Posts

Showing posts from September, 2010

No-Knead Roasted Garlic Potato Bread for Yom Tov, by weight

Image
One reason I’m philosophical about making the Hated Challah is because it’s not our ONLY Yom Tov bread option this time around…!  Yup, I’m making Roasted Garlic Potato Bread.  Just ‘cuz I love it so.  Love love LOVE the idea of swishing up a potato with yeast and flour, then tossing it into my brand-new economy-sized (aka tiny) cast-iron dutch oven (no brand name, which is a bad sign:  $30-something at The Bay). I also wanted to metricize / weigh-icize my favourite / easiest recipe for this bread. By the way, if you’re hesitant about making something with this much garlic, don’t be.  The garlic is pre-roasted, which mellows it, and it really is barely discernable in the final flavour of the bread.  On the other hand, if you want a REAL hit of garlic, consider roasting TWO heads of garlic to double the garlicky goodness.  Or roast some garlic afterwards and slather it on top! No-Knead Roasted Garlic Potato Bread Originally from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Adapted f

Hating this Challah already (but liking it a bit, too)

Image
Why did I decide to make a NEW challah for Yom Tov? Am I asking for problems??? This is Aliza Sussman’s challah , the second-prize winner in the ChallahCrumbs.com challah contest. To begin with, the recipe reads weirdly: I had no clue what Shtybel #2 flour is (Israeli bread flour, as it turns out), or how much was in “2 bags” (2kg). Then, she also asks for “1 pack of fresh yeast”… umm, how much is in a pack? (50g, which seems like a LOT for the proportions here) Finally, she says, “Add the ingredients one at a time and mix by hand after each ingredient is added.” Mix by hand after adding four eggs to over 2kg of dry ingredients?? That is a LOT of work. The water called for is only “1 ½ - 2 cups of warm water,” with the comment “want good consistency.” Gee, thanks. I shouldn’t have taken it on, and definitely shouldn’t have dived in no questions asked. Actually, I did ask a few of these questions in the comments field below the recipe, but they have since been delet

Edible Dough Crafts for Kids with Yummy Dough

Image
Full description, steps and product mini-review at my regular blog .        

Six Word Saturday: 18 Tishrei, 5771 (Sukkos)

Image
Why the weird dates? Click here to find out! OMG, fresh naan on Yom Tov! Nothing fancy at all. Basic batch of AB5 no-knead “boule” dough, stirred up on Tuesday. Oh, wait, not so basic… in place of all-purpose flour, I substituted half chapatti / durum atta flour. Anyway, I mixed it up, then stuck it in the downstairs fridge. Hauled it upstairs on Thursday morning, when I had the good sense and timing NOT to make the naan immediately, but instead condition it slightly with a stretch and fold operation, then let it rest another 45 minutes. Finally, rolled out the basic recipe into 20 about-equal circles (yom tov: kneading, yes, weighing, no, even with a non-digital balance). Pan-fried dry on my new teflon pan – they DO work if you fry them on a regular pan, but I got lazy and didn’t want to take the chance of sticking. They almost all puffed up beautifully – the gorgeous “full balloon” look I love so much. Served still-warm, our guests quickly gobbled them up with two

Step by Step through Maggie Glezer’s Pan de Calabazas

Image
This recipe jumped out at me the other day while flipping exhaustedly through my mother’s well-thumbed-by-me copy of A Blessing of Bread :  Pan de Calabazas – Sephardic Pumpkin Bread.   The book describes it as a sephardic Rosh Hashanah bread, but I figure with pumpkins just coming into their own right now, it’s perfect for Sukkos.  Plus, Ted loves anything with pumpkin! I am reminded of the Ashkenazi custom to dissolve a few threads of saffron to give your challah a lustrous yellowy-orange colour (perhaps in times and places when egg yolks were not as plentiful?).  In this case, though, the pumpkin (she says you can also use a sweet potato) also adds moisture, hopefully making for a long-keeping bread. Here are the steps to creating this gorgeous orange challah. Autolyse/slurry:   Fold laundry, come back 1/2 an hour later.   Add in all the other liquids… (nice and sweet, but light on the egg; my favourite!)   Then dump in the flour all at once.   Whoops!  Would

Mmm… perfect!

Image
At Elisheva’s special request:  everybody knows the best part of honey cake is the sticky top layer.  So what better way to bake honey cake than in a muffin-top pan??? Ahh… perfection.  Honey cake …that’s only an inch thick!   (I’m also baking regular-sized cakes for Yom Tov tomorrow night!  These really just used a bit of “spare” batter.)

Six Word Saturday: 11 Tishrei, 5771

Image
Why the weird dates? Click here to find out! Twenty-five hours without bread?  Oy! Believe me, only when I’m fasting… and the fast itself was actually bracketed by a) a yummy challah, and b) some yummy Dempster’s parbaked baguettes, heated up quickly on my stone after the fast.  So it was probably not much MORE than 25 hours without bread. And we’ll definitely make up for even that 25 hours with all the festive meals in the coming two weeks, just begging for really special sweet challahs…

Sicilian No-Knead Bread… again

Image
Yes, I’m at it again.  And yes, I know we just had this bread – disaster-style – on Sunday.  I have vowed to do it right this time, because it’s simply SUCH GOOD BREAD. (guess you could say I’m a gluten for punishment) Here it is, all mixed up.  Now, apparently, I just have to let it SIT for 12-18 hours.  Easy!

Cimbuns, Take 2

Image
She’s at it again!  Big girl bakes her trademark cimbuns once again… this time because she bartered at school:  someone else’s snack today in return for fresh home-baked cinnamon buns tomorrow. That’s my girl!!!

Pane Siciliano – the sequel

Image
Monday-evening Postscript! So I made Sicilian no-knead bread , aka Pane Siciliano, kind of.  And it turned out badly, kind of. But it totally serves me right!  Let’s see… shortcuts?  I used the wrong amount of flour, the wrong rise times (bulk and loaves), pulled it out of the oven too early, sliced it open hot.  Oy, vey, the things a fast day will do to you, and I wasn’t even, technically, fasting. That said, this was AMAZING bread.  Utterly mindblowing. Yes, the middle, though fully-cooked, was gooey because of being both underbaked and undercooled.  But the texture of the durum flour!  The flavour of the sesame seeds!  The crust was both crunchy and light – I told YM to think of it as the best breadsticks he’d ever eaten.  And even the gooey middle (it reminded me of a Chinese red-bean bun I used to get at dim sum which was crunchy with sesame seeds on the outside and shiny with glutinous rice flour on the inside) was heavenly, in its own weird way. I didn’t ev

How does this happen?

It’s a fast day today and I decided to make a nice grainy bread like Ted likes for the end of the fast. So how does it happen that when I sit down to Google a nice, fairly quick, easy grainy bread to use up some of the ingredients I have on hand: barley flour, oat flour, bread flour, a bit of Pioneer Village whole wheat… I end up falling DEEPLY in love with a Sicilian No-Knead Bread , totally different from what I set out to bake??? I have been obsessed with Pane Siciliano for a while. For whatever reason, I love pasta and semolina and everything related to it. This bread is actually made with durum flour , which is a finer grind than durum semolina . Semolina is coarser, like corn meal. It works for bread in small quantities, and actually works well for pasta. I also keep it on hand because, like corn meal, it’s useful for sprinkling on a surface so breads don’t stick: the coarse grains act like ball bearings and your bread rolls right off! I haven’t been able to find

Six Word Saturday: 4 Tishrei, 5771

Image
Why the weird dates? Click here to find out! Welcome the New Year with CHALLAH!!!    

Grama’s Neapolitan Cake

Image
This is the most beautiful cake!  Elegant and delicious.  And I can’t stand the idea of Rosh Hashanah without it.  Sappy, but it IS like having my grandmother there, in some way. It helps that it’s a really GOOD cake.  And one that tastes so much better, fresh and buttery, than anything you can buy in a kosher bakery.  It really is good enough to plan meals around.  It’s basically cookies, layered with pudding.  Cookies and pudding:  the ultimate comfort foods! I found a lot of recipes online for a “Neapolitan Cake” which simulates the 3-flavour, 3-colour effect of Neapolitan ice cream.  Wrong!  Those are completely way off track.  This cake is nothing like that. I discovered that many (most?) layered Neapolitan Cake recipes call for jam or something fruity between the layers.  Indeed, the classic “dolce alla napoletana” often features almonds and either plain cream or a fruit spread between the layers and then an exterior icing glaze.  Not necessarily ANY chocolate, anywhere.

More delicious kosher morsels!