Posts filed under ‘Bread’
Week 3 of Bread: Saffron Basil
Everybody ready? It’s time for SFTF’s third and final Week of Bread. Actually, I’m hoping I really can rein myself in to keep this to just one last week. You know me and bread; can’t get enough of the stuff. Luckily, if only for the sake of my hips, we’re not too far away from the start of the growing season so I can get back to recipes featuring fresh locally grown produce. The baby bok choy seeds are already pushing up out of the soil in their trays in the greenhouse just four days after we planted them. Talk about your “go-getters”!
With the promise of a new season, it becomes a little easier to stop rationing the preserves I put aside for winter. I have just a few cubes of frozen basil puree left, most of which I want to use in soup and pasta dishes. Since fresh basil is still a few months away, it might be brash to throw two more cubes into a second bread recipe (here’s the first recipe). But I couldn’t help myself as I really wanted to try these Saffron Basil Breadsticks.
Saffron is fascinating to me. It’s such a precious commodity, taken from the heart of beautiful crocus blossoms, with what I consider to be an effervescent earthy scent. I realize not everyone enjoys a smell reminiscent of fresh cut hay as much as I do – I am a farm girl at heart after all. But taking into account saffron’s history in which kings would send ships half way across the world to get it, paint pictures of it all over their palaces, and offer it to their gods, I’m obviously not a complete loon.
Fortunately for those of us who aren’t kings and thus have no armadas of ships to fetch our spices, there’s the good old internet. Buying saffron in bulk (and by “bulk” I simply mean getting more than a mere dozen overpriced strands) online makes this princely seasoning quite affordable for even a pauper. I got mine here and love using it lavishly without a single guilty twinge for my wallet.
Saffron and basil, with its peppery bright flavor, are happy companions in most any dish. They elevate these breadsticks from simple pasta accompaniments to an item on the menu worth noting. The recipe yields more breadsticks than any normal person, save for a party host, would need at one time. I froze half of mine and look forward to pulling a half dozen out at a time to bake off and serve with a weeknight dinner fit for a king!
Week 2 of Bread: Rosemary Olive
Two weeks of non-stop bread recipes. Aren’t you people satisfied yet?! I actually now have five more bread recipes waiting in the wings for a third week. Won’t somebody please save me from myself?! We will be taking a brief intermission from bread next week though as I have an original recipe for a Valentine’s Day treat that’s not bread-based. Since I like to keep my bread weeks pure, a change in theme is necessary.
Enough with the administrative mumbo-jumbo. Let’s talk about this sumptuous loaf of Rosemary Olive Oil Potato Bread. All the bread I’ve been baking lately has been superb, but there have been two clear front-runners. Last week it was the pita. This week it’s this rosemary loaf.
Let’s rewind a bit to a few weekends past when I was having a much-needed girls’ day out with my friend, Christine, during which we talked about men, work, aspirations, and, of course, food. She was currently in love with a loaf of rosemary olive oil bread she bought from Willow Creek Orchards that was actually made by Metropolitan Bakery here in Philadelphia. Knowing I own a copy of their recipe book, she asked me to look to see if it was listed so she, being the industrious homemaker she is, could make this bread herself. When I got home, I obliged and did indeed find a recipe for a rosemary bread.
However, it seemed unnecessarily complicated, so much so that I, bread baking addict that I am, was put off by the idea of making it according to their specifications. What did I do? Naturally, I went hunting for a more straightforward recipe that might yield the same crusty aromatic results. All the recipes I found kept coming up short though. There were plenty with rosemary, but they didn’t include olive oil. And then there were plenty with olive oil, but those didn’t include rosemary nor did they seem to have the heft of an artisan bread. Finally, a little stumped, I thought I’d look through my baking books for a picture of a loaf that at least looked like the one I’d seen in the Metropolitan Bakery’s book. I found two potato breads that seemed to be a rough match.
I like potato breads – they’ve got heft and they’d be a nice palette for the rosemary. The olive oil was still the sticking point though. I didn’t want to end up with an overly wet dough that would require too much flour and end up heavy as a brick. After all, there’s “heft” and then there’s “don’t drop that or you’ll crack the floor”. I spent a good two days mulling it over before I hit the ticket: roast (vs. boiling) the potatoes so they’re dry and then use the olive oil as the moisture needed to mash them up.
It worked like a charm! Besides producing a tasty artisan loaf, the smell…oh the smell…of this bread baking is like no other. The olive oil in the slices makes them the perfect choice for grilled sandwiches since it turns golden brown and crisp. The rosemary asserts its fragrance no matter how you serve it. It’s just a wonderful loaf of bread in every way.
There’s one test to be passed yet though. I anxiously await Christine’s verdict so I know if it rivals that made by the Metropolitan Bakery. Fingers crossed!
Week 2 of Bread: Sage Soda
Let’s see, how many bread recipes have we gone through together so far? Miracle Bread, Dried Tomato Braid, Pumpernickel, Pesto Whirl, Pita, Sourdough, Cinnamon Rolls, Cheddar Pepper Rolls and Cinnamon Raisin…yep, that makes nine. That’s what I thought. Do you know what each of these recipes has in common? I think I just heard someone snicker, “They’re all breads, moron.” Yes, I know that much, thank you. Do you know what else they have in common? They’ve all taken many shapes and held several different ingredients, but at the start of them all was yeast. Bubbly hungry yeast took them all from mild-mannered blobs of wet flour to celebrated crusty loaves of homemade goodness. Bravo, yeast, bravo!!
Yeast breads have always been my favorite to work with and, frankly, I hadn’t delved much into the other realms of loaf breads, of which I know two types: quick breads and soda breads. Of course, like any baker who’s been around the block once or twice, I have my standard for zucchini bread and pumpkin (cranberry) bread, two quick breads that are fairly common in my collective neighborhoods. But I’d only tried soda bread once, quite some time ago, and my vague recollection of it was not all that positive. Not wanting to leave these realm of bread-making unexplored during SFTF’s Week(s) of Bread, I decided to give soda bread another shot.
Soda bread gets its designation from baking soda, which is the leavening agent (what makes bread rise) in the dough, rather than the yeast of the recipes I’ve been posting previously. Since baking soda is not as rambunctious as yeast, the resulting bread is usually denser than your standard yeast loaf. This density has its advantages and disadvantages; soda bread is good as a hunk alongside a bowl of soup, but it’s not so great sliced for sandwiches.
I’m still picking off leaves from the huge bunch of sage I hung up to dry during the summer, and sage-infused soda bread sounded like a nice accompaniment to the Spicy Parsnip Soup I made recently. The sage scent and flavor of the loaf was almost heady, but the texture was what really surprised me. Bearing in mind that my memories of my last soda bread attempt weren’t all that warm and fuzzy, I wasn’t expecting the almost silky quality of the bread in my mouth. It was most certainly denser and more crumby than the yeast breads, but the change was a welcome one.
Comparing my two drastically different soda bread experiences, it would seem to me that the key to success with soda breads, much the same as with yeast breads, is making sure your leavening/baking soda is fresh and active. I’ve acquired a few tricks since my first batch of soda bread and knew this time to test the soda out first by sprinkling a pinch of it over warm water. It fizzed vigorously, indicating it had plenty of leavening action to offer my dough. If it hadn’t fizzed so happily, I would have needed to get a new container of baking soda before proceeding. You’d be wise to do the same.
So which do I prefer, yeast or soda? I have to say I’m fonder of the yeast breads on a whole, but I do really like the idea of being able to use baking soda should I be out of yeast sometime. Or if I just want a loaf specifically for soup, I’d choose soda bread. It’s nice to have options, isn’t it?
Week 2 of Bread: Cheddar Pepper
There’s no two ways around it… I’ve got writer’s block today. For the past two hours I’ve been blankly staring at my computer screen, occasionally flipping around a couple other blogs, trying to come up with some inspiration. Really, just a smidgen of the stuff would do. But I’ve got nothin’. Not even a pinch or a dash. I guess it was bound to happen during this feverish bread affair.
But don’t worry; I do have a lovely little recipe to share. I’d never leave you unnourished in that sense and certainly not smack in the middle of our second week of bread baking together. Today’s recipe is actually one I’ve been contemplating for awhile and rather unique in that I couldn’t find a recipe written to my required specs so I made it up as I went along, very loosely referring to a basic recipe for plain white rolls in my copy of The Big Book of Bread.
Very late in the summer last year, I was “gifted” with a big bag of leftover Lipstick Red Peppers at the end of our day at the Headhouse Market. Really, if recollection serves me right, it felt more like I was being forced to take them home, seeing as how no one else wanted them. I know that sounds absurd to anyone who doesn’t have their own vegetable plot. But for those of us who have such a good fortune, all that bounty of summer (bushels of tomatoes, eggplant, okra, squash and peppers) can eventually wear thin. By late September, we farmers (and many of our customers too, I think) had grown disinterested in those gorgeous Lipstick peppers. Saying that now, in February, I think we must have been absolutely insane! In any case, I ended up with a bunch of peppers I didn’t want to eat in September so I dried them to have for just such a moment as now in the midst of winter when I’ve returned to my senses and want that sweet pepper flavor.
Only trouble with the dried peppers was that, at the time, I really didn’t know how I was going to use them. I have since used them in baked corn. But previous suggestions of bread or maybe pasta dough sounded like good possibilities too. Of course once I hatched the concept of having an SFTF Week(s) of Bread event, I knew I’d need to find a recipe to use the peppers. The only “pepper” bread recipes to come up in my searches were ones using ground black or cayenne pepper, which really wasn’t of much use, save for several of them had cheese included and that made me think how tasty a contrast it would be to have a sharp aged cheese in the same dough as the concentrated sweetness of the dried peppers.
In the end, I decided I was in the mood for rolls for a change, what with so many loaves piling up on my kitchen table, and adapted a basic white crusty roll recipe to give my dried peppers their first shot at doughy stardom. Are the rolls good? Yes! Do I need to continue experimenting to get just the right combination of flavors? Yes. This time around, the cheese stole the spotlight, making the peppers mere supporting cast members. A very good first attempt though and if you don’t have a baggie full of dried sweet peppers, these rolls with just the cheese would still pack powerful flavor.
Huh! Would you look at that?!! I didn’t have writer’s block after all!
Week 2 of Bread: ‘Sin’namon
It’s a big day on the calendar, my friends. It’s Super Tuesday here in the States, which means a lot of us will be trotting to the polls to decide which presidential wannabe is less evil than the rest. It’s the start of Mardi Grai or Carnival in several countries, which means there’s lots of dancing to be had and occasional stripping for beads. It’s World Nutella Day, which if you haven’t had the pleasure of eating nutella before, you really should rectify that today. It’s also Día de la Constitución in Mexico, which is an official holiday to celebrate the signing of their current Constitution.
But most importantly, it’s Fat Tuesday here in Pennsylvania, which means any god-fearing life-long resident with a German heritage is making a batch of oh-so-bad-for-you-but-unnervingly-delicious fried fauschnauts (the counterpart to pancakes and doughnuts in other parts of the world that observe “Shrove” Tuesday). When I was growing up in the rural heart of Pennsylvania, my school actually celebrated Fauschnaut Day by serving homemade fauschnauts at lunch. To this day I am baffled by how a cafeteria renowned for its inedible cuisine was able to churn out these little balls of heaven once a year. My mom also made homemade fauschnauts during much of my childhood, and I adored swiping them straight out of the cinnamon sugar mixture while they were still piping hot. Ah, the memories…
I hang my head in shame to admit that I forgot all about fauschnauts until today. You see, they would have been PEFRECT for this current theme of bread variations. Fried dough most definitely classifies as bread in my book. You can even make them with just a few adjustments to the Miracle Bread recipe I already provided. Yes, yes, there’s still time to make the fauschnauts today, but not time to post them (this thing called a “job” does tend to hinder my culinary ambitions like that).
I guess we’ll all have to settle for some cinnamon rolls/buns instead. It’s just despicable, isn’t it? I can’t believe this sweet, gooey, lick-your-fingers-afterwards recipe is all I have to offer you on Fat Tuesday. To make up for it, I’ll throw in a second recipe for cinnamon raisin bread. Surely that will even up my debt to my Pennsylvania-Dutch heritage, won’t it?
Of course this redemption isn’t enough to cover up the sin of not posting a nutella recipe today, as any good food blogger worth her salt would be doing. Okay, okay, here’s my solution. Make the cinnamon rolls as directed in the recipe, but just after spreading the dough with butter and before blanketing it with cinnamon and sugar, slap on a layer of nutella for an even more decadent dessert or breakfast treat.
Whew, I think I’m just about absolved of my (food-related) sins. Can I just go home now before I get myself in any more trouble? All I really want to do is make some fauschnauts…
Recent Comments