Sometimes you have time to bake bread, sometimes you don’t. But you always have time to take a Black Russian Rye you made at home, and top it with some peppered smoked salmon, a little red onion, and a flavorful parsley-dill sauce.  I adapted the sauce from this recipe by Sunny Anderson – it’s fantastic.  Light, flavorful, and the lemon provides a bright counterpoint that cuts through the richness of the salmon and the intense flavor of the bread.  I’m sending this post over to Susan for her weekly YeastSpotting event.

Where have I been?  In keeping with the ongoing breakdown of all our major appliances, our washing machine broke. I’ve been doing the laundry down by the creek, beating our loin cloths on a rock.  But my new one has arrived!  Hooray for modern conveniences!

Parsley-Dill Sauce

• 1 small bunch fresh dill leaves
• 1 bunch parsley leaves
• 1 lemon, zested and juiced
• 1/2 cup low fat sour cream
• 1/3 cup mayonnaise

Directions

In a food processor, whir together the herbs, lemon juice, lemon zest, sour cream, mayonnaise, and salt and pepper, to taste. Keeps for about 5 days in a tightly covered container in the refrigerator.

This month, for You Want Pies with That?, Jenn of Piccante Dolce asked us to bake a pie that was inspired by a vacation we’ve taken or hope to take.

That was easy:  Nice, France.  On some travel or food show a few years ago, I saw pictures of the sun drenched Mediterranean, azure waters, and markets overflowing with beautiful produce.  So, I slow roasted some Roma tomatoes in the oven after tossing them with olive oil, oregano, salt, and pepper.  Then I layered them on top of crumbled goat cheese and fresh basil, all nestled in a savory butter crust.

How did it turn out?  A lot better than that awful picture! My husband and I (well, mostly me) almost ate the whole thing in one sitting.  Definitely on the repeat list.

Be sure to see what pies others came up with this month at the Pies with That blogroll!

For the BBA group, we are supposed to bake and post all the recipes in  The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread in order.  Well, I baked the English Muffins and this delicious bread on the same day, and accidentally posted them out of order.  My bad.  I think I’ll have a slice of this fragrant, citrusy loaf to make myself feel better.  Toasted.  With butter.

A double decker enriched bread, filled with nuts and dried fruit, this reminds me of the Eastern European breads that the Polish side of my family introduced me to when I was a child.  I used half atta flour, buttermilk, as well as dried tart cherries because – you guessed it – I couldn’t find my cranberries.  I also substituted 3 teaspoons of lemon oil for the lemon extract.  If you didn’t know, lemon oil is a lot stronger than the extract, but I like it better because, to me, it doesn’t have an aftertaste that I often pick up in baked goods that use extract.

My only mishap occurred during the final rise:  the top braid fell off the bottom braid, lending a squat, toad-like appearance to what I had hoped would be a pretty bread.  You should go to Natashya’s blog to see what a really pretty braided loaf should look like!  And see those lighter colored areas in the cross section?  That’s the atta flour that I apparently failed to mix in properly.

Bottom line:  Pure deliciousness.  I really liked this bread, but would save it for the Thanksgiving or Christmas holidays.  You can see what everyone is making this week at our Flickr group, on Twitter (#BBA), or check out the challenge page. This recipe also appears on Google Books.  To see what others have been baking this week in the way of breads, be sure to check out YeastSpotting!

As I’ve said before, when I’m stressed, I bake.  Preferably bread.  On my latest out-of-town jaunt to check on my dear auntie, who has been ill, I felt compelled to bake a bunch of yeasty items the day before I left for Wisconsin.  And one of these items was the English muffins in the The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread.  And, because I had never made homemade English muffins before, and I LOVE them, I was pretty excited to tackle this challenge.

Unlike a lot of recipes in the book, there was no biga, or soaker.  I used buttermilk, and the dough came together quickly and easily.   I loved shaping these little muffins, and they rose incredibly fast in my hot kitchen.  As you can see from the photos, I cooked the first three a little too long on the griddle – the color I was shooting for was a deep golden brown, not black!

But the real test came when I split them open and toasted them – would they have nooks and crannies?

Why, yes, we have some nook and cranny action!  Maybe not quite as much as Thomas’s English Muffins, but as many as Wolferman’s.  The bonus was that my husband loved these, and would like me to make them again.  I thought they could use a bit more depth of flavor.

What changes would I make?  In the future, these will get an overnight rise in the refrigerator to give the dough a chance to develop some more flavor; I may even throw in some sourdough starter to get a bit more “tang.”  In the end, though, these definitely go on the “repeat” list.

FYI, you can see what everyone is making this week at our Flickr group, on Twitter (#BBA), or check out the challenge page.  This bread has been YeastSpotted!

Not Northern cornbread (sweet), but not Southern cornbread (savory), either.  The next entry in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice group, which is baking it’s way through the book, is Peter Reinhart’s cornbread.  FYI, you can see what everyone is making this week at our Flickr group, on Twitter (#BBA), or check out the challenge page.  For the recipe, please see The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread.

The recipe starts with a cornmeal/buttermilk soaker, and includes a full pound of corn and about 10 ounces of bacon.  I baked the whole thing in my cast iron skillet, and ended up with a lovely deep golden brown crust on the bottom.  The bread was surprisingly moist on the inside, and the crisp bacon topping provided a nice counterpoint to the sweetness of the corn.  Both my husband, who prefers his cornbread so sweet that we call it “corn cake,” and our dinner guest (a born and bread Southerner) each had two pieces, and they were not small pieces.

All in all, one of the better cornbread recipes that I’ve ever made, and one that I’ll keep in my repertoire.

For the Recipes to Rival recipe, please check the previous post.

If you’re here for some chocolate brownies and espresso cheesecake, kick  back and set a spell.  This week, Melissa of Life in a Peanut Shell chose Espresso Cheesecake Brownies, pages 104 and 105 of Baking: From My Home to Yours.  A dense brownie layer, covered with espresso cheesecake and the whole thing topped with a sour cream frosting.  This sounded amazing, but it definitely ended up with mixed reviews.

I tweaked the recipe in two ways; one was successful and the other was not.  First, I added walnuts to the brownie layer, a must at my house.  I know there are nut haters out there, but they do not reside at Chez Chow.  That adaptation was a success.  Next, I used semisweet chocolate instead of bittersweet for the brownies, and that did NOT work – just too sweet with the cheesecake layer, even though I cut back on the sugar to account for the adaptation.  And I didn’t much care for the sour cream topping.

All that being said, I think I would make this recipe again for company, with bittersweet chocolate, as written, but still keep the walnuts.  It would make for a very elegant little dessert with some espresso coffee.

And if you’re wondering what the Classic Banana Bundt Cake, chosen by the Food Librarian (you can find the original recipe there) a few weeks ago, is doing here, I finally had a chance to make it between all my flying about.  I mean, considering the rave reviews it received, how could I NOT make it?  Plus the fact that I am a bundt cake/pan fanatic who looks for every opportunity to make one.  Following Caitlin’s lead, I substituted rice bran oil for the TWO STICKS OF BUTTER in the original recipe.  And I nixed the icing because I thought it wouldn’t be needed.  The result? . . . .

DING! DING! DING! We have another Dorie winner!  My husband LOVED this cake.  In his words, “this is what banana bread is supposed to taste like, but never does.”  Really, what better compliment is there?  My adaptations to the Classic Banana Bundt Cake recipe after the jump.  And be sure to check out the TWD blogroll to see what results other bakers achieved with the brownies.
continue reading "TWD -Brownies and Banana Cakes; R2R and Risotto"

This month for Recipes to Rival, Debyi of The Healthy Vegan Kitchen chose Asparagus & Lemongrass Risotto by Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero from Veganomicon.  She wanted to challenge us by going vegetarian and gluten free.  Now, I don’t have a problem with that at all, but NO parmigiano reggiano in my risotto?!  Could I do it???  Yes, I could, even though I had a little bowl of parm on hand, just in case.  The one thing I did eliminate were the optional peanuts, because the thought of them in my risotto just ooged me out.  What can I say? It’s my northern Italian blood talking here!

I had all the ingredients on hand, believe it or not.  Arborio rice and asparagus in the freezer, shallots in the pantry, and fresh lemongrass growing in a pot in the back yard.  Amazingly, I did not have to go shopping for a single item on the recipe.  I must say, I was pretty pleased with myself when I realized I could cook this with the food I had on hand. Heh, heh.

I enjoyed making the risotto, although I did not put on relazing music or have an adult beverage as instructed by Debyi.  Summer on the east coast is “sweating like a pig weather,” which is exactly what I did over a hot stove.  The result was a lovely, light risotto with Asian flavors, which would NOT have worked with the aforementioned parmesan cheese, so I’m glad I left it out.

And if you’ve ever tried to photograph white, and ended up with a whited-out blog in the middle of the photo, you know what became of the photos of the finished dish.  My risotto was still on the pale side, despite the tamari in the recipe.  I really must devote some time to figuring out my new camera.  But at least we’re eating well!  Be sure to check out the R2R and Debyi’s blog for the recipe, as well as one she has for Tangerine Baked Tofu.

The day before I got back on an airplane, I jumped on the computer and discovered that the Bread Baking Babes, an intrepid group of bread aficionados, had been at it again.  This time, the bread of the month was an incredibly fascinating recipe for Russian Black Bread.

Why “fascinating?”  Because the recipe called for sourdough starter, plus yeast, plus coffee grounds, plus crusty old stale bread pieces.  In fact, one of the unfortunate nicknames for this baked good is . . . “dump bread.”  How could I pass up an opportunity to make such a bread, especially when this month’s Bread Baking Day theme is to bake a bread you’ve never made before?  So, I got to work.

Luckily, I had been feeding my sourdough starter, Son of Boris, so he was ready for action.  Boris Senior died earlier this year, when I discovered that he was consorting with something pink in his sourdough container.  So down the drain he went.  Both of them were derived from a sourdough starter recipe by their godmother, Mary over at The Sour Dough.

So, this recipe starts with a sourdough mixture, and a soaker which is supposed to sit for 12-14 hours.  My sourdough sat for 19 hours, and when I took a look at it it was bubbling away, a welcome site to anyone who bakes with sourdough.

The soaker was very interesting, indeed.  You see, in addition to fennel and caraway seeds (which I have on hand and actually was able to find!), I had to toast up some stale bread from my freezer, and grind up some coffee.  As luck would have it, all I could find was Mystic Monks Rum Pecan coffee.  Now, I am NOT a fan of flavored coffees, with a couple of exceptions, and this is one of them.  So, I thought, what the heck!  And in went the Rum Pecan coffee grounds.  Yes, never let it be said that we home bread bakers don’t like to live on the EDGE!

Flours used:  King Arthur Medium Rye, Arrowhead Mills Rye, and Golden Temple Whole Wheat Durum Attah Flour.  To make up for not be able to find the high gluten flour (I know it’s in my freezer, aka “the Time Machine,” somewhere), I added 2.5 Tablespoons of vital wheat gluten (Hodgson’s Mill), following Karen’s lead over at Bake My Day.

The dough came together very easily, and I kneaded it in a stand mixer for about 12-15 minutes at low speed.  It was pretty sticky when I took it out to rise, but I did not add more flour because I’ve found that the stickiness tends to diminish after the first rise with most breads, and I was right.  I decided to shape the loaves into batards, mostly because I stink at it and need the practice.

After slashing the tops, I popped them onto the baking stone.  To my surprise, the loaves baked up beautifully, and did not explode or develop odd growths due to my having shaped them incorrectly.  The loaf was chewy but not too dense.  And the flavor was amazing – deep, complex, with hints of sweetness (from the molasses), sourness, and . . . coffee.  Yes, the coffee flavor, not the rum pecan flavor, came through in different bites.  In fact, this is the most complex rye bread I’ve ever made in terms of flavor, so if you love rye bread, as I do, you will probably enjoy this one!

Thanks to the Babes for inviting all of us to join them.  Gorel at Grain Doe will have a list of everyone who participated, as well as the recipe.  And please check out imafoodblog for Sara’s Bread Baking Day roundup after September 1.  And every week, Susan has a YeastSpotting roundup, which is always fun and inspirational.

Next on the list for the Bread Baker’s Apprentice baking group is cinnamon raisin walnut bread.  Now, things have been hectic around here, and it wasn’t until I had baked the bread and was munching it at my kitchen counter that I wondered where the wonderful cinnamon swirl was.  The swirl that I’d seen over at Tanna’s blog.

Why, it was in a sidebar to the main recipe, the sidebar that I neglected to read what with all my running about.  I have to say that without all that added cinnamon crunch goodness, this loaf was . . . blah.  It tasted too yeasty, and didn’t have enough flavor for me.  I did use half attah durum flour, and half white flour, buttermilk, and I eliminated the walnuts.  I plan on making the recipe again, this time with the swirl and LOTS of cinnamon!

You can see what everyone is baking this week at our Flickr group, on Twitter (#BBA), or check out the challenge page.  For the recipe, please see The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread, or check out Google books.

And I’m sending this in to Susan for her weekly YeastSpotting roundup every Friday.  She’ll be back from Switzerland this week, and I’m eager to read about her trip.

At least my husband and I think that the cinnamon rolls from the Bread Baker’s Apprentice are incredible.

No, my husband said that THESE WERE BETTER THAN CINNABON.  Pause for a moment, and let that sink in.  If my husband, the Honorable Master Chow, weren’t so disciplined, Cinnabon would be a major food group.

I’m lagging a bit behind in my baking/cooking/challenges because of an illness in the family, so I’m coming up for some air.  The good news:  it isn’t cancer that a close relative is suffering from, but it is still pretty serious, and when you’re almost 80, you just don’t bounce back like you used to do.  And baking seems to be my stress reliever.  My brain is happy, the scale . . . not so much.

The Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge (BBA) is the idea of Nicole at Pinch My Salt.  You can see what we’re baking this week at our Flickr group, on Twitter (#BBA), or check out the challenge page.  For those of you who don’t know about it, we are baking everything in Peter Reinhart’s book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread. I must say that when Peter Reinhart claimed that these were BETTER than Cinnabon, I was skeptical.  Peter, I should not have doubted you – they are better.  No commercial aftertaste, and delighfully fluffy.

What changes did I make?  Not many.  I used buttermilk, and Kirkland brand cinnamon (Costco).  Because that is not as strong as Penzey’s Vietnamese cinnamon, I increased the amount to 2 Tbsp, and added a dash of allspice for good measure.  Unlike a lot of other cinnamon bun recipes, Reinhart does not call for extra butter as a foundation for the cinnamon mixture, making for a decidedly less greasy bun.  The recipe for the White Fondant Glaze makes way too much glaze, so next time I will cut that in half, which will provide a generous amount for the rolls.  I used 1/2 tsp. orange oil (not extract) for the glaze, and it worked out really well.  Really, really well, since we polished off all of the buns between the two of us.

Be sure to check out Susan’s weekly YeastSpotting roundup, to see what bread bakers all over the world are making!  This week, Nick at Macheesmo will be hosting for Susan, so head on over there.