2
Main kid-goal these days is to find new and interesting ways to entice kids out of bed in the morning. What seems to motivate them to leave their cozy beds is the promise of something tasty to eat. One morning: Cinnamon-Raisin toast. It did the trick, albeit slowly… Read More
I picked the world’s freshest watercress from a chilly Minnesota river last week, and baked it into fantastic savory flatbread, all out in the wild (everything tastes better outdoors). This camping-trip method blends two favorite techniques from our book: rolling in something that wasn’t originally mixed in the dough, like our raisin challah on page 183, and baking in a skillet on the stovetop (like our naan on page 173). Read More
A fruit pizza: The fruit sat on top of our basic non-enriched white dough (Master Recipe in the book, page 25), but I’ve been wondering whether we could get away with using brioche dough on a stone placed in the gas grill. I wasn’t so sure, because brioche dough is a bit finicky and prone to scorching or drying if the temperature isn’t quite right or the heat isn’t quite even. So today’s recipe is very similar to the fruit pizza, but it’s made with rich brioche dough (page 300 in the book or here on the website), and it’s folded into a rustic tart.
For me, it’s the Holy Grail: the entire meal done outside in the summer, including a delicious dessert. It works beautifully, so long as you have a gas grill with a reasonably controllable heat source. If you do, you can bake brioche dough outside, at least when it’s rolled out for tarts and other thin creations. Read More
I admit it, I’m becoming obsessed with outdoor dining. We’re at the perfect summer moment up here Minnesota– not too buggy, and perfect temperature for dining al fresco. So I’ve been doing everything on the grill. The pizzas and flatbreads are no surprise, but the loaf breads are more challenging. I did a pumpernickel on the gas grill and topped thin slices with butter, smoked salmon, fresh dill, and capers. But you need to know the new twist for trapping steam to crisp the crust, which usually doesn’t work well on the well-ventilated gas grill. Read More
People kept asking us whether our very wet, stored dough could be grilled directly on the grates of a hot gas grill, and the answer is a very delicious yes– I stopped lugging my stone outside last summer. Read on if you want to see some highlights on how to grill the pizzas I made for friends in my backyard this past Saturday night… Read More
These days it is a struggle to find something kids want to bring for school lunch. It has to be easy to eat in the 15 minutes they are given, taste good, not produce a huge mess and make them the envy of their peers! Calzones are perfect, because everything’s wrapped up in the pizza dough–think spinach and homemade meatballs. Read More
After a bactch of doughnuts for a party, the next morning the oil was still on the stove, albeit cold–but there was brioche dough left in the bucket… Read More
(photo by Mark Luinenburg from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day)
In Minnesota for the past week it has been a little too gray for my taste. The one consolation to all the cold and snow we get around here, are the endless clear blue skies. They are rather remarkable and make the winters tolerable. When they refuse to show themselves through the clouds I go cold. This means I need a little something to brighten up my day. Something sweet! Something easy and quick. Sunny-Side-Up Apricot Pastry (p. 225) will do the trick. A combination of buttery brioche, luscious vanilla pastry cream and tangy sweet apricots.
If you have a batch of Brioche dough at the ready then these treats go together in a short time. Perhaps more than 5 minutes but some indulgences are worth the few extra minutes.
One other thing drives me crazy about January, the lack of fresh fruit. Not that Chile isn’t willing to produce and ship anything your heart desires, but it just isn’t the same as fresh fruit from the farmers market or the pick-it-yourself farm. But this is a craving and one that I can’t wait until summer to satisfy. So I admit I went to Lund’s and bought a can of Apricots and went on my merry way toward happiness. Read More
New York’s a great bread town; its best bakeries are really world class. But if you start sampling restaurants not neccesarily known for their bread, it gets kind of variable. It’s a real disappointment to sit down to a week of great restaurant meals in one of the world’s great food cities, and find that only one of them is accompanied by good bread (pictured above; a Turkish pita with black and white sesame seeds at Zeytin Turkish Restaurant and Bar, on the Upper West Side). Zeytin’s pita, done by a bakery service, has been a bread high point of a nine-day stay in the Big Apple.
But at a fantastic little French-Algerian place, the baguette was comically dismal– it actually CRUMBLED when pressed in the hand (don’t ask about the mouth). This restaurant takes itself very seriously (the terrific and authentic couscous was $38 a plate). Why the gap between food and bread? We all need to complain more (like New Yorkers, which is exactly what our hosts did the next night, when faced with overtly stale Italian peasant bread at their reliable Midtown trattoria where they are well-known to the staff). Alas, there was no fresh bread in the restaurant at 10:30 on a Wednesday.
So for great restaurants with lousy bread, I’m proposing B.Y.O.Bread rules. Make your own and bring the stuff. It will raise eyebrows and consciousness. Meanwhile, here’s a pita recipe that WON’T puff, in the style of Greece or Turkey. Read More
Short answer: Yes!
My method is super-fast because it’s based on stored dough, not because I use a full dose of granulated yeast in the recipes. In the 2007 edition of the first book, I used full-dose yeast (which was 1 1/2 tablespoons for four pounds of dough) because I knew that many readers would want to use the dough within a few hours of mixing it. For the 2013 update of that book, I decreased the dose of yeast to 1 tablespoon, because testing showed that the extra half-tablespoon made little difference if the water was warm (though if it wasn’t, initial rise-time stretches beyond two hours). I’d still consider that a full dose of yeast in a four-pound batch, and you can decrease to 1 tablespoon in any of the recipes, from any of my books. But if you have more time for the initial rise, you can decrease it further–by large margins. Half-doses, quarter-doses, and even less will work. When using fresh cake yeast, increase by 50% (by volume) to match the rising power of granulated yeast.
Why use less yeast? Experienced yeast bakers sometimes prefer the more delicate flavor and aroma of a dough risen with less packaged yeast. And some people found that the full dose of yeast resulted in bread that tasted and smelled of beer or ale. Traditionally, it’s felt that rising the dough very slowly, with very little added yeast, builds a better flavor. So this is an option to try when you have more time:
I’ve tried it two ways, first halving the yeast (1/2 tablespoon), and then dropping it way down, to 1/2 teaspoon. Both worked, but they work slowly. For the 1/2 teaspoon version, you need to give the dough 6 to 12 hours to rise. The 1/2 tablespoon version needs something in between (about 4-5 hours). You don’t need to increase the resting time after the loaf is shaped. Active time is still five minutes a loaf, it’s just your passive resting and rising times that really escalate when you go to the low-yeast version. If you use cool or cold water with a low-yeast preparation, you’ll need 18 to 36 hours for the initial rise.
So if you’ve hesitated to try my method because you like your loaves risen long and slow, give this approach a try.
Low yeast/slow rise with egg-enriched breads: Readers have asked about the food-safety issues in trying low yeast/slow rise at room temperature with egg-enriched doughs. Raw egg shouldn’t be left out too long at room temp. How long is too long? US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is very conservative on this question; they say 2 hours is the max (click here and scroll down for their detailed recommendations). Understand that this would make it impossible to rise a cold-started egg-enriched dough fully at room temperature (though I’ve found that two hours on the counter is enough even for a 33% yeast reduction; the problems start when you make more significant reductions, which would require 8 to 24 hours on the counter). The risk is salmonella and other food-borne illnesses. Even though eggs in baked breads are fully cooked, the USDA is clear on this: 2 hours maximum. They’re a very conservative organization– for example, you basically can’t eat hamburger with any pink in it, according to USDA. Otherwise there’s some risk.
To stay in compliance with USDA guidelines for egg-based doughs, refrigerate at 2 hours regardless of whether the batch has fully risen. Then, allow the rising to complete at refrigerator temperature (18 to 36 hours).
More in The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, and my other books.
Note: BreadIn5.com is reader supported. When you buy through links on the site, BreadIn5 LLC earns commissions.