Archive for the 'bread' Category
This is what you do when once again you’re completely out of hours, and your intention to FOR SURE THIS TIME bake fancy fruit-studded loaves to bring all your friends and neighbours in the days before Christmas has once again fallen flat on its face. Honestly, don’t you know yourself yet?
It occurred to me that the wonderfully easy, rustic and crusty no-knead bread could take on additions like cinnamon and raisins, or herbs and cheese, or figs and walnuts. So I made a loaf, just to see. It fused fast to the pot – something that has never happened before – so much so that I had to chisel and soak its bottom from the bottom of the pan.
So for round two I used a piece of parchment, which worked brilliantly – not only did it contain the floury mess on the countertop, it looked quite charming in the pot itself, especially after the bread had baked and the parchment turned crackly and pale golden. Don’t skip it, unless you love doing dishes.
It turns out this is perfect for after Christmas too – for those midwinter mornings when preheating a large, heavy pot in a 450F oven to bake a crackly round loaf seems like a Very Good Idea.
Fig & Walnut No-Knead Bread
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, plus more for dusting
1/4 tsp. active dry yeast
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup chopped dried figs or raisins
1/4-1/2 cup chopped walnuts, toasted if you like
1 tsp. cinnamon (or a good hefty shake)
In a large bowl stir together the flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 ½ cups plus 2 tablespoons water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Add the figs, walnuts and cinnamon and stir to sort of combine – the cinnamon will be streaky. That’s OK. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a plate and let it rest on the countertop for 18-24 hours at room temperature.
The dough is ready when its surface is wet looking and bubbly. Put a piece of parchment on the countertop and scrape the dough out onto it; dust the surface generously with flour and fold the dough over itself a couple times; sprinkle again with flour and cover with a tea towel. (Make sure it’s not terry cloth, which will stick.) Let it sit for another hour or two, or even three or four.
When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 450°. Put a 6-8 quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. Pull the pot out of the oven, lift up the dough on the sheet of parchment and drop it into the pot. Cover with the lid and bake for 30 minutes, then uncover and bake for another 10-15 minutes, until crusty and golden. Remove from the pot and cool on a wire rack, or eat warm.
January 06 2012 | bread | 31 Comments »
I woke up early this morning, and finding myself downstairs in the kitchen in the dark surrounded with half cleaned-out cupboards and drawers and a sink more than full with dirty dishes, I opted to make muffins. Breakfast is important, right?
Also, that half jar of mincemeat in the fridge was far more pressing than total kitchen reorganization. (I do this every holiday week – decide to overhaul the kitchen or bedroom or basement, or all three. Most often my gumption runs out after I’ve taken everything out, and before I put it all back away.)
Mincemeat is one of those things that -unlike chocolate and cheese and wine- does not translate well to any season beyond Christmas. Namely January. Eating mince tarts in the middle of January just does not taste the same as the middle of December. But what else do you do with all that mincemeat?
Bake muffins!
They won’t come out tasting of mince tarts, but of themselves – moist and fruity and wonderfully spiced. You can add chopped apple or pear and pecans or walnuts too, if you like. And if you have a little more than a cup of mincemeat, or a little less, don’t sweat it – they’ll still work.
And the house will smell wonderful when everyone gets up.
Mincemeat Muffins
Gourmet, December 1997
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup milk
1/3 cup canola or other mild vegetable oil
1 large egg
1 cup all-fruit mincemeat
1 small tart apple, cored and chopped
1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)
Preheat oven to 400°F and line twelve muffin cups with paper liners.
In a largish bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. In a smaller bowl (or Pyrex measuring cup) stir together the milk, oil and egg, and add it to the flour along with the mincemeat. Stir until the batter is almost combined, then add the apple and nuts and stir just until blended. Don’t worry about getting the lumps out.
Fill the muffin cups almost full and bake for 25 minutes, or until golden and springy to the touch. Serve warm.
Makes 1 dozen muffins.
December 29 2011 | bread and breakfast and snacks | 6 Comments »
I have a baguette secret. And a browned butter secret. I’m sure they’re not secret to those who know about them already, but for those who don’t, I’ll totally share.
On Tuesday when I made cheddar & ale soup for CBC, I also made fresh baguettes that required under an hour from start to out of the oven – but what everyone couldn’t stop talking about was the browned butter to go with. That show on which I watched Michael make ale soup? He also made no-knead bread, with browned butter – made spreadable. Because really, browned butter makes everything better – cookies, brownies, popcorn – but bread? Freshly baked? Slathered with browned butter – whipped and creamy, not a melted puddle? Hell yes.
Here’s what you do: take a slab of butter. Melt half of it in a small saucepan on the stovetop. Once it’s melted, leave it there until it starts to turn nutty and golden – you’ll see the foam change colour.
Take it off the heat and let it cool a bit. Then whip it with the rest of the butter. Use beaters. It will be all lumpy at first, but will then turn soft and whipped and spreadable. And nutty and browned.
You’ll need freshly baked bread to go with it. Here’s a recipe my friend Brooke shared awhile ago – a quick baguette you mix and knead and bake all in under an hour. True story.
Quick French Baguettes
adapted from the amazing Brooke of Cheeky Kitchen
1 1/2 cups very warm water
1 pkg. yeast (or 2 1/4 tsp.)
2 Tbsp. sugar
3-4 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
Preheat the oven to 425F. Fill a shallow cake pan with water or ice and put it on the bottom rack, and make sure another rack is in the middle. In a large bowl, whisk together the warm water, yeast, and sugar. Set the bowl on top of your preheating oven for ten minutes. Add half the flour and the salt, then add more flour a half cup at a time until you have a soft dough. Knead it for a few minutes, until it’s smooth and elastic. (You can totally do this with the dough hook on your stand mixer, if you have one.)
Cut the dough into four pieces and roll each into a long, thin rope. Twist two together to make two baguettes and set them on a parchment lined baking sheet. Let it sit for another 15-30 minutes on top of your warm oven.
Bake on the middle rack of your oven for 15-20 minutes, until golden and crusty.
Makes 2 loaves.
November 03 2011 | bread | 18 Comments »
We drove out to Aldersyde this afternoon to visit Tony and Penny at Highwood Crossing Farm. W was ecstatic to have the chance to meet the very people who grow his very favourite food – oatmeal. Which he would opt for a bowl of anytime over most anything else. Tony and Penny and the friends who help them out on their farm grow oats, flax, wheat, rye and other grains in rotation, and cold press organic (non GMO) canola and flax oils. They stone grind their flour, make pancake mix and power grains – a truly whole-grain breakfast cereal made with hulled oats, millet, sunflower seeds and flax – and bake enormous batches of granola every Monday using rolled oat flakes, whole flax and sunflower seeds, cold-pressed canola oil and amber maple syrup. It was baking day today, and we could smell the granola in the oven, wafting from a little building in the field as we got out of the car.
In their house, Penny made little rhubarb galettes, from a recipe on the cover of Good to the Grain, by Kim Boyce. They were phenomenal, with a sweet-crunchy crust made with cornmeal and in Penny’s version, oat flour. Lucky for us, Smitten Kitchen posted the recipe, as did Whitney in Chicago. So if you don’t have the book, there you go. She didn’t, by the way, do the hibiscus thing. I don’t think. Penny? Are you reading this? I didn’t detect any floral notes, and I’m generally super sensitive (not in an allergy way, in a my-great-aunt-used-way-too-much-lavender-way) to flowery things in my food.
She told me she makes and freezes them unbaked, then slides them in the oven whenever she wants them. Très genius.
She also made flax muffins for W, who immediately introduced himself, with a handshake, as a scientist. Who knew? She brought out plasticine and played with him. She’s awesome that way.
He went ahead and adopted them. I would.
I do love sitting at kitchen tables – or nooks, crannies, islands – and chatting about food. Especially over food. We talked about farming and cooking and beans and organics while W inspected every square inch of their house (from the bathroom: MOM! YOU HAVE TO COME CHECK THIS OUT!), and Tony took W for a ride out to the field in a golf cart. And Penny sent us home with a homemade flax loaf. Which we ate slabs of for dinner with spinach salad and rhubarb ice cream.
And now every morning when W eats his oatmeal we’ll be able to reminisce about the nice people -Aunt Penny and Uncle Tony, right?- who grew it for him. Talk about priceless.
June 27 2011 | bread | 9 Comments »
I don’t have much to report, food-wise, this particular weekend. Friday we ate pizza. Saturday night we ate braised pulled pork sandwiches (made smoky with smoked paprika in the spice rub) and rented a movie. Halfway through said movie Lou expressed particular interest in going outside to investigate whatever was scurrying around under our back deck. Yes, it was a skunk. Yes, he bolted back inside, leaving the skunk to continue defending itself directly outside our sliding glass doors, which yes do open directly into the dining room/living room/kitchen of our small house. Yes, our niece ran out the front door with a pillow over her face.
Now, if you have not yet experienced direct, unadulterated, undiffused skunk spray, it’s nothing like the cloud of rotten egg smell you may have driven through on the highway, when everyone unanimously goes ew! a skunk! and plugs their noses and rolls up their windows. No. In its pure, straight-from-the-skunk form, it’s a smell of burning tires with the acridity of onions that crawls down your throat and into your eyes, and seeps into anything in its path that will hold onto smell. Including glass and stainless steel.
And so it came to be that at midnight I wrestled a reluctant 100 lb dog into the shower to wash him with dishsoap and vinegar, then drove to the late-night drugstore in a PigPenlike cloud of skunk to buy hydrogen peroxide (vet advice: mix with baking soda + dishsoap for dog cure) and extra-strength Febreeze. (Tomato juice, it turns out, is a myth. Thankfully, as I’m not sure I’m prepared to buy several dozen gallons of it to then bathe a large dog in. After seeing what Lou + water did to the bathroom, I can’t imagine what Lou + tomato juice would do.)
Have you smelled wet dog? How about skunked wet dog? Word on the street is we’ll have to now keep him out of the rain for, like, ever.
Today, the house smells of truck stop bathroom (all that Febreeze) with notes of skunk and vinegar. (So do we.) And so I baked a cinnamon pull-apart bread – what else could I do? – to offset the smell. It’s something I made last week that for some reason smelled more divine as it baked than cinnamon buns or scones or even a fully stuffed turkey. Nevermind incense or potpourri – I needed to bring out the big guns. It helped, and the warm cinnamon-sugar bread was a good consolation prize for those of us kept up all night by a smelly dog whining to go outside and play with his new BFF again. (Lesson not learned.)
Because I posted the over at the Family Kitchen I can’t post it here, but I thought you should know about it. It’s worth a click.
June 26 2011 | bread and Family Kitchen | 17 Comments »
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