Alton made bread in his dutch oven. I had to make bread in my dutch oven, too! It’s actually a very easy bread to make, perfect for beginner bread makers. Why? There’s no kneading! You just have to wait a really really long time for it to rise. Like 19 hours, and then 15 minutes, and then another 2 to 3 hours. It was worth it in the end. It was really yummy. I love homemade bread.
I’ve made corn bread and corn muffins before, but with my new cast iron skillet obsession, I knew I had to make some in there. The skillet is meat, so I had to find a recipe that I could make pareve.
I decided on a recipe with buttermilk and used rice dream with a drop of vinegar in it. The buttermilk you buy in the store isn’t real buttermilk, anyway, so why not just acidify some milk substitute? (This is real buttermilk.)
I decided that instead of buying bread made with high fructose corn syrup I would make my own. How hard could that be? It happened to be very easy, until it came time to shape the loaves; the first time I made them they looked a little funny, but the bread tasted great! It was such a simple recipe, and made two loaves. I made sandwiches with one for an entire week and froze the other. That was a while ago, and these pictures are from the first batch of this white bread I’ve ever baked. Now I bake this about twice a month. It makes the house smell like a bakery and leaves my stomach and wallet happy.
Tomorrow is Yom Kippur, and all I want to break the fast on is cinnamon buns. This recipe is very easy, and though there’s a lot of wait time, it’s worth it.
Can you tell that I really like cinnamon buns?
The recipe yields a tender dough. The egg yolks make it rich, and the buttermilk adds a hint of tang to the recipe. I changed Alton’s recipe only a little bit because I didn’t have any instant yeast.
Everyone’s really excited to eat these tomorrow after 25 hours of fasting. Continue reading
It’s a tradition to eat round challah during the holidays to symbolize a repetitive cycle – the end of an old one and the beginning of a new one. Usually people add some sweetness to the challah with raisins, and instead of dipping it in salt, as we dip it in sugar (or honey). I skipped the raisins – a lot of my guests don’t like raisins – but made sure to use plenty of sugar.
This challah was definitely a special one. I’ve been practicing the six-strand braid and got really good at it, but have never braided a round one. It came out really pretty. I also made it dairy, since we were having dairy for the second day of rosh hashanah. Instead of the usual oil and water, I used milk and butter, which I thought would add a delicious flavor. Continue reading
A couple of weeks ago I had some store-bought chocolate babka. It was delicious, and I was inspired to try it out with my sister as our next experiment.
Later on, we were scouring the internet and cookbooks for recipes.
We couldn’t find exactly what we were looking for, so we mixed and matched a few recipes to come up with what we hoped was the best chocolate babka ever.
It took a long time, but it was worth it!
Everyone likes cinnamon buns, and I usually make Alton Brown’s recipe. They’re a hit at every gathering. They have a pretty classic flavor with a cream cheese icing on top. When I saw that The Art and Soul of Baking had a maple syrup topping, I knew I had to give this alternative a try.
One thing you need to make sure to do is manage your time right. This dough takes time, but it’s well worth the wait. It is moist and buttery, much better than the bread-like versions I’ve tasted. I made the dough on Tuesday morning and refrigerated it until Tuesday evening. On Tuesday evening I made the topping and filling, shaped the rolls, proofed and refrigerated. I woke up somewhat early and baked the buns on Wednesday morning and served hot, fresh sticky buns to my happy colleagues.
flaky deliciousness
Ever since I saw Ina Garten going to the bakery and buying six croissants for a breakfast party (why she needed so many for so few people at her breakfast party I have no idea) I wondered how hard they would be to make. I googled “croissant recipes,” but really got no good instructions. Everyone I mentioned making croissants to told me I was crazy, just buy them. Instead, I bought a cookbook that happened to have really good instructions for folded pastry dough.
We planned to bake these on a day when we had lots of time, a fast day. We stayed up all night doing the first three turns and then shaped, proofed, and baked them the next day. It was hard to do this without just tasting the dough, but we had a delicious meal to break the fast with. We froze the leftovers and had them for Saturday lunch.
In the end we had 24 croissants. They weren’t giant like bakery croissants, but they were definitely delicious.
