Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Whole Wheat Loaves
September 18, 2012 at 12:01 am | Posted in BWJ, groups, savory things, tuesdays with dorie, yeast breads | 14 CommentsTags: baking, bread
Now that it’s ever so slightly cooler outside, it’s nice to spend the better part of a Sunday morning making bread. Baking a yeast bread makes me feel productive, even if I’m really doing almost nothing at all. Craig Kominiak’s Whole Wheat Loaves were this weekend’s TWD project.
This wheat bread has a kiss of honey and malt extract (I used the Eden Foods malt syrup). It’s slightly sweet, soft and wholesome…not bland, dense and healthy (if you know what I mean). It’s good for sandwiching and for toasting. Now that I say that, it would no doubt make an awesome grilled cheese. That’s avocado toast up top…one of my favorite toast applications…and a turkey sandwich down below.
This is how wheat bread should be. I’m glad that the recipe is so unintimidating…there’s no excuse for me to not make it often. For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan or read Michele’s Veggie Num Nums and Teresa’s The Family That Bakes Together. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Nectarine Upside-Down Chiffon Cake
September 7, 2012 at 4:16 pm | Posted in BWJ, cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 14 CommentsTags: baking, cake, fruit
It’s Fridays with Dorie for me this week with Mary Bergin’s fabulous Nectarine Upside-Down Chiffon Cake. I made, and ate, this cake a couple of weekends ago. Then I was so excited to go Montreal for Labor Day weekend, I didn’t post. We came home and I still didn’t post, because I’ve been too busy looking at Montreal real estate websites and daydreaming about living there!!
This recipe is in a section in the book called “Everyday Delights” but I think it’s pretty fancy. It’s not just a standard-issue tinned fruit upside-down cake. Underneath the glistening fresh nectarines is a light chiffon cake bisected by a layer of crispy almond streusel. It’s a bit of work to pull off, but I thought it was worth every bite. And really, the streusel could be skipped to save a step…it would be just as good, I think.
I had good success with this chiffon. I was a little worried when I saw the batter almost totally filled my springform, and it did mushroom up in the oven. But nothing overflowed, thank goodness. If you are worried, I’d suggest taking out a couple scoops and making them into cupcakes or something. It was kinda hard to tell if the cake was done, and I think I left it in the oven a few extra miinutes. When making chiffons, the cake pans are often ungreased so the batter can really climb up the sides. I’ve learned to (gingerly!) run a thin knife around the edges of the pans about five to ten minutes after the cakes have come out of the oven. This helps the cakes to not tear away from the sides as they start to cool, which I think can cause them to sink a bit.
For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan or read Marlise’s The Double Trouble Kitchen and Susan’s The Little French Bakery. There’s also a video of Julia and Mary baking this together. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Popovers
August 21, 2012 at 12:01 am | Posted in breakfast things, BWJ, groups, tuesdays with dorie | 22 CommentsTags: baking, breakfast
My first couple of years at Wellesley, there was a restaurant in “the Vill” called Popovers. Popovers served, you guessed it, popovers…giant, bowl-sized popovers that could be ordered on their own with butter and jam or used as a vessel for one of a zillion different (mostly mayo-based) salads. This place was clearly an old-school institution and I thought the concept was so entertaining, that when I returned from my junior year abroad, I was kind of confused and heartbroken to see it had closed. (I have heard that there’s something similar here in NYC, but I haven’t been.)
That place is what sprang to mind when it was announced we’d be baking the late, great Marion Cunningham’s popovers this week. There’s something fun and kind of magical about popovers–how does such a runny, crepe-like batter explode and mushroom like that in the oven? And because they are hollow inside, eating them is kind of like eating air. They do take a while to crisp and dry out, and there’s no peeking in the oven (unless you have a working oven light), so if you are an impatient type, these may test you a bit. But that’s the only hard part….the batter is sooo easy to make…a 15 second blender blitz and it’s done. I happen to have a popover tin that was gifted to me, but you certainly don’t need one. A muffin tin works, and Marion even used custard cups in the BWJ episode.
We had ours for breakfast…some with honey, some with jam. I heard a savory twist with cheese and herbs is tasty, too.
For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan or read Paula’s Vintage Kitchen Notes and Amy’s Bake With Amy. A short version is also here. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Crunchy Summer Fruit Galette
August 9, 2012 at 5:07 pm | Posted in BWJ, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 11 CommentsTags: baking, fruit, pie
This week it’s Thursday with Dorie. Oops, someone didn’t pay attention…my bad. Anyway, here is Flo Braker’s Crunchy Berry Galette, made instead with peaches and red currants from my CSA. A galette is a freeform pie. I make little individual ones everyday at the shop where I work, but we call them crostatas, cuz we’re Italian like that.
This galette has an unusal dough…it’s not a flaky pie pastry. It gets it’s crunch from cornmeal and softness from sour cream. The dough is seriously sticky, but I rolled and formed it directly on the parchment I used for baking, so I didn’t really have issues with it. I added a tiny spoon of cornstarch to the filling just to tighten it up a bit. I still had a little leaky juice, but no major explosion. This was small, perfect for two with ice cream.
For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan or read Lisa’s Tomato Thymes in the Kitchen and Garden and Andrea’s The Kitchen Lioness. It’s also here. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Blueberry-Nectarine Pie
July 31, 2012 at 12:01 am | Posted in BWJ, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 17 CommentsTags: baking, fruit, pie
Yeah, I know that just a couple of weeks ago I declared crisp to be the new pie. And now here I am with an old school pie. A big pie, too…not my normal half-sizer, but a full nine-inch pie. A pie that I can eat while I watch the Olympics– ha! Leslie Mackie’s Blueberry-Nectarine Pie is actually a favorite recipe. I’ve made this pie several times in summers past and it’s always great. I really love nectarines, even more than peaches, I think.
There are a couple of wacky instructions in the recipe that I don’t go by. First, it says to assemble the pie in a one-inch tall nine-inch cake pan. That’s weird…why not use a pie pan? I do. Then it says to cool the pie for 30 minutes before cutting. Trust me, it needs to cool much longer than that if you don’t want your filling to pour out when you slice it. I always try to bake my pies in the morning, so that by dinner time, they are well-set.
By the way, I spent last week on the West Coast, mainly visiting my family in Seattle. I had my mother take me to Mackie’s Macrina Bakery in SODO one afternoon. I didn’t see this pie there, but the breads are amazing.
For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan or read Hilary’s Manchego’s Kitchen and Liz’s That Skinny Chick Can Bake. It’s also here. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Semolina Bread
July 17, 2012 at 12:01 am | Posted in BWJ, groups, savory things, tuesdays with dorie, yeast breads | 17 CommentsTags: baking, bread, savory
I thought I was in for a whole day project when I set out to make Nick Malgieri’s Semolina Bread. The recipe calls for three two-hour proof periods, but with the East Coast heat and humidity, my kitchen is its own proof box. I had that loaf ready for the oven in under five!
I made the dough in the food processor. So easy. I cut the salt by a quarter teaspoon, and added it to the dough after the rest period in the processor. Besides that and my shorter proof times, I followed the recipe as-is.
I wanted my loaf to be like bread from the Italian bakeries over in Carroll Gardens, so I spritzed it with a little water and sprinkled on some sesame seeds before I put it in the oven. Then they all more of less fell off when I cut into it, but whatever. I had a crusty, golden loaf of bread, and it was delicious. My favorite part of a crusty loaf like this is the end bit. Actually my favorite parts, since there are two end bits! Slathered with a little salty butter, they are my ideal baker’s treat.
For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan or read Renee’s The Way to my Family’s Heart and Anna’s Keep it Luce. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Hazelnut Biscotti
July 3, 2012 at 3:13 pm | Posted in BWJ, cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 16 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
I’m not supposed to be home writing this post right now, but the last three days we’ve had power outages at work and closed up shop early. Hard to work in a food business when your refrigeration is down. I feel bad for the store owners because it’s truly a mess and they lose sales when this stuff happens, but it’s a little bonus time off for me. Time off means time for a cookie break with Alice Medrich’s Hazelnut Biscotti!
These super-crunchy biscotti are the perfect little something on the side of a plate. Good with coffee (naturally), ice cream or fruit. The recipe calls for skin-on hazelnuts and has kind of a kooky method for removing the skins (just watch this video…ick). I went a far more straight-forward route– I bought pre-blanched nuts! I just toasted them as directed before proceeding with the dough. A tip that worked well for many of us this week is to lightly wet your hands before shaping the dough into logs. This helps neatly deal with the stickiness. And I recommend slicing the cookies pretty thin after the first bake, because after the second, the cookies are so crisp that a fat cookie would be hard to bite down on. They have proven to be good keepers, even with the heat and humidity we’ve had here this past week.
For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan or read Jodi’s Homemade and Wholesome and Katrina’s Baking and Boys. There’s also a video of Alice and Julia making the biscotti together. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll! I kept mine pretty plain and simple, but I’m sure there are lots of fun substitutions and biscotti variations this week.
Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: French Strawberry Cake
June 19, 2012 at 12:01 am | Posted in BWJ, cakes & tortes, groups, layer cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 24 CommentsTags: baking, cake, fruit
Flo Braker‘s French Strawberry Cake is the perfect thing for right now, right here. Strawberries are all over the NYC greenmarkets (and my CSA), so a summer strawberry cake of some sort was bound to be in order even if we hadn’t picked this for TWD.
This is a lovely simple cake…no fancy buttercreams or anything. Just some lightly sweetened whipped cream and mashed strawberries filling a whole egg sponge cake. The cake is called a genoise in the book, but it’s the only genoise I’ve ever made that doesn’t heat the eggs in the process. The recipe calls for making one tall cake and splitting it into three layers. I made just a half recipe and I thought my little six-inch cake really only needed to be cut into two. This type of sponge cake can be a little dry on its own, but the whipped cream and macerated berries add the moisture that is needed. I think it became even tastier the second day. I can see this being great with raspberry smoosh, too, if you are feeling more English than French (Victoria sponge, anyone)?.
For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan or read Sophia’s, Sophia’s Sweets and Allison’s Sleep Love Think Dine. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Oasis Naan
June 5, 2012 at 12:01 am | Posted in BWJ, groups, savory things, tuesdays with dorie, yeast breads | 32 CommentsTags: baking, bread, savory
Phew…I cut it close on this one. I just made Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid’s Oasis Naan a couple of hours ago. Luckily it’s a pretty simple bread dough, as long as you have the time to proof it.
The recipe calls for making this flatbread dough by hand. I’m lazy…I used the food processor, same as I do for pizza dough. (I must say here, that I only made a half batch of dough, so everything fit just fine.) I started by adding the minimum amount of flour to my processor bowl, then with the machine running, I poured in my water/yeast combo. I added more flour to touch and turned off the machine for 10 minutes. Then I sprinkled the salt and a little bit more flour over the dough (because it still felt pretty sticky) and turned it back on for a few more seconds. I kneaded it on the counter for about a minute before putting into a bowl to proof.
The dough bakes up nice and puffy (be sure to dock it well!), and chewy, too. I topped mine with chopped spring garlic and za’atar spice, but I bet all kinds of things would be good on top. You could even make them like mini pizzas. It’s not quite as soft and charred as the naan I get from my local Indian takeaway, but I’d make this again for sure.
We ate our naan with a freekeh, beet, chickpea and feta salad I concocted. Very healty…I think my husband thought the naan was the best part!
For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan or read Maggie’s Always Add More Butter and Phyl of Of Cabbages & King Cakes. There’s also a video of Alford, Duguid and Julia making the bread together, and the authors wrote this article that gives more naan tips. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Pecan Sticky Buns
May 15, 2012 at 12:01 am | Posted in breakfast things, BWJ, groups, sweet things, sweet yeast breads, tuesdays with dorie | 31 CommentsTags: baking, bread, breakfast
I’ve been getting a lot of practice making breakfast pastries lately. A couple of months ago, the owners of the shop I work for decided that we should open three hours earlier and have a menu of morning baked stuff. I now have to wake up basically in the middle of the night to walk to work and make this happen. I’m thinking about quitting soon….but you didn’t hear me say that, and you certainly didn’t come here for banal griping. You came for Nancy Silverton’s Pecan Sticky Buns!
It’s pretty much a given that sticky buns have a lot of butter in them, but this recipe uses a sh*t-ton of butter. There’s brioche dough..no, make that laminated brioche dough (unlike the other sticky buns we did about–yikes– four years ago)…and then there’s the sticky top part. The only component without butter is the pecan-cinnamon swirl inside. When everything’s tallied up, it comes to five sticks for a whole recipe!! My mind immediately went to work wondering where I could shave off a few tablespoons. First off, a whole recipe makes two 9-inch pans, or 14 buns, and I certainly didn’t need that many for the two of us. A quarter of a recipe would be fine…I knew I could squeeze four slightly smaller buns out of that and bake them in a 6-inch pan. I ultimately decided on making a half recipe of brioche dough, and only taking half of that to make buns with (I’m saving the other half for another project). I kept the full amount of butter in the dough itself. Best not to mess around with that. I used about two-thirds the butter called for in the laminating step and half for the topping. I don’t think I missed out too much…my buns were sweet and soft and flaky. I plan to experiment more with this laminated brioche thing later on…it’s a cool technique.
By the way brioche is a lovely dough to work with…if you can keep it cool enough while you shape it, that is. It’s so soft and nice to touch. And it rises beautifully.
It took me like an hour to figure out how to put two pics side-by-side in Photoshop, btw…wow.
I made my base dough on day one, parked it in the fridge overnight after its first rise, and finished off the laminating and rolling the next day. I did my dough in my stand mixer. Since I just made a half a batch, my KA had no problem cranking it out. It was really such a small about of dough, though, that I think even the whole recipe would have been just fine. Despite my earlier talk about breakfast pastries, my husband and I actually ate two of these sticky buns for dessert. After getting up so early for work now everyday, I can’t manage to get up early enough on the weekends to have buns proofed, baked and cooled before brekkie. The other two baked buns were wrapped up tight and stuck the freezer, to be defrosted and enjoyed properly one weekend morning with a cup of coffee.
For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan or read Lynn’s Eat Drink Man Woman Dogs Cat and Nicole’s Cookies on Friday. There’s also a video of Nancy and Julia making the buns together. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
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