King Arthur Pain de Mie

Monday, February 16, 2009

I didn't get around to baking anything this weekend, but, fortunately, as a state employee I get President's Day off. Pondering what bread to bake next, I was looking through more whole grain breads when I said to myself, Hmmph. I want white bread. So I made really white bread. Not only does it have white flour, but it also has potato flour and milk and powdered milk. All manner of white things.
You can call this sandwich bread if you want. But you can also call it pain de mie , which sounds ever so much better and more hoity-toity than white sandwich bread. The recipe is from King Arthur's website, and I chose it because I had some potato flour that I've had for a while and is probably getting to the point where I should either use it up or throw it out. Before I started baking bread, I thought flour lasted forever, so I would have had no qualms about using 20-year old flour (not, I hasten to add, that the potato flour is anywhere close to that), but now I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing.
I had to do quite a bit of searching to find my old pain de mie pan. I got the pan used on eBay.com during the period that I was buying a lot of baking equipment. I remember balking at the purchase of a new pain de mie pan. They're quite expensive, and I figured that I'd never use it again, so I could only bring myself to spend a few dollars, plus shipping. I fell in love with it when it arrived--it's heavy and tall and looks very French.

This is an easy bread to mix up, except that my friend June put a curse on me. We went out for dinner on Saturday--June and I, and our husbands too--and at some point June asked me if the bread I made with the dough hook turned out grainier than the dough I kneaded by hand. I looked at her as if I didn't know what she was talking about (because I didn't), and said I had never noticed such a thing. And, I said, it doesn't make sense because the dough hook kneads more thoroughly than you can knead by hand. But this dough turned out to have little lumps in it. Because that's never happened before, I can only think that it's June's fault, and that she must have put a hex on me or my dough hook. At first I thought there were only a few little lumps, and I tried to carefully pick them out by hand, but then I saw that there were many. If I don't blame June, I blame the potato flour for forming what looked like little mashed potato lumps.

I love baking in this lidded loaf pan! The top presses down on the bread while it's baking, so it turns out almost square. I think that the idea is that the crumb becomes more compressed this way, which is why it's called pain de mie, which means bread of crumb, more or less. I grew up thinking it was called a Pullman loaf, which is not as French or romantic. I could look up why it's called that (because it was served on a Pullman car?), but I think I'll leave that for another time.
I was feeling a little insecure about this bread, because of the lumps and all, so I decided to make up for the lumps by taking its temperature so at least the bread's lumps would be the proper temperature.

The trouble with sticking the thermometer in the middle of the bread is that it leaves a hole. I don't like the idea of a hole in the middle of the bread, which is why I don't usually do it, and it turned out to be 190 degrees on the first testing, so it was a letdown anyway.
For a plain white loaf, this is seriously good bread. The little potato-y lumps that I was so concerned about disappeared in the baking, leaving nothing in their wake but a fine, delicate crumb. I didn't make sandwiches, but it's clear that this bread would be perfect for sandwiches, and even better for grilled sandwiches. It will probably make excellent toast, a hypothesis which I will test tomorrow morning. And yet...I have to admit that this plain white bread, good as it is, just doesn't have the complexity of the whole wheat bread which I've been dissing. The lesson seems to be--enjoy the bread you're eating now.

Whole Wheat Bread

Saturday, February 7, 2009

You know how I'm always saying that all you have to do to cook is know how to read? Well, maybe I'm not always saying it, but I sometimes say it, and baking this bread taught me again that all you have to do to screw something up is not read the directions. Aside from baking scones, sticky rolls, chocolate babka, and sour cream coffee cake, I've been on a healthy-eating quest this year, which meant that I had to up the whole grain quotient in the breads I've made. This one is from one of my Christmas books, Bread, by Jeffrey Hamelman.
This book is unusual because it's really directed at least as much to the professional baker as the home baker, and each recipe tells you how to make, say, 25 loaves as well as 2 or 3. No, that's not the mistake I made--even in a caffeine-deprived state, I would think something was amiss if tried to mix up 20 pounds of flour.
But the book's ingredient sections for individual recipes are divided into three sections: Overall Formula, Pate Fermentee (or Levain), and Final Dough. This is too much information for me. What do I care about the overall formula? I just want to know how to mix things together.
I made the Pate Fermentee Friday night--no problem.

And by Saturday morning, it was nicely bubbling and ready to mix in the rest of the dough.
That's where I was done in by the Overall Formula section. So instead of mixing in 1 lb., .6 ounces of water, I poured in 1 lb., 5.8 ounces. As I kept pouring, and pouring, and pouring, I finally said doubtfully to myself, this seems like an awful lot of water. So I looked at the recipe again and saw my mistake. So there I was with a pound of whole wheat flour, a pound a bread flour, and a ton of water. I thought of possible ways to rescue the situation, but they were all too messy and complicated, so I just dumped the whole mess out.
And it was a mess. Have you ever tried to put a couple of pounds of gluey glop in the garbage disposal?
I was so disheartened that I almost gave up on the idea of baking bread this weekend, but there was my pate fermentee, cheerfully bubbling away, so I decided to give it another go. This time I used a blank piece of paper to cover up the "overall formula" section so I couldn't even see it, but I was feeling quite put out with Mr. Jeffrey Hamelman.
By the time I'd put the two loaves in bannetons and they'd risen nicely, I was feeling more kindly toward Hamelman and decided he probably didn't pull the wings off flies after all, and might be a perfectly lovely man.
I slashed one banneton and put the other in the oven without any cutting, hoping that it would stay in one piece, and it did. I liked the looks of both of them; really, I'm not sure which is more attractive.





When we ate our slices of still-warm bread, though, I was a bit disappointed--very nice and all, but still, it was just a piece of whole wheat bread.
As I was leafing through the book, I came across a section where Hamelman was rhapsodizing about bread: he said that bad bread tasted good when it was warm, but good bread didn't really come into its own until the second day. Oh, please, I thought. It's not like it's fine wine. But when I had another piece of bread on the second day, I thought he might be on to something: I could taste the slight tang from the pate fermentee and detect the sweetness from the honey. But maybe I just didn't want to claim a loaf of bad bread.

Jeffrey Hamelman's Whole-Wheat Bread

For Pate Fermentee:
8 oz. bread flour
5.2 ounces water
.2 oz. salt (1 tsp.)
1/8 tsp. instant dry yeast

For Final Dough:
1 lb. whole-wheat flour
8 oz. bread flour
1 lb., .6 oz. water
.4 oz. salt (2 tsp.)
.13 oz. instant dry yeast (1 1/4 tsp.)
1 oz. honey

1. The night before baking, mix the pate fermentee. Mix yeast, water, flour, and salt until smooth. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let stand for 12 to 16 hours.
2. When ready to make the bread, place all ingredients for final dough in the mixing bowl of a stand mixer with a dough hook. Mix on low speed about three minutes. As dough starts to come together, add the pate fermentee in chunks. Mix for another three minutes on medium speed.
3. Put in bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise for a total of about two hours. After one hour, remove bread from bowl and fold it over. Put back in bowl and cover with wrap.
4. Divide into two pieces and shape into rounds. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes. Shape into round or oval loaves, or place into floured bannetons. Cover with plastic and let rise another 1 1/2 hours. (The dough can also be put in a loaf pan or shaped into rolls).
5. Transfer the risen loaves onto a baking sheet lined with parchment, or place directly on baking stone. You can add steam either by pouring a cup of boiling water or about 1/2 cup of ice cubes into a pan on a lower shelf of the oven. Bake in a preheated 450-degree oven for 30-40 minutes. Turn heat down by 25 degrees if bread starts to get too brown.

Vermont Cheese Bread

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Today was ChiliFest at the State Public Defender's Office. My friend Cathy is the unofficial Social Director of our office, and every now and then, she just has to have some kind of party. Today was a chili pot luck, with Ngoc bringing Havana chili, Andrea whipping up a turkey chili, Jodie with a healthy eggplant-based chili, and Cathy herself bringing a giant crockput of your regular hamburger and kidney bean variety. Ben was supposed to be responsible for the white chicken chili, but his kids were being difficult last night, and he opted to get some sleep instead of stirring chili. Probably not an unreasonable choice. Sara made corn muffins, and I brought cheese bread. There were plenty of desserts: a chocolate-coconut bundt cake, and bars galore (in Minnesota, there is a separate category of dessert called "bars," which is pronounced sort of like "barse.") All potlucks in Minnesota have barse for dessert, and ours was no exception: Toll House, lemon cheesecake, ginger, and brownies. The non-cooks had the option of bringing drinks or condiments.
I turned to the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book again, and I was impressed with the results. I made the dough Tuesday night and it sat in the refrigerator until this morning. At 7:00 a.m., I dumped it out on the counter.

The master recipe is supposed to make four loaves, so I cut it in half, figuring I'd make one loaf for ChiliFest and another one this weekend. When I divided the dough in half, though, I realized that it made very small loaves, so I changed my plan: I'd bake both loaves this morning and bring the leftovers home for us.

I've had mixed success with the method where you slide the bread from the pizza peel directly on the hot baking stone, but this time it worked, and I didn't burn my hand in the process either.
However, once the breads were in the oven, I realized that I'd completely forgotten to slash the breads with my cute little French knife, so when I turned on the oven loaf to see how they were doing, I saw that they had developed slashes au naturel.

I blame this on my having only one cup of coffee, which was half decaf; this clearly did not provide enough caffeine to get me through an entire recipe without a mistake. And I had even spent a considerable amount of time deciding what slashing pattern I would use. Aha, I thought to myself, in a glass-half-full kind of way, this provides me with a challenge--can I go through the entire day without announcing to everyone that I had screwed up the bread? Almost. I told only one person, and she seemed completely uninterested in my mistake. For the rest of the day, if someone said something about the bread, I just smiled and said not a single word about how it was supposed to have been slashed decoratively.
Oh, and that plan to bring home the leftover bread? It didn't happen. As some of you may know, the fact that something is eaten when it's brought into the communal kitchen in an office doesn't necessarily mean that the food is good; it just means that it was there. But in this case, the bread actually was good. The extra-sharp aged cheddar gave the bread a distinctive, delicious flavor, but it wasn't gooey and greasy as some cheese breads are. It was a perfect complement to four different kinds of chili, but would be good with almost any soup and would probably be an excellent sandwich bread too.
I'm going to include a shortened version of the four-loaf recipe, but I'll put in a plug for buying the book, especially if you, like me, just like to read cookbooks. First, all the recipes are based on a particular method, and it's useful to read about the method before tackling a bread. Second, you may have better luck with some recipes than others. The first bread I tried from this book was too salty, because I hadn't followed my own advice and read through the entire method before trying a recipe--all the recipes advise the use of kosher salt, and I used table salt; two teaspoons of table salt is a lot more salt than two teaspoons of kosher salt. The second recipe, a rye bread, was fine but not spectacular. A buttermilk bread that I tried next was excellent, as have been the brioche and cheddar breads. That's a good enough percentage to justify purchase of the book, I think, especially if you relish the idea of having bread dough on the ready in the refrigerator.

Vermont Cheddar Bread
3 c. lukewarm water
1 1/2 T. instant yeast
1 1/2 T. kosher salt
1 1/2 T. sugar
6 1/2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
1 c. good quality sharp, aged Cheddar

1. Mix all ingredients, either by hand, or using the dough hook of a heavy-duty mixer. You don't have to knead; just make sure all flour is incorporated. This is a wet dough.

2. Cover, not airtight, and let rest at room temperature about two hours. Dough should rise and start to collapse. Refrigerate in a covered (but not airtight) container, and use within 7 days. (I made the bread on the third day and it had a very slight tanginess).

3. On baking day, cut off a one-pound, grapefruit-sized piece of dough. Dust with flour and shape into a ball. Allow to rest and rise on a cornmeal-covered pizza peel for one hour.

4. Preheat oven to 450, putting a broiler pan or cookie tray (with sides) on the bottom of the oven or the lowest shelf, and a baking stone on the lowest or next-t-the-lowest shelf--depending on where the pan is.

5. Just before baking, slash the bread with a razor or sharp knife. Or not.

6. Slide loaf directly on the hot stone. Pour one cup hot water into the broiler tray and close the oven door. Bake for about 25 minutes.

Tunisian Spicy Breads (Touarits)

Sunday, February 1, 2009

See, this is what I mean about breads. They can be a little on the brown side, not quite as brown, some thicker than others, some thinner--they don't care. They all taste good, not like some finicky coffee cake.
These filled Tunisian mini-breads are the first thing I've made from Savory Baking from the Mediterranean, by Anissa Helou. As far as I know, they're the first and only Tunisian anything I'ver ever made, but if this is any indication of Tunisian cuisine, I may hunt down some more recipes.
The savory little breads are made with a simple all-semolina flour dough (I used King Arthur's durum flour because it's so much finer than any semolina I've seen at stores). It only has to rest for a while, which can be done while you're making the filling, so you can think of this just a few hours before you want to eat them.
The lovely golden dough is divided in half, and each half is rolled out to a 1/4-inch thickness.

(For someone who fears pastry, I've been doing a lot of rolling out dough lately). I used a biscuit cutter to make 3-inch rounds, then filled half of the rounds with a spicy mix of sauteed onions, red peppers, tomatoes, chili peppers, harissa, cayenne, and salt. With the chili peppers, harissa, and cayenne, it sounds like it would be crazy hot, but each little bread has only about 1 teaspoon of the mixture, and the bread itself modifies the heat of the filling.

The filled circle is topped with a plain one, the edges are pinched to seal and brushed with olive oil. Then they're popped into a 400-degree oven.

There is no picture of these in the book, and I have absolutely no idea what touarits are supposed to look like (they're a "Tunisian spin on r'ghayefs," if that clarifies things for anyone.) But I liked the way mine looked. And I definitely liked the way they tasted. We ate them for dinner, with a salad that wasn't at all Tunisian (greens, pears, goat cheese, and almonds), but it worked out well. They would also make a wonderful appetizer, but you would have to limit people's intake, or they would gobble them up and then not eat your dinner that you worked so hard on.

A word about the cookbook: although I loved the bread, I have a few complaints about the cookbook. First, the ingredients are given by volume, not by weight, and I think they've been translated because there are some weird amounts (1/3 teaspoon?). The water for the dough is not listed in the ingredients; instead, it's listed in the directions, in two different places. The filling instructions tell you to saute the onion over medium-high heat, but if you cooked everything until the red pepper is soft, as you're supposed to, over medium-high heat, it would be a charred mess. Also, there are very few pictures, and the ones that are there are blurry, in black and white, and not particularly helpful. Nevertheless, there are recipes in this book that I've never seen anywhere else--including this one--and if you're interested in expanding your bread horizons, you might want to give this book a try.

TUNISIAN SPICY BREADS
adapted from Savory Baking from the Mediterranean

Dough
3 1/3 teaspoons active dry yeast
3 1/3 cups (473 grams) fine semolina or durum flour
1 1/2 t. fine sea salt or kosher salt
1 1/2 T. olive oil, plus extra for brushing the breads
1 egg
1 cup water
All-purpose flour for kneading and shaping

Filling
3 T. olive oil
1 medium onion, finely copped
2 medium tomatoes, finely chopped (I use cherry tomatoes in the winter)
1 medium red bell pepper, finely chopped
2 small serrano peppers, seeded and finely chopped
1 t. harissa (available in some supermarkets and in specialty groceries)
1/2 t. cayenne pepper
Salt

1. In mixer bowl with dough hook attachment, combine flour, yeast, olive oil, egg, and salt. Gradually add water and knead for 2-3 minutes. (The kneading can also be done by hand).

2. Cover bowl and let dough rest about 15 minutes. Knead another 2-3 minutes, until dough is shiny and smooth. Cover dough with damp kitchen towel and let rest while you're making filling.

3. For filling, heat oil in saute pan over medium heat. Add onion and cook until golden. Reduce heat to medium-low and add tomatoes, bell and serrano peppers, harissa and cayenne. Salt to taste and cook, stirring occasionally, until bell pepper is soft. Remove from heat and set aside.

4. Divide dough into two pieces and shape each into a bowl. Let them rest, covered with plastic wrap, for 15 minutes.

5. Preheat oven to 400. Roll out one ball of dough to 1/4-inch thickness. Cut out as many circles as possible. (I used a 3-inch biscuit cutter). Place about 1 teaspoon of the filling in the middle of half of the circles. Top with plain circle, and pinch the edges to seal. Place on baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

7. Repeat with second ball of dough. Then gather all scraps together and cut out more circles until dough is gone.

8. Brush with olive oil and bake for 12-15 minutes until crisp and golden. Cool on wire rack. Best if eaten warm (they can be reheated in a 200-degree oven).

Sour Cream Coffee Cake

Saturday, January 31, 2009
Our last Saturday coffee-and-doughnut hour for the year, and the last Saturday I have to rouse myself in the middle of the night to bake a not-doughnut something. (Sometime I will try doughnuts, I think). I asked for suggestions, and I got some good ones. Melinda thought I should make some "easy-peasy" homemade Danish. I asked her what planet she lived on. Oriana sent me a good-sounding recipe for bran muffins, which actually did look easy, and I could have made them ahead of time, but I feared two hours of jokes about bowel movements if I made something with bran (or prunes for that matter). Maura sent me some fabulous recipes, one for sunny-side-up apricot pastries made with homemade puff pastry, which she also described as easy. This makes me realize that many people have a different definition of "easy" than I do. Maura also sent me directions for baking dozens upon dozens of kolache, which she herself has done--with multiple fillings. I wish that Maura would become my personal baker. Finally, she suggested sour cream coffee cake, which seemed perfect. Besides, I love it. Now Maura said she'd had good luck with the recipe from The Silver Palate, and I should have just used that recipe, no questions asked, but I started thumbing through cookbooks and decided to try the recipe from The New Best Recipe, which had four eggs, a cup and a half of sour cream, and nearly two sticks of butter, plus pecans, brown sugar, and cinnamon. How could I go wrong?
I didn't exactly go wrong, but I didn't exactly go right either. The Best Recipe coffee cake is mammoth, and I took it out of the oven after an hour because I feared burning. It might have been perfect if I had kept it in for just five minutes more, but it was ever so slightly underdone. That is, it was not perfect. If I'm going to get up at 6:30 on a Saturday, I want perfection!

The batter was lovely, rich, and silky, and it gave me high hopes. It was easy to layer the batter and the streusel, but it ended up nearly filling the bundt pan. (The directions said to use a tube pan, but not one that came apart, like an angel food cake pan, so the bundt pan seemed the only option).
In making the streusel, I came scarily close to using curry powder instead of cinnamon, probably because I was operating on only one cup of coffee, so I spent quite a bit of time trying to imagine what a curry powder streusel might taste like and wondering if I could possibly convince people that I'd done it on purpose, and it was all the rage in New York. I decided no.

One reason I like baking bread better than anything else is that it's not so fussy about the precise moment it's done. Five minutes either way, and no one's the wiser. But pastry and cakes--they're spoiled children. Take them out one minute too soon and they're squishy and spongy. Leave them in one minute two long and they burn or dry out.

The directions for this coffee cake are to bake for 50 to 60 minutes. Usually my convection oven, even set 25 degrees lower than recommended, gets things done early. I checked the cake after 50 minutes, and a lot of batter clung to the knife. Eight minutes later, it seemed to be good.

After it cooled a bit and I up-ended it on a plate, I had my doubts. It just didn't look quite solid enough. But I'd passed the point of no return, and I figured that everyone else was on their first cup of coffee so they wouldn't be that observant. Just don't mention that it might not be quite done, I instructed myself. Apparently I routinely ignore my instructions because I announced that it wasn't done to anyone who would listen. They didn't seem to care.
It was our neighbor Doug Logeland's birthday on Saturday, so he got a candle on his slightly underdone coffee cake.


Cook's Illustrated Sour Cream Coffeecake
Streusel
3 3/4 ounces unbleached all-purpose flour
5 1/4 ounces sugar
3 1/2 ounces dark brown sugar
2 T. cinnamon
2 T. cold unsalted butter
1 c. pecans, chopped

Cake
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups sour cream
1 T. vanilla
11 1/4 ounces unbleached A-P flour
8 3/4 ounces sugar
1 T. baking powder
3/4 t. baking soda
3/4 t. salt
12 T. unsalted butter, softened, cut into 1-inch cubes.

1. Streusel: Place flour, sugar, 1/4 cup of brown sugar, and cinnamon in a food processor and combine. Transfer 1 1/4 cups of this mixture to a small bowl, stir in the remaining 1/4 cup brown sugar, and set aside (streusel for inside cake). Add butter and pecans to remaining dry ingredients in food processor. Process for about 10 pulses. Set aside (streusel for top of cake).
2. Cake. Put oven rack to lowest position and preheat to 350. Grease 10-cup capacity tube or bundt pan. Combine eggs, 1 cup sour cream, and vanilla in medium bowl.
3. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in mixer for about 30 seconds at low speed. Add butter, 1/2 cup sour cream and mix until moistened. Increase speed to medium for 30 more seconds. Decrease speed and incorporate egg mixture in three additions. Increase speed and beat for one minute and mixture becomes aerated and pale in color.
4. Add 1/3 of batter too pan, and smooth evenly. Sprinkle with half of streusel filling. Repeat with batter and streusel. Top with remaining batter, spread evenly, and top with the streusel topping with the nuts.
5. Bake until cake feels firm to the touch and toothpick comes out clean of batter (sugar may cling to tester), 50 or 60 minutes. Cool cake in pan for 30 minutes, then invert on plate. (You can also re-invert so streusel will be on top).

Cinnamon Pecan Sticky Rolls

Saturday, January 24, 2009
It's below zero again in Minnesota (that is below zero on the Fahrenheit scale for readers who don't live in the U.S.) I figured that the intrepid band of coffee-breakers who were willing to trudge over to our house this morning deserved something special for their trouble, so I made fresh-from-the-oven caramel rolls.

While I was considering how to make these rolls without getting up at 3:00 a.m., I remembered Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which I haven't used for a while. I am going to go out on a limb here, and say that these rolls are probably worth the cost of the book. They will give you a (possibly undeserved) reputation as a baker. I heard, "Where did you get these rolls? You made them? That's amazing!" so often that my store of modesty was quite used up. Granted, these people have an interest in encouraging me to keep providing them with food, but this was genuine enthusiasm.
The 5-Minute-a-Day method requires you to make the dough ahead of time and keep it in the refrigerator until you want to use it. The authors, Zoe Francois and Jeff Hertzberg, say you can keep most of the doughs in the refrigerator for up to 14 days. The brioche dough, which I wanted to use for the pecan rolls, could be kept for only five days, so I mixed it up Wednesday night, let it rise for a few hours, and stuck it back in the refrigerator. That part was easy.
You really can't make these rolls in five minutes, however. No step is really hard, but it is time consuming. I still had to get up a 6:30 (a.m.!) (on a Saturday!) to make sure these rolls were ready on time.

This is the dough as it's dumped out of its plastic container. It doesn't look that promising, does it?
But it rolls out nicely.

As I roll out the dough, I realize that I'm a sucker for any recipe that asks you to roll out the dough, strew good things on top of it, and roll it back up, jelly roll fashion, although I've never made a jelly roll. I don't think I've ever even seen a jelly roll in the flesh, but without it, how would we know what cookbook authors were talking about when they instruct, "jelly roll fashion." I guess if they didn't exist, someone would have to invent them.

In this case, the aforementioned good things are butter, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and pecans. Usually this kind of roll just has you sprinkle cinnamon and sugar over the dough, but in the 5-Minute method, you cream the sugar and spices with the butter. This makes it harder to spread, and there's already so much butter in this recipe that I'm not sure that more is needed, but I have to say that nobody complained that there was too much butter.

Now you roll it up, you know how.
You cut slices off the roll and put them in a pan that's already been prepared with butter and brown sugar, creamed together, and then covered with pecan halves. More pecans than would be on anything that you might buy.

At this point, I had to punt. The recipe uses 1 1/2 pounds from 4 pounds of brioche dough. But I cut the brioche recipe in half, and I decided I might as well just turn all the dough into rolls. This gave me two pounds of dough for a recipe based on 1 1/2 pounds, so I increased all the ingredients in the pecan roll recipe by about 25%. This process overtaxed my math skills, so I'm going to give you the proportions in the original recipe, not as I fiddled around with them. The recipe says to put the rolls in a round cake pan, so I used an bigger oblong pan, figuring it would be about right. I was left with a lot of leftover dough, so I had to quickly grab a smaller cake pan, cream so more butter and sugar for the caramel part, and cut smaller rolls. I didn't tell anyone that these were makeshift, inferior rolls.

Then they had to sit for about an hour. I was so happy that I'd read the recipe the night before and allowed for this period of resting time. Otherwise, I might have had to lock the front door and hide when people started to arrive. As it was, I pulled the big pan of rolls out of the oven seven minutes before Robert, our first guest, arrived.

They looked nice and brown and fluffy in the pan, but inverting something like this is always an iffy proposition. There was so much butter that they could hardly stick. The worst that happened is that some buttery caramel sauce puddled out on the counter before I could completely get the rolls out of the pan.

Joe, our neighbor from across the street, told me they were the best sticky rolls he'd ever had, and he's had many. (Joe's wife Lela is the one who flattered my scones last week. I love Joe and Lela).
One more week of doughnut open houses, so I have to think of one more breakfast treat to make. I should have saved either this recipe or the chocolate babka as the final piece de resistance, because I'm not sure what I can bake next week that will be up to snuff. Any ideas?



BRIOCHE DOUGH (full recipe, makes about 4 1-poundloaves)


1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
1 1/2 tablespoons instant yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
8 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup honey
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
7 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

Mix the yeast, salt, eggs honey and melted butter with the water in a 5-quart bowl, or lidded (not airtight) food container.

Mix in the flour, using the dough hook on a mixer, or just use a spoon, until all of the flour is incorporated.

Cover (not airtight), and allow to sit at room temperature for about two hours



STICKY PECAN CARAMEL ROLLS

Makes 8 rolls.

1 1/2 lb. premixed brioche dough

Caramel topping:

6 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. brown sugar
30 pecan halves For filling:
Flour for rolling dough
4 tbsp. salted butter, at room temperature
1/4 c. granulated sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 c. chopped and toasted pecans
Pinch of ground black pepper

To make caramel topping: In a large bowl using an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream together butter, salt and brown sugar. Spread evenly over bottom of a 9-inch round cake pan. Scatter pecan halves over butter-sugar mixture and set aside.

To make rolls: Dust surface of refrigerated dough with flour and cut off 1 1/2-pound piece. Dust piece with more flour and quickly shape into a ball by stretching surface of dough around to bottom on all four sides, rotating ball a quarter-turn as you go. Using a rolling pin, roll out dough to 1/8-inch thick rectangle.

To make filling: In a large bowl using an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream together butter, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Spread mixture evenly over rolled dough and sprinkle with chopped pecans. Starting with long end, roll dough into a log, jelly-roll fashion. Using a serrated knife, cut log into 8 equal pieces and arrange rolls over pecans in cake pan. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest and rise 1 hour at room temperature. Twenty minutes before baking, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake about 40 minutes, or until golden brown and set well in center. Remove to a wire rack. While still hot, run a knife around inside of pan to release rolls and invert rolls immediately to a serving dish.

Whole Wheat Bread with Pecans and Golden Raisins--a Lazy Bakers Project

Sunday, January 18, 2009

It was my turn this month to choose the project for the Lazy Bakers. Even though we have no rules, we do sort of try to take turns. I guess that's okay--it's not the Anarchists' Baking Club, after all. Naturally, I chose bread. I wanted something from one of the new cookbooks I got for Christmas, and something that wasn't so long and complicated that it wouldn't be fun. I was looking for something at least moderately healthy. And finally, of course, I wanted something that tasted good. I had high hopes for this bread from the beginning. It's half whole-wheat flour, which satisfies my "healthy" criterion, with enough white flour to balance out the heavyness and the slightly bitter taste you get with all whole wheat and with raisins for sweetness and nuts for crunch, protein, and antioxidants. It's from Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread cookbook. (Hamelman is the Director of the Baking Education Center for King Arthur Flour, and he does seem to know a thing or two about bread).
The dough--half and half whole wheat and bread flour, yeast, salt, and water--was thick enough to to make the KitchenAid groan, but not so thick that I couldn't handle it (like the Norwegian bread, which resisted all efforts to shape it).

Even though it didn't sound completely, the mixer made it just fine through the final step, mixing in the pecans and golden raisins. I think it will live to make bread again.
I don't think we had golden raisins when I was growing up. I think that whoever named them "golden" was a clever marketer. I believe they're just dried green grapes, but "green raisins" doesn't sound nearly as pretty as "golden." Even "yellow raisins" doesn't work. And have you noticed that those same marketers are trying to turn prunes into "dried plums"? Maybe they should just try making "golden prunes" and see how that works out.
But back to the bread.


This recipe makes two loaves of bread, which I was very happy about because I finally got another 8 1/2 x 4-inch loaf pan, so I could make two loaves of bread that were the same size. I was unreasonably excited about this.
The lumps in the bread dough aren't big air holes, by the way; they're the pecans and raisins, of which this bread is chock-full. (After I wrote this sentence, I realized I didn't know where the expression "chock-full" came from, so I had to look it up. Chock is a variant of "choke," so it means full to the point of choking. This information makes the phrase "chock-full" seem not as homey and comfortable as it did before, but I'm glad to report that no one has choked on this bread--so far at least).
Really, fellow Lazy Bakers, there are no pitfalls in this recipe that I'm aware of. It turned out just as I hoped--a lovely, slightly sweet and nutty bread filled with nutrients. You have to find an excuse for eating scones, but you can eat this bread with a clear conscience.


WHOLE WHEAT BREAD WITH PECANS AND GOLDEN RAISINS
--from Bread, by Jeffrey Hamelman

Makes two loaves


1 pound (3 5/8 cups) whole wheat flour
1 pound (3 5/8 cups) bread flour
1 pound, 5.8 ounces (2 3/4 cups) water
.6 ounces (1 T) salt
.16 oz. (1 1/2 tsp) instant dry yeast
4.8 oz. (1 cup) golden rains, soaked and drained
4.8 oz. (1 3/8 cups) pecans

1. About 30 minutes before starting, pour warm water over the golden raisins and let them sit for up to 30 minutes to soften. Drain the rains well.

2. MIXING: Add all the ingredients except the rains and pecans to mixing bowl. Mix on low speed for 3 minutes (using dough hook if you have a KitchenAid) to incorporate the ingredients thoroughly. The dough consistency should be moderately loose. Turn the mixer to the second speed and mix for about 3 minutes more. Add the drained raisins and pecans (the recipe doesn't say whether they should be chopped, so do whatever you want). Mix on low speed, just until the rains and nuts are thoroughly incorporated.

3. BULK FERMENTATION: Put in large bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise for about two hours. If it's more convenient, you can put the dough in the refrigerator and let it rise overnight.

4. FOLDING: After the dough has been rising for about an hour, take it out of the bowl and put it on a lightly floured work surface, pat it out it into a rectangle, and fold it, as if you're folding a business letter, in thirds, and put back into the bowl.

5. DIVIDING AND SHAPING: The dough can be put into loaf pans or you can make it free-form into a round or oblong shape. Divide the dough into half, and place the dough pieces on a lightly floured work surface. Cover the rounds with plastic and let rest 10 to 20 minutes, until relaxed. Shape into a blunt cylinder just slightly smaller than the loaf pans if you're using the pans. Otherwise, shape into round or oblong shape.

6. SECOND RISING: Cover loaves with oiled plastic wrap or with cotton or linen towel and let rise for another 1 to 1 1/2 hour.

7. BAKING: Preheat oven to 450. If you have a baking stone, put that in the oven and preheat it too. Put the loaf pans on the preheated stone, or on the oven rack if you're not using the stone. Lower the temperature to 425 after 20 minutes. Bread baked in the loaf pans will take 30 to 35 minutes to bake. Loaves baked freeform will take about 40 minutes.


Note on steam: The bread will develop a better crust if you inject some steam into the process. The easiest ways to do this are 1) Preheat a cookie sheet or cast-iron pan on the lowest shelf of the oven. Put about 1/2 cup of ice cubes on the heated sheet or pan when you put the bread in the oven; 2) pour about 1/2 cup of boiling water into a cookie sheet or cast iron pan when you put the bread in the oven; or 3) mist the bread and oven with water from a spray mister when you put it in the oven. Or if you don't want to bother with a steam contraption, you can forget about it and the bread should still be perfectly fine.

Cranberry-Orange Scones

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Week 3 of our annual January morning coffee hours brought scones--my own personal favorite breakfast treat. I was quite anxious the first time I made scones, which was just a few years ago. They seemed so foreign. Not exotic foreign, just not something I grew up with and not in my repertoire. And also because scones can be very good, but they can also be quite bad. I didn't know how to tell whether mine would turn out to be one of the good ones.
This recipe is from America's Test Kitchen Cookbook via Smitten Kitchen
Even before they were baked, I could see they were going to be good because the dough was crumbly and buttery, with the butter worked in well throughout. I guess the only real secrets to scones are not to be stingy with the butter and cream and not to work the dough too much. I'm sure that there are people who can successfully work the butter into the flour with their fingers, but I'm not one of them. It's the food processor for me, baby!
The original recipe calls for currants, but SmittenKitchen changed that to dried cranberries, chopped up a bit, and I used cranberries too. I added the grated rind of one large orange because orange is such a natural partner of cranberries. I also sprinkled some Demerara sugar on top.

The nicest compliment came from Lela, our neighbor across the street. She took a bite and said, "Oh, I didn't know I liked scones, but I guess I do. I've had them at Starbucks, and I just thought they were dry and tasteless. But these are good." Once you've had real scones, you can never go back.

Chocolate Babka

Saturday, January 10, 2009

In January, Jim and I always host Saturday morning open houses for our neighbors. We keep it very simple: coffee, tea, juice for the kids, doughnuts, and something that I make. (Last week I made espresso muffins, which I didn't bother to post about because they weren't very exciting). This week I made chocolate babka. That was exciting.
Apparently a lot of people who grew up somewhere other than northern Indiana have fond memories of their neighborhood bakery's babka. There was a bakery in our little town, but it sure never made babka. Neither did anyone else I knew. Like a lot of midwestern people, I first heard of babka in the babka Seinfeld episode. I first tasted Breadsmith's version. In fact, that was the only version I had ever tasted until I made this one. This babka, a recipe from epicurious.com, is softer, richer, and substantially more buttery and chocolatey than Breadsmith's. In fact, it bears about the same relation to "bread" as champagne bears to water. It is obscenely delicious but it wouldn't do on a long-term basis to sate your hunger.
The dough is very soft and sticky, with a lot of butter and eggs. It's so unlike a regular bread dough that you don't even make it with the bread hook attachment.

Although there are three teaspoons of yeast in the dough, it was a reluctant riser. It may have been the chilly January kitchen or the dough may just be so heavy that it doesn't like much activity, but it took longer to rise than the 90 minutes claimed by the recipe. That meant that I had to stay up past my bed time to get it shaped.

This was fun. For such a rich, buttery dough, it handled beautifully and rolled out into a 10 x 18-inch rectangle with no trouble at all. The dough rectangle is brushed with butter and sprinkled with chopped bittersweet chocolate (I think I might try grating it next time) and a few tablespoons of sugar.

After the dough is rolled up, you make it into a circle and then twist it a few times. It's supposed to look like a double 8. I couldn't really envision this, but I just twisted a few times, which is a little risky because the rolled-out dough is fairly thin and the chopped chocolate has sharp edges, so you could easily rip the dough, resulting in leaking butter and melted chocolate. Unless you're a master babka maker, there's no way to avoid a certain amount of leakage, but you'd rather not invite it. I believe this is why the recipe instructs you to prepare each loaf pan by lining it with two sheets of parchment paper. I didn't really like this idea--I thought that the weight of the bread would straighten out the paper, but it didn't work all that well, so you end up with a misshapen loaf.

At this point, I put the shaped loaves in the refrigerator, with instructions to Jim to take them out immediately when he got up. I was sure he'd forget, even though he left a giant note to himself to TAKE BREAD OUT OF REFRIGERATOR!!!. I was so sure he'd forget that I got up earlier than I wanted to so I could do it myself and chastise him for forgetting. He had remembered, however, so I was all at sixes and sevens because I was still sleepy and I couldn't berate him. Not a good way to start a weekend.
On the plus side, though, all I had to do was wait for the loaves to come to room temperature and pop them in the oven. Then came the only part that did not quite work out as planned. The recipe says to bake until the bottom sounds hollow when tapped. Do you see the problem with this method? You can't be doing any bread-bottom-tapping until you've already taken the bread out of the pan. And if it turns out that you've misjudged, the bread collapses. At this point, you can tap it and find out that it doesn't sound hollow, but a fat lot of good that does.

If I had made only one loaf, I would have been quite despondent at this point, but there was, fortunately, a second loaf, which stayed in the oven for another five or ten minutes. It got quite a bit browner on top, but it emerged in one piece when I took it from the pan.

There was only about ten minutes for the intact loaf to cool before guests started arriving, and, of course, the smell of bread and chocolate drew people into the kitchen. When they spotted the babka, they wanted some. This week, the doughnuts played second fiddle to the babka.

Desserts to Ring in the New Year

December 31, 2008

As some of you may recall from last year, some people in our neighborhood have a tradition of doing a progressive dinner on New Year's Eve, with each couple being assigned one of five courses, except for the lucky sixth couple; they are dubbed "the assistants."
In fact, last year Jim took pictures of all the courses, but this year he balked at the idea of taking his camera out in the cold and snow, so we only have pictures of our course. We drew dessert this year. I couldn't settle on a single dessert, but I had a brainstorm: why not present a dessert tray? I could bake all day, and end up with, say, four desserts. I liked the idea. I spent a lot of time browsing through cookbooks and on the internet--I wanted something chocolate, of course, and something fruity; a pie, a cake, and a something else. After a lot of different combinations and permutations, I finally decided on a white chocolate cheesecake, a lemon tart, a cranberry upside-down cake, and a layered chocolate-vanilla pudding served with World Peace cookies.
I will tell you at the outset that disaster never struck and I finished everything with enough time left to take a shower. So if you're hoping for a little schadenfreude, you'll have to look somewhere else.
I started with the cheesecake, a white chocolate variation on Rose's Cordon Bleu cheesecake. I had heard high praise of Rose's cheesecakes, and, indeed, this was probably the richest, creamiest cheesecake I've ever eaten. Her cheesecake recipe is for a cake that is served au naturel, without a crumb crust. I don't know about other parts of the country, but I know that in Minnesota, a cheesecake without a graham cracker crust would just not pass muster. (Did anyone else think the phrase was "pass mustard"? As a teenager, I remember spending a fair amount of time wondering how one passed mustard and what it signified. Now that I'm a lawyer, I know how to use the phrase, "passed constitutional muster," which would be even odder as mustard).
However, back to the cheesecake. So I made a graham cracker crust.

And then I used a 9-inch springform pan instead of an 8-inch, because the crust took up enough space that I was afraid it would overflow. The 9-inch was perfect. Do you notice anything about the top of this cheesecake? It does not have a giant crack in the center, as other of my efforts have done. In fact, I don't think I will ever be disloyal to this cheesecake recipe because I don't see how it could be done better. Now I just want to try the original, pure version. I did the white chocolate version, which just requires less sugar, less lemon juice, and the addition of white chocolate. I learned that you should steer clear of most things that claim to be white chocolate and peruse the label carefully to make sure the supposed chocolate actually has cocoa butter in it. Naturally, this is the most expensive kind.

I served it with a raspberry coulis and a few fresh raspberries. The coulis is not very artful, but I like the effect of the two raspberries plunked on top.
I was feeling pretty confident when the cheesecake came out of the water bath intact, so I went on to the lemon tart, a Dorie Greenspan recipe which she got from Pierre Herme. This was the thing I feared most because it had two possibilities for going amiss: the crust and the lemon cream. An all-butter pastry crust can go wrong in so many ways and the lemon cream could not thicken or could scramble. As it happened, the crust turned out to be delicate and flavorful and the lemon cream was a perfect, unscrambled consistency. This is not just any lemon tart; it's "the most amazing" lemon tart, according to Dorie. I don't know if it's the "most amazing," but it's pretty darned good.

It looks innocuous, but that pale yellow packs a huge lemony punch, and a melt-in-your-mouth creaminess. I had what I thought was an artistic presentation idea. I would serve a wedge of tart with a dollop of whipped cream into which I would place a smaller dollop of Trader Joe's lemon curd. I was quite pleased with the effect until my so-called friends pointed out that it looked like a fried egg and started calling it the sunny-side-up dessert.

Next up was the pudding course--again, a recipe from Baking From My Home to Yours. This is a recipe that Dorie calls Split Level Pudding, and I called Black and White pudding. It's extremely easy, but relies heavily on the quality of the chocolate and the quality of the vanilla, so you don't want to scrimp on either. The first layer is a chocolate ganache made with just cream and chocolate. I upped the quantity of both because it didn't seem like 1/3 cup of cream would make enough ganache for six ramekins, and I was glad I did because it was still a pretty thin layer. The chocolate layer is topped with a layer of standard vanilla pudding and decorated prettily with chocolate shavings. What really made this pudding special was serving it with Dorie's famous World Peace cookies, which I also baked.
About those chocolate shavings. I have heard that you can make chocolate shavings with a vegetable peeler, but whenever I've tried it, I've ended up with chocolate sawdust. Inspiration struck--I checked "chocolate shavings" in the index of The Cake Bible. Who else but Rose would tell you that you can't shave chocolate unless it's just the right temperature, which happens to be 80 degrees, which also happens not to be the temperature of my kitchen in January. Rose says just warm the chocolate in the microwave in 3-second bursts. After about five bursts, the chocolate actually peeled right into shavings.

It was 3:00, and I had only one recipe left--a cranberry upside-down cake that took about five minutes to put together. I didn't like the way the top looked when I took it out of the oven--to plain and white--but then I remembered that I was supposed to top it off with a red currant glaze. That was just the ticket.

I tried to think of a clever presentation, but couldn't, so I settled for whipped cream.

Jim's considered opinion: the lemon tart was the best. (He has to phrase this very carefully, or I accuse him of not liking the other desserts). I think I may agree, although the cheesecake was so creamy, and the pudding was so chocolatey, and the upside down cake was so homey....

Split Level Pudding


Chocolate Layer:
2 oz. bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1/3 cup heavy cream

Vanilla Layer:
2-1/4 cups whole milk
6 Tbsp sugar
3 Tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt
3 large egg yolks
2 Tbsp unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces, at room temperature
2-1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Chocolate shavings for decoration (optional)


Put the chocolate in a 1 or 2 cup glass measuring cup. Bring the heavy cream to a boil. Pour the cream over the chocolate and let it sit for 30 seconds, then gently stir to blend. Divide the chocolate ganache among six ramekins or custard cups and set aside.

Bring 2 cups of the milk and 3 Tbsp of the sugar to a boil in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan.

While the milk is heating, put the cornstarch and salt into a food processor and whir to blend. Turn them out onto a piece of wax paper, put the remaining 3 Tbsp sugar and the egg yolks into the processor and blend for 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the remaining 1/4 cup milk and pulse just to mix, then add the dry ingredients and pulse a few times to blend.

With the machine running, very slowly pour in the hot milk mixture. Process for a few seconds, then pour everything back into the saucepan. Whisk without stopping over medium heat- making sure to get into the edges of the pan - until the pudding thickens and a couple of bubbles burble up to the surface and pop (about 2 minutes). You don't want the pudding to boil, but you do want it to thicken, so lower the heat, if necessary.

Scrape the puddding back into the processor (if there's a scorched spot, avoid it as you scrape) and pulse a couple of times. Add the butter and vanilla and pulse until everything is evenly blended.

Pour the pudding into the cups over the chocolate. Press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface of each pudding to create and airtight seal and prevent a skin from forming. Refrigerate the puddings for at least 4 hours. You can serve it chilled or at room temperature so the ganache was soft and blended with the pudding.




Cranberry Upside-Downer

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
14 tbsp butter (at room temperature)
1 cup minus 2 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
2 cups cranberries, fresh or frozen
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup whole milk
1/4 cup red currant jelly (for glaze)

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.
Melt 6 tablespoons of the butter in a small saucepan; sprinkle in 6 tablespoons of the sugar and cook until it comes to a boil.
Pour the butter/sugar over the bottom of an 8 inch round pan, then scattter the nuts and berries over the top, making a smooth layer. Set aside.
Beat the remaining butter until smooth. Cream in the remaining sugar, beating for about 3 minutes.
Add the eggs and the vanilla.
On low speed, stir in half the dry ingredients, then all the milk, then the last half of the flour mixture.
Spoon the batter over the berries, smoothing the top with a spatula.
Bake for 40-45 minutes at 350ºF, or until the top of the cake is golden.
Once the pan is cool enough to handle, turn the cake out onto a serving platter, rearranging any cranberries that fall out of place.
While cake is still warm, melt the red currant jelly and brush on top.