Bread Love

The finished garlic-buttery loaves

     The last time I baked was two weeks ago.  It has felt very odd not having my Sunday ritual of flour and yeast and heat.  I was sick last week (still recovering) from one of those colds that makes you realize how lucky you are to be healthy most of the time.  While I was sick, I craved homemade bread.  It's true, I'm not lying, I actually craved a biscuit, or a slice of toast or a muffin, but not just any biscuit, bread or muffin, I wanted something homemade by me, from my own kitchen.  What I really craved most of all, were the loaves that inspired the title "Bread Love."

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 I am in love.  I am sorry Mireille Guliano, I used to think that your French bread recipe from French Women Don't Get Fat were the bread-loves of my life, but I was wrong.  The French bread from the Tassajara Bread Book is perfect in every way, and I am serious about this.  This crusty loaf with a fluffy interior is hard to beat, but topping these loaves with garlic butter straight out of the oven seals the deal and makes them the loaves-of-my-dreams, hand's down. The mixture of wheat and white flour is divine, giving the bread enough weight without making it heavy.  The crust of the bread gets very golden and, well crusty, because of the moisture you coat the loaves in with a squirt bottle while baking.  In the FWDGF recipe mentioned above, a pan of water is baked in the oven with the loaves to provide moisture, but I think that squirting them or brushing them with water is a much better approach, plus it's way more fun. Introducing water not only keeps the crumb of the bread moist, but it allows the exterior to turn a deep golden color and have a much crustier exterior without burning.

Shaping the dough after rolling out
with new French rolling pin (thanks Mom)

Cutting vents in the loaves
on top of a cornmeal dusted baking sheet

A homemade steam injection oven!

Brushing the loaves, straight from the oven with garlic butter

mmmmm...garlic butter

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     Next time I make these loaves (and I know there will be many more times)I plan to let them bake a little longer.  The crust was still delicious, but I think it could have been a more golden shade of brown.  This recipe also opened the door to all kinds of savory and sweet butters: butters with fresh herbs like Cilantro or Basil, with cinnamon and orange peel, or with ginger and lime.  I am pretty sure that I could live off of bread and butter, especially now that I have made this recipe.  Well, maybe I'd like to add beer to that list. 

#15 A French Bread

From The Tassajara Bread Book

Crusty, with good wheat flavor.  Try a combination of whole wheat and white flour, or use all white flour if you prefer.

3 cups lukewarm water

3 packages dry yeast

2 tablespoons honey or sugar

2 cups unbleached white flour and 2 cups whole wheat flour

4 teaspoons salt

1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour and 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

wheat flour for kneading

Proceed with directions for Recipe#1.  With the additional yeast, rising times will probably be somewhat shorter.

To shape the loaves, cut into two pieces, roll each out into a rectangle about 1/4 inch thick on a floured board.  Then roll up the dough tightly, as you would roll up a carpet.

Pinch the seam together and roll the loaf about to shape it evenly.  Place the finished loaf, seam down on a baking sheet that has been sprinkled with cornmeal.  Let rise for about 20 minutes.

Brush with water.  Bake at 400 for 10 minutes, and then spray or brush the loaves with water.  Continue baking at 350 until well browned--another 35-45 minutes.  For added shine and a bit of flavor, brush the tops with garlic butter as soon as the loaves are removed from the oven (a must).

Pop-Pop-Popovers!

The end result; chaotic, spontaneous, popovers.

     After a somewhat hectic week at work, I was looking for an easy recipe that I could knock off my list.  I was looking for something that did not require kneading, rising, or too many ingredients.  Popovers seemed somewhat low maintenance, except for the fact that the only other recipes that I had seen for popovers had been from a Martha Stewart baking cookbook that required the use of a certain popover pan (which I, of course do not have).  I hoped that since none of the other recipes required special equipment, that this one wouldn't either, and I was right.  Turns out that Popovers can be made in a regular muffin tin.  

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     This recipe seemed dangerously similar to a souffle, which I have never actually made, but from watching several cooking shows with people trying to pull one off successfully, I know that it can collapse at any moment if taken out of the oven too soon, if moved to quickly, or if someone sneezes in the other room.  In that way, a souffle, and to a lesser degree popovers, are like science experiments, all the elements have to come together just right to make it work.  Luckily, popovers are not as temperamental as souffles and if you follow the instructions of this recipe, they are very simple to make.  As long as you keep the oven shut for the first 30 minutes of baking (which is all I needed in my oven)they should bake into perfect puffs of yummy soft baked goods that are like a hybrid creation of croissant, muffin and souffle.  

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  I normally avoid the word "magical" because it's often used to describe things that have an explanation (therefore, it's not magic!) but, I do feel like the way that these little suckers bake is pretty magical.  They pop up in a chaotic, spontaneous way that is unique for every popover.  The extra amount of eggs in the batter is what makes these rise and bake too fast for their own good which produces a hollow eggy roll which can be filled with any number of ingredients.  The origin of these delicious rolls is somewhat unknown, but apparently, food historians generally agree that the recipe was derived from an American adaptation of Yorkshire Pudding, which has been made in England since the 17th century.  The next time I make these, I want to try out filling them with something; cheese, pesto, hummus, nutella...okay, maybe they are a bit magical...



Popovers, ready for their close up.




Yum!





#44 Popovers

From The Tassajara Bread Book
Makes 12 popovers

1 cup unbleached white flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 eggs, beaten

1 cup milk

2 tablespoons melted butter

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Use a popover pan or  regular muffin tins.  Mix ingredients thoroughly.  Grease the muffin tins and heat in the oven for 5 minutes.  When hot, fill each cup one-third full with popover batter.

Bake at 425 for 20 minutes, then reduce the heat to 325 and bake another 10-20 minutes.  DO NOT OPEN the oven until after 30 minutes of baking of the popovers may fall.

Serve with butter, jam, or cheese.  Or serve for dinner with stuffed meat or vegetables in cream or cheese sauce; with grains, vegetables, or stuffing; or with a mushroom filling.  Heck, or just plain buttered.

Everything IS better with Cheddar!

The finished cheesy loaves

     
     As mentioned last week, during my cooking/baking extravaganza, I made chili and cornbread and this lovely cheese bread.  I knew from the start that I would love this bread, seeing as I love pretty much anything with cheese and I like to add cheese to pretty much everything.  This is why it will be important for me to maintain the habit of exercising vigorously  as I am just not the dieting type.  Who trusts a skinny chef right?  Bread is honestly something that I don't think I could live without, this cheese bread included. 

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     When I was flipping through The Tassajara Bread Book (TBB) deciding what I wanted to bake, I was a little startled to come across this recipe.  I have this feeling when it comes to baking from the TBB, that everything is healthy and wholesome, so it was somewhat shocking to see a recipe that included 3 cups of cheese, 2 eggs and 1/2 cup of melted butter. But, if you are using this bread to make a sandwich and skip the cheese and mayonnaise, (because there is cheese and butter in the bread itself), you have probably balanced things out.

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     What I am learning more and more as I get older (and I have been feeling a little bit older lately) is not some new nugget of information that I have never heard before, but something that I have heard from almost everyone I know of a certain age; "everything in moderation".  So I guess I will skip adding cheese to a sandwich on a cheesy loaf, or better yet, eat the cheese and walk an extra mile to compensate.

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The bubbling yeast doing it's magic

Adding the cheddar

Rolling the dough to fit the bread pan

#14 Cheese Bread

From the Tassajara Bread Book

3 cups lukewarm water

2 packages dry yeast

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 cup dry milk

2 eggs, beaten

2 cups unbleached flour and 2 cups whole wheat flour

2 teaspoons salt

1/2 cup melted butter

3 cups grated Cheddar (or other strong favored cheese)

3-5 cups whole wheat flour as required to form the dough and knead it

Proceed with directions for recipe #1, stirring in the beaten eggs after the dry milk, and folding in the grated cheese after the salt and butter.

Eggy-Custardy-Cornbread

The Three layered cornbread in all it's glory

     

     After a very busy weekend full of un-baking related activities, I decided to have a baking/cooking marathon- extravaganza on Sunday evening.  Even though it had been a fairly sunny warm day, I was in the mood for chili and cornbread.    Native Americans used ground corn for food for thousands of years before Europeans "discovered" the New World.   Europeans learned the cornmeal techniques from the Native Americans, and quickly developed bread using the cornmeal in a similar fashion to the grains they were familiar with at home.  Chili, or Chili con carne, is taken from Spanish and means "peppers with meat".  According to Wikipedia, chili was first invented in San Antonio Texas by the Spanish Canary Islanders.  They would pound dried peppers and meat, suet (raw fat), and salt into bricks that could then be reconstituted by boiling water on the trail.  I don't know who first decided to pair sweet, mild cornbread with hearty, spicy chili, but they were on to something good.

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    Cornbread and chili was one of the meals that I would really look forward to growing up.  I pretty much always made my self sickeningly full from the chili and all of the glorious toppings that came along (cheese, sour cream, cilantro, avocado, tortilla chips, and of course cornbread).  In the past, as an adult, I have made cornbread and chili several times, but used to rely on the Marie Callender's prepackaged version.  This three layer cornbread from the Tassajara bread book is actually just as easy as using the packaged version and the taste is 100 times better.  The recipe creates three different layers, the cornmeal settles to the bottom, the wheat bran or germ rises to the top, and in between is an eggy-custard filling.  This is hand's down the best cornbread I have ever had.

Me looking very official

     The baking/cooking extravaganza included the chili and cornbread (as mentioned before) and a cheese bread that will be my next blog.  As you can see in the photo above, my mom and dad got me this very professional looking chef's jacket that is embroidered with my name and the name of this project.  I actually cried a little when I opened this jacket up on Christmas morning and I was surprised at how right it felt when I put it on.  Sometimes wearing the uniform can make such a difference.

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#53 Three Layer Cornbread

From The Tassajara Bread Book

1 cup cornmeal (coarse ground works best)
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup unbleached white flour
1/4 cup wheat bran or wheat germ
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1/4-1/2 cup honey or molasses
1/4 cup oil or melted butter
3 cups milk or buttermilk

Preheat oven to 325.

Combine the dry ingredients.  In a separate bowl, combine the wet ingredients.  Mix together.  The resulting batter will be quite liquidy.  Pour batter into a greased 9-by-9-inch pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes or until the top is springy when gently touched.

As a variation (which I didn't do) you can add a cup of grated cheese like Jack, provolone, or Parmesan.

Nothing beats homemade bread

The finished oatmeal loaves

     

      It was after I had just consumed an egg-in-a-basket prepared by Caroline using my homemade oatmeal bread, that it dawned on me that nothing beats homemade bread.  The morning before, I had made toast at work using my favorite store-bought bread, and it was clear to me that there was no comparison.  Even the best store-bought bread can't compare to a homemade loaf.  While I completely encourage people to make their own bread, I know that we all lead very busy lives and that it can sometimes be difficult to carve out the time to slow down and make something by hand.  Perhaps buying our loaves directly from a local bakery is a happy medium in between making our own, and buying it from a grocery store.  

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     I am lucky in Santa Cruz, because there are a dozen or more amazing local bakeries to choose from; Sumano’s in Watsonville, Kelly's on the Westside, The Buttery, Gayle's in Capitola, Beckman's, Emily's...the list goes on. I am living, quite literally, smack in the middle of some fine baked goods.  I want to explore these bakeries, find out how they retain the flavor and integrity in each loaf.  I am also interested in taking tours of commercial bakeries that operate on a large scale.  I imagine them to be full of people (or maybe even machines) that pour large containers of flour and vats of yeast and water into enormous standing mixers, but to be honest, I can't even fathom how that many loaves are made in one day.  It is a difficult feat to double a recipe, so centupling a recipe must require some interesting techniques or tricks.  In the same way that gardening and researching about food has made me a better cook, I hope that learning more about bakeries (small and large scale) and perhaps the ingredients of bread can give me a deeper understanding of the art of baking.

Measuring the flour

Oatmeal dough after the first rise

Kneading the dough

My favorite sight to see: dishes done and two loaves waiting to be consumed

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     Here's the recipe that inspired it all.  This oatmeal bread makes a delicious sandwich or toast and an exception egg-in-a-basket.  The oatmeal provides a confetti like appearance in each slice and also a satisfying chewy texture.

#8 Oatmeal Bread

Tassajara Bread Book  

3 cups lukewarm water 

2 packages dry yeast

1/4 cup honey or molasses

1 cup dry milk

2 cups unbleached white flour and 2 cups whole wheat flour

4 teaspoons salt

1/4 cup oil

1-3 cups rolled oats

2-3 cups whole wheat flour for forming the dough and kneading

Proceed with the directions for recipe #1. 

Easiest. Apple. Crisp. Ever.

Easiest apple crisp ever.

     

     I have always admired those people that actually make a desert every night after dinner.  It’s almost a given that Jake and I will both want something sweet about a half hour after we finish eating dinner and we are usually scouring the cabinets for something, anything that would quiet our screaming sweet tooths.  We have been known to eat dry cereal with Nutella or make a fudge/caramel of sorts with leftover Mexican chocolate or sugar.  Every time we make these kinds of deserts, they are spontaneously delicious, but it also reminds me that if I had some fresh ingredients on hand I could use my baking skills to make something yummy.  

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I had originally planned on making the apple crisp after making a rather elaborate meal with a guest over and so it wasn’t a surprise to me when I had a kitchen full of dirty dishes, that I didn’t end up making the crisp.  Instead, I made it after a relatively simple meal consisting of pasta and little else.  I was shocked at how easy this crisp was, and realized, that if I did the dishes while I cooked, and wasn’t overwhelmed with no space to bake after dinner, this was something that I could easily make during the week for no special occasion at all. 

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The recipe didn’t even call for peeling the different varieties of apples (which I would do next time), and I used one of those round apple slicers that cuts the apple into even wedges and sections off the core, which made it so easy and quick.  Then you soak the apples in lemon juice and arrange them in a somewhat eye-pleasing manner in a baking dish.  Then you cut butter into flour and sugar and sprinkle that mixture on top of the apples and bake.  Really.  That’s it.  I served the crisp with vanilla ice cream and a dollop of Nutella, and we had desert on a weeknight, for no special reason at all besides the fact that we always crave something a little sweet about a half hour after dinner.

#98 Apple Crisp  
Tassajara Bread Book

4-6 pippin apples (or a variety)

juice of 1 lemon

1 teaspoon or more cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon or more freshly grated nutmeg

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup butter or margarine

whipped cream or vanilla ice cream

Nutella, if you wish

Serves 6, preheat oven to 350 degrees

Wash, quarter, core and slice the apples, thickly or thinly.  Toss with the lemon juice and then arrange in a buttered 9-by 13-inch pan.  Sprinkle on the cinnamon and freshly grated nutmeg.  Mix the sugar and flour together and cut in the butter or margarine with a pastry cutter until it is in pea-size lumps.  Sprinkle this topping onto the apples.

Bake for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees or until the apples are fork soft.

Serve plain or topped with whipped cream and a grating of nutmeg or ice cream.

Summer Swedish Rye Bread

The finished product complete with orange halves and a winter ale

    

     This is the first of the more interesting breads that I have made in this project.  I know that there are more to come; with ingredients I would never think of putting in a loaf of bread.  The pungent and spicy ingredients in this Swedish Summer Rye bread are orange peel, caraway seed, and anise seed.  Other than the orange peel, it seems a little odd that this would be called a summer bread.  To me, it is warm and zesty, like the cinnamon and nutmeg flavors of fall and winter.  This is also the first bread that I have baked that I didn’t like.  

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     My not liking this bread didn’t have to do with the way the bread turned out, but the ingredients themselves.  I figured out that I am not a big fan of caraway seed and it’s heady aroma and flavor, sort of similar to fennel or licorice.  The same goes for the anise seed as it has a very similar taste and function.  After researching the caraway plant a little further, I found out that the caraway seed is often used as a spice in breads, especially in rye breads, I assume because the spice of the caraway cuts through the robust taste of the rye flour.  I also found out that rye bread containing caraway seeds produces a denser bread because one of the essential oils found in caraway seed (limonene) has yeast killing properties (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caraway_seed).  

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     The orange peel zest that I included after the folding of the oil and salt adds a beautiful speckling of color and the aroma of the freshly peeled oranges is divine.  The orange that I picked out of the selection for no particular reason, turned out to be one of the best oranges I have ever seen.  The flesh was a deep, yet vibrant hue and I ended up squeezing the juice into a cup and consuming it immediately.  It was delicious.  

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     This loaf wasn’t exactly a sandwich bread, although I could see it going well with peanut butter and jelly or maybe an orange marmalade with butter, but I thought I would use the trick that I am sure a lot of bakers do, which is have French Toast for dinner.  French Toast as a meal is very interesting. There are a lot of different versions of French Toast, but the French version is called pain perdu which means “lost bread” as it was typically made using stale, leftover bread.  Makes sense.  Caroline and Jake said that the bread made a great French Toast, and although I didn’t like it, they seemed to.

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The bread batter which includes orange peel, caraway seed, and anise seed

     So I ended up appreciating the bread and it’s unique ingredients, but not actually enjoying it.  I still learned a bit about the ingredients, their use, and the history of the way I used the bread.  I’m sure there will be more bread that I don’t actually like, but I am almost certain that they will still teach me something valuable about baking and hopefully, Jake and Caroline will continue to help me eat them.

Swedish Summer Rye #6

Tassajara Bread Book

3 cups lukewarm water

2 packages dry yeast

1/3 cup honey

1 cup dry milk

grated peel of two oranges

2 teaspoons anise seeds

2 teaspoons caraway seeds

4 cups unbleached white flour

4 teaspoons salt

1/4 cup oil

4 cups rye flour

whole wheat flour for kneading

Proceed with directions for Tassajara Yeasted bread#1, stirring in the orange peel, anise seeds, and caraway seeds after the dry milk.