Challah

Well, I've learned something this week: don't start a bunch of posts and assume that you'll have time/brainspace to come back and fill in the important details later.

Um... here's a picture of some bread! From a week ago. Bad blogger, bad!

I first tried my hand at challah a few years back, and once I did, I wanted to know where it had been all my life? I think that if you make it, you will also fall in love. I was told that the recipe comes from Beth Hensperger's book Bread. It has come to me through a chain of at least two other people, and I hope you will pass it to others.

I don't bother with the egg glaze. This bread makes the best French toast you will ever have.

2 packages (2 Tbsp) active dry yeast

1/2 C sugar or honey

1 Tbsp salt

5 1/2 to 6 C unbleached all-purpose or bread flour

1 3/4 C hot water (120 deg)

4 eggs, slightly beaten

1/2 C (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

Rich Egg glaze

Poppy or sesame seeds (optional)

1 Place yeast, sugar, salt, and 2 C flour in a large bowl. Add water, eggs, and butter. Beat hard with a whisk until smooth, about 3 min. Scrape sides of bowl occasionally.

2. Add remaining flour 1/2 C at a time with a wooden spoon. Continue beating until dough is too stiff to stir. Turn the shaggy mass out onto a lightly floured board. Adding flour 1 Tbsp at a time as necessary, knead until dough is smooth and elastic and a layer of blisters shows under skin. The dough needs to be a bit firm for free-form loaves.

3. Place dough in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 to 1 1/2 hrs.

4. Gently deflate dough, turn out onto a lightly floured surface, and divide into equal portions. Roll each section into a strip and lay 3 strips side by side. Braid, pinch ends, and tuck them under. Place on a greased or parchment-lined sheet (Braids can also be placed in loaf pans). Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise until almost doubled, 30-40 min. Because of the eggs, this loaf doesn not need to completely double. It will rise a lot in the oven.

5. Brush the dough with glaze and sprinkle with seeds. Bake in a preheated 350 deg oven for 40-45 min, or until a deep golden brown. Carefully lift braids off of sheet with a spatula to cool completely before slicing.

Yield: 2 large braided breads

Rich Egg Glaze

1 yolk or 1 whole egg

1 Tbsp water, milk, or cream

Whisk together until combined

Also, I did my first two "crits" for critters.org this week. Off to a good start, I hope.

Walnut and Rosemary Loaves

The weather is cooling off a bit, the trees are starting to turn on their colors, the flavor palette is shifting. I am finding recipes I had all but forgotten about over the course of the summer, even as short, cold and dark a summer as the one we just had; pot pies, braises, roasts are coming to my attention as if for the first time. And the idea of walnuts and rosemary (indeed, of any sort of bread) sings to me in a way it did not only a few weeks ago.

Walnut and Rosemary Loaves

I love this bread. I make it when I want something a little bit different, and, well, in the winter. It is firm, sturdy, with a strong but not overpowering flavor that takes toppings and sandwich meats well. The perfume while it bakes is better than any candles out there.

I shape mine into oblong loaves, because my oven isn't big enough to do rounds side by side without them running into one another. And even when I do make it in rounds, my loaves don't look anything at all like the picture on the linked page--mine are much loftier. I wonder if they used the wrong photo? Here is my own for comparison. They generally do turn out somewhat dark, even darker this time because I made them on the stone.

Oat and (not) Walnut Buttermilk Braid

It's been a kind of crummy month. One illness after another in the family, and on Friday our cat Amber died unexpectedly (she was 14, so it was not untimely, but as far as we knew she wasn't sick, so it came as a bit of a shock). I still owe this blog an Easter post. Will get to it soon, I hope--there were some good recipes that day.

Anyway. Yesterday I was in a bit of a funk, and attempted to combat it with a new bread recipe. I have no idea where I got this one--must get better about that when I copy things down.

1/2 cup warm water (105°F. to 115°F.)
1/4 cup honey
1 envelope dry yeast
2 cups buttermilk
4 1/3 cups (about) bread flour
2 cups old-fashioned oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 teaspoons salt

1 cup chopped walnuts (I left them out because L won't eat 'em)

1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
Additional old-fashioned oats
preparation

Stir warm water and honey in large bowl to blend. Sprinkle yeast over. Let stand until foamy, about 8 minutes. Heat buttermilk in small saucepan to lukewarm (about 100°F.). Stir into yeast mixture. Add 2 cups bread flour, 2 cups oats, wheat flour, oil and salt and stir until smooth. Gradually mix in enough remaining bread flour to form dough. Cover and let dough rest 15 minutes.

Turn out dough onto floured surface. Knead until smooth and elastic, Adding more bread flour if sticky, about 10 minutes. Knead in nuts. Oil large bowl. Add dough; turn to coat. Cover bowl with clean towel; let rise in warm area until doubled, about 50 minutes.

Oil large baking sheet. Punch down dough. Turn out onto oiled surface; knead briefly. Divide dough into 3 pieces. Roll each piece into 16-inch-long rope. Braid ropes together; tuck ends under and pinch to seal. Transfer to prepared sheet. Cover with clean towel. Let rise in warm area until almost doubled, about 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375°F. Whisk egg and milk in bowl. Brush loaf generously with some of egg mixture. Sprinkle with additional oats. Bake until golden and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Transfer to rack; cool. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Wrap tightly; store at room temperature.)

Makes 1 Loaf.

One really, really big loaf. Next time I will divide it and make two smaller ones, unless I'm making a harvest table centerpiece or something. Keep an eye on it during the last ten minutes or so; I think mine overbaked slightly. 375 is slightly higher than most bread recipes I have. The finished bread has a relatively strong flavor, as it should with all of these whole grains, but I think it would take very well to many sandwich ingredients or just some sweet butter. Would probably be even better with the nuts.

And it did indeed help with my mood. Mission accomplished!

Soup and Bread, Part 2

I worked from home on Tuesday, and threw my week out of whack. I generally work from home on Wednesday, you see, and it's funny how these little things become ingrained into your thoughts, so that I spent the next day vaguely out of sorts because my body thought it was a different day of the week than it actually was. Having a cold didn't help.

But on Tuesday we were supposed to get "our every five or six day storm," as the radio meteorologist resignedly (and accurately) called it, and all of my normal meetings had been canceled in favor of a big project review, which is the kind of thing I am regularly grateful I don't have to go to. So I switched my days around.

Working from home not only saves energy and my sanity, it allows me to make things that take time but not effort--like bread, and bean soup using (gasp) dried beans. There's this meme out there right now that dried beans are totally the way to go (Mark Bittman and Rancho Gordo being the prime movers, apparently). I'm not really vested in the argument, since I've always opted for the convenience of canned, but I figured I should give the dried ones a try if the time and inclination ever came together, and Tuesday turned out to be it.

I can't say that I was totally blown away, but I could see a positive difference in the texture between the dried ones I cooked up and the canned ones I normally use, even though I think I overcooked them. The recipe that I used was more or less this one, since I had most of the stuff it wanted. I used a canned roasted chile in place the jalapeno (should I just start buying one every week, just in case?), and added a bit of cayenne to offset what seemed to my virally-impaired palate a lack of resulting heat. The soup was fine and sturdy, the bacon particularly yummy.

To go with it, I made this walnut bread. I went back and forth on whether to add the walnuts or not, went ahead and added them, and berated myself when L noted their presence and refused to eat any of it. JJ, on the other hand, ripped his little piece into tinier bits and ate them thoughtfully.

Today, the gas station sign said 10 degrees when I left Worcester. Itis not supposed to get much warmer than that all day. Along with everyone else I know, I am seriously sick of this weather. February is always the toughest month, I remind myself. I am nevertheless going to venture out of the office today and have lunch with a friend I haven't seen in ages.

Soup and Bread, Part 1

This past Sunday I started coming down with a cold. As usual it was just me and JJ for the morning. I sat down on the couch for a few minutes and watched him play, and thought about staying there; what the hell, I was sick! I could watch a video, or something.... But no, that wouldn't do. I am not sure at what point in my life I forgot how to just sit around relaxing; probably some time after L was born.

Instead of loading up a DVD, I thought about the leeks I had picked up at the store on Saturday. Good-looking leeks are a rarity around here, so when I see them, I tend to buy some even if I don't know what I'm going to do with them. I got some Yukon Gold potatoes, too--organic ones, because their regular ones were all green--with the vague thought that I hadn't made mashed potatoes in ages.

This is obviously leading up to potato-leek soup. But I wanted something to go with it, and it was too late in the morning to start bread and have it ready by lunch time. Suddenly I remembered the existence of Irish soda bread. I first made this for supper club a couple of years ago--we were doing a St. Patrick's day theme--and while it's definitely not something I would make all the time, it does make a nice change of pace once in a while, and it's the easiest thing in the world to make. I even had buttermilk in the fridge. I mixed it up, put it in the oven, and got to work on the soup.

The very good advice in Julie and Julia notwithstanding, I don't use a recipe for making potato-leek soup any more. I put a few tablespoons of butter in a pot, chop up a couple of generously-sized leeks, and let them sit in the butter there over lowish heat while I peel and cut up potatoes (and try to keep JJ out of trouble). I love the buttery color of Yukon Golds. I fell out of reading Much Depends on Dinner as easily as I fell into it, but I was thinking about her chapter on butter while I cooked, and the multiple meanings of its color.

I put in the potatoes and enough chicken stock to cover, and simmer until the potatoes are soft. Out comes the immersion blender for a couple of whirls. I don't generally care if my soups are perfectly smooth; I like them to have some body. At this point the dish looks like mashed potatoes, not soup, so I taste it for salt and add either water or more chicken stock to thin it down, let it simmer a wee bit more, and that's that.

It was ready a few minutes after D and L got home from church. Simple, warm, yummy, and with plenty left over for me to take to work a couple of times this week, breaking me free of the sandwich rut I've grown to heartily resent over this long winter. A thousand times better than cracking open a can, and not all that much more work.

Back to Basics: The First Loaf

I don't actually remember the first loaf of bread I made very well.

I know it happened at our old apartment in Brighton, with its teensy stove and ancient refrigerator (the one with the freezer compartment inside, that was too small to hold much of anything and required defrosting every couple of months). I didn't have a stand mixer in those days, and the biggest surface in the kitchen was a cheap card table, not the sturdiest of surfaces for kneading. I overfloured the dough, naturally, and the results were dense and on the dry side. I seem to recall it was a while before I tried again, but I did. And again. And somehow it turned into routine, this business of making bread, the way things do when you're busily living life and not paying it too much attention. You pause and look around and suddenly wonder how you got here? I suppose that blogging, like most other writing, is an attempt to capture the steps of the journey.

But the bread. I'm pretty sure this was the recipe I used that first time, since this is my oldest bread book--Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Breads. Lo, these many years later, I have still only made a handful of recipes out of it, and annually I swear I'm going to do something about that. Friday's schedule required that I take some time out of work to watch the kids while D went to a doctor appointment. We were out of bread. I wanted to make something other than my usual, and I didn't have much time to think about it, so I pulled out this one, like an acquaintance you haven't seen in ages and suddenly feel an urge to call.

I've abbreviated the written recipe somewhat, assuming that most people use mixers these days. One thing that I hadn't noticed before and thought was interesting is his kneading time instruction. 10 minutes by machine is much longer than most other recipes recommend, but I suspect it is much closer to the time required to fully knead a batch of dough.


5-6 c bread or AP flour
3 Tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
1 package dry yeast
1/4 c nonfat dry milk
2 c warm water
3 Tbsp shortening (I used butter, I generally don't have shortening around)

In a large mixing bowl, measure 2 c flour, sugar, salt, yeast, and dry milk. Pour the water into the dry ingredients and beat to blend thoroughly. Add shortening, continue beating. Add 1 cup flour and beat 3 minutes on medium speed. Continue adding flour, 1/4 c at a time, until the dough becomes a shaggy mass. Attach the dough hook and continue adding flour until the dough forms a soft, elastic ball around the hook. Continue to knead for 10 minutes. If the dough sticks tothe sides of the bowl, add sprinkles of flour. Should it try to climb over the protective collar the top of the hook, hold it back with the edge of a rubber spatula.

Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and leave at room temp until the dough has doubled in bulk, about an hour.

Turn back the plastic wrap and punch down the dough. Turn it onto a floured work surface and knead for a moment to force out any bubbles. Divide the dough into two pieces with a sharp knife. Shape each piece into a ball and let it rest for two or three minutes. Form a loaf by pressing the dough into a flat oval roughly the length of the baking pan. Fold the oval in half, pinch the seam tightly to seal, tuck under the ends, and place seam down in the pan.

Cover the pans with wax or parchment paper and leave until the dough has doubled in volume, about 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400F. Place the loaves in the hot oven for 10 minutes, then lower the temperature to 350F for an additional 25-30 minutes. When the loaves are golden brown and sound hollow when thumped on the bottom crust, they are done.

Turn the loaves out onto wire racks to cool. If you want a soft crust, brush with melted butter while still hot.

Tender Focaccia

I can't believe I have never blogged this recipe... but then, it's been a while since I made it.

The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion is one of the books I would take with me while fleeing the collapse of civilization. It's good stuff; this focaccia likewise. I am going to post the recipe as they write it, with notes:

2 cups boiling water
3 ¾ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
¼ cup potato flour or 1/3 cup potato flakes
¼ cup nonfat dry milk
2 ½ teaspoons instant yeast
1 ½ teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons olive oil, 2 to 3 tablespoons to grease the pan and the surface of the dough
¼ to ½ teaspoon kosher salt, sea salt, or fleur de sel, for topping

Put the hot water and 2 cups of the flour in a large bowl and beat for several minutes to develop a smooth batter. If you have the time, add 1/8 teaspoon yeast once the batter has cooled to lukewarm, and set the sponge aside for several hours or overnight (this helps develop flavor in the finished loaf, as well as the soft interior texture).

Note: I tried doing it this way once and ended up with a gluey mess! So ever since, I have used lukewarm water and a more "normal" way of mixing the ingredients.

Whisk the potato flour with the remaining flour, dry milk, yeast, and salt. Add this to the batter a little at a time, while continuing to beat. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Beat, by hand with a large spoon or with the paddle attachment of a mixer set at medium speed, for 8 to 10 minutes, changing to a dough hook when the dough begins to hold together.

Note: You may feel like you should add more flour. Don't! The wetter, the better with this type of bread, though it may be difficult to move around. It took a good 12 minutes in my mixer before it came off the bottom of the bowl, which I take to be the sign that it's been kneaded long enough.

After the dough has become smooth and shiny, put it in an oiled bowl, cover it with a damp towel or plastic wrap, and let it rise for 30 minutes.

Drizzle 2 tablespoons of olive oil into a 12- or 14-inch round pan, or 1 tablespoon olive oil into each of two 8-inch round pans. Place the dough in the oiled pan(s), gently stretching it to fit. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes, then stretch it out a little more. At this point you may refrigerate the dough in the pan(s), tightly covered, for up to 24 hours.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Just before baking the focaccia, dimple it with your fingers, brush it with a little olive oil, and sprinkle it with coarse salt or a few sprigs of fresh herb. Bake the focaccia for 25 to 30 minutes, until it’s deep brown all over. Remove it from the pan(s) and cool it for 15 minutes before eating. Serve with flavored olive oil, or split for sandwiches.

I don't know what I did this time, but this is some of the best focaccia I've ever made! As you can see, I put it into one large pan instead of the two small round ones. I sprinkled the top with fleur de sel and herbes de Provence, and it came out wonderfully, with a crisp outer crust and a tender interior crumb with some nice-sized holes. Not as chewy as you'd get with a proper starter, but a little bit of heaven anyway.

Classic Walnut Boule

Two marvelous things happened on Monday: the weather was reasonably cool, and my head was well enough organized that I could make some bread--some new bread, at that, instead of a recipe I know by heart. I'd marked this recipe in the latest Cooking Light issue (yeah, them again, sorry), and even remembered to buy the walnut oil for it, so it was a natural choice.


I can't find a lot to say about the process of making it. It's bread; you mix a few things together, let it sit around for an hour or so, knead in some walnuts, let it sit some more while the oven gets nice and hot, and there you go.

It seemed a little small at first, but after the second rise it was hefty enough to make a good-sized loaf. Following my recent success with my pizza stone, I tried baking this bread on it, and I'd have to say it worked quite well. The loaf did not get much of a crust, but that's something I really have to work on. Perhaps next time I make it, I'll try for some steam and see what happens. I will definitely make this again; it's a tender, slightly sweet loaf, and something about serving up a round loaf just says "special occasion" to me.

Facebook + Blogger = Bread?

On Sunday I finally got myself organized enough to make bread again for the first time since before Fourth of July (hey, that's a long dry spell for me...). Not just any bread, but a new bread, something I haven't done in what seems like ages. And not just any new bread, but the recipe I've bookmarked on my Facebook page since I first added the Epicurious link to it, oh, weeks ago now.

So. Oatmeal Wheat Bread. This is great stuff--tons of whole grains, and the oats soften the impact of the whole wheat. It took a while to make, but I'll do so again. I had to knead it by hand, since it was too big for my mixer, but I didn't do so for long; I used far less yeast than they called for and gave it a longer rise as a result, which (I read somewhere) also develops the gluten. And it's good bread, so what the heck.

In other news, JJ is about to cut his third tooth, the whole family except me (knock wood) has had a cold for several days now, and I am actually, tentatively, doing some writing again as of yesterday.

We went to the farmer's market this morning. Squash, zucchini, tomatoes, kale, peas in their pods, and a bunch of basil that has perfumed most of the apartment by now. I have actually had time this week to figure out a list of recipes based around what I thought we were likely to find, so I should be actually cooking this week.

Dinner for a Perfect Day

It started early--most of my days do. In the morning it was drizzling in between pretty breaks of sunshine, and I watched the kids while D got some alone-time to recuperate from the week. L and I played (while toting a fairly patient JJ around) until close to lunchtime, when she selected a Hamtaro video to watch and I did a bit of cleaning up.

In the afternoon, on report that it was much warmer than we'd expected it to be, and that the rain had stopped, we went up to Elm Park. The bank clock said it was 75 out, and the clouds had cleared away. We spent two hours there. A tall black man practiced the trumpet over by the pond, while near the playground a woman whose cloud of long gray hair proclaimed a hippie-ish bent played a wooden flute. A polyracial chaos of children climbed, swang, slid, and sprinted (D and I took turns keeping track of L's pink corduroys in the crowd). A few teenagers slouched about--couples holding hands, a trio of girls giggling as they played on the equipment with the younger kids and took pictures of each other with their cell phones. We even ran into our landlord and her family.

When it started clouding up again we decided to call it a day. On arriving home, I went off to do the grocery shopping, and only got slightly rained on walking home. It was just about time to start dinner. I had made the dough for the rolls before we left for the park, and put in the fridge (which for once was clean enough that I had room for a bowl of dough!).

Both this soup and these rolls I've made at least a dozen times; insofar as I have a repertoire,
they're in it. And every time I make them I think "I should make these more often." I often talk myself out of making dinner rolls. Not enough time, I say. Too much trouble. And so I end up going to the grocery store and buying some overpriced (though admittedly very good) La Brea loaf every time I want something to go with the soup. Not much sense in that.

Escarole and Orzo Soup with Turkey Parmesan Meatballs

Cloverleaf Honey-Wheat Rolls

After dinner another thunderstorm passed through, leaving a rainbow behind. Days don't come much better.

Whole-Wheat Walnut Bread

Over the past year or so, this has become my standard sandwich bread. The combination of white and whole wheats is delicious, and the loaf is an excellent keeper, perhaps because of all that yummy sour cream. I generally make it without the walnuts, but of course if you like them, you should put them in.

Shaker-Style Walnut and Rosemary Loaf

Out of all of the ways you can spend your time, making bread at home has to be one of the most rewarding. This recipe for Shaker-Style Walnut and Rosemary Loaf gives a beautifully grained, sturdy bread. The touch of rosemary makes the kitchen smell heavenly while it's baking (as if the smell of baking bread alone wasn't enough!).


Unfortunately, I'm the only one of the family who likes it, so I guess I won't be making this one very often.

Honey Oat Bread

Now that I'm back at work, I'm not doing quite as much bread baking as I had been, but I really wanted to make sure I got some made this weekend. This a recipe I found on the Cooking Light bulletin board (I post there as veschke); from the text that goes with it, I suspect it originated in Bon Appetit's "RSVP" feature. It's a sweet little loaf with a wonderful texture.

Never have I tried a homemade bread as light and delicious as the honey-oat loaf at The Green Mountain Inn in Stowe, Vermont," writes Rebecca Rothaug of Westbury, New York. "With your help, I would like to share this bread with my family and friends."

Serve slices of this tender, slightly sweet bread with plenty of butter and honey.

1 3/4 cups warm water (105°F to 110°F)
1 tablespoon dry yeast
3/4 cup quick-cooking oats
1/3 cup honey
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 1/2 teaspoons salt
5 cups (about) all purpose flour

1 large egg, beaten to blend
Additional quick-cooking oats

Stir 1/4 cup warm water and yeast in large bowl. Let stand 10 minutes to dissolve yeast. Stir in remaining 1 1/2 cups water, 3/4 cup oats, honey, oil, and salt. Stir in enough flour to form soft dough. Coat another large bowl with oil. Transfer dough to oiled bowl and turn to coat. Cover with plastic wrap, then kitchen towel and let rise at room temperature until doubled in volume, about 1 hour.

Oil two 8 1/2x4 1/2x2 1/2-inch loaf pans. Punch down dough; shape into 2 loaves. Place 1 loaf in each pan. Cover and let rise in warm draft-free area until almost doubled in volume, about 20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Brush tops of loaves with egg; sprinkle with additional oats. Bake until brown on top and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Cool completely. (Can be prepared up to 1 day ahead. Store airtight at room temperature.)

Makes 2 small loaves.