Sourdough Bread

A couple of weeks ago, my friend, Arie, came over to teach us how to make beer bread. I'm not talking about a quick bread made with beer. I'm talking about chewy, yeasted bread that uses wort in place of water! Wort is the amazing liquid created during the process of brewing beer. The boiling of grains and sugars create a sweet, malty aroma. Imagine a big giant bath of honey, grains, maple syrup, oatmeal, and brown sugar. Are you picking up what I'm putting down? The wort lends all of these flavors to create some of most flavorful bread I have ever tasted.

One of my favorite qualities about Arie is that he truly loves teaching and sharing his knowledge. I'd love to share that knowledge with you, but there were spreadsheets involved!

Like, Excel spreadsheets.

He busted out the metric scale and started talking about mathematical equations, baker's percentages and hydration ratios and I packed up my bags to leave my own house. No, I didn't. I got my hands dirty in the floury mess. But don't worry, Arie has detailed his process to share with you too!

The process starts with boiling malt grains to make wort that is typically used for brewing beer. I can't wait to show you what else you can do with these boiled grains!

If you get the chance to pop into a local homebrewing shop, go sample the various types of grains! The grains range from light beige to pale gold to caramel to amber to deep, rich chocolate. Crunchy tasty.

You gotta have a starter--a simple mixture of flour and water that sits out and collects the naturally occurring yeast in the air. Then, you add the wort and some bread flour to your sourdough starter and let it hang out. It sits out at room temp and bubbles up to make a "sponge".


This is where the spreadsheets come in--you weigh how much starter and water you used to determine how much bread flour and salt to add to create a dough.



The dough is heavy and dense and you can tell right away that it will pack a nice yeasted malty flavor.


After kneading and letting the dough rest, you can shape it into rounds or baguettes and let it triple in volume. Then, like a kid putting sprinkles on the cupcake, you can decorate with seeds, salts, and spices as you wish. Using a sharp knife, you can cut some slashes in the dough if you want to get really fancy.


I have always loved "everything" bagels, so I put on a coating of sesame seeds, dehydrated garlic, poppy seeds, oregano, fennel seeds and salt.


Bake. Bake. Bake.


And wish for a more evenly heated oven.


Thank you, Arie, for sharing your bread knowledge with me. With us.

Garlic Naan

How come when you see people in a movie getting takeout for dinner it is always chinese food?! To be honest, my first inclination when ordering take out (after pizza, of course) is to get Indian food. Or sometimes I whip up a batch of fragrant basmati rice and some Saag Paneer or Crockpot Chicken Tikka Masala and then I run down the street to Indian Oven to just buy some Naan bread. Now, that's a meal! Besides, who has a tandoor clay oven conveniently installed in their kitchen?! I don't have one. But I do have a pizza stone (which is essentially an unglazed ceramic or terra cotta stone that distributes heat evenly and maintains a really hot temperature so that you can crisp up breads and pizza doughs). And, as it turns out, a pizza stone worked out great!

You will be happy to know that it really is fairly easy to make naan! Yes, it takes some planning and some time for the dough to rise, but you can just cover the bowl and go about your day.

INGREDIENTS:

* 2.25 cups flour (plus more for kneading)
* 1.5 tsp. salt
* 3/4 cup plain yogurt (low fat)
* 3/4 cup milk (room temperature or slightly warmed)
* 3 tsp. sugar
* 3/4 tsp. yeast
* 2 Tbsp. chopped fresh parsley
* 1/2 tsp. turmeric
* 2 Tbsp. melted butter (or ghee)

DIRECTIONS:

* Sift flour and salt in a large mixing bowl and then stir in the yogurt.
* In a cup, mix together the warmed milk, sugar and yeast and let sit for 3 minutes.
* Add the milk mixture to the flour and mix with your hands.
* Knead the dough for at least 5 minutes. Add more flour as necessary to get a kneadable consistency because the dough will be very sticky.
* Cover the dough in the bowl with a towel and place in a warm place to rise for 4-5 hours.
* Pre-heat the oven to 475 degrees.
* Once the dough has nearly doubled in size, divide the dough into 6 balls and use a floured surface to roll them out to be flat, thin oblong shapes.
* In a little bowl, mix the butter, turmeric and parsley and brush the mixture on each piece with a pastry brush or spoon.
* Bake on a cookie sheet or preheated ceramic pizza stone for 8 or 9 minutes until it is puffed up, bubbled and browned on top.

Makes 6 large pieces of naan.

Pear, Brie & Walnut Galette with a Honey-Pepper Glaze

I really adore the idea of brunch, don't you!? In France, you would call it le grand petit déjeuner, which is essentially a big breakfast or, literally translated, a "big little lunch" (which is the best oxymoron of them all if you ask me). I like everything about it, really. The lazy mornings. Maybe you slept in a little too late. Maybe it's almost 11 o'clock and you can't decide whether you should eat a sweet breakfast or charge ahead to a savory lunch. Maybe you just want to curl up with some tea and relax while you munch on something yummy. In any case, I have just the thing for you--a warm, flaky galette. Not too sweet. Not too savory. Just perfect...

INGREDIENTS FOR HONEY PEPPER GLAZE:

* 1 Tbsp. butter, melted
* 3 Tbsp. honey
* 1/4 tsp. freshly cracked pepper

INGREDIENTS FOR GALETTE:

* 1 recipe Classic Yeasted Tart Dough
* 1 pear (I used a star krimson pear for its bright red skin), sliced into thin wedges
* 1 small wedge of brie, cut into small chunks or strips (or blue cheese if you prefer!)
* 1/2 cup walnuts, roughly chopped
* 1 tsp. raw/turbinado sugar (optional for crust)
* 1/2 tsp. kosher salt (optional for crust)
* 2 Tbsp. butter, melted

DIRECTIONS:

* Flatten out the dough until it is about 1/4 of an inch thick and gently brush some of the melted butter onto the dough (leaving a little bit for the crust edges).
* Starting in the center and leaving about 2 inches of dough on the edges, arrange the pear slices, slightly overlapping.
* Scatter the brie chunks and the walnuts.
* Fold over the edges to just barely cover the edge of the pears and brush the crust with the remaining melted butter.
* Use a pastry brush or spoon to drizzle half of the honey-pepper glaze over the top.
* Optional step: I like to sprinkle some turbinado sugar and kosher salt on the edges of the crust. The dough is not very sweet at all so I like to have a little sweet and salty kick when you bite into it...
* Bake in 400 degree oven for 30-35 minutes or until the fruit is carmelized and the crust is golden brown, but check on it every ten minutes and continue to brush or drizzle on more of the glaze until it is all gone.

Serving suggestion: I like to serve a slice of the galette next to a nice big handful of mixed greens or arugula simply tossed with some olive oil, lemon juice and salt and pepper...

The Classic Yeasted Tart Dough

There is certainly a soft, buttery little place in my heart for recipes that use frozen puff pastry or filo pastry dough. But sometimes going the extra mile to make some dough from scratch makes all the difference. Plus, it's much cheaper and uses simple ingredients that you will likely already have in your cupboards...

This dough is extremely versatile. I use it to make tarts and little individual quiche cups. But what I really like to use this dough for is making a galette, which is a thin, semi-flaky pastry crust typically filled with various combinations of fruits, nuts, cheeses, and/or vegetables. Galettes are made free form by rolling out the dough, laying out ingredients in the middle and then folding over the edges to create an abstractly shaped "pizza". I find the rustic look so charming...

INGREDIENTS:

* 2 tsp. active dry yeast
* 1 tsp. sugar (if you are making a sweet dish, you can add another teaspoon of sugar, but don't over do it because the dough will not rise properly if you give the yeast too much sugar)
* 3/4 cup warm water
* 4 Tbsp. olive oil
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1.75 cups flour

DIRECTIONS:

* In a large mixing bowl, combine the warm water with the sugar and yeast. Allow that to sit in a warm place for about 10 minutes until it becomes slightly bubbly.
* Add in the olive oil, flour and salt and gently mix with a fork until almost combined.
* Gently use your fingertips to fold in any flour left and knead the dough for up to 3 minutes till it is soft.
* Place ball of dough in an oiled bowl, cover with a kitchen towel and let it rise for about 45 minutes until the dough has doubled in size.
* Roll out the dough on a floured surface, carefully transfer it to a cookie sheet and place it in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes before using it.

Note: You can also freeze the dough and it will thaw out and cook beautifully!

When you want to bake it, I like to keep the oven really hot at about 400 or 425 degrees for a galette (about 35 minutes) or at about 350 or 375 when I am cooking up a quiche (about 45-55 minutes, depending on size of quiche)....

The possibilities are truly endless, but here is a list of some savory and sweet Galette ideas you might want to try:

* Spinach, Carmelized Onions & Fontina Cheese
* Spanish Olives, Manchego Cheese & Arugula
* Tomato, Mozzarella, & Basil
* Fig, Prosciutto & Balsamic Syrup
* Plum with Apricot Preserves
* Potato and Roasted Garlic with Thyme and Rosemary
* Apple & Cinnamon with Marzipan paste
* Pear, Gorgonzola & Honey
* Ricotta and Mint with Meyer Lemon-Honey Glaze
* Pear, Pinenuts & Honey
* Pesto with Sun-dried Tomatoes & Mozzarella
* Sweet potato with Pumpkin-Butter & Pecans

Feel free to share any ideas that you come up with as well! :)

When It Rains, Make Focaccia!

It's supposed to rain all weekend, so I had planned to hole up in my apartment and do two things: cook comforting food and my taxes. I bet you can't guess which I opted to do first.

I was staring out the window watching the rain slam against the glass (the last time it rained this hard, my bedroom flooded because the building is old and the windows are poorly designed) and I started to day dream about my sunny summer days in a little Italian paradise called Cinque Terre...5 tiny little fishing villages filled with the most welcoming people who offer you a sample of their homemade Limoncello, crazy amounts of seafood restaurants, and the best damned pistachio gelato I have *ever* had in my entire life. Cinque Terra also happened to be *filled* with focaccia stands--more kinds of focaccia than you can imagine. And that's good because I would expect nothing less from Italy.

There were entire shops dedicated to focaccia--the perfect comforting salty carb to munch on-the-go...

I practically ate my way through Italy, as any sane person would do visiting that gorgeouslovelyamazingwonderful country...(here, I'm eating artichoke focaccia, which was *divine*):

So, today, since I had to be indoors anyway due to the oppressive rain, why not make some focaccia?! Yesssss...I have been one of the lucky few who got to try ACME's ridiculously delicious Etruscan focaccia that is made with grapes, so maybe I could try that variation another time. There are countless variations of focaccia toppings and recipes (as my time in Italy proved to me), but I decided on a classic Olive and Basil Focaccia. This recipe is relatively easy to make if you have a bread machine and it was really, really yummy...

INGREDIENTS FOR DOUGH:

* 3/4 cup warm water
* 2 Tbsp. olive oil
* 2 cups bread flour
* 1 Tbsp. sugar
* 1/2 tsp. salt (I used French Grey sea salt)
* 1.5 tsp. yeast

DIRECTIONS:

* Place all ingredients in the order listed above in a bread machine on "dough only" setting and let it do its work! Once the dough is ready, you can take it out and put it on a cookie sheet, cover and let it rise more if you want, but this is not necessary and it is perfectly fine to just add the following ingredients:

INGREDIENTS FOR TOPPING:

* large handful of kalamata olives, cut in halves
* 5 or 6 large basil leaves, cut into strips
* 1/2 Tbsp. rock salt, kosher salt or any other flake salt
* olive oil for brushing the top

DIRECTIONS:

* lay dough out on a pizza round (circular tray with holes in it so the crust gets crisp!) or a cookie sheet.
* press dough out in desired shape.
* use your fingers to push indentations in the dough (but not enough to poke through the dough!).
* brush the top with olive oil (which should pool in some of the holes you made with your fingers!).
* scatter olives, basil and salt.
* push the olives into the dough again with your fingers (just enough so they get wedged into the dough because we dont want these precious flavor gems to roll off!).
* bake in oven at 425 degrees for 18-20 minutes until golden brown.

Serving Suggestion: Eat plain or serve with olive oil and balsamic vinegar dipping sauce!