Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: The Daily Bread: White Bread Edition
October 14, 2025 at 12:01 am | Posted in biscuits/scones, breakfast things, BWD, groups, tuesdays with dorie | 7 CommentsTags: baking, bread
Next time you’re at the store, don’t be tempted by that squishy white bread in the bag with colored polka dots. That stuff is all fluff and no flavor! Leave it on the shelf and make The Daily Bread: White Bread Edition instead.
This homemade sandwich loaf is enriched with a bit of butter, egg and milk (liquid and powdered), so you get softness and flavor. The dough goes through three rises to make the prefect bread for your tuna sandwich, your PB&J and your toast. I have one of those 9″x4″ pullman pans, and I baked my loaf in that. I like the height and the straight sides. These days I’m usually making sourdough loaves (mostly to torture myself, I think), but there’s really something comforting about a soft yeasted bread.
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Devil’s Food Party Cake
September 23, 2025 at 4:18 pm | Posted in BWD, cakes & tortes, groups, layer cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 4 CommentsTags: baking, cake
Sure, this Devil’s Food Party Cake would be great for a birthday, but if it’s just a regular Tuesday, the cake is the party. I love a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting…on my dessert top five, for sure. Both the cake and the frosting here are made with cocoa powder instead of melted chocolate, which Dorie says makes everything profoundly chocolatey. That’s all I need to know to start snipping up a stack of parchment rounds.
I cut the 8-inch cake recipe in half to make a 6-incher, my regular move when I’m just slicing for the two of us. I divided the batter between three pans instead of two, for slightly thinner layers without having to split them in half (which stresses me out, tbh). Because even a small cake lasts several days for us, I brushed the layers with coffee liqueur as I stacked them with the tasty American-style cocoa buttercream. This bit of brushed on liquid helps keep cake from drying out as it sits.
Some TWDers said their cakes came out dense and fudgy. I wouldn’t say that about mine, as it was soft, but it did have what I’d call a tight texture that made barely any crumbs when cut. Maybe slicing the layers in half wouldn’t’t have been too painful after all. I decorated my cake with some giant malt balls I had in the cupboard. This was a just the thing to make the week feel like a celebration!
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan yet, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays! Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Tenderest Shortbread Four Ways (the rye-chocolate way)
September 9, 2025 at 12:47 pm | Posted in BWD, cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
Dorie says to bake the Tenderest Shortbread you need to make the dough with powdered sugar, egg yolks, and of course lots of butter. She gives four different flavor options for these sablé-like cookies, and I made the Rye-Chocolate Shortbread version, not only because I will rarely pass up chocolate if it’s an option, but also because I really do like the flavor from a bit of whole grain flour in baking. I can’t help myself from adding flakey salt to just about every cookie I make, even though they probably could have handled a sprinkling of coarse sugar instead, as they aren’t very sweet. They are melt-in-your-mouth, as Dorie says, but they are also good keepers– perfect for cookie tin coffee treats!
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Ricotta-Tomato Tart
August 26, 2025 at 3:12 pm | Posted in BWD, groups, other savory, savory things, tuesdays with dorie | 7 CommentsTags: baking, savory, tarts
Our second savory tart in August, this Ricotta-Tomato Tart features big chunks of peak-season tomatoes and seasoned ricotta in a “proper” tart shell. I used a mix of red, orange and green tomatoes from the farmers’ market. They kept their juiciness but didn’t sog the tart crust out or bleed much into the cheese filling. The ricotta was seasoned with lemon, parsley and oregano. Another great savory bake for lunch or dinner from this book!
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it twice a month. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Vegetable Ribbon Tart
August 12, 2025 at 12:01 am | Posted in BWD, groups, other savory, savory things, tuesdays with dorie | 10 CommentsTags: baking, savory, tarts
This Vegetable Ribbon Tart is basically salad sitting on puff pastry. I like both those things, so I was game to make this for lunch. Not sure that leftovers would hold so well, I decided to make a smaller tart. I didn’t measure anything, but started by baking a rectangle of puff that looked just big enough for two. The base is topped with a thick smear of hummus and lots of thin-sliced and shaved veggies. I used carrots, cukes, red pepper, fennel, tomatoes and roasted beets tossed in a vinaigrette made with za’atar and a splash of sesame oil (this really makes the dressing, imo). It’s light and fresh and a jammy egg or two help make it more filling. If I make this again, I’ll try salt massaging the ribbons of carrot and cucumber to extract a bit of water before I dress them. I think it would make them more pliable and easier to curlicue around the tart.
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it twice a month. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Blueberry Biscuits
July 29, 2025 at 3:55 pm | Posted in biscuits/scones, breakfast things, BWD, groups, tuesdays with dorie | 6 CommentsTags: baking, biscuits
After being disciplined for months with my New Year’s resolution to post on time, seems like I’m up to my old lazy ricks again. I made these Blueberry Biscuits early in July, but here is the end of the month, and I’m finally sitting down to write something about them.
What makes these biscuits instead of scones? I don’t know. Maybe because they aren’t too sweet? I think you could call them whichever name you wanted to and get away with it. I cut the recipe back to just a third, and while that really should have given me only three biscuits, I patted the dough out enough to cut four squares. Even though my biscuits were a little runty because of this, they were nice and tender and loaded with berries.
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Park Avenue Brownies
July 9, 2025 at 7:09 pm | Posted in BWD, cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
Dorie says these Park Avenue Brownies are named after the “rich and slim” Upper East Side crowd. I think they were made to be packed up in a picnic basket, shuttled uptown and enjoyed in Central Park. Chocolaty and fudgy, everyone who likes brownies will like these.
I made a half recipe in a loaf pan. I go for nuts in my brownies, and here, I added walnuts and flaky salt to the top. I made these a couple of years ago, too, and topped them then with sea salt and pecans. I like to take my brownie slab and, as soon as it’s cool enough to lift out of the pan (but still warm), pop it in the fridge on a cutting board for a couple of hours. Someone I used to work for taught me that…it does seem to make the brownie texture set up really nicely, and of course, brownies cut so sharply when chilled.
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Double-Chocolate Rhubarb Tart
June 10, 2025 at 7:18 am | Posted in BWD, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 8 CommentsTags: baking, pie
I’m not the biggest fan of fruit and chocolate combos, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised from time to time so I try to keep an open mind when these recipes pop up. The Double-Chocolate Rhubarb Tart, though, presented a mix my brain would not have thought up. Sounded odd- I was not sure how this one would go.
A chocolate tart shell houses a layer of jam and a layer of chocolate frangipane, with pieces of fresh rhubarb tucked on top. Right now, orange marmalade is the only jam I have in the fridge, and that seemed to be moving too far in the weird direction for me. Instead, I used fresh raspberries that I ripped in half to cover the bottom of the tart shell. They basically turn into their own jam while the tart is in the oven.
Room temp or chilled, this one goes into the “pleasantly surprised” category! The tart shell is like a crisp chocolate cookie, the frangipane is like a fudgy brownie and the sweet-tart thing with the fruit works nicely. My rhubarb stalks were so thin, I probably could have squeezed on a few more pieces (Dorie actually does say to be generous, should have listened instead of being skeptical).
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan yet, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays! Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Lemon (or Yuzu) Meringue Layer Cake
May 27, 2025 at 8:08 pm | Posted in BWD, cakes & tortes, groups, layer cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, brekkie, cake
Another month, another layer cake. This time it’s a Lemon Meringue Layer Cake to celebrate Mardi’s birthday month! I actually used yuzu instead of lemon, because I have a stash of frozen yuzu juice at the moment…I rarely see it sold here, and I kind of go nuts whenever I do.
I cut the 8-inch cake recipe in half to make a 6-incher, my regular move when I’m just slicing for the two of us. This cake has two layers of soft lemon cake, a lemon soaking syrup, a lemon cream filling and lemon meringue frosting. I just straight up replaced the lemon in all the components with yuzu…well, apart from the soaking syrup, which I skipped making. I have a sweet yuzu liqueur that I found at the wine shop some time ago, and I used that in its place. (I am, btw, a huge proponent of brushing cake layers with sugar syrup or booze to keep them moist. I do this even if a recipe does not specify to, especially since just a 6-inch cake will last us three or four nights.)
I know there’s another recipe Dorie also calls “lemon cream” that she learned from Pierre Hermé. It’s a lemon curd that’s set with like two sticks of butter blended in at the end. That was what I excepted we’d be making for this cake, and I was kind of surprised that this lemon cream is more like a lemon pudding: milk-based and thickened with cornstarch. Not to worry- all that butter that’s absent from the lemon cream finds its way into the frosting instead! The meringue component of this cake is not a marshmallow fluff, but a Swiss meringue buttercream– the most luxuriously buttery-smooth cake coating in all of frosting-land (in my opinion, at least).
My taste tester said this was like wedding cake. It’s been a minute since I’ve made one of those, but I see what he meant. This comes together as a very grown up and elegant cake. I like the touch of adding a thin layer of extra lemon cream over top of the frosting. Now go and wish Mardi a happy birthday!
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan yet, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays! Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and all the other participation deets over on Tuesdays with Dorie!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWD: Oatmeal Cookies with Nuts and Chocolate
May 13, 2025 at 6:42 pm | Posted in BWD, cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 4 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
What’s better than an oatmeal raisin cookie? Try one of these Oatmeal Cookies with Nuts and Chocolate. I went with pecans and milk chocolate, and swapped out the raisins for dried cranberries. More is more, I think, so I increased a bit what Dorie calls the “middling” amount of chopped nuts and dried fruit that she prefers.
These have just a touch of honey, along with the normal white and brown sugars, and they baked up nicely browned but kept their soft chew. Very comforting to have a tin full of these, I must say. Maybe I made a mistake by only making 1/3 recipe!?
If you don’t have the book Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, get it and join us as we bake through it every second and fourth Tuesdays. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Baked Fresh Weekly
Blog at WordPress.com.
Entries and comments feeds.
a whisk and a spoon 