Archive for November, 2007

Make note: A major holiday passed and I didn’t bake a dessert. But I did bake.

I love to bake bread – really, I do. Sweet or savory, white or wheat – the yeastier the better.

I fell in love with the look of the famous no-knead bread late last fall – the look of a “real” bakery boule at home. But I’ll be honest, I don’t care how pretty that loaf of bread is, an 18 hour rest rarely fits into my schedule. I often make the decision to bake bread for dinner the day-of and patience is not a virtue for which I am known – just ask Foodie Groom I have no problems kneading a loaf of bread (read: fire up the KitchenAid) if it means I can have bread with dinner in 2 hours.

Ages ago, I bookmarked a recipe for Oatmeal Buttermilk Bread that I saw on Peabody’s site. The chances are pretty darn good that if Peabody published the recipe, it’s a good one. I formed the boules and baked them in my dutch oven, al a the no-knead bread. I got a moist, flavorful wheat bread with a beautiful crust that accompanied dinner just as perfectly as it did the leftovers.

Oatmeal Buttermilk Bread
1 ½ cups rolled oats
1 cup boiling water
¼ cup water
2 tsp dried yeast
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1/2 cup canola oil (I used vegetable oil)
1/2 cup brown sugar (I used dark brown sugar)
1 cup whole wheat flour
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (I used about 4 1/2 cups because my dough was *super* sticky)
2 tsp salt
1 spray bottle of water (I omitted in favor of next ingredient)
1 tsp honey mixed with 1/2 tsp very hot water

Set aside 1/4 cup rolled oats. Place the remaining oats into a medium bowl. Cover with boiling water. Mix with spoon to moisten all oats. Let bowl sit, uncovered, for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

Place 1/4 cup of warm water in the bowl of your stand mixer and sprinkle yeast on top. Let rest for 5 minutes. Add soaked oats, buttermilk, oil, brown sugar, both flours, and salt (I added the original 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour and then added extra flour in 1/4 cup increments). With hook attachment, mix on low speed to combine, then increase speed to medium and mix for about 10 minutes. Dough will be wet and cling to hook, but have a satiny finish.

Place dough in an oiled bowl and over with plastic wrap. Proof in a warm area for about an hour, the dough will almost double in size. (My oven has a “dough proof” setting for 82 degrees and the dough doubled in about 45 minutes.)

Place dough onto a floured surface and flatten it with your hands, releasing excess air bubbles. Divide the dough into two equal portions. Knead a few times to form each half into a ball and rest seam-side down on two sheets of parchment paper cut larger than the dough ball (a tip: the parchment will enable you to easily transfer the dough to and from the dutch oven so it needs to be large enough to keep it from sticking to the bottom/sides). Cover with lightly-oiled plastic wrap and let rise for 45 minutes.

While loaf is proofing, place a covered dutch oven into the oven and preheat oven to 450.

Remove plastic wrap and use a very sharp knife or razor (I have a 4″ razor from the hardware store that I use specifically for slashing baguettes) and make 1/2″ deep cuts on the bread in a pattern of your choice. Use a brush to apply the honey and water mixture to the top of one loaf (allow remaining loaf to continue to rise). Sprinkle with half of the remaining oats. Carefully transfer the parchment paper with the dough to the dutch oven and reduce temperature to 400. Cover and bake for 35 minutes. Remove lid and bake an additional 15-20 minutes until loaf is a deep brown.

Remove dutch oven from the oven, use the parchment paper to remove the bread from the oven. Glaze the remaining loaf with the honey mixture, sprinkle with the remaining oats, and bake as directed for the first loaf. Allow loaves to cool completely before cutting.

Adapted from the Macrina Bakery and Cafe Cookbook, as seen on Culinary Concoctions by Peabody.

This is my favorite way to consume Jif – my favorite way that doesn’t involve just a spoon or my finger.

These cookies don’t advertise but if they did, they’d live up to their name with no problems. I’ve actually made a recipe called “The Best Peanut Butter Cookies Ever” and I don’t think those even compare. They’re chewy, moist, peanut buttery, and they’re not grainy like some cookies I’ve tasted. The honey-roasted peanuts folded into the batter at the end puts these cookies over the top.

Peanut Butter Cookies
1 stick butter, cubed and room temp
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup honey-roasted peanuts, roughly chopped

Preheat oven to 375. Cream the butter and peanut butter on medium high for 1 minute. Add sugars and beat at med-high for another minute. Add eggs, vanilla and mix until smooth. Add flour, baking soda and salt on low speed until thoroughly combined. Mix in peanuts (the dough will be quite soft). Chill dough for 15-20 minutes. (I usually start out with room temperature dough for the first pan for a flatter, chewier cookie and refrigerate the remaining half of dough while the first batch is baking. The colder dough yields a puffier cookie.)

Drop the dough onto a lined baking sheet (whatever method you prefer to keep cookies from sticking is fine). You can use a greased fork to form the traditional criss-cross (I didn’t). Bake for 10-12 minutes until edges are golden brown. For a crispier cookie, allow the entire cookie to brown. Let cookies cool on baking sheet for 10 minutes and then transfer to a rack to cool completely.

Let’s talk about the size of of this cookie (again). I use a No 10 scoop to drop a well rounded scoop of chilled cookie dough (approx 3/8 cup of cookie dough) onto parchment-lined baking sheets and bake for 23-27 minutes. I get 6 or 7 cookies with a diameter of 6 inches using the No 10 scoop. Perfect if you’re going for the “real bakery” look, perhaps less-than-perfect if it’s just you and 8 of your new peanut-buttery friends over a weekend. If you scoop a more normal sized cookie, I’d estimate 12-16 minutes in the oven.

Yields: Depends on size of cookie, I get 6 or 7 jumbo cookies
Source: Adapted from The Pastry Queen

I started to think that joining the Daring Bakers during high baking season wasn’t a good idea after all. You know, that whole spit-into-the-wind, tug-on-Superman’s-cape thing. Then the announcement came. Bread? Could the Baking Gods be that pleased?

::Bowing reverently towards my oven::

My first challenge as a new member of the Daring Bakers would be bread. Homemade bread. Just in time for Thanksgiving. Tanna, dear – you are a genius

My Kitchen in Half Cups is hosting this month’s Daring Baker Challenge: Tender Potato Bread. It was very difficult not to run into the kitchen and bake the potato bread on the day the recipe was announced to the group. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that difficult – I didn’t have any potatoes. But still, I held off ’til the Tuesday before Thanksgiving so I could kill two loaves with one stone.

We had free reign over the flavoring of the bread (as long as it was savory) and the shape of the bread. Since there seems to be an unwritten rule that all breads served at Thanksgiving must be round, I opted to make rolls. Everything else was to be done by the book and by hand. This meant I wasn’t allowed to sit at the island and do my Christmas shopping online while my KitchenAid did all the work – I had to get my hands dirty. An odd admission by someone who loves to cook and bake: I hate to get my hands dirty. We were warned that the dough would be sticky – that was an understatement!

A pictorial in making Tender Potato Bread rolls, using my fancy-schmancy new camera:

I flavored half of the batch with a generous mound of fresh cracked pepper and Pecorino-Romano and left the other half “plain.” I let the dough complete two rises and then I wrapped the rolls with lightly-oiled plastic wrap and popped the trays into the freezer. Two hours before I was ready to bake the rolls, I pulled them out of the freezer and let them sit on the counter. After a quick brush with some melted butter (another Thanksgiving requirement), the rolls went into the oven ’til golden brown. The recipe yielded nice, moist and tender rolls.

For the recipe, visit My Kitchen in Half Cups. And don’t forget to check out the other Daring Bakers’ version of Tender Potato Bread!

Need more yeast? Then check these out.