Making the world a little sweeter one pastry tip at at time.
A blini pan is small diameter cooking pan, similar to a frying pan and a crepe pan. It is used primarily for making mini pancakes called blinis. A ‘pancake’ pan is a blini pan just slightly bigger. What makes this style handy is the pan size …read more
Ok, I’m in love with oatcakes. At least this recipe. In celebration of national oatmeal month (January) I dove into my collection of recipes to find some outstanding ones using oatmeal. I almost overlooked this one. Oatcakes are savory biscuits (although sweet ones are out …read more
It’s no secret that I love love love tomatoes from the garden. This year, I planted wild tomatoes, San Marzano plum tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, yellow and red cherry tomatoes, and Black Krim tomatoes. I had tomatoes to my heart’s content. And sometimes when I’m slicing a fully ripened tomato, I get a flashback memory of my grandmother serving up a sweet version of tomatoes when I was a kid.
She liked to garden, too, and she did it on a big scale. She had the green thumb of all green thumbs, and every once in a while, she would make me a special treat: sliced tomatoes with cream and sugar. Served cold, there was just enough sugar to complement the light acid of the fresh tomato. To fully appreciate this dish, though, there is no way it could be recreated with tasteless supermarket tomatoes. The tomatoes called for here must be vine ripened.
This recipe below is adapted from The Southern Junior League Cookbook, and features cherry tomatoes sweetened with brown sugar, lightly sauteed in butter and served with cream. For those who have never had tomatoes with cream and sugar, it is an unusual treat. I like my tomatoes cold, but this recipe caters to those who like the dish warmed.
The warm weather is upon us, and with it comes picnics and potlucks. Picnic cakes are the quick and easy solution if you are tasked with bringing a dessert: they are portable, store well at room temperature, and are typically baked in a 9 inch …read more
Breaking Breads by Uri Scheft gives spirit to old favorites, and is a reflection of the author’s travels. Traditional challah, laminated breads, flatbreads, and stuffed breads are all greatly described and made, and he mixes contemporary ingredients with traditional methods. And it’s not just about …read more
What is “Real Bread?” According to the The Real Bread Campaign, co-founded in 2008 by Andrew Whitley and the charity, Sustain, it is bread that is made without artificial additives or processing agents. At the very basic definition, bread contains just flour and water, and a little salt for flavor and sometimes sugar. The Real Bread Campaign is a community effort to support local bakers and the art of breadmaking, and the effort has spread to over 20 countries.
Baking bread at home for me is both cathartic and energizing – it gives me an outlet during a busy day and both relaxes and energizes me. From the first addition of yeast to the water and watching it foam, to kneading it and dividing it into loaves. I have to admit that having a convection bread maker has made the process so much easier and at times I don’t even think about the process; I just love the feeling when I grace my dinner table and make my kids’ sandwiches with unprocessed bread. I’m a busy mom and run from practice to practice, and having a machine knead it for me is wonderful.
Making bread now is quick and easy even though the process still takes more than 3 hours to complete. And every single loaf made this way from my very basic bread recip tastes just the same as the previous.
Enter in slow bread. Slow bread is more than just spending time kneading and causes you to actually think about the fermentation process. It uses less yeast and needs a much longer fermentation time. It is in this fermentation process that the flavors of the bread come through. Not only does the crumb of the bread improve along with the digestibility of it, but the actual flavor improves as well.
Increasingly, however, Real Bread Bakers are reminding people that long and slow tends to be far more satisfying than a quick finish. Far from farinaceous folly, a long-proved dough has more time to develop flavour, tends to produce a less crumbly loaf, and in the case of genuine sourdough, might even offer health benefits.
This is The Real Bread Campaign’s first cookbook, and the 90 recipes it contains are wonderful. The recipes were contributed by bakers in the industry, and all have been tested. Their names and a brief bio are alongside each recipe.
You’ll find everything from a very basic white loaf using ‘old dough’ to boost flavor to a gorgeous beetroot sourdough. The cookbook begins with a great overview of the slow bread movement and what the bread really is all about. Terms, techniques, ingredients, and equipment are defined, and really great info is presented on the kneading process with Q&A (How do I knead? For how long? How do I know when the dough is properly developed?).
The bread recipe chapters are divided by how the bread has been leavened: pre-ferment, long ferment, and sourdough. The last chapter incorporates the bread leftovers into new menu items.
This is a perfect companion for home bakers and those who bake for a living. It is refreshing that this is more than simply a collection of slow bread recipes but a full guide on why and how slow bread is good to bake.
According to realbreadcampaign.org, all author royalties of this book go to support their campaign.
Disclosure: This book was provided by the publisher and any opinions are my own.
Looking for quick and easy old-fashioned cookbooks for baking (or even giving) this holiday season? The ABC series from Peter Pauper Press may have just you are looking for. Peter Pauper Press recently is releasing several of its older titles from the 50s and 60s …read more
This is a simple recipe for macarons, those favorite French cookies my kids love to call ‘mini cookie burgers.’ Two methods for baking them are below. While it calls for almond flour, other nuts could be used. Hazelnut flour (filbert nuts) can easily be …read more