Fresh Pita – the fastest bread in the land!

BreadIn5 102 Comments

pita

(photo by Mark Luinenburg)

Pita bread is a simple, unadorned flatbread that dates back to antiquity. You simply roll out your favorite non-enriched dough as thin as possible and bake it on a hot stone. There is no resting time or other ingredients to prepare, so you can have it in a matter of moments. Despite its simplicity pita is one of the tastiest breads around. Perhaps it is all of the surface area and the soft chewy crumb? During the winter, this is great on a hot baking stone in the oven (without steam), but in the summer you can do it on the grill, directly on the grate.

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Great Crust without the Steam!

BreadIn5 191 Comments

without steam

For what ever reason some ovens just don’t trap steam very well. This is true of professional equipment, but some home ovens behave this was as well. The reason to care…if you don’t trap steam in the oven for the first 10 minutes of baking you will end up with a dull, lackluster crust, even if you use a good baking stone (which is essential for great free-form loaves).

There are a couple different ways to achieve this, including the tried and true misting bottle. You use a food grade spray bottle and mist the bread every minute for the first 10 minutes. This requires you to stick close to the oven and open the door repeatedly to spray. A bit more work than I’m generally willing to do, but it will give you a nice result. Here is a much easier way: Read More

The Easiest and Tastiest Homemade English Muffins!

jeff 182 Comments

english muffins

In case some of you have missed the memo, it is BYOB year! Bake Your Own Bread!! There are several food bloggers whose New Year’s Resolution is to bake all the bread they need and never buy a single loaf (see below for info!). This includes artisan boules, sandwich breads, sticky buns and even English muffins! These most popular breakfast muffins are a favorite in my house and yet I never make them. There are some things I perceive to be too much trouble to bake at home and shamefully never tried. The English muffin was among them. Oooops, I discovered today that they are so simple and really fast! I owe my family a big apology for not having tried this earlier. I have several of you to thank for this lovely discovery. The English muffin has been a most requested item lately and so here it is in all its simple glory: Read More

Homemade Soft Pretzels!

jeff 91 Comments

pretzels-cover.jpg

Food writing can be very, very memorable.  In 1978, I read a marvelous essay in the New York Times by Mimi Sheraton.  They say that tastes and smells are the most memorable senses, which explains why when we re-create food we ate as children the smells bring us back in the blink of an eye.  The same’s true of great food writing, at least for me.

Mimi’s article on homemade pretzels she ate in Stuttgart, Germany is one of those great food articles that stayed with me.  I clipped the article and forgot all about it.

Testing recipes for Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (click here to purchase), I finally made Mimi’s recipe, adapted from her Stuttgart hosts, so I adapted it for Artisan Bread (page 127 in the book). Read More

Bacon and Eggs in Toast!

jeff 149 Comments

eggs in toast

It is the quintessential breakfast combination; bacon, eggs and toast. But I had no bread to make toast (seems hard to believe, but true). In a desperate race to get my kids to school on time I decided to bake the eggs right into the dough. Not only was it fast, but my kids may never settle for regular eggs and toast again. I threw a bit of Emmenthaler cheese and bacon into the mix and 15 minutes later breakfast was ready!

Jeff and I finished up the manuscript for book #2 yesterday. We are thrilled to be done with this first phase of the book. Now we look forward to months of testing recipes, editing copy, testing recipe and editing more copy! First we will CELEBRATE! 🙂

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Chocolate-filled Beignets (or Soufganiyot, or whatever you’d like to call them)

jeff 33 Comments

sugar-snow-skinny.jpgIf you’ve been to Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans, you’ve had the best beignets (French-style doughnuts) around.  They’re really not very hard to make at home; check out my book, on page 197, and the chocolate-filled variation on page 199.  We make them at my house for Hannukah (tonight was the last night), and they are sublime (the same deep-fried treat is called soufganiyot in Hebrew).  The only special equipment you’ll need is a candy thermometer.

Start with a pound of dough, choosing challah (page 180), or brioche (page 189), which will make 5 or 6 beignets.  Roll out the dough into a 1/4-inch rectangle, then cut into 2-inch squares using a pizza wheel or a sharp knife.  Place a half-ounce of bittersweet chocolate into the center of each square.  Gather the edges of the dough around the filling, pinching at the center to form a seal; you may need to use a bit of water to help the edges stick together.  Read More

Rustic Whole Wheat Bread for Pappa al Pomodoro (and some Holiday gift ideas)

jeff 33 Comments

slashed-boules-cover.jpg

Once again, my gracious friends Jim and Theresa invited my family to their gorgeous cabin, where we needed a warm-up.  Jim made fantastic Italian Tomato Soup (Pappa al Pomodoro), which is actually a bread soup usually made from stale Peasant Bread (see page 46).  But we decided to use the dough from the Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread on page 78 instead, forming it into rustic round loaves.  That’s them just after being slashed, above.  Because they’re free form loaves rather than loaf pan breads as in the recipe, you can bake at 425 degrees F, right on the baking stone for about 35 minutes (use steam from a broiler pan to get a great crust). 

Northern Minnesota is JUST like northern Italy in winter, isn’t it?  Though I guess tomatoes in the soup would make this southern Italian.  Want to make it? Read More