Tag: bread

Categories
Breakfast and Brunch The Book

177. Baked French Toast p.650


The recipe

The blurb for this recipe suggests that it’s an easy and fuss-free way to make French Toast. I couldn’t disagree more. This looks like a scaled down restaurant recipe to me, and what works for breakfast for hundreds doesn’t necessarily make much sense when serving six. The idea with the recipe is to make a basic French toast batter (eggs, milk, salt) and pour it over buttered slices of bread in a buttered baking dish. You then let the mixture soak into the bread in the fridge for at least an hour. The bread then needs to warm up to room temperature, whereupon it’s sprinkled with sugar and baked in a 450 oven for 20 to 25 minutes. I can make normal people French toast for six and have everything cleaned up in 25 minutes, so what’s the point of this recipe? The Book suggests that you should assemble the dish and let the bread soak overnight, so that it can be popped in the oven while you’re setting the table and squeezing the orange juice (I wonder how many oranges are juiced rhetorically for every real life glass of fresh squeezed orange juice). I guess one advantage of this approach is that all the dishes can be done the night before, and you do have a bit less to do in the morning. But you also have to wake up extra early to take the baking dish out of the fridge and preheat the oven. Making normal French toast requires washing a cutting board, a mixing bowl, and a frying pan. I’m willing to wait until after breakfast to get to those. If I was serving this dish to twenty people this approach would make a lot of sense, but as it is it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

The greatest crime of this recipe is that it didn’t taste particularly good. There was nothing bad or objectionable about it, but it was very very dull. I always add vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg to my French toast, and I prefer to use a more interesting bread (sourdough is good) than the “soft supermarket Italian” loaf the recipe calls for. I understand that French toast is mostly a vehicle for maple syrup delivery, but that doesn’t mean that it needs to be boring. I should give The Book due credit for calling for whole milk in the recipe, I was sure they’d find a way to integrate heavy cream.

If I had a giant group coming for breakfast I’d consider tripling this recipe, and adding some flavour to it. Beyond spices and different bread I’d increase the called for 1/4 teaspoon of salt to 1/2 teaspoon. As it was it was OK, we ate it, and once it was drowned in maple syrup we enjoyed it, but I’d say this recipe is a definite missed opportunity.

Categories
Breads and Crackers The Book

166. Skillet Corn Bread p.600

The recipe in The Book is identical to this one on Epicurious, but The Book adds a tablespoon of sugar to the corn bread.

The desire to make corn bread comes in waves for me. Six months will go by, and I won’t even think of it, then I’ll get the urge, and make it three times in a week. I like to play with my recipes, and improvise. The first batch of the week is usually pretty straightforward, in a baking pan, hardly sweet, good with gravy. Then I get stupid and try putting things that shouldn’t go into corn bread into my recipe. I’ve never once liked the cheese or sausage corn bread I’ve made, and I don’t particularly like corn bread muffins, I should just learn my lesson. I make the third batch to redeem myself. By this point I’ve remembered how much I like leftover corn bread for breakfast, and that I really like it warmed for a few seconds in the microwave, with a bit of butter, and a drizzle of maple syrup. I substitute maple syrup for the sugar in the recipe, and add a bit of extra butter directly to the batter for the week’s final batch, and I am usually well pleased. By the time we’ve finished that pan, I’m so ODed on corn bread that I can’t look at it for another few months.

This recipe takes the unusual step of omitting the flour that’s in most corn bread recipes, it’s all cornmeal. That makes the bread more coarse and granular, and less cake-like. The nice thing about corn bread is that it’s fairly idiot-proof. You just whisk together the dry ingredients, gently stir in the wet ingredients until it’s barely combined, and bake. This bread is baked in a preheated cast iron pan, and the butter that goes into the bread is melted in the pan first, this leaves you with a browned butter coating in the pan, which tastes nice, and helps keep the bread from sticking. The recipe uses the muffin method, of barely combining the wet and dry ingredients, which is usually done to prevent gluten from forming, and making a baked good tough. In this case there’s no flour, so I can’t see why you shouldn’t beat the tar out of it.

This was perfectly fine corn bread, I liked the cast iron skillet method which created a very nice deeply browned crust. This was a dryer style of corn bread than I prefer, and even with the tablespoon of sugar, I would have liked a bit more sweetness. I found it a bit crumbly, and missed the soft texture of a flour based corn bread. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it, and it’s probably somebody’s favourite style. As a recipe I think it worked quite well, I just wasn’t totally on board with what it was trying to do.

Categories
Breads and Crackers The Book

150. Pumpkin Apple Bread p.599


The recipe courtesy of The Amateur Gourmet

A loaf is a dangerous thing. It hardly ever occurs to me to bake up some banana bread, or a lemon loaf. If you asked me to name my favourite desserts, no loaf would make the list. I don’t think about them, or go out of my way to get them, but the second a sweet cakey loaf comes out of the oven, I’m lost.

The insatiable craving that takes hold isn’t a conscious one. I have a slice with an espresso, dining companion and I chat about how nice it is, then I get on with my day. About half an hour later, I find myself back in the kitchen with the knife in my hand, and another reasonably sized slice on my plate. After all, it really is better when it’s fresh. I trick myself into the next slice with a lie about pumpkin and apples making it a healthy snack. It gets worse from there, I probably won’t have any appetite for dinner, and my dining companion may not get a second slice. These types of loaves are a triumph of marketing. They’re not cake, they’re bread! and look! they’re full of healthy fruits and nuts! At least a black-forest cake is honest, if you eat it for breakfast you know exactly what a bad person you are.

This particular temptress is made by sifting together flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice in one bowl, canned pumpkin, oil, sugar, and eggs in another, and then adding the dry stuff to the wet stuff, and folding in chopped apples. The batter is divided between two loaf pans, sprinkled with the inevitable streusel topping (flour, sugar, cinnamon and butter), and baked.

This bread is about as autumnal as it gets. Think pumpkin pie, now with carbs! If you’re a fan of the pie, this is the bread for you. Being in the house while it baked was a pleasure. Someone should distill it into a perfume. The bread was exceptionally moist, with a loose spongy crumb, and the barest hint of toothsomeness. The chunks of Granny Smith added a necessary textural counterpoint, and a little bit of bite to keep things in perspective. This topping worked better than some of The Book’s other efforts. In this case it was a flavourful glaze on the loaf, and not the overwhelming mess that sometimes results. I might toss in some crushed walnuts or pecans next time, but as it is it’s a winner

If you’re the sort of person who has a modicum of self control when it comes to baked goods in the house, I happily recommend this bread. For those of you who don’t, bake it and give it away, at least you’ll be able to enjoy the way your kitchen smells. Unfortunately I tried the second strategy, and for possibly the first time in human history a lab full of grad students was too busy to polish off free baking on the first go-round. I ended up with a third of a loaf on my desk for the afternoon, I’m not at liberty to say what happened next.

Categories
Breads and Crackers The Book

113. Rosemary Focaccia p.606


The recipe is the same as this one, but linked recipe forgets to list the water and salt for the dough in the ingredient list (they are in the recipe description).

I should start off by saying that this was absolutely delicious. It didn’t rely on rare ingredients or novel taste experiences to get there. It went with the straightforward combination of fresh baked bread, so much olive oil that drizzling is not an option, and enough salt to make it crunchy. This is the same tried and true combination that keeps the deep-dish pizza places of the world in business. You know that this is a Gourmet recipe and not a special from Pizza Hut because the focaccia doesn’t have a ring of cheese baked into the crust.

The recipe starts with a simple yeast dough, with some olive oil added in. It’s mostly kneaded in a stand mixer, then finished kneading by hand. Once the dough is coated in more oil and it’s been left to rise for 1 1/2 hours, it’s pressed into a baking sheet, covered with plastic wrap, and allowed a second rise. Obviously this second rise requires the addition of more oil, but this time it’s used to lubricate the baking sheet and plastic wrap. After the second rise it’s time for, you guessed it, more oil. This time the oil is mixed with chopped rosemary, and poured over the bread. There is so much oil at this point that the recipe directs you to make indentations in the bread for the oil to pool. Then the bread is sprinkled with sea salt, and baked at 425 ’till it’s golden. When it’s ready the bread needs to be inverted to get it out of the baking sheet. I’d do this over some paper towel because even the absorbent power of bread is overwhelmed by the amount of oil in this dish.

The focaccia was excellent, the bread was moist, with some chewiness, but a nice crumb and texture. The crust, both top and bottom, were wonderfully golden. The rosemary was fantastic, and really allowed to shine as the sole aromatic. If you serve this to friends they’ll beg you for the recipe, don’t give it to them. It would be like telling a kid about Santa. The bread doesn’t hold up well overnight. It’s not great cold, microwaving killed everything good about it, and rewarming in the oven didn’t to it justice. It’s best to get a crowd together and polish the whole thing off in one go.

The recipe uses a truly unconscionable amount of olive oil. The ingredient list calls for just under 1/2 a cup (7 tablespoons) of oil, to 5 cups of flour. But that doesn’t count the “generous” lubrication of the dough ball during the fist rise, or the baking sheet and plastic wrap during the second. I suspect the total is closer to 3/4 of a cup. That’s 1400 calories at 120 cal/tablespoon. We had the focaccia along with yesterday’s kale and chroizo soup for dinner, and certainly didn’t feel like we’d eaten lightly.

Categories
Fish and Shellfish The Book

96. Salmon Burgers with Spinach and Ginger p.291


The recipe

I rarely make recipes from The Book for lunch, but this was an exception. I happened to be home, and to have a salmon fillet lingering in my fridge, so I decided to go for it. It wasn’t the greatest thing I’d ever tasted, but it certainly wasn’t bad. It’s a simple burger made of diced salmon, spinach, scallions, ginger, salt, and pepper. It’s held together with an egg white, and a dash of soy, then shaped into patties, fried crisp, and topped with pickled ginger. As you can see I happened to have some neon pink pickled ginger in the fridge, and I used it. It didn’t look great, and it wasn’t the best pickled ginger I’ve ever had, but this was lunch and I was alone, so who would ever know? I still had a bunch of the dill and crème fraîche mixture I used in the Rye Crispbread Crackers with Pepper-Dill Crème Fraîche and Smoked Salmon, so I added that and the burger to a slice of Russian bread and called it a meal.

The burger cooked up nicely, and developed a crispy crust. I often worry about fish burgers falling apart in the pan, but that was not an issue. The flavours were a bit aggressive. Salmon can stand up to intense sauces, but this was pretty much a ginger burger with salmon and spinach. It tasted quite nice, but not much like salmon. Unfortunately my kitchen still smelled like pan fried fish. I’ve also got to deduct points for the boring “let’s make it Japanesque” flavours they’ve gone with. Ginger and soy are a great combination, but leaving that as the only flavouring in an Asianoid dish smacks of foreign food of the ’50’s. And not in that quaint kitschy way I love.

Overall the burgers were fine. Not particularly inspired, but totally edible and even enjoyable. I definitely don’t think this should be the definitive salmon burger, or the only fish burger in The Book, but it’s not bad at all. The nice thing about lunch is that it’s held to a lower standard. This burger might have been a disappointment at supper time, but having a burger for lunch is a treat no matter how it tastes.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

75. Sour Cream Pastry Dough p.419

The recipe

This is the crust for Twenty-First Century Beef Wellington. It’s folded over a browned beef tenderloin, covered in Cilantro Walnut Filling, and baked. It’s a very simple dough, made with flour, butter, sour cream and a dash of salt. It’s brought together, then smeared to distribute the fat, and chilled for a couple of hours before rolling.

The dough was exceptionally strong before baking, it put up with a lot of folding, and pinching, and crimping, without tearing or stretching out too much. It rolled out easily, and stood up to the fillings during baking. Between the filling and the meat juices this dough was asked to encase a lot of liquid, and it did an admirable job. Not a drop leaked out, and the bottom of the crust remained crisp.

The final texture was flaky on the outside, and rich and moist on the inside. The sour cream gave it a bit of a bite, which I really appreciated. I was thoroughly impressed with how beautifully it browned up. The central problem of beef wellington is arranging things so that the pastry is nicely browned at the same time as the meat is medium rare. I took the wellington out when the beef was done, and just hoped for the best on the crust. As it happens I turned my back for a bit too long and ended up closer to medium than medium rare on the beef, but the crust was absolutely perfect.

The crust was probably my favorite part of the final wellington recipe. It tied the flavours of the meat and filling together, and had a wonderful crisp – tender texture. You could replace the tenderloin and filling with all sorts of things in this recipe. The dough would be great filled with vegetables, or fish. It would also be a delightful dough for a savory pie. Maybe I’ll use it for a tourtiere at Christmas.

Categories
Hors D'Oeuvres & First Courses The Book

22. Pita Toasts p. 7


the recipe

A recipe for toast. A recipe… for toast. Well, super simple basics like this will sure help me get through the book faster. Or at least compensate for some of the marathon recipes yet to come. These were the recommended accompaniment for Olive and Eggplant Spread. They worked perfectly well, nice crisp pitas able to support the dip, with a good flavour of their own. They’re dried and crisped slowly in a 375 oven to avoid browning too much or heating the olive oil above its smoke point, and kosher salt also adds a nice texture. The Book did everything right, but I don’t think I’ve ever been moved by a pita toast (a baguette is another matter).

Don’t get me wrong, pitas, toasted or not, are an indispensable workhorse in my kitchen. I don’t think I’ve ever put out appetizers without pita appearing in some way. It’s the unsung hero of the cocktail party world! but I’m content to leave it seen but not heard. Make these, use them, but don’t love them.

Categories
Breads and Crackers The Book

3. Garlic Bread p.606

the recipe

Ahh Garlic bread, the ubiquitous starchy accompaniment to a big plate of my mom’s pasta. Weren’t the fat phobic carb happy 80’s a good time? So this is fairly idiot proof: apply garlic butter to bread, bake in tinfoil till warmed through, open tinfoil package to crisp up bread. Who could screw this up? apparently I can.

Things were going well through the cutting of the ciabatta loaf, and smearing butter stages. All clear for operation put in tinfoil and bake at 350 for 15 minutes. Things were going so swimmingly I decided to focus on the rest of dinner. 15 minutes became 20, and the first hint of burning came to my nose. I never opened the package to crisp, and while the bottom of the loaf got nicely done, the rest of the loaf was the soggy mess of a thousand backyard BBQs.

Soggy garlic bread does have some fairly good memories associated with it, and
I enjoyed it thoroughly. However, I was really looking forward to the crispy crunch. Thankfully this is as simple a recipe as there is, so a redo won’t call for any untoward effort.

One thing I really appreciated about this was the suggestion to replace the parsley with basil (a suggestion not made in the linked recipe). To me parsley is a bit of waste of an herb, the Italian stuff has some nice flavor, the frizzy has none. All in all I’ll give parsley a pass whenever possible. Unfortunately The Book (and the whole world) seems to have a bit of thing for it. I won’t balk at spending eight bucks on a tiny piece of goat cheese, but that 79 cent parsley tax so many recipes charge really irks me.

This is a childhood classic not re-imagined in any way, as it should be.