Archive for the 'bread' Category
They say you have either a sweet tooth or a salty one – I have a warm biscuit with butter tooth. I’d choose a freshly baked biscuit over most anything else – it knocks a bag of chips out of the park, and can hold its own against anything chocolate.
I’ve been making a lot of these cream biscuits lately – so easy to stir together, and no cutting in of butter. It’s no secret that such a biscuit can be called into service for any number of occasions.
These are Stan Lee‘s leftovers. (Creator of Spider-Man! The Hulk! X-Men! The Fantastic Four! Iron Man! Thor! All the important people in W’s life.) When I was cooking for the sci-fi celebs at Calgary Expo, a security guy came in and asked for “an egg salad sandwich on white bread with the crusts cut off, and a C-Plus for Stan Lee.”
I asked if he thought I was a restaurant. You know, as if I was his mom. I didn’t have egg salad, nor C-Pluses, but on Sunday I made sure I mixed up a batch. There were leftovers, and when I got home I piled some onto a biscuit. It was a surprisingly good combo. (I can’t offer up a recipe for the egg salad – I peeled a few hard-boiled eggs and mashed them with a blop of mayo, minced celery and Italian parsley, a dab of grainy mustard and some salt and pepper. How does one make egg salad for Spider Man’s dad, anyway?)
A coffee shop opened up last month in my neighbourhood. One morning, in there with a friend for lattes, I met the owner, who professed to not know as much as he’d like to about food. I showed him how to make these biscuits, and now, having never baked a thing in his life, he turns out batches of fresh blueberry biscuits in the morning, and cheese biscuits some lunchtimes to serve with thickly sliced roasted ham. There are few better sandwiches than this – especially when a handful of aged white cheddar is tossed into the dry ingredients before you stir in the cream.
Or you could roll each cut-out biscuit out and stuff it with stuff. Last week I stuffed mine with scrambled eggs, crumbled bacon and bits of Gouda and havarti, and we all ate them for breakfast, and the boys brought the rest for lunch, and with some hot coffee, all was right with the world.
Oh yes, the recipe:
Cream Biscuits
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
2 cups heavy (whipping) cream
extra cream or milk, for brushing (optional)
Preheat the oven to 400F.
In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. If you like, add a handful of grated sharp cheese, some fresh or frozen berries, chocolate chunks or other additions. Add the cream and stir just until the dough comes together. On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough a few times, then pat into a circle about an inch thick.
Cut into wedges and transfer onto a parchment-lined baking sheet; if you like, brush the tops with milk or extra cream and sprinkle with coarse sugar. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until golden. Serve warm.
Makes 8-10 biscuits.
May 08 2012 | bread and breakfast | 20 Comments »
Snow in May calls for a sweet, doughy consolation prize.
Eat your heart out Hef. Could there be anything sexier? This doughnut could be a cover model. Or a centrefold. Do they even have centrefolds anymore? It wouldn’t need any photoshopping, anyway.
Age has brought with it a certain persnicketiness in the doughnut department. At one time I would have been thrilled with Timbits, but I’ve become spoiled – if I’m going to eat a doughnut it might as well be a really fantastically great one. This is not to say I easily shun a box of coffee shop doughnuts should I discover one in my vicinity. Warm ones, made from scratch with real vanilla, are a little more difficult to resist. But why would you want to, when slush is falling from the sky and you’ve pulled out your woolly socks again?
I buy this vanilla bean paste from the Cookbook Company Cooks for applications such as this, where the flavour is predominant and the smooth glaze allows you to see the bitty black seeds. You could use actual vanilla beans too – I just find the paste a bit easier and more economical. Also – I used every last bean in my cupboard to (finally) make my own extract. So easy-I’ll fill you in soon.
Doughnuts from scratch is the sort of thing I generally reserve for company, for days when I know more mouths will be around to help me out, because leftovers (it could happen!) don’t age well.
It may be the sort of thing I’d make if I had a group of friends over to make peroghies! Remember when I put it out there? The suggestion to have a good old-fashioned peroghy bee? I was thinking it might be a suitable Food Revolution Day activity. It’s coming up fast – May 19th – but really, any longer than two weeks would be far too long to wait. So if you’re free to come make peroghies and nibble coffee and a pile of warm doughnuts that Saturday, leave a comment here!
Vanilla Bean Doughnuts
Adapted from Canadian Living
Sponge:
1 tsp. sugar
1 cup warm water
1 pkg (2 1/4 tsp.) active dry yeast
1 cup all-purpose flour
Dough:
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla bean paste or good vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. salt
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
Vanilla Bean Icing:
2 cups icing sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 tsp. vanilla bean paste or good vanilla extract
canola oil (or another mild vegetable oil) for cooking
In large bowl, dissolve sugar and yeast in warm water; let stand until frothy, about 10 minutes. Stir in flour until you have a smooth paste. Cover with plastic wrap; let stand until bubbly and stretchy, about 30 minutes.
In large bowl, beat butter with sugar until fluffy. Beat in eggs, vanilla and salt, beat in sponge. Stir in flour until you have a sticky dough. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 6-8 minutes, or until smooth and elastic. Place back in the bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and place in a warm place until tripled in bulk, about an hour and a half.
Punch the dough down and roll or pat it out about 1/2-inch thick. Using a 3-inch doughnut cutter or a round cutter and a smaller one for the hole, cut out doughnuts. Transfer doughnuts and holes to a baking sheet, cover and let rise for another hour, until doubled in bulk.
In a wide, shallow pot, heat 2 inches of oil until hot but not smoking. Cook a few doughnuts at a time for a couple minutes per side, turning as they turn a rich golden. Remove from the pot with a slotted spoon and set aside to drain on a wire rack or paper towels. Makes 1 1/2-2 dozen doughnuts.
Vanilla Icing: Whisk together all the ingredients, adding a little extra icing sugar or milk if needed to make a dippable/drizzlable consistency. Dip or drizzle over doughnuts while they’re still warm.
May 05 2012 | bread and breakfast and dessert and sweet stuff | 19 Comments »
It was a pretty great weekend, actually. I nestled right into it. It had all the elements of a weekend that I might not have thought at all ideal ten years ago: bringing the boys to an early movie on Friday (meh), on Saturday we went to Seedy Saturday and Market Collective, and then were so inspired by all that creativity and all those seeds that we came home and started planting. We made little pots out of newspaper (a Pinterest discovery – I’ve just discovered the potential for procrastination there) that once sprouted, you plant directly outside in the dirt.
When we ran out of newspaper we drilled holes in the bottoms of stacks of plastic cups. We started with our just-bought seeds (W chose pumpkins, sunflowers and stock, a flower I had never heard of but it turns out was one of my Grandma’s favourites) and then W asked if we might hack apart an apple and plant its seeds. Why not? He then ransacked the cupboards, asking if each jar of grains and beans was in fact a seed and might grow. We wound up planting quinoa (actually a seed), chia, dry chickpeas and a few speckled du Puy lentils.
Mike came home to a kitchen covered with a not so thin layer of dirt. We’ll see what comes up.
Sunday morning we went for a family brunch – the perfect excuse to bake a batch of scones with berries and white chocolate – which are obviously far too dangerous to make on a regular morning with just the three of us. (Also, I had some excess half & half that had been frozen, which makes it go all lumpy in coffee, and the early March expiry date makes Mike nervous. Huge scone potential.)
Blueberry & White Chocolate Chunk Scones
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter, cut into chunks
1 cup milk or half & half
1 large egg
a handful of fresh or frozen blueberries (or raspberries, or blackberries)
a handful of chopped white chocolate
Preheat the oven to 425F. In a large bowl or the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the butter and pulse or blend with a pastry cutter, fork or your fingers until the mixture is crumbly.
In a small bowl, stir the milk and egg together with a fork. Add the berries and chocolate to the dry ingredients and toss them about, then add the milk mixture. Stir with a spatula until the dough comes together, then gather it into a ball and pat it out an inch thick on a baking sheet. (When I make this quantity I pat it into a rough square.) Cut into pieces – try cutting across each direction into 3 or 4, making 9-16 pieces. It doesn’t matter if they’re square, rectangular or wedges – they’ll look great.
Pull the scones apart about an inch so that there’s space for them to cook all around, and bake for about 20 minutes, or until they’re golden. Serve warm, if at all possible.
Makes 9-16 scones.
As for the weekend, we’re wrapping it up now with some Shiraz, popcorn, and Annie Hall.
March 18 2012 | bread and breakfast | 20 Comments »
I know, I’m jumping on the bandwagon. But every year it’s the same: I forget how much I love Irish soda bread, those big, dense, rustic loaves that are really like enormous biscuits, only a bit tweedier with a light, crunchy crust. And I’m a sucker for all bread served in wedges.
See? It’s like a big biscuit. You cut in the butter, or rub it with your fingers. Warm wedges make perfect vehicles for butter and jam in the morning, and when else can you get away with eating biscuits for dinner? I don’t know what all the hubbub over baguettes is about – soda bread is far easier on the teeth, and a wedge balances perfectly on the edge of a bowl of soup, stew or chili.
And takes very well to a handful of grated cheese, if you’re so inclined. Just sayin’.
Irish Soda Bread
adapted from Gifts from the Kitchen (Douglas & McIntyre)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 Tbsp. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter, chilled and cut into bits
1 1/2 cups buttermilk or plain yogurt, thinned with milk to the consistency of buttermilk
Preheat oven to 375F.
In a large bowl, stir together the flours, salt, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add the butter and blend (or pulse the mixture in the food processor) until well combined and crumbly. If you like, add grated cheese, herbs, nuts or dried fruit at this point. Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture and add the buttermilk, stirring until blended.
Knead the dough until it comes together in one piece, then knead the ball 10 times. Place on a baking sheet or in a buttered 8″ or 9″ round cake pan.
Bake for 1 hour, or until golden and the bread sounds hollow when tapped. Cool on a wire rack.
Makes one loaf.
March 15 2012 | bread and breakfast | 5 Comments »
I’m home! Although it may seem to the rest of the world as if I’ve never left, but between traveling and conferences and colds and flu in between, I feel like I’ve hardly been in my kitchen (except to make soup). I have a real and proper dinner simmering away on the stove right this minute, and if it turns out and I manage to take pictures before devouring it, I’ll share it with you. Meanwhile I promised a friend some muffins.
A good muffin is a wonderful thing. Once you have a good formula you can do anything with it – make it savoury with cheese and garlic and herbs, or add fruit or nuts or berries or chocolate. I do like my muffins to have a little tooth – without grains they’re a little too cupcake-like. These muffins in particular are made with oatmeal, which is soaked for a bit in buttermilk or thin yogurt (or even thinned sour cream) to soften before you start.
A few tricks for the muffin impaired: make sure your baking powder isn’t a hundred years old. If it’s in a tin with the sort of lid you have to pry off with the tip of a knife, it probably is. Once the liquid and dry ingredients are combined, be really gentle with your stirring; use a spatula if you have one, and mix just until the two are combined. Overmixing will make your muffins tough.
Like pancakes, I also see muffins as warm, cakey little opportunities to use up things that might otherwise get tossed. The half & half I left outside that froze and now comes out ever so slightly lumpy into our coffee. The cups of banana flavoured yogurt that came in the box of flavoured yogurts W begged for that he doesn’t like. The wrinkly apples and half eaten bananas and glut of Saskatoon berries still hanging out in our freezer. And yes, the soggy cereal that was left on the kitchen table. Muffins give them the chance for a new life.
The recipe is adapted from one Beth McCasland of Flagstaff, Arizona; it came from her mother’s home economics class in Louisiana in the 1940′s. By way of an old copy of Gourmet, of course. It’s a great example of how technology by and large hasn’t affected cooking from scratch that much.
Oatmeal Muffins
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup buttermilk or plain yogurt, thinned with milk
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
1/2 cup canola oil or butter, melted and cooled
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup dried currants or raisins, or 1 cup fresh or frozen berries, or a handful of anything else you think would taste good
In a large bowl, stir together the oats and buttermilk and let sit about an hour.
Preheat oven to 400°F and line 12 muffin tins with paper liners.
Add the egg, brown sugar and oil or butter to the oat mixture and stir well. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and stir until almost combined; add any additions you like and stir just until blended.
Divide the batter evenly among the prepared muffin tins and bake for 20 minutes, or until golden and springy to the touch. Serve warm. Makes 1 dozen muffins.
March 12 2012 | bread and breakfast | 17 Comments »
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