Continuing my rye kick, for St. Patrick’s Day I decided to try to make soda bread using only rye flour. I started from a brown soda bread recipe from Cook’s Illustrated. That recipe called for a roughly fifty-fifty mix of white and whole wheat flours, with some wheat bran also thrown in, and enough buttermilk […]
Conventional wisdom – among burger bloggers at least – is that it’s not worth it to make your own buns. This matches my experience: chalky, crumbly, too chewy, too rich, the list of sins goes on and on. So many broken promises, so many tears. These bitter bun experiences have taught me better than to […]
3 comments | Baking, Bread, hamburger, hamburger bun, Trout Caviar
Far be it from me to complain about having a job in this economy, but there are certain inconveniences for the food blogger engaged by day in the 9 to 5 grind. Like bread-baking: for me, it has to be a weekend activity, since even if you take the delayed-fermentation route – doing most of […]
4 comments | Delayed Fermentation, Focaccia, Italian, Office, Olive Oil, Work
Over the weekend I reorganized our spices, a project that involved transferring our dried herbs and spices into new jars. An unexpected perk of the process was the opportunity to take in the aromas of each. The wafts of cardamom seeds stayed with me through the day on Monday, and by evening I could no […]
2 comments | Bread, Breakfast, cardamom, Cinnamon, Rolls, Swedish
Local food mega-site the Heavy Table recently stirred up controversy by deeming, after conducting a metro-wide tasting, the Bruegger’s bagel to be the best bagel in the Twin Cities. To have a giant national chain beat out all the local options was understandably upsetting to the many people whose culinary ethos is built around eating […]
7 comments | Bagels, Controversy, Fermentation, Overnight, Peter Reinhart, Twin Cities
Every Christmas my father prepares buñuelos for the family on the mornings of the 24, 25, and 26 so that all can have their share–no matter their arrival time. A round Colombian cheese bread, buñuelos are made from corn starch, shredded queso campesino, milk, and a little salt and sugar (we first mentioned them here). They are […]
8 comments | Bread, Buñuelos, Burgers, Cheese, Cheese Bread, Christmas, Colombia, Colombian Food, Holidays, Tradition, Traditional
My ideal bread–the bread I want to have for breakfast every morning, around my sandwiches at lunch, and to sop up the remains of whatever sauce adorned my dinner–is a crisp-crusted, chewy, open-crumbed bread, flecked with bran. This is the kind of bread perfect with a slice of cheese, some large-grained cured sausage and a […]
15 comments | Bread, Country, Crumb, Delayed Fermentation, Fermentation, Gluten, Kneading, No-Knead, Rustic, Stretch and Fold
When someone I respect as much as Peter Reinhart claims to have discovered a technique that “has the potential to change the… bread landscape in America,” it’s worth taking notice. In The Bread Baker’s Apprentice Reinhart writes: [Delayed fermentation] has the potential to change the entire bread landscape in America. I’ve begun teaching it to […]
6 comments | Boule, Delayed Fermentation, Enzymes, Experiment, Fermentation, Flavor, Peter Reinhart, Proofing, Retarding
Eighty degree weather notwithstanding, I can’t shake the feeling that summer is soon to end and that a short fall will in no time at all be heralding in dark, cold winter. But as far as the farmers’ market is concerned, these fears are unfounded: fall might be around the corner, but there is still […]
4 comments | Basil, Cucumber, Eggplant, Elizabeth David, France, French, French Cooking, Goat Cheese, Heirloom, Olive Oil, Onions, parsley, Peppers, Produce, Provence, Ratatouille, Real Bread, Seasonal, Squash, summer, Tomatoes
