a whisk and a spoon

TWD BWJ Rewind: Pebble Bread

A couple of weeks ago, the group made the Pebble Bread recipe from Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, world travellers who have brought us a few other flatbreads you may or may not remember.  I was all geared up to make this one, and then I didn’t.  Sometimes I just run out of gas.  Thankfully we get a make-up week every now and again.

Pebble Bread is a round Moroccan flatbread; traditionally baked on hot pebbles, it gets dimply and a little puffed.  The not-so-traditional Western method we used here involves a bowl of water, your fingertips, and a heavy skillet…first dipping a rolled out dough round into water to create steam, next quickly dimpling it with your fingertips, then starting the bread in a skillet on the stovetop to cook the bottom, and finishing it under the broiler to cook the top. 

I only made half a recipe (four large-enough-to-share pieces of bread) and since I used two skillets and they take just a few minutes each to cook, I worked though the process pretty quickly.  Of course I totes torched the top of my first one under the broiler, but, just like my morning toast, it was nothing a little scrapey-scrape with a serrated knife couldn’t fix.  You learn, eat your mistake before anyone else sees it, adjust and keep going.

I’d call these a definite success.  I can’t roll pie dough into a nice round to save my life, but these breads all rolled out into perfect circles.  They had just enough puff and chew, and a good flavor from the overnight sponge (yes, you need to plan to make a sponge the day before you make the bread, but it’s virtually hands-off) and the barley flour in the dough.  I have a couple breads left in my freezer and I am very happy to eat all of them warm, ripped up and swiped first into olive oil and then into dukkah (which is actually an Egyptian nut and seed mix, but we found it all over the place when we lived in Australia, and ever since I must have it on a regular basis).

For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan.  Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll to see if anyone else did a rewind this week, and see the links page from the Pebble Bread a couple of weeks ago!

Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Salsa Quitza

I’ve been intrigued by Lora Body’s Salsa Quitza recipe for a long while…I’ve nominated it at least five or six times, but seems I was the only one so interested!  With refried beans in the crust and layers of cream cheese and salsa in the filling, I’ve never heard of this bizarre Southwestern quiche-pizza hybrid thing.  Must be a Lora Brody original.  I made it for Sunday’s game (which did not at all end the way I hoped it would, by the way), and my husband asked what to expect…I told him the only thing I was sure of was that it would be weird.

The quitza crust is a bread dough that can apparently also be made into a loaf, if you don’t want to go full-quitza on it.  The dough instructions call for a bread machine, but I don’t have one so I made it in my stand mixer and let it rise on the counter.  I combined the ingredients in the “regular” way, with yeast and liquids first (including the not-so-regular addition of refried beans…I used canned pinto), followed by the dry stuff.  The dough was soft, but not sticky, and made a nice ball after about eight minutes of knead-time.  I let it rise twice, about 45 minutes to an hour each time, before shaping it in the pan.

I made half a recipe and baked it in an 8″ regular cake pan.  For the filling, I followed Cher’s suggestion to decrease the salsa by about half (proportionally, of course, for my half recipe), and I also chose to reduce the cream cheese layer by a couple of tablespoons and add on a smear of refried beans, since I had extra from the dough.  I topped it with a mix of cheddar and mozzarella.

OK, yeah, it was kind of weird, but good-weird.  The dough was soft and rose high, like a deep dish.  The filling was really creamy from the cream cheese (and I’m glad I reduced the cream cheese and salsa or it would have been sloppy and too much).  And it went well with beer.  If I make it again, I think I’ll sprinkle some olives on top.

For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan (there’s also a video here of the episode). Finally, don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!

Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Eastern European Rye

Before making Lauren Groveman’s Eastern European Rye, I began to daydream about a turkey reuben on homemade bread.  Liz Lemon is not the only one with very specific food fantasies.  I was out of rye flour, though, so I bought a bag of local (okay, not NYC, but NY state) farmer-ground organic rye flour from the Greenmarket and got to mixing.  I saw a tip to mix the dough in a stand mixer for 3 minutes, turn it off and let the dough rest for 10 minutes, then back on again for about 12 more minutes of kneading.  I did this mixing method, and the dough rose nicely, and apart from my three slash marks, it didn’t split open in the oven.  The final dough shaping and rising instructions are a little wacky when you read them in the book, but in this video, Groveman demonstrates those same steps on her pumpernickel loaf recipe.  They are still wacky, but are at least understandable after seeing them on video.

The bread that I wound up with was not the Levy’s-like sandwich loaf I was expecting, but a rustic loaf with more of a true whole grain bread feel and a craggily crust.  I couldn’t really get nice sandwich-sized slices from it, so no homemade turkey reuben for me this time (since I have a one-track mind, I did go to Mile End yesterday and get one!), but the bread does have great rye and caraway flavor and it’s nice with salty butter or a bit of good cheddar.  I think it’ll make a good tomato soup dunker, too.

I assumed that the whole grain rye I used was the culprit for the denser loaf that I got…after reading Alisa’s post this morning, if I make this again I’ll either just reduce the amount of rye I use or sub a bit of it with some extra white flour and see what I get .

For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan. Finally, don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!

Tuesdays with Dorie BWJ: Mixed-Starter Bread & Walnut Bread

Two things you need to have before making Steve Sullivan’s Mixed-Starter Bread are a piece of leftover bread dough and plenty of time.  The “old dough” can be just a little hunk of raw dough saved from last night’s pizza party.  As for time, we’re talking about a whole weekend.  That’s the time needed to feed that old dough and turn it into a big batch of airy new dough.

Once you’ve successfully done your time feeding the starter and kneading and rising your dough, you can make a variety of shapes out of it…like a nice baguette, an amazing couronne, or cute wheat stalk.  You can even knead in a heap of walnuts and make a big Walnut Bread.  Not wanting to fully stock my freezer with bread loaves, I made a half-recipe of the dough and divided into a somewhat imperfectly snipped wheat stalk (pain d’epi) and a walnut boule.

In the book, the walnut boule is made with an entire batch of the finished mixed-starter dough, so mine is just a baby boule and it baked through much faster than a big guy would have.  As a result of reduced oven time, it didn’t brown as much as I would have liked, so I cheated by painting on a little olive oil before its last five minutes of baking.  I still wish I’d gotten a both breads a bit darker.

Due to the lack of afternoon light in my house this time of year, I didn’t get a good shot of the cut breads.  Even though you feel like you’ve done a lot of waiting while making this dough, it actually doesn’t hang around long enough to develop a sourdough flavor.  You get soft white bread with air holes inside and a real crust outside.  The walnut version is excellent with cheese, and I’ll take salty butter on the epi, please.

For the recipe, see Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan (the mixed-starter bread is also here and the walnut bread is here). There’s also a video of the BWJ episode showing how to make and shape the mixed-starter bread. Finally, don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!