnuts disappeared from the platter. The coffee cake's tempting aroma was wafting from the kitchen, but the cake was still not quite done. People were banging their coffee cups against the table, shouting, "We want food! We want food!" Cold January Saturdays seem to put normally taciturn Minnesotans in a rambunctious mood.
At last, I was able to take the cake from the oven. I cut it as soon as I could, barely letting it cool. With the exception of an almost burned layer on the bottom, it was an exceptionally good coffee cake, maybe the best sour cream coffee cake I've ever tasted. One layer of cake, a layer of streusel, another layer of cake, sliced apples, and a final layer of streusel on top. The streusel was crunchy with walnuts, the cake was soft, rich and buttery, and the apples added a slightly tart counterpoint.
It's baked in a springform pan, and it's a high cake--it rises to fill the pan. I'm not quite sure how I could have avoided the too-dark bottom because I took it out of the oven as soon as it firmed up in the middle. I might try turning the oven down from 350 to 325 the next time I make it, or maybe, if I don't have a bunch of hungry people in the next room, I might try taking it out of the oven when it's just slightly undercooked and hope it finishes cooking while it's cooling. It's so delicious that it's worth trying again, and if I ever perfect it, it just might lead to fame and fortune.

Pane all'Erbe

Sunday, January 13, 2008

I made these two adorable loaves of bread because 1) I realized I hadn't made bread from Carol Field's The Italian Baker for a while and 2) I had a big bag of Italian parsley in my vegetable bin that I apparently bought for some purpose but forgot to use. Add them up, and you get Pane all'Erbe, or Herb Bread, or, more precisely, Parsley Bread.
This recipe makes two adorable little round loaves, although you could probably just make one big loaf, but it wouldn't be nearly as cute. It's got a few cloves of garlic in it, a lot of parsley, and about half a small onion, and, when I put the loaves in the oven, all I could smell was the raw onion. I feared that the onion would be overpowering, but apparently baking it for about 40 minutes mellows both the onion and the garlic (and the parsley, for that matter). The herbal flavor is is noticeable, but very pleasant.

While Carol Field says that this bread is good to serve with roasts and fish, I was in a more vegetarian frame of mind, and I served it with a spinach and mushroom frittata and roasted asparagus, which was an excellent combination.

Most Italian breads are wet doughs that make nice, holey-looking bread, but this dough was firmer, and the texture much smaller-crumbed, more like a traditional American loaf of bread than a traditional Italian loaf. In fact, it's in the "New Breads" chapter, where Field gives recipes for "'new-wave' tastes." Wherever it comes from, it's a good, hearty loaf of bread, and I still have one cute little loaf in my freezer, which is a very good thing.

Cranberry-Orange Scones

Saturday, January 12, 2008
Our second Saturday coffee/doughnut open house, but I didn't feel like starting a yeast dough Friday night, so I decided to bake scones, which are possibly my favorite thing in the world to eat. I had a bag of dried cranberries in the pantry, and found Ina Garten's recipe for cranberry-orange scones, which got rave reviews on the Food Network site.
Ina Garten's recipes are often a little over the top, and this one was no exception. I have no objection to three sticks of butter or a cup of cream, but adding icing was gilding the lily, if you ask me. Besides, I don't like icing on scones.
These scones were good, but not absolute perfection. One reason they were imperfect is my fault; the other is the recipe's.

My fault--they were too thin. I do this every time I make scones unless I keep a firm hand on myself. I just keep rolling, and the circle gets bigger and bigger. I tell myself, "These are going to be too thin," and then I say, "No, they're not, they'll be too small if I stop rolling now." I continue to have this boring conversation with myself until I cut the dough into triangles, at which point I see that they're going to be flat scones again, but it's too late to do anything about it.
The really annoying thing about these scones is that I had a chance to redeem myself with the second tray, and I did exactly the same thing second time around.

Then I had to stop myself from announcing to anyone who looked at the scones that they were too flat. You know, how your grandmother does: "Grandma, this turkey is fabulous!" "I think it's a little dry, don't you think it's too dry?" "No, it's perfect." "Well, I think it's too dry."
The recipe's fault: Four eggs in the scones, plus an egg wash. What kind of scone recipe uses five eggs? Not an authentic one. Why didn't I notice this? I was too smitten with the butter, eggs, cranberries, and orange peel to notice the surfeit of eggs. These scones were very light and tender, but had a distinct eggy flavor that tasted very unscone-like.
Now maybe if I'd used only two eggs and hadn't flattened them like pancakes, they would have been just about perfect.

Golden Honey Oat Bread

Sunday, January 6, 2008
A few weeks ago, I was reading Rose's blog, and she mentioned making an oatmeal bread for her father. Suddenly, the idea of an oatmeal bread sounded excellent to me, but it's not a recipe that's in The Bread Bible or in my other bread cookbooks. So I went to a recipe in a general vegetarian cookbook, and the result was--well, it was hearty. You might also say that it was heavy. My ideal oatmeal bread, the one that I could almost taste, was hearty but light, healthy but delicate. So I was delighted when I saw that Rose had posted her recipe for golden honey oat bread. She promised it was healthy and flavorful, with a wonderful light texture. She was right. This bread is head and shoulders above my first try.
Even unbaked, this loaf looks plump and inviting.

My loaf-pan breads never turn out even. They're always taller on one side than the other. This recipe says it's essential to shape it into a log and let it rest for 20minutes before putting it in the loaf pan. I followed the directions and ended up with an almost perfectly balanced loaf. This little hint was worth the price of admission. Especially since it was free.

When I made my first oatmeal bread on December 2, I complained about how hard it was to shape, and I specifically complained about the ends of the loaf, which looked like giant belly buttons. No belly buttons on this bread.

Not that there's anything wrong with belly buttons. Still, it was nice to turn out a loaf of bread that looked a little more orthodox.
It smelled good, too. It was hard to wait to cut into it and see if the texture was really going to be light.

Yes. It passed the test. Light, but with a satisfying chewiness. And a lovely, slightly sweet, slightly oaty taste with the contrasting crunch of flaxseeds. A bread worth waiting for.

Chocolate Almond Coffee Cake Ring

Saturday, January 6, 2008
It's time for our Saturday morning coffee hour open houses, which we've been doing for over ten years now. Every Saturday morning in January, Jim goes to a bakery and buys a bunch of doughnuts. Most Saturday mornings, I make something else. Sometimes it's more popular than the doughnuts, and sometimes not. Today it was a hit.
I had intended to make Danish, using Rose's recipe from The Pie and Pastry Bible. But the more I read the directions, the more scared I got. They're a lot like making croissants, only more complicated--and it was hard enough to get up my nerve to make croissants (although they actually turned out quite well).
But when I fell victim to Danish-cowardice, I decided that I should at least try something a little bit snazzy. I remembered that my friend Karen had been talking about the coffee cake rings that our mothers used to make, where you roll up the dough, fill it with something, and snip the dough into sections, turning the filled part up. I looked on the internet for something like that, and the first recipe I came across was the almond-chocolate version from Cooks Country. Cooks Country is kind of a down-home version of Cooks Illustrated--a little too down-homey for me, but this recipe sounded intriguing, and, with a filling of chopped bittersweet chocolate, cream cheese, and almond paste, a little more interesting than the rolls my mother used to make.

After you spread the filling on the nice buttery dough, which you've rolled into a rectangle about 9" by 18", you roll up the dough.

Then you turn the rectangle into a ring, and make about ten or eleven partial cuts through the dough.

After you've made the cuts, you gently turn the sections so you can see the chocolate-almond filling on top.

So far, so good. I really don't have a Martha-Stewartish artistic, decorative touch, which is one reason I prefer bread to most other baked products. If breads are going to be beautiful, they do it on their own. They don't require symmetrical arrangements of fruit, like some pies, and they don't need to be deftly iced. They just need to be taken out of the oven. A lot can go wrong with a coffee cake like this. The filling can ooze out and burn, for example. You can cut too deeply into the coffee cake so that it falls apart instead remaining in lovely slices. You can make a mess out of the pieces when you turn them. You can glop on the frosting instead of drizzling it decoratively. None of that happened (except for the frosting glopping, and even that wasn't too bad).

People were very impressed with this outcome, even with the few blobs of frosting (I thinned it a bit and then it drizzled more easily).

My friend Bridget, who is an excellent baker, asked me where I'd bought it. I chose to take that as a compliment, even though I suppose she may have wondered if I'd picked it up at SuperAmerica. My neighbor Barb, a chef and caterer, said the dough was light and tasty. My neighbor Greg asked for the recipe. This week the homemade treat beat out the doughnuts. We'll see about next week.

"Poverty Pizza"

Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2008
A few months ago, I made something I called "The Cupboard is Bare" pizza, and a reader named Carol commented that she and her friends made something called "poverty pizza" at the end of the week when they were graduate students. She said it was always good and always unrepeatable, and that it had widened her horizons about what a pizza topping could be.
Today I decided to make another pizza--with my last round of frozen pizza dough--what a great thing to have in the freezer! And I decided I'd just use whatever I had on hand. This happened to be one serrano pepper that I didn't use in the serrano creme fraiche for new year's eve, two Yukon Gold potatoes, some kalamata olives, some cherry tomatoes that were going a little wrinkly, garlic (of course) and parmesan. I sliced and slowly poached the garlic in olive oil, and brushed the oil and garlic on the bottom of the pizza. Everything else was just sliced, or grated in the case of the parmesan, and tossed on in carefree fashion.
I had sent Jim to the grocery store a few days earlier because I needed a few last-minute things and was, as usual, running late and a little harried myself. I told him to pick up black olives--"not stuffed with anything, just plain..just pick them up from the olive bar." He came home with a can of California ripe olives. I was horrified. "No, these are not even olives!" I said. "We might as well just put these in the bag for the food shelf right now," I said, "because I'll never use them." (Nice, Marie, maybe you could also give all the things past their freshness date to the food shelf). "You said black olives," Jim said defensively, "and there were no black olives at the olive bar--just kalamata olives, and other olives that were stuffed." "What do you think kalamata olives are? They're black olives! That's just what I wanted." "Kalamata olives are purple, not black!"
Well, I could see that this fight was deteriorating rapidly, so I graciously allowed as how I could have been clearer in my instructions, and he graciously went back to Kowalski's to pick up purplish-black olives. He got a LOT. So I had to come up with many ways to use up the olives, besides reaching in the refrigerator and eating the random one now and then.
Here it is in its uncooked state. Oh, it looks like there's a little rosemary on it too--I forgot about that. The pizza dough stretched beautifully this time. I can't account for what makes it work better some times than others, but it did do a lot of resting. As did I. Maybe that had something to do with it.
It smelled so good and looked so brown and crunchy and crispy that we both dug in, forgetting entirely to take a picture of it in its whole, baked state. Jim had to take one quick picture while there was still a slice left uneaten.

Jim claimed this was the best pizza he had eaten in his entire life! Well, it was pretty good. The tomatoes gave it some sweetness, the olives saltiness, and the peppers hotness. The paper-thin sliced potatoes and garlic made a perfect base, and the crust was crispy all the way through, not just at the edges.
The whole notion of the poverty pizza got me wondering whether all leftovers would make equally happy combinations. What might I have in the refrigerator at the end of a week? Vanilla yogurt, Thai green chile sauce, and lettuce? Would that really work? I hope never to have to find out.

New Year's Eve Feast

December 31, 2007
On New Year's Eve, six couples from our neighborhood have a progressive dinner. The tradition started when progressive dinners were a new thing, and it has continued even though it may now be passe. But why should eating good food with good friends ever be passe?
This year, we started at the Beiers' house.

Jim doesn't really like to take pictures of people, so you will not know what the Beiers look like. They are like us, a handsome couple of a certain age. And Betty is an excellent cook. For the appetizer course, Betty made marinated shrimp:

Beautiful, aren't they?
And cornbread crab cakes:

These were fabulous. Betty said that she was dubious about the crab and cornbread combination, but she needn't have been. They went together like love and marriage. (And we know whereof we speak on the love and marriage front, by the way. All six couples are still on their first marriage, and among us, we have about 250 years of marriage. A bizarre thought).
This huge wheel of brie with pecans and figs was not a bizarre thought, however, but a very happy one:

There was also a small bowl of caviar. I don't know why Jim didn't take a picture of that. Maybe he didn't want to suggest that we are caviar-eating, latte-drinking liberals. Although we are.
The second course was soup, at the Wolfs' house. That's us.

I'll admit that I worked all day on my assignment. I made white whole wheat rolls from Maggie Glezer's book:

I recently bought some white whole wheat flour, and when I saw this recipe, it seemed like kismet. Honestly, I was underwhelmed by the results. They were hearty and flavorful, but the overall effect was perhaps a little too hearty. They seemed like little discs that you might want to use in a food fight. No one did, but it was, after all, only the second course, and nobody had had enough to drink to start a food fight. Not that they would.

This is a picture of The Green Head. She comes out on New Year's Eve as a travelling prize to be awarded to the person who gets the most predictions right. I won it last year. This year I was more careful to be wrong in my predictions so I wouldn't get it again.
Back to the soup. I made a roasted yellow pepper soup and a roasted tomato soup, drizzled with serrano pepper cream. It turned out to be an all-day process, but worth every minute.

As you can tell from the recipe and the photograph, it's two different soups, both made basically the same way--lots of fresh vegetables are roasted and added to a base of shallots softened in butter, herbs, and chicken broth. This mixture is pureed and strained, and cream and more chicken broth is added. The serrano cream is made with creme fraiche, salt, garlic and a bunch of chopped serrano peppers.
The recipe warns that if you process the creme fraiche too much, it might curdle. And so it did. Curdled creme fraiche is not a pretty sight. I had to run to the grocery store and get more creme fraiche and more peppers, which I processed very, very lightly. Both soups were very good--fresh-tasting and flavorful--on their own, but dynamite together. And the presentation, which is a result of just pouring two cups from either side of the soup bowl, was quite dramatic. The serrano cream added the right punch.
We went next to the Niemiecs' house. They live on Harriet Avenue, not Garfield Avenue like the rest of us, but they are also allowed to participate because we are nothing if not inclusive.
Joan did a salad bar:

Although we had already eaten too much food, we trundled off to the Delorias' house for the main course.
Laurel is a collector.
She collects antiques, masks, and many other things, including Department 52 Snow Village houses.

It takes her and her three helpers a full day to put up these houses, and another day to take them down. Some might call this an obsession, and Laurel has hinted darkly that this is the last year she's going to put all these houses up, but no one really believes it.
Jim was quite taken with their creche-and-wine combo:

Laurel did a nice, light hunk of roast beef with horseradish cream, with a side a gooey, cheesy potatoes provided by the Papanicalaous:

So delicious! But I was in pain from all the food, and dessert was still to come.
We moved to the Logelands' house for dessert:

Note The Green Head, now in residence with the Logelands until next year. Doug is the dessert chef at the Logelands' house. Mary weighs about 20 pounds, and thinks that a nice piece of fruit is the perfect dessert. Doug--well, he weighs more than 20, and he thinks that if you're going to have fruit, you might as well make pie. And so he made these two Key Lime pies with perfect meringue.

In case anyone was disappointed with a fruit-based dessert, they also thoughtfully provided bowls of chocolates and nuts.
And that, dear friends, was how Breadbasketcase and her faithful spouse, Jim, spent New Year's Eve. It couldn't have been better. We hope that you were also surrounded by good food and good friends, and that you have a most excellent new year.