Thanksgiving Baking Recap

I did a lot more baking than cooking this Thanksgiving. Although I love to cook, at get- togethers, it has become expected that I will bake. I certainly don't mind this, as I have grown to really enjoy baking over the last year.

Since R and I both have family in town, we often end up doing double duty on holidays. This year we had a Turkey Day brunch with R's family. Erica made a bunch of delicious savory food, so I went the other direction and made a huge pan full of brioche sticky buns. And, if I do say so myself, this was the best batch yet. I used the brioche dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, and I promise you don't want to ask how much butter, eggs, and honey is in it.

You start by whipping together butter and brown sugar and spreading it along the bottom of the pan. For my double batch we filled up a 9x15 pyrex baking dish. Then spread a handful or two of pecan halves around. The dough gets rolled out and spread with a mix of whipped butter and brown sugar with cinnamon and chopped toasted pecans. Roll the dough up, chill for a bit, and then slice into rounds. Arrange the rounds into the pan so they are just touching and fill the pan up. You can let them rise and bake immediately, but I usually get to this point, cover in cling wrap and put them into the fridge overnight. That way you can do all the prep work in the evening (or after the kids go to bed) and bake first thing in the morning. I think the slow, cold ferment also gives the dough a nice character. They come out soft, warm, gooey, and amazing.

That evening we had dinner at my mom's house with about 14 others. Again, I was on baking duty. This time I wanted to bring bread and some sort of dessert. I ended up making a loaf of crusty artisan semolina bread and a batch of pull-apart buttermilk rolls. For dessert I put together a pinenut tart that has always been a favorite of ours but one that we haven't had in quite a while.


The semolina loaf was also ABi5MaD, and therefore quite easy but delicous. The rolls were a new recipe I found at one of my favorite sites, The Fresh Loaf. Luckily there were several comments after the original recipe post that talked about needing to add extra moisture to the dough to make it workable. I would have been concerned because I, too, ended up adding quite a bit more buttermilk before I could work the dough well. Still, the dough was quite tough, almost like a bagel dough, so I was worried that the rolls would be too dense or tough. All in all they went together very easily, baked up beautifully, and were soft and delicious. We will definitely be making these again; they're tasty and have a fun presentation.



Finally, for dessert, we had the Pignoli Nut Tart that I have been making for years. It is wonderful to eat, and easy to make. It's a simple all butter pate sucree base, with an almond meal filling, baked half way, topped with pine nuts and then put bake in to finish baking. It is not too sweet, and great with a whipped cream and a drizzle of good honey.


It was a fun holiday spent with family, friends, and a lot of quality carbs.

Cool Weather = Warm Bread

Now that the weather has finally started to cool off, I haven't been afraid to heat the oven up. While I haven't branched out into anything new and exciting, we have been enjoying some of our favorites. I've been trying to keep a batch of 5 minute a Day dough in the fridge so we have bread or pizza whenever we want. The go-to bread dough lately has been 6 cups unbleached AP flour and 1/2 cup dark rye flour per batch. We'll get three or four small loaves, or two larger boules out of this. This is also enough for a loaf or two of bread and several small pizzas. Just for fun I've thrown in a few pics of our current favorite bread (and one semolina boule), proofed in the brotform.



I've been enjoying venturing into new bread territory, but I still can't recommend Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day more highly. Especially for anyone out there who has been intimidated by yeast breads in the past, it really is so easy. Just pick up the book and a baking stone and you're in business.


HARPER and JACK <-- Harper was sitting on my lap as I typed and wanted me to type this for her.

This Weekend - I Baked

I have been wanting to do a lot more baking and cooking lately. It has just been too busy with kids, work, event like American Idol, etc. But this weekend, the stars aligned and I was able to spend some time in the kitchen. Actually, it is mostly due to my beautiful wife who was kind enough to stay on top of the weekend chores and the kids so I could get some yummy things from the oven to our bellies. And, speaking of stars...they were gorgeous last night. R and I stepped outside after the kids went to bed and the sky was brilliant with glowing stars, we hung out outside long enough to see a shooting star together, which has always been a thing for us.

Back to the baking. This weekend, I made...

a brotform loaf of semolina bread,

a classic diner style layer cake with homemade peach jam and spiced whipped cream,

and bagels from Grandpa S's recipe

I also made some zuchinni pickles from the Zuni Cafe cookbook to put on hamburgers at my mom's house tomorrow.


So first off, the brotform. This was basically because I needed space in the fridge. I had some semolina dough from ABi5MaD and I let it rise in the brotform I got from D and M. This was a much smaller loaf than the last one, but it worked just fine. We had it as an appetizer with some rosemary oil and balsamic last night.

The cake was also for last night - we celebrated my Dad's birthday.

They had just dropped off some fresh peaches for us the day or two before so I thought it would be fun to incorporate them into the cake.

I have been looking for a go-to cake recipe lately and have been playing with one from Dorie Greenspan that was used in a past DB challenge. I made it a few nights ago as mini lavender bundt cakes, but I forgot the vanilla extract and they were obviously a bit flat (sorry Cat and Heath). I am liking the cake, it's got a great texture and a hint of lemon from the zest that is blended with sugar and then creamed with the butter.

This time I used vanilla and walnut extract and used the homemade peach jam (which was just cooked fresh peaches with butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove) and covered the whole cake with whipped cream (whipped with powdered sugar for added stability) flavored with a hint of the walnut extract. It ended up looking like a classic diner cake. I really liked using the whipped cream - I really really like whipped cream, so covering a cake (I really really like cake too) in whipped cream is definitely the way to go. I can do without buttercream for a while.

I have also been wanting to bake more bread lately and I thought trying out Grandpa's bagel recipe would be perfect. My grandpa was a New York fireman way back, and used to tell me cool stories about growing up playing stickball in the streets. Now some people swear that you can't make a good bagel outside of New York because there is something special in the water, but Grandpa and I gave that theory a run for its money today.

To make bagels, you make a basic bread dough with salt and a bit of sugar, and knead the heck out of it

let it rise,

reknead, then shape into the the classic bagel "oh".

After a brief rise, they are boiled in salted, malted, water. I used sugar, because I didn't have any malt in the house. Boiling is key. You can't make bagels without boiling, so don't even try, unless you are a huge fan of round rolls. Steaming bagels doesn't work either, they don't get that perfect crust and chewy inside without being boiled.


They boil for about three minutes then you take them out and put them on a greased cookie sheet and you can add your favorite toppings at this point. That is of course assuming to don't think blueberries, or sundried tomatoes are the perfecting topping. Chocolate chip and blueberry are muffin flavors, not bagels. Today I went with sesame seeds, caraway seeds, and some gray salt.


They'll sit again for a few minutes and then head into a preheated (425) oven for about 25-30 minutes. I did add extra steam when I first put them in and I left my baking stone in the oven to regulate temp since I knew I would have to open the oven to rotate the two trays.


After an agonizing wait to let them cool, R and I finally tried some. They're fantastic. I will keep playing with the recipe, but I won't buy bagels in the Valley ever again. They are delicious, dense, chewy with a crust. I can't wait to toast one up in the morning with a schmear of cream cheese.

Grilled Bread

I finally made another batch of bread dough. Semolina this time because I didn't have any unbleached ap flour in the house (I know, how does one let these things happen?). We had Steve and Erica over for dinner so I wanted to try a little grilled bread for an appetizer. I took a few small pieces of dough, spread it out on a Silpat with a bunch of olive oil, sprinkled a few herbs and sea salt on the bread and plopped it down on a medium-hot grill. Close the lid, and flip it over in a few minutes. You can of course cover it with some precooked toppings, sauce and a little cheese and make quick and easy grilled pizzas. But tonight instead, I made a new pasta dish from a site I like a lot. The Velvety Broccoli and Feta Pasta was pretty good - broccoli, feta, lemon, parsley - what's not to like? We served it all with a good salad and a nice citrus-honey viniagrette. All in all a good meal, and of course great company!

Sesame Semolina Batard

Sesame Semolina Batard you silly bastard.

Pizza on the Grill

Not your classic grilled pizza. This time I actually put the baking stone right on the grill and cooked the pizzas on the stone with some water in a metal cup on the side for the steam. The pizzas looked great and were okay to eat, but the crust was definitely on the charred side. I'll have to experiment some more in order to really get this one down. It was nice on this near 100 degree day to not heat up the stove in the house though.

We made three small pizzas for dinner, all with a semolina crust, basic tomato sauce and mozarella - one with pepperoni, one bbq chicken and one plain pie with fresh basil.

Good enough to try to hone in the cooking heat and time in order to perfect the crust.

Semolina Baguettes

Grilled Tri-Tip Sandwich

I had a batch of semolina dough hanging out, so I made a few small baguettes and grilled a tri-tip and some peppers and onions. Harper and I harvested fresh arugula from the garden and we put it all together with some spicy mustard and a horseradish cream sauce I made. The bread and the sandwiches were very good.