Cottage Cheese Dill Bread

The first bread I ever baked was Dilly Casserole Bread, the winner of the 1960 Pillsbury Bake-Off. (This was back in the day, when contestants actually baked things from scratch instead of using cake mixes).

And when my daughter asked me for an easy bread recipe, I found the Dilly Bread recipe for her, because I knew she'd want something 1) with an interesting flavor and 2) that was dead easy to make. So naturally when I saw this slightly more sophisticated (that is, with 8 times as much butter) version of the original recipe, I wanted to try it.

Still dead easy. In fact, if you use instant yeast (a better invention than sliced bread), it's even easier because you can eliminate the process of proofing the yeast in liquid and can just dump everything in one bowl.

My current recipe, taken from Savoring the Seasons of the Northern Heartland, by Beth Dooley and Lucia Watson, uses fresh dill (although you could also use dill seed). The fresh dill gives the bread a cleaner, livelier flavor than the dill seed. Even using 1/4 cup of fresh dill, I could see only traces when I sliced into the bread, but the taste was distinctly there.

The dough takes only about an hour and a half to rise; then it's flattened out, where it rests under a towel for about 20 minutes.

And shaped into a loaf. Maybe if I bake bread for another 20 or 30 years, I'll finally get the knack of making them level. I certainly won't be entering any listing loaves in the State Fair.

Jim asks me why I always want perfection. In turn, I ask him why he doesn't. It's just how marriages work.

I liked the dill taste, although it does limit the number of things this bread is appropriate for. (Breakfast toast with strawberry jam? Maybe not.) We ate it fresh from the oven with slices of cheese and sweet cherries for a mid-afternoon snack. I think it would be a dynamite base for egg-salad sandwiches, and would be good, if unusual, if shaped into dinner rolls. If you don't like dill, of course, you'll just want to move on to the next recipe.

Cottage Cheese Dill Bread
adapted from Savoring the Seasons of the Northern Heartland,
by Beth Dooley and Lucia Watson

1 scant tablespoon instant yeast
1/4 cup (30 g.) warm water
2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup (225 grams) small curd cottage cheese
1/4 cup chopped fresh dill
1 stick (8 tablespoons) butter, softened
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking sodea
1 egg
3 cups (375 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour

Mix all ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the bread hook. Knead for about 8 minutes, until the dough is soft and smooth.

Put the dough into a greased bowl and cover loosely with a towel. Let it rise for about 1 1/2 hours, or until doubled in size.

Put the dough on the counter. Stretch into a rectangle and give two business-letter turns. Let rest for 10 minutes. Shape and place into a lightly greased 8- or 9-inch loaf pan, and let rise for another 30 minutes. Put the bread in a preheated 350-degree oven for about 40 minutes. Take the bread from the oven and let it cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn it out onto a wire rack to cool.

R'ghayef (Moroccan multi-layered breads)

In the spirit of my planned trip to Morocco in November, and with a bow to my friend who suggested that I bake a bread from every country in the world, I tried my hand at r'ghayef, a Moroccan layered bread. Apparently, this bread is a traditional street food in Morocco. If it is, good idea! I hope to look for it when I'm there, although, as Jim pointed out, it might be helpful for me to learn to pronounce it.

Not only is this bread mighty tasty, it's also the quickest yeast bread you'll ever make. So quick that we're missing a few process photos. Jim kept wandering off with his camera in tow because he expected he wouldn't have to take a picture for another hour or two. Little did he knew that this bread happens fast.

It's one of the few breads I've made where I didn't bother to get out my stand mixer, or even my food processor. Instead, I stirred the few ingredients together (AP flour, semolina (or durum) flour, yeast, and water; kneaded it for a few minutes, and topped it with the mixing bowl to give it 15 minutes to rest.

After it rests, you divide it into four pieces. (I halved the recipe so I could make just enough for dinner. They're best when they're just off the griddle). The pieces of dough rest while you're making the filling.

Since I'd already made the filling, I didn't let them rest. This was a mistake, since the dough is much more malleable after it's rested for about 10 minutes. So even if you're itching to get going, take a deep breath and go cut a bouquet of flowers or something. If you don't wait it out, the dough won't stretch nicely and will tear.

After it's patted out into a thin, oiled circle, put a dab of filling in the middle. The filling is made with chopped onion and parsley, cumin, paprika, red pepper flakes, and salt. I found that the dried spices gave the filling a raw flavor, and I think I'd substitute harissa for the spice mixture next time. But the flavors were great (and hot! I was liberal with the pepper flakes), and the onions (be sure to finely dice them) and parsley tasted fresh.

You fold the sides over so you have a rectangle, and then fold the top and bottom over to form a square.

Then you flatten them quite emphatically. You want them very thin because they're only going to cook a few minutes. They're ready to fry in a frying or griddle pan at this point, but I had to let them rest while I grilled some yogurt chicken with Moroccan spices. No harm seemed to come to them by their 10- to 15-minute rest.

These little breads are amazingly quick to "bake." They're cooked for a minute or two on each side in an oiled frying pan on medium high heat. They rise and bubble just a tad while they're cooking, and should be eaten as soon as possible. They're crisp, chewy, spicy, and absolutely delicious. While I served them with Moroccan-style chicken, they would pair with something less spicy--a quick summer salad with feta and olives or a winter vegetable soup. And they'd make toothsome appetizers too. You could certainly pare down the heat level by lessening or eliminating the red pepper flakes--I didn't measure, but I'm pretty sure I used about twice the recommended amount.

When I'm in Morocco, I'll have to make it my mission to search out various r'ghayefs and see whether mine came close to the authentic thing. I do love to have missions that involve tasting food.

R'ghayef (Moroccan Multilayered Breads)
--from Savory Baking from the Mediterranean, by Anissa Helou

Dough
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
1 cup unbleached AP flour (120 grams)
1 cup semolina (or durum) flour (120 grams)
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons warm water

Filling
1/2 onion, very finely chopped
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (more or less, to taste)
Salt

Combine the flours, yeast, and salt in a large bowl andmake a well in the center. Add the yeast and mix with the flour until you have a rough, sticky dough.

Remove the dough to a lightly floured work surface. Sprinkle the dough with flour and knead for about 3 minutes. Invert the bowl over the dough and let rest for 15 minutes. Knead 2 to 3 minutes more, until the dough is smooth and elastic. Cover with a damp kitchen towel and let rest about 10 minutes.

Combine all filling ingredients in a medium bowl.

Divide the dough into 8 equal pieces. Oil a work surface and your hands. Flatten a ball by hand on the work surface into a very thin circle. Spread about one-eighth of the filling over the center of the circle. Fold the left third of the circle over the filling, then fld the right third over to omake a rectangle. Fold the top third over the bread and the bottom third under the bread to make a square about 5 inches on each side (mine turned out smaller than 5 inches at this point). Let rest while you make 3 more squares in the same manner. Flatten the squares of filled dough until they are quite thin.

Oil a large frying pan and place over medium-high heat. Place the squares in the hot pan, drizzling a little additional oil over the bread. Cook for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes on each side, until golden. Remove to parchment paper or a wire rack. When all breads from the first batch are cooked,kk shape, fill, and cook the remaining 4 breads. (I was able to cook 4 at one time, but I think the author envisions them as bigger and flatter than mine). Serve immediately.

Meini o Pani de Mei (Italian Sweet Corn Buns)

A friend of mine asked me recently if I was still doing my bread blog. When I said I was, he asked if I hadn't made every possible kind of bread by now. I said there were many, many left to do. Then he suggested a new project: making a bread from every country in the world. I'm intrigued by this idea, but not enough to commit to it. And does every country have a signature bread? Andorra? The Seychelles?

But I have made breads from a fair number of countries already: Turkey, Puerto Rico, Norway....and, of course, France and Italy, the king and queen of bread-baking. This week, I turned once again to Carol Field's The Italian Baker for inspiration. Although I wasn't even thinking about making sweet corn buns, I was so taken by the description that I had to try them:

These sweet buns are a very delicat e cross between a corn muffin and a scone.... Meini are definitely a Lombard specialty, and the Milanese traditionally eat them on April 24 as a celebrfation of the liberation of their contryside from the assaults of a ferocious highwayman and his brigands during the Middle Ages.

Oh, how I love Italy! A country that celebrates being liberated from a highwayman by making a big batch of sweet, buttery, crumbly rolls! I just hope I remember this recipe next April 24, and that I make them again to mark Highwayman Liberation Day.

As a scone-ish, muffin-ish, cookie-ish hybrid, these are easy to mix up, especially if you use the whisk attachment to your stand mixer. With just over half a pound of butter, they really can't be bad, can they?

The ratio of white flour to cornmeal is about 3 to 2, which I figured should keep it from being too grainy. I like to taste of cornbread and muffins, but not if they're overly sweet, not sweet enough, not too crumbly, not too dry, not too insipid. It's a tough. but not impossible, bill to fill.

It ends up coming together a little like scone dough--rough and buttery.

A few seconds of kneading turns it from rough and buttery to smooth and buttery.

The dough is divided into about 15 90-gram pieces. I love weighing out pieces of dough. I'm not obsessive about it--if they're 89 or 91 grams, that's okay with me.

Form each piece into a ball, squish it down, and place it on a parchment-lined baking sheet. (You'll need two). Brush the tops with water, then sprinkle with granulated sugar. Finally, sift some confectioners sugar on top.

After about 15 minutes in the oven, or until the tops are cracked "into a pattern that looks like the land after a long dry summer, they're done.

These are really nice. You could Americanize them with the addition of, say, fresh blueberries or dried cranberries, but why bother? The Italians have been making them this way for about 500 years, and there's no need to mess with tradition. Not surprisingly, they go well with tea or coffee. More surprising, at least to me, was how good they tasted with a glass of wine. Have one with afternoon tea, another with a pre-dinner glass of wine, and freeze the rest for later. And be thankful your town isn't overrun with highwaymen.

Meini o Pani de Mei
--The Italian Baker, by Carol Field

•2 sticks plus 2 tablespoons (250 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
•1¼ cups (250 grams) granulated sugar
•2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons honey
•1 egg
•1 egg yolk
•½ cup plus 2 teaspoons milk
•3¼ cups (450 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour
•1¾ cups plus 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon (300 grams) fine yellow cornmeal
•3½ teaspoons baking powder
•1/8 teaspoon almond extract
•About 1/3 cup (70 grams) granulated sugar
•½ cup (70 grams) confectioners’ sugar


Using the whisk attachment, beat the butter, sugar, and the honey for 1 to 2 minutes at low speed until combined. Increase the speed to medium-high and beat until light and fluffy. Add the egg, egg yolk, and 2 teaspoons milk and continue beating for 1 minute. Mix in the flour, cornmeal, and baking powder. Add ½ cup milk and the almond extract and mix at the lowest speed until blended. The dough should be stiff but not heavy. Knead briefly by hand or mixer, sprinkling with additional flour as needed, until buttery, soft, pliable, and slightly sticky.

Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Cut the dough into 15 equal pieces (90 grams each). Flour your hands and roll each piece into a ball. Flatten each ball into a ½-inch-thick patty, the size of a hamburger and the width of a woman’s hand. Place on the paper-lined baking sheets.

Brush the tops with water and then sprinkle with granulated sugar, making sure a thin layer of sugar covers each bun. You can shake off the excess sugar by holding on to the paper and shaking the sugar up and over the edge of the pan. Place the confectioners’ sugar in a sifter or sieve and sift the sugar heavily over the buns so that they look as if they’re lost in a blizzard of sugar. The excess powdered sugar can stay on the paper because it will not caramelize.

Heat oven to 375ºF. Bake until the sugar on top has cracked into an irregular design, 15 to 20 minutes. Cool on racks.

Far Breton

Granted, this is not a bread. It's not even a cake, exactly. It's more like a clafoutis, except it's made with prunes soaked in Armagnac, rather than with cherries. It's the national dessert of Brittany, where I just spent a vacation, and it was so good I wanted to try making it myself. (I have also wanted to try making crepes, the other famous food of Brittany, but am more intimidated by that).

Brittany's butter is world-famous, according to the Butter Council of Brittany. It's lightly salted, whereas most French butter is unsalted. At my local grocery store, there was no Beurre de Bretagne, but there was Normandy butter. Unsalted. I settled for that. I hope that Brittany and Normandy aren't arch-rivals, like Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Let me say a word in favor of the much-maligned prune. Even as a child, I understood that there was something faintly ridiculous about a prune. Only grandparents ate prunes, which were always called "stewed prunes." I understood that they did it for some vaguely shameful health reason, and I knew that I would never get so old that I'd order stewed prunes at a restaurant. So maligned are they that prune manufacturers have taken to marketing them as "dried plums," because plums aren't tainted fruit, as prunes are. Cherries aren't tainted either, so clafoutis is considered acceptable. But (non-stewed) prunes are delightful. Really, they are! Eating them won't make you old. (I was old before I ate them). In this recipe, they're cooked in water until the liquid has nearly boiled away.

Then you pour on some Armagnac (or other brandy). I used Calvados, again opting for a product from Brittany's neighbor to the north. You light a match to the brandy, which flames up quite dramatically, but harmlessly. It's very difficult to get a picture of a flame; if you look very closely at the above picture, though, you can see a hint of a flame. (Contrary to common wisdom, it appears that flaming or boiling down alcohol will not remove all the alcohol from the food, so this is a dish that should probably not be served to someone who avoids alcohol).

The custard/cake, however, is so wholesome that anyone, even a baby, could eat it: it's just eggs, butter, flour, milk, sugar, and a little vanilla. I used a recipe from epicurious.com, but there are many similar recipes available on the internet and in books. I followed the recipe exactly except that I omitted the raisins, so the dessert could be an unsullied ode to prunes.

It came out of the oven looking poofier than a quiche and less poofy than a Dutch baby pancake. Perhaps some day I'll compare recipes and see if I can figure out what the poofiness factor consists of.

My dinner guests loved this--they asked for the recipe and declared that they too were now admirers of prunes. I served it with slightly sweetened whipped cream, which was lovely, but not essential: it would still be good on its own, unadorned but classic.

Dutch Crunch Bread and Pistolets

Another of life's lessons learned: if someone tells you that there is one ingredient you need to make your recipe perfect, but gives you some second-class substitutes, just go to the grocery store and buy the perfect ingredient, even if you're feeling too lazy to get in your car and drive to the store.

My friend Melinda Pickworthmade this bread - Peter Reinhart's Vienna Bread with Dutch Crunch Topping - in November of 2008 (right after Obama was elected president).  I wanted to make it as soon as I saw it.  This is how long it's taken me--maybe I'm not that great on follow-through.

The Vienna bread itself is an easy-to-make,  fine-textured white sandwich bread, which can also be shaped into rolls or buns. If you want to make the Dutch Crunch topping, you need rice flour, which I didn't have. Melinda made her bread in November of 2008, so you would think that sometime in the 2 1/2 years after I read her blog and got inspired to try it, I would have picked up some rice flour. Not true. 

But, since you can substitute any number of things for the rice flour, I did, even though Reinhart warns that rice flour is most commonly used because it's "perfect for the job."  Meaning that the substitutions are less than perfect.

I said this bread was easy, and it is, but you do have to start it the night before you want to eat it. It starts, as do so many tasty bread recipes, with a pre-ferment that you make the night before, stick in the refrigerator, and bring to room temperature in the morning. On the second day, it's just a dump-everything-in-the-bowl, knead, and shape kind of bread.

Vienna bread is different than French bread in a lot of ways. First, it's got a lot more ingredients than the yeast/flour/salt/water quartet that works such magic in a baguette. It's also got barley malt syrup, shown here in its sticky splendor, an egg, butter, and a little sugar.

After this is mixed, kneaded, and allowed to rise, it's time to decide what kind of bread you want.

The recipe makes two one-pound loaves of Vienna bread (usually shaped into a batard), but you can make rolls with part of the dough, or you can make American-style loaves in loaf pans. I decided to make four three-ounce pistolets (miniature batards) and one large Dutch-crumb loaf.

What turns Vienna bread into Dutch crumb? A topping made from rice flour, yeast, sugar, salt, and water. (Or, if you can't be bothered to go fetch some rice flour, a mixture of cake flour and cornstarch). This mixture gets brushed on the shaped loaf, where it starts to bubble and burst. Frankly, it looks a little frightening. If made with rice flour, the contrast between the crunch and the loaf is supposed to be much more striking than in my picture--it's called tijgerbroodin the Netherlands, whence it comes, and should look like the markings on a tiger.

Almost alive.

The rolls turned out pretty and golden brown. I used them as dinner rolls, but they could also be used for sandwiches.

The bread's topping wasn't as pretty or as crunchy as the photo in The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I blame the lack of rice flour for the lack of perfection in the Dutch crunch, but it still formed a lovely crust--slightly sweet and toothsome, although not as firm as a baguette's crust. The interior was soft and even-crumbed--equally good for sandwiches and as toast.

I'd like to thank the people at Channel 4 for naming Breadbasketcase one of their top ten bread blogs. Check out their list for some great-looking blogs.


Vienna Bread
from The Bread Baker's Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart

Pate Fermentee
1 1/8 cups (5 oz.) AP flour
1 1/8 cups (5 oz.) bread flour
3/4 tsp (.19 oz.) salt
1/2 tsp instant yeast
About 3/4 cup (6 to 7 ounces) warm water

Mix together the flours with the salt and yeast. Then add the water while stirring until you have a rather 'shaggy' dough. You may need to add the extra water to bring it all together.

Remove the dough to a floured surface then knead it for a few minuted until the dough is smooth and slightly, not sticky. Place this dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover and let it ferment for at least 4 hours at room temperature. Place in the refrigerator overnight.


Vienna Bread

2 1/3 cups (13 oz.) pate fermentee (You'll have a little left over)
2 2/3 cups (12 oz.) bread flour
1 Tbs sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp instant yeast
1 large egg, beaten slightly
1 Tbs melted butter
3/4 cup + 2 Tbs (6 to 7 oz.) warm water

1. Remove pate fermentee from the refrigerator, cut it into about 10 pieces then let it come to room temperature, covered, for about an hour before using it.

2. Stir together the flour, sugar, salt and yeast. Then add the pate fermentee, egg, butter and 3/4 cups of the water. Add extra water if needed, then continue mixing until you have a smooth dough. Knead with dough hook, or by hand, about ten minutes.

3. Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, turn to coat, then cover. Let it rise until doubled in bulk for 2 hours.

4. Shape the dough into rounds (big or little, depending on what you want your final product to be). Cover and let rest for 20 minutes.

5. Shape into batards, rolls, or loaves, and let rise until nearly doubled in size.


Preheat the oven to 450F. Just before placing the bread in the oven, place an empty pan in the oven and pour a cup of boiling water into it closing the door quickly.

Place the bread in the oven, reduce the heat to 400F. Continue to bake for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, rotate the baking sheet to ensure even baking. Bake an additional 10-20 minutes, depending on size.

Cool on a rack to room temperature.

Pear Buckwheat Bread

This is the first bread I've made from Advanced Bread and Pastry: a Professional Approach, by Michel Suas. It's a daunting book. I mean it's a TOME (over 1000 pages). And you have to read through the first chapters before you can bake--because the recipes assume that you've read everything--and you have learned more than you ever wanted to know about bread and pastry. Especially if you don't retain information the way you used to. Another clue that it's not just for the home baker is that the recipes make about 10 loaves, although Mr. Suas reduces the massive numbers to a more manageable "test loaf" (i.e., two loaves).

As I periodically skimmed the book (I'm not going to pass the midquarter, by the way), I kept coming back to this pear and buckwheat bread. It intrigued me because 1) I've never baked with buckwheat and 2) the dried pears soaked in white wine sounded quite yummy. And I realized it wasn't hard at all. So I got me some buckwheat and went to town.

The first thing you do is make a buckwheat poolish--just a mixture of buckwheat flour, bread flour, water, yeast, and salt--that sits overnight. I almost threw in the towel after I saw the unappetizing color of the poolish--sort of a bluish black-gray. It didn't look like a food color. And that was a mere 1 3/8 ounces of buckwheat flour. But the rest of the bread was all white flour, so I hoped that the addition of more white flour would tone down the brackish looking mixture.

The hardest part turned out to be finding dried pears. I checked two grocery stores and a co-op; though there were many dried fruits, none of them were pears. Finally I bought some mixed fruit, and took out the pears. Not enough pears, so they had to be supplemented with dried apples.

I toasted the walnuts and vigorously toweled off the skins. This extra step is supposed to make the walnuts less bitter. I don't think that walnuts taste bitter, but sometimes I add this step anyway--if I'm feeling worthy of baking from an "Advanced" cookbook, for example.

The poolish, which has been developing overnight, is mixed into the macerated dry fruits, walnuts, and more flour, yeast, and water. It's still an odd color (not the rich brown of whole wheat), but looks less offputting than before. As you may know, but I did not, buckwheat is not even related to wheat. It's a pseudocereal, which seems a bit harsh. It's also used as an upholstery filling, which seems even harsher.

I shaped the dough into two rough torpedo-shaped loaves, poking the fruit slices back into the loaves in order to avoid burned apple and pear bits. These are supposed to be shaped into pear-shaped loaves, with a pear stencilled on top of the loaves in flour. The pear-shaped loaves were very attractive, but I could see all kinds of frustration ahead of me, so I nixed that idea.

The loaves came out of the oven a nice mahogany brown, not the unappetizing gray they looked before baking. This turned out to be quite a successful bread after all. The crust was nice, and the crumb was delicate. The wine-steeped fruit added sweetness and character, and the toasted walnuts were unexpected but welcome. You could use almost any combination of fruit and nuts--cranberries and pecans would be nice, or raisins and hazelnuts.

I've got plenty of buckwheat left. I think it will next go into some buckwheat crepes, or galettes, a specialty of Brittany, where we're headed next week. This will give me a good excuse to try galettes all over Brittany.

I'll give you the recipe just as it is in the book, and you'll see what I mean about abbreviated instructions. If you've made bread before, the language will make sense. If you haven't, it won't.

Pear Buckwheat Bread
--from Advanced Bread and Pastry, by Michel Suas

Poolish Formula
Buckwheat flour 1 3/8 oz.
Bread flour 4 7/8 oz.
Water 6 1/8 oz.
Yeast (instant) 1/8 tsp.
Salt 1/8 tsp.

1. Mix all ingredients until well incorporated.
2. Allow to ferment 12 to 16 hours at room temperature.

Final Dough Formula
Bread flour 9 7/8 oz.
Water 4 3/4 oz.
Salt 3/8 oz.
Yeast (instant) 1/8 oz.
Walnuts (toasted) 1 3/8 oz.
Dry pears, soaked in
white wine* 3 1/4 oz.
Poolish 12 1/4 oz.
*Soak pears for one hour, then strain

1. Mix. Add pears and walnuts after dough has developed in first speed
2. First fermentation. 1 hour 30 minutes at 80 degrees F.
3. Divide (one pound each)
4. Preshape (light ball)
5. Resting time (20 to 30 minutes)
6. Shape (pear shaped loaves if desired)
7 Final proof (one hour)
8. Score
9. Steam (two seconds)
10. Bake for 30-35 minutes at 450 degrees F.

Pan de Mallorca

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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