Adding Some Yeast to the Morning Routine

I'm sure I've said it before, but I'll say it again: breakfast and brunch are my favorite meals, especially when it comes to entertaining. Dinner parties are fun, lunch is cute, but there is something so cozy and friendly about brunch, and I love waking up to bake muffins or whip up a batch of buttermilk pancakes.

This weekend we had some friends over for brunch, and kept it simple with scrambled eggs, toast, and the newest addition to our morning repertoire: fresh-from-the-griddle English muffins. The best thing about the muffins, though, is that they don't just have to be an entertaining-only affair. They are definitely impressive and delicious, and yes, they do require a yeasted batter, but I'd be so bold as to say that they are actually easier to make than a regular batch of pancakes.



I guess that's why I've made them three times in the past two weeks. The only "rise" they need is a quick 45-minute rest, which happens to be the perfect window for checking email (or if you're me, about 1000 food blogs), and whisking a few eggs or making some oatmeal. The best part about these muffins, though, is that they are cooked on a griddle instead of baked. Plus, the batter is wet and malleable enough that you don't need to roll them out - just drop a puff of dough on the griddle and you're good to go. Sure, they come out a little irregularly shaped, but that's never stopped anybody from eating them as far as I can tell.

These English muffins are worlds better than anything that you can buy in a store. Fresh off the griddle, they are warm and steamy, with a soft, chewy interior. Forget nooks and crannies - these muffins have supple peaks of yeasty dough tucked between lightly crisped edges, browned and golden from the heat of the griddle. They can, theoretically, be split and toasted or slathered with jam, but Jonathan insists on eating them plain. The flavor imparted by a generous amount of yeast, a touch of whole wheatiness, and a bit of sugar is surprisingly robust.

In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, the recipe I use is adapted from a recipe I found on the excellent baking blog, Baking Bites. It is one of the only recipes I found that doesn't require several rises, the use of elusive English muffin rings, or other wildly inconvenient processes that would make these prohibitively involved for an everyday breakfast item. My only modification is to substitute a cup of whole wheat flour for one cup of regular white flour. I've made them both ways, but whole wheat flour lends a heartier taste, in addition to a few grams of my favorite nutrient: fiber.

The only mildly challenging part of this recipe is the cooking. If the heat under the griddle is too high, you'll end up with a burnt exterior and a slightly underdone interior. I use relatively low heat, allowing the griddle to heat up just until some water sprinkled on it sizzles and evaporates. Once you drop the dough on the griddle, don't move it for a few minutes, flipping it once the underside is golden brown and the sides of the muffin are starting to dry out. The muffin is done when both sides are golden brown and the sides are dry to the touch, about 5-8 minutes total.



I love this recipe for many reasons, but here are the ones that will convince you to try it: 1) it only has 5 ingredients that don't come from the faucet 2) it yields a yeasty, bready flavor with only a 45-minute rise 3) it is in no way similar to anything store-bought 4) the muffins are delicious and healthy without the use of any dubious "substitutions." Enjoy!

Shockingly Easy English Muffins (adapted from Baking Bites)

2 c. flour (white, half whole-wheat, or 100% whole wheat)
3/4 tsp. salt
2 1/4 tsp. instant yeast
1 tbs. sugar
1/3 c. water
1 c. skim milk
cooking spray

Directions:
Whisk together flour, yeast, salt, and sugar in a large bowl. Warm the water and milk together in the microwave until warm, about 45 seconds. Mix the liquids into the flour, stirring with a wooden spoon to combine thoroughly. Beat until well-mixed, about 30 seconds or so. Dough will be wet (much wetter than most bread doughs). Cover bowl with plastic wrap and a tea towel, and set aside to rest for about 45 minutes, until puffed and bubbly. To cook the muffins: heat a griddle or skillet over medium heat until water sprinkled on its surface sizzles and evaporates immediately. Lightly grease with cooking spray, and then drop big spoonfuls of the dough onto the griddle using either a greased spoon or a greased measuring cup (I use a 1/3 c. measure). Cook until golden brown, and then flip and cook until sides of muffin are dry. They are best eaten fresh, but keep very well in a zip-top plastic bag for a day or two.

Hot Chick Pizza

I know, I know...it's been a slow blog month for me. Just when i thought I'd have all the free time in the world, little things started popping up - apartment searching, catch-up schoolwork, weekend trips - that have been keeping my posting at bay.

Luckily I've still had ample time to cook, and in addition to some new sweet baking experiments (recipes coming soon, I hope!), I've been playing around with bread doughs, too. And I'm not just talking about whole wheat pitas, either. I do love my whole wheat pitas, and I especially love the versatility of the dough, but my last creation took flatbread to a new level.

For one, I used a special secret ingredient in the dough. More importantly, though, I created my first original yeasted dough recipe. Most of the chemically-leavened recipes on this site are my original recipes, and I've gotten pretty comfortable baking on the fly, without a recipe, recording measurements as I go. Yeast, though, has always been a tricky thing, and I've mostly stuck with other people's guidelines when it comes to making pizza, pita, or bread.

Ever since the last pita episode, though, I've been looking for a good day to make more flatbread. The idea of a Mediterranean pizza seemed to be stuck in my head, and I wondered if I could incorporate some of that inspiration into the dough itself, and not just the toppings on the bread. Thus my garbanzo dough was created. I was hoping to get a real chick pea flavor in my dough with the addition of garbanzo flour.

Honestly, I can't say that I'd be able to pinpoint garbanzo as the distinctive flavor of this dough, but it really was much more flavorful than ordinary dough. It turned out to be the perfect backdrop for a host of different toppings, including spinach, red onion, roasted peppers, herbs, and feta.

I made the dough with a sponge in the hopes of it imparting a certain richness in flavor that straight doughs often lack. Although it sounds complicated, a sponge is like a pre-dough made with all of the liquid, part of the flour, and the yeast of the recipe, which allows the yeast to develop a bit before the addition of more flour and other flavoring agents (salt, oil, etc.). The sponge entails an extra rising period, but this recipe is pretty flexible - I made it on a day when I was in and out of the kitchen, and all of the rising times are approximate. I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's pretty hard to mess up a flatbread dough.


The dough mixed and rose beautifully, and was particularly easy to roll out for thin, almost cracker-like pizza crusts. A combination of garbanzo, white whole wheat, and whole wheat flours resulted in a lower gluten content and thus a slightly less elastic dough than a traditional wheat dough. After a few minutes on the pizza stone, the crusts were golden, crunchy, and slightly bubbly around the edges, but the interior was thin and a bit chewy.

Given that legumes in general are about the healthiest thing one can consume, and that they lend a distinctly savory and pleasant flavor to this dough, its appeal is two-fold. I made a bunch of dough, used half for dinner on Friday, and then saved the rest in the refrigerator for lunch on Sunday. Yes, the secret is out, I'm so not doing the whole matzah thing. The name "hot chick pizza," though, was created during the car ride back from a Passover seder...

We took the dough in a whole bunch of directions, so it wasn't just plain old pizza, either. We made several smallish thin-crust breads, some with spinach and ricotta, and some with peppers, onions, and pine nuts. We also did a "deep-dish" risen-crust pie with sausage and mozzarella (guess who ate that one?). We tried out a wee calzone with ricotta, tomatoes, and spinach, and even made a little garbanzo griddle cake that Jonathan ate with scrambled eggs for breakfast.

Next time, I think I'll make a huge batch of this dough, and stash some in the freezer so that when I'm struck by a garbanzo griddle cake craving (they happen to the best of us), I'll be totally prepared. Seriously, though, this dough is awesome. Try it!

Whole Wheat Garbanzo Dough (for Chick Pizza)

Sponge:
1 c. garbanzo flour
1 c. white whole wheat flour
1 tbs. instant yeast
1 tsp. sugar
1 3/4 c. warm water

Dough:
All of sponge
2 1/2 - 3 1/2 c. whole wheat bread flour
2 tsp. salt
2 tbs. olive oil

Directions:
Prepare sponge: mix dry ingredients in a large bowl, and add warm water. Stir for a few minutes, until thoroughly combined. Sponge with be very wet. Let sponge sit, covered, for about 45 minutes, until bubbly. Add salt and oil, and then start adding additional flour. Stir in about 2 c. of flour, adding more until dough is too stiff to stir with a wooden spoon. Turn out the dough and begin kneading, continuing to add flour until it is just tacky and smooth. Return dough to bowl and cover with oiled plastic wrap and a dish towel. Let rise until about doubled in bulk, 1 1/2-2 hours. Punch down dough and either roll out for pizzas or place in a sealed plastic bag and store in the refrigerator until ready to use. Makes enough dough for about 6 smallish, thin-crusted pizzas.

1st Daring Bakers Challenge: Baking (and kneading, waiting, deflating, shaping, proofing, and slashing) with Julia

The moment you have all been waiting for: Red Ramekin's first foray into the exciting and borderline cultish world of the Daring Bakers. "The Daring Bakers?" you ask. "Wow, you must know basically nothing about the culino-blogosphere," I chortle, possessed and covered in flour. It's OK, though, I'll explain anyway. The Daring Bakers is a baking group composed of lots and lots of food bloggers from all over the world. Each month, an illustrious blogger or two "hosts" the event, which means that they pick a challenging baking recipe, disseminate it to the eager and less-illustrious members of the group, and then try and moderate the endless discussions that go on throughout the month surrounding the specifics of the recipe. This often includes topics such as the percentage of gluten in bread flour, the appropriate proofing time for bakers living in Malaysian huts with no air-conditioning, and whether it is acceptable to use a linen towel for covering your dough, even though the recipe explicitly says canvas. It's awesome. No, seriously, the Daring Bakers, and the Daring Bakers blog, are really awesome.

The recipe is released to the group members on the 1st of each month, and must be kept a secret until the last day of the month, when all of the bloggers get to post about their successes and/or failures in making the chosen recipe. The event is not a competition, but rather a way for the blog-obsessed to branch out and try recipes that they might not choose to try otherwise. There's more information, and a complete list of members, at the Daring Bakers blogroll.

So, this month's challenge was.....Julia Child's French Bread. Compared to some of the previous challenges (strawberry mirror cake, lemon meringue pic, sticky buns, buche de noel) this one seemed a bit ordinary. However, most ordinary recipes don't require 12 hours to complete. Ordinary recipes don't require that you set your resting dough on a heating pad to achieve the desired rising temperature. Ordinary recipes aren't 8 pages long. You get the idea. It may be bread, but let's face it: bread-baking is anything but easy. Besides, it's a Julia Child recipe, which makes it extra-special. I (like everyone else who has ever cooked) grew up on Julia Child. OK, I'm exaggerating a bit, but Baking with Julia, on PBS's How-To Saturdays, was the best show. Ever. At that age (maybe 12 or so) when watching TV for an entire Saturday was still a reasonable undertaking, I watched Julia religiously.

I have been pretty busy with work this month, but I didn't want to delay membership in the Daring Bakers another month. So, last Sunday was dedicated to Julia's French bread. We prayed for success on the first try, because there probably wasn't going to be a second try. And nobody likes blogging about failed French bread. Luckily, all went according to plan. We ended up with 3 lovely, uber-French batards with golden, crispy crusts and feather-light interiors.

I will spare you the entire recipe, because it is basically the longest recipe I've ever read and I don't even want to think about typing it up. If you are curious, though, check it out here. I'll lay out the basics, though.

First was the mixing, and then the kneading. Lots of kneading:


Then the dough rose until tripled in size, at which point we deflated the dough and set it to rise again. After the second rise came the shaping:


And then another rise:


And then the baking, which involved, among other things, a silicone pastry brush, two baking sheets, a pizza peel, a baking stone, a cast-iron skillet, lots of floury towels, and 10 ice cubes. Look!


Since this was a rather momentous event in my life as a food blogger, I have taken some time to seriously (and not so seriously) reflect on the whole experience.

Overall, it was wonderful. I've been really into bread-baking lately, and this was a kind of baking that I haven't done so much of. It's a totally classic recipe, and it's one of the staples of any decent baker's bread repertoire. I am pretty obsessed with creating my own recipes and using lots of whole grains and alternative ingredients, but it was fun to have an excuse to go completely balls-to-the-wall refined flour for a change.

We have also been doing a lot of that new-fangled no-knead stuff lately. I must admit that I love the no-knead method. It takes literally 5 minutes to mix the dough, and then you just let it hang out for a while in your fridge until you get your lazy ass around to baking it. That's what I'm talking about.

Still, though, there is something about doing bread the real way - I'm talking about kneading now - that is utterly satisfying. This dough was so great to work with, and it was very nice to actually make a successful kneaded loaf. I've tried doing kneaded loaves in the past - just a few times - and have never really been successful. I discovered that it's because I never really knew how to actually knead dough. This recipe explained it very thoroughly. Turns out when a recipe says "10 minutes" it actually, literally means 10 minutes. My arms were tired. When I was kneading the French bread dough, I could see and feel the dough transform from a mish-mash of gluten and liquid into a smooth, soft, cohesive bread-to-be.


The dough was also amazing in the strictly tactile sense. I'd really been missing out by not kneading dough. After a few minutes, this lovely, white, little lump was so soft and smooth that it almost melted (not really, but it felt like that) into my hands. It wasn't sticky, but just barely tacky; it cleared the surface and became delightfully springy and elastic. By the time I was done pounding that sucker, it was like a refined little bubble of yeasty velvet. If my fingers could talk, they would have said something like: "aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhoooooooooeeeeeeahhhhhooohh." Oh yeah, it was that good.

The evidence for that was in the rising: our precocious little dough-ball puffed up to triple its volume in less than 2 hours. You don't see that with whole-wheat dough. Trust me. The risings went smoothly, so that was good, if not overly exciting. I went to yoga class during the second rise, though, which was a little bit exciting.

And then there was the shaping. This part scared me the most, since I've never had to shape my free-form loaves into "batards" before. The directions were thorough, although not altogether clear; it was hard to visualize them without actually having the dough in front of me. When the time came, though, the directions pulled through. I won't claim that the loaves were perfectly shaped, but they were at worst a rough approximation of a traditional French bread shape. Long, thin, and not horribly disfigured.

Baking was also a breeze, although it required brushing the loaves with water every 3 minutes for the first 9 or so minutes of baking. Hey, I told you this wasn't easy. Miraculously, though, everything seemed to work more or less as written. After letting the loaves cool for a ridiculously long time, we sliced into one and were pleased with both taste and texture. The crust was crispy with a slight chew, and the crumb was close and fine but light as a feather and subtly yeasty.


So, the real test: is it something I'd make again? Well, to be honest, probably not. For one, this loaf requires 100% white flour. Substituting whole grains here would not be pretty. Nor would it be tasty. While I make some exceptions to my whole-grain regime, when I bake for myself I try to stay away from white flour.

And then, of course, there is the time commitment issue. I do like making bread, and I'm excited to try some more kneaded loaves, but this recipe is a bit over-the-top, time-wise. Three rises, really attentive baking, fairly involved shaping....it all adds up to an entire day dedicated to bread. Not that I don't like the occasional day-dedicated-to-bread. But still. This recipe isn't messing around.

The final kicker? Yeah, our French bread was good. But it wasn't any better than a loaf you could get in any bakery or (gasp!) supermarket. Yep, I said it. Store-bought loaves won't make your kitchen smell wonderful, but seriously, they will save you 11 hours of your precious time. Even if your time isn't that precious, that's still a freaking lot of time. I refuse to use this argument when talking about a) breads that don't take huge amounts of time or b) breads that are in some way unique and can't be replaced with store-bought loaves (there are many). But French bread? It's pretty much everywhere, and baking it is definitely not my comparative advantage (just ask Jonathan, the resident economist, what that means). Oh, I almost forgot: sourdough is better than French bread. If I try to do a traditional white loaf again, you can bet that some serious sourdough starter will be involved. Snap.

So, that's the wrap-up of my first-ever Daring Bakers challenge. Totally worth it, totally enjoyable, and totally educational. I can't wait for the next one (I find out tomorrow, but you have to wait until the end of the month!).

Also, if you actually read this entire post, you can officially consider yourself a food blog geek. You're basically a step away from joining the Daring Bakers yourself. But look at what lies ahead:

Homemade Bread: A Primer

Having decided to pursue home-baked bread in earnest, we picked up a copy of Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois' Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. The title is alarmingly infomercial-like, but the content is decidedly unso. It is also a little vague -- it should be "Artisan Bread in an Average of Five Minutes a Day," since the dough-mixing day involves half an hour of measuring out cups of flour and then the other involve sliding the dough into the oven -- but our schedules conform to this regimen easily enough.

In an attempt to placate Mia, I picked the 100% whole wheat sandwich bread for the first experiment. In retrospect, the simple master recipe boule would have been the right choice, since in general the best way to develop any skill seems to be to start with its most basic application. But we like our germs and brans, so I reached for the bag of whole wheat flour and added it to the yeast, honey, olive oil, and milk waiting in the food processor. The authors suggest making a large amount of dough and then storing the residual in the refrigerator so that fresh bread can be available throughout the week without mixing more dough. Expecting to learn quickly by doing, I made half a recipe, enough for two small breads; luckily, this also happened to be the maximum amount of dough that fit in the food processor, so I didn't have to mix the dough by hand.

After mixing the few ingredients together and letting the dough rise for 3 hours in a covered bowl, we transferred the sticky blob to two cleaned-out quart-size yogurt containers and put them in the fridge. The dough expanded to fill the container, but there were no explosions or eruptions.


The next day, we removed the dough, shaped it, and put it on the pizza peel to rise again before going in the oven. After rising, we covered the top in flour and cut slashes in the bread:


Then we slid it off the peel and onto the warm baking stone. 55 minutes later, we had our first finished product.

Though I may have declared it an "unqualified success," our first bread's success wasn't without its qualifications. It tasted good and looked and felt like real bread. But the texture and moisture of the interior, and the crust, while not problematic, could stand improvement. We will continue to update you as our experiments unfold.

Pesto Pinwheel Perfection

We always try to keep a frozen spheroid of Whole Foods' whole wheat pizza dough in the freezer. When we're feeling hungry and creative, we've been known to break out the pizza stone and try a new topping or two. And recently, we've come to the realization that this pizza dough, which, unlike our attempts at homemade dough rises on command, can be used to make other kinds of bread. In particular, we thought we might make cinnamon rolls.

Cinnamon rolls are a wonderful, delicious treat, but not half as inspired as our next idea. Why not make cinnamon rolls, but stuffed with something else, say...pesto? They'd still be soft, moist, and delicious, but savory instead of sweet. And the fresh pesto's bright green color would add a nice touch to the presentation. Luckily, we had already prepared pesto in the new food processor the day before, so all we needed to do was to unfreeze the dough and find a piece of unwaxed floss (more on this below).

I've always been hesitant to try to make any of the family of rolled-up dough products after the unfortunate incident of the yule-log cake in Christmas '98 (it looked like the yule log had been the victim of Hurricane Andy). But I was confident that, as long as I didn't get in Mia's way too much, this would work.

We began by taking the dough out of the freezer and putting in the fridge for a day. What was once a small lump of dough ballooned to many times its original size, threatening to burst through its plastic bag. With a rolling pin, we pressed the dough into a flat, wide rectangle and coated it with a thick layer of pesto. Next, we carefully rolled up the dough into a long, narrow cylinder:

The fun part is using the floss to squeeze off inch-wide slices of the cylinder, each of which will eventually grow to be its own pesto pinwheel. You loop the floss around the cylinder, and then squeeze it tight until separation is achieved:

We arranged the pinwheels in a cake pan, let them rest in the warm oven for 45 minutes, and then baked them for about 30 minutes at 375 degrees F.

The result was better than we had ever dared hope. The pinwheels are just sticky enough to holds themselves together, while not be too sticky to separate from each other. Once you have one in your hand, you can unroll it or take bites from it as you please. The olive oil contributes a delightful moisture, and the combination of fresh pesto and bread smells is almost overwhelmingly pleasing. Next up - a Christmas combination of pesto and roasted red pepper pinwheels!