Williams-Sonoma Parmesan-Black Pepper No-Knead Bread

Sunday, July 27, 2008

I've been thinking about making no-knead bread for the past few weeks (because it's so easy and I'm so lazy), but I wanted something a little jazzier. I noticed a recipe for Lemon Rosemary NKB on the Williams-Sonoma web site, and thought that sounded good, but I didn't get around to going to the grocery store until I'd run out of time. But I saw the recipe for Parmesan-Black Pepper bread on the same site, and I had all the ingredients for that, so I got ready to bake. (This, by the way, must be the first bread I've ever made that has three hyphens in the bread title).
Well, of course, I immediately remembered why NKB has been so popular--it's so dang easy! Flour, yeast, salt, and water. Mix it up, and let it sit overnight. I added two teaspoons of freshly grated black pepper (that's a lot of pepper!), grated parmesan, and chunks of parmesan as well, so it took slightly more than three minutes. Maybe six.

After somewhere between 12 and 18 hours (I waited about 13 hours), you have a soft, spongy dough that's ready to be dumped out on a floured counter, where it can rest for 15 minutes. (Or 45 if you forget about it--I don't think that resting an extra half-hour hurts a person or a loaf of bread).

You shape it into something aproximating a boule, and place it on a cotton dishtowel that's been scattered with cornmeal. Strew some more cornmeal on top, cover it with another cotton towel, and go out and work in your garden for two hours until it's properly risen.

Obviously, you don't have to work in your garden, but you might as well.
At this point, you have already preheated a cast-iron pot. The directions say, "Slide your hand under the towel and turn the dough over, seam side up, into the pot; it may look like a mess [indeed it does], but that is OK [not really].
My other loaves of NKB have looked fine when removed from the oven, but this one looked like a mess when I put it in, and it never straightened out. I still don't understand why I have to put the ugly side up when I'm making this bread.

The recipe gets extremely optimistic at this point because it tells you that your bread will easily come out of the pan. But the people at Williams-Sonoma forgot that this variation of NKB has a cup of parmesan cheese in it, and that the lovely chunks of parmesan have browned and clung to the pan for dear life. It was a battle between me and the cheese, and the cheese was winning, but I took a break, sneaked back up on it, and I won.

This bread looks innocent enough, but it is very, very peppery, which is fine, if you like pepper. If you don't, you would probably want to cut back on the pepper.

As it happened, it was a good thing I made this bread today. I'm on the board of our neighborhood association, which just held a raffle to make money for a neighborhood art project. The first prize was at least $800 worth of wine. I sold some raffle tickets in my block. My friend Betty called me today and told me that she'd won first prize. I first said, "congratulations," then I said, "why don't you have a wine party tonight?" So she did, and I brought the black pepper parmesan bread, which went pretty well with the three bottles of wine that she opened.

PARMESAN-BLACK PEPPER NO-KNEAD BREAD
--from adapted from recipe at williams-sonoma.com

3 c. all-purpose flour
1/4 t. yeast
1 3/4 t. salt
2 t. coarsely ground black pepper
1/2 c. granted Parmesan cheese
1/2 c. Parmesan cheese chunks.
1 1/2 c. plus 2 T. water
Cornmeal as needed.

Combine flour, yest, salt, black pepper, grated cheese and cheese chunks. Add water and stir until blended. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rest for 12 to 18 hours.

Place dough on slightly floured work surface. Sprinkle dough with a little flour and fold it over onto itself a few times. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and lest rest for 15 minutes.

Shape the dough into a ball. Coat a cotton towel with cornmeal. Put the dough, seam side down, on the towl. Dust with more cornmeal, cover with another cotton towel, and let rise about two hours.

Remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under the towel and turn the dough, seam side up, into the pot. If it looks messy, shake the pan to try to distribute the dough, but be aware that it may not turn into a perfect loaf. Cover with lid and bake for 30 minutes. Uncover and continue baking until the loaf is browned, 15 to 30 minutes more.

Transfer pot to wire rack and let cool for 10 minutes. Turn pot on its side and gently loosen bread with metal spatula. It will come out, but it won't be easy.

Put cast-iron pot in oven and preheat to 450.

P.S. I just want to say that it's very hard to buy good bread, which is one argument for baking your own. Aside from a few excellent bakeries, most purchased bread is a disappointment. Case in point: I bought two "ciabatta rolls" from Whole Foods, which is a pretty good grocery store. The rolls were awful: tasteless and stale. They should be ashamed of themselves for selling such bad bread, but they're probably not.

Royal Crown's Fennel Taralli

Saturday, July 12, 2008

I was planning to bake another no-knead bread this weekend, but at the last minute, I decided I wanted something more interesting, so I turned to Maggie Glezer's Artisan Baking for inspiration. I opened the book at random to page 201, which had a big picture of beautiful, shiny brown elongated ovals.
The directions looked easy. I like fennel, and I like crunchy, cracker-like things. Most of all, I like shaping things into long, thin snakes. When I was in the first grade, I learned to make bowls out of modeling clay by making a snake-like shape and then rolling it up into a bowl. I was very careful and earnest, and I was the best snake-bowl-maker in the first grade. Unfortunately, my artistic ability peaked there. By the time I was in third grade, my friend Jennifer was using modeling clay to shape dogs and cats, and I was stuck in the snake-bowl phase.
Making the tartalli was just like being in first grade again. First you divide the dough into 32 30-gram balls, and then roll them into 11-inch-long snakes. With moistened fingers, you pinch the ends together and then hold it on your fingers so that the shape becomes a big elongated.

After the dough rests for a few hours, during which time it does nothing to speak of, there's another fun part--the dough gets boiled in water to which olive oil has been added.

They only boil for about a minute, until they puff up a little, then they're put on a rack to drain. I have no idea what would happen if you just baked them, without doing the boiling thing first. I think it makes them a little shinier than they would otherwise be because a little of the olive oil sticks to them as they're being removed from the water.

Finally, after they've dried off a bit, they go into the oven for about 45 minutes (more like 35 in the convection setting). When they're nice and brown, they slide right off the baking sheet onto a rack. (If you drop one on the floor, it shatters). Excellent with wine or tea as an afternoon pick-me-up.
All the steps make it sound like the taralli are difficult and time-consuming, but they're quite easy and fun, and they take only about four hours from start to finish.


Royal Crown's Fennel Taralli
--from Artisan Baking by Maggie Glezer
1/2 t. instant yeast
3 c. (450 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 c. (120 grams) durum flour
1 3/4 t. (9 grams) salt
3 T. (40 grams) vegetable oil
1/4 c. (60 grams) white wine
1 T. (60 grams) fennel seeds
1 cup plus 2 T. (250 grams) water
2 T. Olive oil

Add yeast, flours, salt, vegetable oil, and white wine to food processor workbowl fitted with steel blade. With the machine running, add the water through the feed tube and process until smooth, firm dough is formed. Remove dough and knead in fennel seeds by hand.
Divide dough into 32 (30 gram) pieces. Dampen your hands sand roll a piece of dough into an 11-inch rope. Pinch ends together. Hold rope ring together at the seal and let it drop into an elongated oval shape.
After all the dough is formed, cover with plastic wrap and let them rest for 2 hours.
Preheat oven to 400.
Bring a pot of water to the boil and reduce heat so the water is simmering. Add the olive oil to the simmering water. Set a rack over a baking sheet. Boil the taralli in small batches, for about one minute, or until they float and puff up slightly. Skim them from the pot and let them drain on the rack. After they've drained, move them to two parchment paper-lined baking sheets.
Bake in preheated oven until they are dry and golden brown, about 35 to 45 minutes, rotating the baking sheets after about 20 minutes. Let cool on rack and store in sealed container.

Spiced Pecan Toasting Bread

Sunday, July 6, 2008
Our July Lazy Bakers No Rules Club assignment was a pecan bread from Sunset Magazine. Melinda suggested it, but then remembered it wasn't her turn. I asked her how we could turns if we had no rules, so she typed out the recipe and sent it to the other Lazy Bakers. Who knows if anyone will get around to baking it? But as I've already told Melinda, I actually like rules, and so I want to bake the July assignment in July. Preferably early July so I can cross it off my List of Things to Do.


Spiced Pecan Toasting bread
(From Sunset Magazine April 2008)

Prep and baking time:4 hours
Makes 2 8 inch loaves

Ingredients:
2 Tablespoons active dry yeast
2 Tablespoons honey
3 eggs
6 to 7 cups bread flour, divided, plus more for shaping
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup dried low-fat or nonfat milk
4 teaspoons salt
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons ground cardamon
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
Butter for bowls and pans

Method:
1.) In a bowl of a stand mixer, dissolve yeast and honey in 1 1/2 cups warm water (90 to 105F).
Let sit until foamy, about 5 minutes.

2.) Attach dough hook and with mixer on medium, mix in 2 eggs, 2 cups bread flour, the whole-wheat flour, brown sugar, dried milk, salt, vanilla, cardamon, cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg and pecans. Add remaining 4 to 5 cups bread flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until dough pulls away from the inside of the bowl. Knead ( with mixer on medium) until smooth and elastic, adding more flour as necessary to keep dough from sticking too much. When ready, dough should feel a bit like an earlobe when you pinch it.

3.)Transfer dough to a large, lightly buttered bowl. Cover with a clean towel or plastic wrap and let sit until doubled in bulk, about 1 1/2 hours. Meanwhile butter two 8 inch loaf pans and set aside.

4.) Punch down dough, divide in half, and on a lightly floured surface, shape each half into an 8 inch oblong loaf. Put dough in pans, cover and let sit until doubled in bulk; about 1 hour.

5.) Preheat oven to 350F/180C. In a small bowl, beat remaining egg with 2 tablespoons water.
Brush dough with egg wash and bake until brown, about 35 minutes. Remove loaves from pans (they are done if they sound hollow when tapped on the bottom) and cool on wire racks.

Toasted and buttered, this bread reminds me of freshly baked cinnamon rolls. We recommend it with a cup of coffee or tea and some charming company. (Sunset's introduction about this bread. [I suppose in bad company this bread might make them more tolerable.--Melinda's words].

This is not a difficult bread to make at all, although I was puzzled by the instruction: "When ready, dough should feel a bit like an earlobe when you pinch it." What does the "it" refer to? One's earlobe or the bread? Or both? And I don't seem to have a lot of experience in earlobe-pinching because the feel I was looking for was not immediately clear to me, even though I reached up and pinched my earlobe several times, and then pinched the bread. Honestly, the dough didn't feel like my earlobe at all. I asked Jim if I could pinch his earlobe, just as a control, but he turned me down.

I was also a little wary of the two whole teaspoons of cardamom in the recipe--a lot of cardamom, which has a very distinctive taste. It actually wasn't too much, although you could certainly taste it. The other problem was that the recipe makes two loaves of bread, and specifies two eight-inch loaf pans. Although I have a number of loaf pans, it turns out that no two of them are the same size. So I made one loaf in an eight-inch pan and one in a too-large pan.

See how it doesn't quite fill up the pan?
I applied the egg glaze very liberally, and it made the loaves super-shiny.

The proof of the pudding is in the tasting, and the proof of a toasting bread is in the toasting. I can't say that the bread really reminded me of "freshly baked cinnamon rolls," as the recipe's description says. It reminded me more of toasted nut bread with apricot jam.

Not that that's a bad thing. Also, I can't say that I had "charming company" since I was eating breakfast by myself.
Although I mixed the dough in my KitchenAid with the dough hook, the pecans did not get evenly distributed, and the bread that I gave away had more pecans in it than the one I kept for myself. I also don't think that the cardamom got thoroughly distributed. I blame all this on my inability to concentrate on anything besides the earlobe comparison. If you make this bread, I recommend that you not think about earlobes.



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Dorie Greenspan's Independence Day Cream Scones

July 4, 2008
Now that I own this big fat book by Dorie Greenspan--Baking From My House to Yours--I figure I should start using it. Every 4th of July, some neighbors have a brunch to which they invite the entire neighborhood. I decided I would bring scones, even though Barb Strand, who hosts the brunch, is a professional chef, and even though she always does homemade biscuits and gravy.
It's always a good idea to have a basic scone recipe that's easy and trustworthy. I generally use one of Rose's two scone recipes in TBB, but I like to try new things. Dorie's recipe uses both cream and butter, and I'm almost always in favor of a recipe that contains both. It's a good combination. I've found that recipes that use just butter are hard to handle and recipes that use just cream aren't as flavorful or flaky, and sometimes get too soft. These, as Goldilocks said, were just right.

I don't like to write out recipes, but, fortunately, if you want to make these scones and if you don't want to buy another fat cookbook, you can just google "Dorie Greenspan" and "cream scones," and you'll find that other, more accommodating people, have already written the recipe down for you.
If you have the book, you should be aware that, although the recipe calls for 3/4 cup of currants, the recipe is missing the instruction that says "add currants." If you were feeling a little slow on the uptake, you might be left a box of currants standing alone on the counter while your cream scones were already in the oven. Not that that would be a tragedy. In my opinion, scones don't really require any fancying up, but it would be too bad, especially if you'd gone out and bought a box of currants especially for the occasion. As I had some dried cherrries on hand, I used those instead of currants.
It occurred to me later that, since I was making these for Independence Day, I should have added, perhaps, blueberries and white chocolate, along with the cherries, for the traditional red, white and blue. That that seems a little over the top, though, and the cherries alone were very nice indeed.

I love scones, especially with clotted cream, although I didn't use clotted cream, it being Independence Day and a time to celebrate our freedom from British tyranny, including, I suppose, clotted cream. But I was a little sad when I learned that I'd been mispronouncing them all these years, and that I shouldn't call them scones, but, rather, something more like scawns. Of course, when you say "scawn," nobody knows what you're talking about, but when you say "scone," with a long o, you know that you are actually incorrect. It's like forte. If you say, "that's not my forte," someone will say, you mean, "for-tay?" Which leads you to avoid the word entirely. So I may just have to make muffins instead.

Vanilla Bean Pound Cake

Sunday, June 15, 2008


We’re back from Australia and New Zealand, and we had a fabulous time. However, crossing the International Date Line seems to be hard on a person’s body, at least on this person’s body, so I’ve been a little under the weather.
First, a few days before we were scheduled to leave, I was trying out my new exercise ball. I’d had a few glasses of wine (you can already tell that the combination of a few glasses of wine and an exercise ball are not going to lead to a happy ending, can’t you?) and decided it would be an excellent idea to do a backbend using the exercise ball. Not surprisingly, the ball slid out from under me and I flew through the air, whacking my leg on the corner of a door. I watched in awe as the leg turned purple and swollen before my very eyes. By the next day, I could barely walk.
My own personal physician, Dr. Liz, my new doctor-daughter, told me she was worried I might have a deep vein thrombosis or a tiny fracture, either of which might interfere with our trip, to put it mildly. But a visit to a real doctor revealed that all I had was a big fat hematoma, which is sort of a fancy name for a bruise. I was a little alarmed at first because I remember from my soap-opera watching days that people are always dying of hematomas, at least on soap operas, but then I remembered that those were subdural hematomas—bruising on the brain, I think—which is a very handy thing to know about if you’re a soap opera writer and are often required to kill of characters quite suddenly. Anyway, my clinic doctor (the doctor I have to pay for) told me to wear a compression stocking on the flight, but the bruising and big goose-egg lump on my leg was going to last a good long time.
So I limped all over Australia and New Zealand. Then I got blisters on my other foot, probably because I was walking funny; then I could walk only by doing a sort of shuffle-shuffle-hop, which was even a funnier walk than before.
I also developed a urinary tract infection while I was in the outback, about 500 miles away from anything else.


Royal Flying Doctor Service to the rescue! They had a little clinic at Ayers Rock resort that gave me some antibiotics.

The next day I woke up with a big spot floating around in front of my eye. Jim said, "Oh, that's just a floater--I have them. It happens when you get old." Dr. Liz said, "It could be a sign of a detached retina--but probably not." So I had spots in front of my eyes for the rest of the trip, but apparently it is just a floater, and it is just one of those things that happens as you get older. Dr. Liz says it must be hell getting old.


Then I got a cold and a sinus infection as soon as I got back—probably from breathing all that airplane air with billions of germs floating around in it.
You thought you were going to get a mini-travelogue, or at least something about a pound cake, and all you get is a tale of woe.

Despite these woes, the holiday was amazing. (I’m going to start saying holiday instead of vacation and rubbish instead of trash, in order to sound more cosmopolitan). I loved Sydney, and would like to go back there for several months, in order to explore the city and some other areas in Australia.

The south island in New Zealand was perhaps the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, especially the trip from Queenstown to Milford Sound.

We did a tour of some wineries on the south island, and I’m trying to track down some of those wines, especially the pinot noir, to buy locally. Jim will probably post some pictures eventually, but now it’s time for me to get back to the subject at hand—baking.
On Mother’s Day, I baked the first project of the Lazy Bakers’ No-Rules Club. The second project was a vanilla-bean pound cake recipe from The Cake Bible. It seemed only appropriate to bake another project for Father’s Day. Since it was my choice, I guess I have to post the recipe, so here it is:

DELUXE DOUBLE-VANILLA POUND CAKE
3 tablespoons (45 grams) milk
1 vanilla bean
3 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups (150 grams) cake flour
3/4 cup (150 grams) sugar
3/4 teaspoon (3.7 grams) baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
13 tablespoons (184 grams) unsalted butter, softened

Split vanilla bean in half lengthwise, place it in a small saucepan with the milk and scald the milk. Cover pan, remove from heat, and cool to room temperature. Remove vanilla bean and scrape black grans from its center into the milk.
In a medium bowl, combine the vanilla-infused milk, eggs, and vanilla.
Combine dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix on low speed for about 30 seconds. Add butter and half the egg mixture. Mix on low speed until dru ingredients are moistened. Increase to medium speed and beat for one minute.
Scrape down the sides and add the rest of the egg mixture in two batches, beating for 20 seconds after each addition.
Scrape batter into a buttered and floured 8" x 4" x 2 1/2" loaf pan and smooth the surface. Bake 55 to 65 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cover looselyly with buttered foil after 30 minutes to prevent overbrowning.
Let the cake cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes and invert onto a greased wire rack. Reinvert so the top is up. Cool completely.

Melinda Pickworth won a massive amount of vanilla beans in a vanilla-bean-lottery she participated in, and she generously shared them, so I have a bunch of vanilla beans to use before they dry up and wither away. Since I love Rose’s recipe for pound cake, it seemed like a good idea to bake the vanilla-bean variation. And it was a good idea.

Here is why I like Rose’s pound cake: 1) it’s easy; 2) it tastes magnificent, with a tender but still substantial texture, a rich, buttery taste, and a slight buttery crunch to the crust; 3) it’s not so big that I will gain five pounds if I should happen to eat the whole cake; and 4) pound cake is the best excuse in the world to add fresh fruit and whipped cream to the dessert plate. The pound cakes are best made in a small loaf pan. Rose says they’re better if they’re kept small, and she advises against doubling them, so I never have, but I’ll bet if you wanted a cake that would fill a whole bundt pan, you could double the recipe anyway and it would still be delicious.
I was hoping that the vanilla beans would be a little bigger, so they’d be more noticeable in the cake, as in Edy’s Vanilla Bean Ice Cream, which our family always called “ant gut ice cream.” But, since you can’t really see the vanilla beans very well in this cake, I can’t very well call it Ant Gut Cake.

Served with whipped cream and fresh strawberries and blueberries, this cake was a very satisfying end to a casual Father’s Day dinner. Jim said it was more than he deserved, and he is probably right.

To the Other Side of the World

May 21, 2008
Back in June!

Devil's Food White-Out Cake

Sunday, May 11, 2008
A few weeks ago, I saw that Melinda,Pink Nest and Evil Cake Lady started their own internet baking club. I horned in on it, and begged them to let me join their projects, even though they baked a fancy cake with caramel and peanut topping that looked really hard. They said I could join, but they had already planned May's project, which was another cake that also looked quite hard. I told them they could always make fun of me if my cake turned out to be really lame.
Melinda named their group the Lazy Bakers' No Rules Club. My daughter Sarah came over for Mother's Day today, and I told her about the group. She said, "But Mom, you love rules!" It's true. But once a month, surely, I could be a no-rules kind of gal.
May's project is from Baking from My House to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan. This devil's food cake requires baking a cake (naturally) and then slicing the layers in half. (Help!) You also make a marshmallow-like frosting (Help again!), ice the whole thing, and then artfully glom on cake crumbs. The picture (it's the cover picture on the cookbook) is quite beautiful. (If you want to make this cake and don't want to buy the book, you can google the name of the cake and get lots of hits, most of which include the recipe).

I tried to match the picture with my level of expertise at cake baking and decorating, and I couldn't. But I decided to slog ahead.
I had to buy some eight-inch cake pans. At Target, they were all out of eight-inchers, so I went to Williams-Sonoma instead. Maybe the shelves at Target had been emptied by people who went first to Williams-Sonoma and were appalled by the $18.50 price tag for the deluxe gold pan. That is $18.50 per cake pan. The lovely woman at W-S assured me that these pans would last me the rest of my life. That better be a good long time, I grumbled under my breath.

I decided to do everything exactly as directed. Normally, I would just spritz some Baker's Joy on the cake pans. But the recipe said to butter the pans, flour them, and then line with parchment. And so I did. Often when a recipe says to sift the flour, baking soda, etc., I ignore it. But today I sifted. Cake recipes that specify adding the dry ingredients in three installments, separated by two additions of milk, seem a little silly to me. But I obeyed. (Sarah pointed out that I was being a little rule-bound considering this was a No-Rules Club. I said I wished I was a little better at the no-rules thing, but maybe I'd improve as I went along).

I was hoping that the layers would be nice and thick so that cutting them in half wouldn't be so scary. But they weren't. And it was really, really scary. I remembered an old trick about putting toothpicks along the middle of the cake layer to guide the knife. If I hadn't done that, God knows what I would have ended up with, but I did manage to cut both layers more or less in half.

If the cake wasn't scary enough, there was still the frosting to contend with. Frosting that required a candy thermometer, boiling sugar, beating egg whites at the same time the sugar is boiling, and pouring the hot sugar-water into the beaten egg whites. I told Sarah that I had a bad, bad feeling. She said, "What are you worried about?" I said, "Everything. It's all going to be bad." She told me again that I was lacking the devil-may-care spirit implicit in the Lazy Bakers' No-Rules Club.

I'll admit the frosting turned out to be quite pretty. It has a whole tablespoon of vanilla in it; at first I thought it was too much, but it married well with the chocolatey, chocolatey cake (cocoa powder, melted bittersweet chocolate, and miniature chocolate chips). And, although I am not a good icer, the frosting was pretty easy to handle.

When the whole cake was frosted, I still had one layer to crumble, and throw on the sides. I was feeling a little giddy by now, and I really did want to throw the crumbs, but I just kind of patted them instead.

Three layers of chocolate cake, filled and frosted with airy, fluffy frosting--my Mother's Day present to myself.

We all had a piece mid-afternoon. Actually, Jim had two, which is how I know he liked it. I restrained myself, but the rest has to go in to work, or I'll be in serious trouble.

Potato Buttermilk Bread

Saturday, May 3, 2008
Since I started baking, I've learned that the search for new recipes is divided into two categories: buttermilk and non-buttermilk. The buttermilk search is for when you have a half-used quart of in your refrigerator and MUST USE IT UP. Non-buttermilk is when you're free.
Buttermilk servitude is not the worst thing in the world. Most things you bake with buttermilk end up being pretty good. Still, would it really hurt to make it available in one-cup cartons? It's not like most people just glug it down.
So I got out The Bread Bible, and looked in the index under "buttermilk," where I found potato buttermilk bread. I was about to ignore it because, though I had buttermilk, I had no potatoes, butI remembered that it took potato flour instead of cooked potatoes. And I still had some potato flour. I heard Rose's voice asking me how old the potato flour was, but I ignored the voice because I didn't want to think about it. (I'm at the age where I feel a lot of empathy for anything or anybody that's considered too old. It's the only reason I'd think of voting for John McCain).

Ha! The too-old flour came through just fine.
This bread is pretty simple, but it does take some time, mainly because the biga needs to be made either early in the morning, or, preferably, the night before. Since I forgot to make it the night before, I was able to hurry things along just a little by using the "proofing" cycle on my beloved Wolf oven. I set it at 85, and it stays cool enough that I can put my plastic proofing bucket into the oven with no fears, but it's just enough warmer than my kitchen (in early May anyway) so that I don't have to worry about lagging dough. And we had the bread in time for dinner.
Usually, I prefer to have bread be the main course because it usually outshines whatever else we're having anyway, but I had dinner all ready to make so the bread had to play second fiddle. Since it was chewy, flavorful, and delicious, it didn't play the runner-up part all that well. I had a slice later that night with a glass of wine, and it was excellent. This bread has a much finer texture than the kind of bread you usually get in this kind of free-form round loaf, but it was a nice change. I hope my elderly flour is up to making one more loaf.

Onion Rye Bread

Sunday, April 20, 2008

This is the best bread I've made so far from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day--mostly, I think, because it has a layer of caramelized Vidalia onions in it. Caramelized onions improve almost everything, except maybe ice cream. I hadn't decided what bread to make this week, when a friend asked me on Saturday if I'd ever made onion rye bread. I had to admit that I hadn't.
When I was leafing through cookbooks later that day, I saw that Artisan Baking had a recipe for onion rye, so it seemed fated that I should make it.
This bread follows the standard Artisan procedure of mixing a large amount of dough, letting it rise for a few hours, and then putting most of it away for later.
For the onion rye, you use the amount for one loaf, roll it out into an oval, cover with caramelized onions, and roll up, jelly-roll style.
This would have turned out to be a handsome loaf of bread, except that I had a brain lapse that made me roll it up on the counter instead of on a parchment-lined baking sheet. It had already risen beautifully when I came to the realization that no matter how carefully I tried to lift it and place it on the pan, it was going to collapse. And I was right. So instead of the high and handsome loaf I was anticipating, I had a squat and dumpy one. And that's why there is no photo of the whole loaf. Even the squad and dumpy loaf tasted excellent, though, and the bonus is that I have two loaves of rye bread in the refrigerator just waiting to be shaped.

Guess Who Came to Dinner?

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

My hero, Rose Levy Beranbaum, was in Minneapolis this week to make a DVD for General Mills in conjunction with her new cake book. When she told me she'd be in town, I asked her if she could squeeze in dinner with us, and she accepted. As you can imagine, I was thrilled--it would be like having Julia Child in your own home.
But then I was struck with dread. What if I invited the best baker in the world and one of the best cooks for dinner, and I made something inedible? I sat myself in the middle of all my cookbooks and looked for worthy recipes. I got a lot of suggestions, few of them helpful:
--Why don't you do a Minnesota church supper? You know, tuna hot dish with potato chips on top and Jello salad?
--Couldn't you just order pizza?
--How about hiring someone to cook and pretending you made it yourself?
--Maybe you could come down with leprosy.
As I said, not particularly helpful.

I finally decided on rack of lamb. Jim and I went to Sam's Wine Shop, where the friendly wine seller, who may or may not have been Sam, recommended a 2004 Rosso di Montalcino. He also recommended The Wedge, a Minneapolis co-op, for the lamb. When I called The Wedge to order the lamb, the nice man from the meat department told me that their lamb was so tasty because it was raised by Doug and Connie, who not only raise the lambs, but also grow everything the lambs eat. Doug is also a champion sheep shearer, which probably has nothing to do with quality of the lamb, but added to the idyllic nature of their lamb-raising enterprise, at least until I remembered what actually happens to the poor gamboling lambs at the end.
When I picked up the package of lamb on Wednesday morning, I was disconcerted to see the price tag: $77.20. I was so disconcerted that I almost ran a red light on the way home from The Wedge. The idea of shattered glass on my $77 lamb sobered me up, however.
I decided on rosemary focaccia as an appetizer. I've made it so many times now that I had no fear.

I've already recounted my first mishap with this bread, after which I fired off an email to Rose demanding that she remove the recipe from the next edition of The Bread Bible because it was impossible to do it successfully. I've done an about face, and now believe that if you follow the instructions very carefully, it is impossible to do it wrong.
I also made some Syracusan baked olives from Paula Wolfert's The World of Food.

These were very nice, although, to be honest, they tasted a lot like marinated olives that I might have bought somewhere, rather than olives that required soaking, mincing, pounding, basting, and baking.

Just as I put the appetizers on the coffee table, our dinner guests arrived.

Rose's assistant, Woody, Rose, and our daughter Sarah.

Rose praised the focaccia, which is sort of like having Shakespeare tell you that you've written quite a nice little sonnet.
Woody not only drove, but he also brought dessert: a wonderful lemon almond cake from Rose's new cake book that will be out next year. From our sneak preview, I can tell you that this cake alone would make the book worth buying.

Our guests also included Rose's cousin Peter, and his wife Anne. They live in the Minneapolis area and don't get a chance to see Rose very often, so it seemed natural to invite them as well.

Jim has a habit of taking candid shots when people are laughing, eating, or telling stories. This means I have a lot of photos of mouths open and eyes closed. He was also so busy pouring wine and taking pictures of people with odd expressions on their faces that he didn't get around to taking a picture of the salad course: watercress with roasted beets, walnuts, and goat cheese with blackberry vinaigrette, adapted from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook and buttermilk mashed potatoes, which Judy Rodgers, author of that cookbook, swears are the best mashed potatoes ever, but which I thought were not as good as plain mashed potatoes with butter and cream.
With the salad course, I served the spaccatini (little Italian cleft rolls that I made last weekend). Rose said she looked at my blog at General Mills and thought, when she saw the picture of my making the little cleft with the wooden spoon handle, that she had mistakenly been directed to a pornographic blog. I couldn't figure out what she was talking about until I went back to the last posting, stared, and laughed out loud. I'm not going to repeat the picture here.
The rack of lamb was stuffed with onions, swiss chard, golden raisins soaked in sweet vermouth, and pine nuts, then tied and slathered with Dijon mustard, rosemary and thyme. Jim and Sarah stuffed and tied, while I called out directions--my favorite role.
Then it went into the oven, with its sweet little bones looking like the swords at a military wedding.

What is it like having a famous person in your house? Or, as my reader and friend Melinda would say, what's it like having The Queen for dinner? It's like any other dinner party where you're lucky enough to have warm, friendly, smart, and entertaining guests. Midway through dinner, I realized I'd completely forgotten about being nervous. I'm not sure if The Queen would be good at making people feel at ease, but Rose definitely was.

Spaccatini

Sunday, April 6, 2008

These spaccatini, or "little cleft rolls," are another sampling from The Italian Baker. They are, according to Carol Field, from Lugano, and are "really something to sink your teeth into." I wasn't sure that sinking your teeth into was really a recommendation, but I wanted some dinner rolls that I could make ahead of time, freeze, and have for dinner on Wednesday, so I decided to give them a try.
These are very easy, except that they require a biga, so you have to start the night before you want them. The next day, after a rise, you divide them into sixteen pieces.

Or more. Or less. Because I am a direction-follower, I did 16.
Then the fun part--shape them into rolls, and then with a dowel, or wooden spoon handle, which you're more likely to have, make a deep indentation in the middle of the roll.

Turn them upside down, and let them rise again for about an hour. Then turn them rightside up, and bake, misting them with water three times in the first ten minutes. When they come out of the oven, they sound like Rice Krispies, with a lot of snap, crackle, and pop.
We tried a few tonight--to make sure that they were worthy of our Wednesday dinner guests. Fortunately, they were crusty and flavorful. As long as they survive the freezing, they should do.
Jim said they reminded him of the brochen he had many years ago, when he was stationed in Germany. It was the first time he had realized that bread could be crusty and delicious, not just something bland to slap peanut butter and grape jelly on. Over the years, these German brochen have attained a mystical quality in Jim's memory--the Platonic ideal of bread. If he thought they tasted like brochen, I knew they were good. And "spaccatini" is even more fun to say than "brochen."