Brioche

A recent conversation prompted a personal observation. I'm not much of a starch guy. Potatoes? Meh. Rice. A bit better. Pasta, now I'm getting interested, but still not my favourite part of the meal. But bread? Good, homemade bread? I can easily make a meal of a fresh-baked loaf of bread and some butter. My go-to bread is no-knead bread, because it's simple, requires only a few preparations and is obscenely delicious.

But it's not the only bread. I've tried a few different recipes for brioche and been completely unsatisfied. Until I found this recipe, from Crust and Crumb: Master Formulas for Serious Bread Bakers. It's a keeper:

1 tsp instant yeast
½ cup lukewarm milk
1 cup unbleached bread flour

Mix the starter until moist. Cover and let rise for one to two hours. To the starter, add:

3 ½ cups unbleached bread flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
5 large eggs, beaten well
1 ¾ cups unsalted butter, softened

Mix on low in your mixer, until the flour is moistened. Then beat on medium with your dough hook until the dough is soft and smooth. It's stickier than regular bread doughs, but the butter should be well incorporated.



Mist lightly with a vegetable oil sprayer, cover with saran wrap, and place in the fridge for five to twelve hours. You're looking for the flavour to develop and the butter to firm back up. This will provide the proper texture and flavour for the brioche.

Remove from the fridge, and mold into three equal-sized round loaves.



Cover and let sit for 2 hours at room temperature to rise. Meanwhile, beat:

one egg

Preheat your oven to 375°F for at least half an hour. Brush the egg wash lightly on the loaves, and bake the loaves for 40ish minutes, until golden brown.



These loaves are almost cakish in texture, buttery and sweet. They're a fabulous soft bread that makes a nice change from the ordinary. And shaped into the fancy little brioche pans, they can be quite fancy to serve, with minimal effort. Huge success, and loved by all.

White sandwich buns

The last few months I've been rather enamoured of the no-knead bread of Jim Lahey. It's almost the only bread I bother with. While it requires a bit of fore-planning, it's delicious.  And low effort. But there are other ways to make bread. Today, I bring you my new favourite sandwich bun, altered from Crust and Crumb.

To start, we make the biga. A biga is basically just a pre-fermented bit of dough that gives a boost to the growth of yeast in the bread, and provides slightly different flavours than a younger fermentation. So, for the biga:

2 ¹⁄₆ cup (10 oz) bread flour
¾ cup water
1 tsp yeast

Mix the flour, water and yeast.



Let sit, covered, for three to four hours.



Now, retard the biga in the fridge for zero to twelve hours. Basically, by chilling the yeast, you're making it do different things metabolically, which will in turn make the yeast piss different combinations of lactic acid and ethanol into the dough. It results in a richer-flavoured bread. So you don't *have* to retard the dough, but it'll be better if you do.

After retarding the biga, mix it with:

3 ½ cup (16 oz) bread flour
2 tsp salt
3 tbsp sugar
1 ¼ tsp yeast
¾ cup milk at room temperature
½ cup softened unsalted butter

Knead for tenish minutes, until the dough softens. I couldn't do this one in my mixer, it really wanted to climb out and get gear grease all over it. So knead by hand it is.



Cover, and let rise 1-2 hours.



Knead again, let rise again, 1-2 hours.

Split into rolls, and pinch and roll balls of dough, about half the size of your fist. Think small, they're gonna rise a bunch, and expand even more in the oven. Place rolls on a greased cookie sheet, this batch made me 14 rolls.



Cover the rolls, and let rise 1-2 hours.



After final rise, pre-heat oven at 350°F for about half an hour. Bake the rolls for 20-25 minutes, until they make a nice brown crust, and rebound to a light touch.



Let cool. But not too long. These soft and delicious guys belong in something tasty like a pulled pork sandwich. Yum.

Bubbat

Every culture has their special dishes. Some, like Italian and Thai food, have found their way into the mainstream. Others, like Mennonite and Ukrainian are less well-known. Well, I have the great fortune to bring to your attention some of the less-well known dishes from my mother's Mennonite family.

Holidays wouldn't be the same for me without bubbat. Not a cake, not a bread, bubbat is a leavened raisin dough that I absolutely love to eat. It's a marvelous thing when fresh, only make enough to serve the day that you're cooking. We serve it with turkey on Christmas and Thanksgiving.

¼ cup sugar
2 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 cups raisins
2 eggs
¼ cup milk
1 cups heavy cream

Mix the dry ingredients, raisins and all.



Beat the eggs.



Slowly mix in the milk and cream to properly emulsify them. Remember, emulsification works best when done slowly. Especially in the early mixing stages, the slower the better.



Mix the wet with the dry, in a few swift strokes. Given that this is a baking powder-leavened dish, it is imperative that you mix as rapidly as possible, so the baking powder doesn't crap out. Pour into a buttered bread-loaf pan.



Bake at 375°F for 45 minutes to an hour. Like cake, we're looking for a batter that you can stick a tester into and come out clean. Serve screaming hot. Bubbat goes best when hot. And it *is* tasty.



Moist and sweet. The perfect carbohydrate complement to a turkey dinner.

Mrs. Hutton's biscuits

Thanksgiving is a trickier cooking time. When you cook for family, you have a broader swath of eaters than at any other time that you cook. There's Aunt Martha the vegetarian, and cousin Vinny who only eats hamburgers.

So on a Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, what do you cook that is delicious, but will meet everyone's needs? Biscuits is a start.

This recipe was handed to my mother by our small-town reverend's wife in the 1970s (Mrs. Hutton). My mom then handed the recipe to me when I went to college.

3 C flour
⅓ C sugar
3 heaping tsp baking powder
½ C butter
~1 C milk

Preheat your oven to 400° F. Sift sugar and flour. Cut in butter. Add milk and mix with your hands to a gooey consistency.



Roll out on counter and cut individual biscuits.



Don’t handle them too much.



Bake at 400° F for 20 minutes or until lightly browned.



Serve. These are amazing the day they're cooked. Mrs. Dude thinks they're pretty good on day 2 as well. I disagree. Bake only as many as you think you'll eat the night you make them.

Chapa bread

When I'm preparing dinner for guests, if I'm serving bread, it's homemade bread.  It's not much effort added to dinner to throw a loaf of no-knead bread in the oven.  It merely requires a bit of forethought.

However, it does require forethought.  And no-knead bread heats up the house more than a little on an otherwise hot day.  A nice pan-bread can be done with little more than a couple hours notice, and you can do it on your grill with a cast-iron pan.  I tried the recipe for chapa bread from Seven Fires.  It's tasty:

4 cups bread flour
1 tbsp kosher salt
2 ¼ tsp dry yeast
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
~ 1 ¼ cup warm water

Mix the dry ingredients well.  Add the oil.  Add the water, slowly, while mixing the ingredients.  Stop adding water when the dough comes together (i.e. when it moves in the mixer as one).



Form the dough into a ball.  Place in an oiled bowl and cover with a damp cloth.  Let rise for an hour (or so).



Roll out on a flat surface.



Cut into 8 roughly equal-sized pieces.



Cover with your damp cloth and let rise for another half hour (ish). Really, these times can be longer or shorter. It's a beautiful thing.

Heat a dry cast-iron pan over medium heat. If you want, you can do this in your kitchen. I found it more amusing to do it over a medium-hot charcoal fire - after all, smoke makes everything taste better.



Brown the breads on one side - it'll take about 5 minutes. If it takes less than this, your fire is too hot, and you won't cook the bread all the way through. Adjust accordingly.



Flip the bread, and brown the other side.



Serve when both sides are nicely browned. Serve hot. Upon eating one of these, Mrs. Dude exclaimed that she could eat all 8. Yum.



Post-script:  My supper tonight was lovely sandwich made from a day-old chapa bread.  I was concerned these chapa breads would make lousy leftovers.  Many breads don't do as well the second day.  However, they were still moist and delicious, though the crust had softened slightly.  The flavour was still toasty and delicious, with a hint of the smoke from the charcoal fire.

Whole wheat no knead bread

In Canada, we call whole wheat bread "brown bread", as opposed to "white bread". My Dad once visited Detroit, and asked a waitress there to bring him some brown toast for breakfast. At home, that would result in some whole wheat toast. Instead, she brought him very darkly toasted bread.

I've been playing a lot with my new bread book, My Bread by Jim Lahey.  This is a fun book.  With 2 minutes the night before, and about 10 minutes of work the day you bake it, you can have delicious, crunchy, chewey, tasty bread every day.  And this stuff makes wicked toast.

This past weekend, I made whole wheat no knead bread:

300 g bread flour
100 g whole wheat flour
8 g salt
½ tsp active dry yeast
300 g water
additional flour for dusting

There's a bit more yeast in this than in the regular no knead bread.  The night before baking, mix together all the ingredients just until wet.



Cover and let rise overnight.  (I have let this bread go as little as 16 and as much as 24 hours, and it turns out well).



This dough is a little more delicate than a shorter fermented dough.  Loosen the dough with a spatula, then fold the edges underneath it into the shape of a loaf.



Place it on a well-floured cotton tea towel (not something fuzzy, or terryish - you don't want lint in there).  Place it smooth side up (you'll be flipping it into a hot pan later, and want the smooth side on the bottom, ultimately).

Flour, cover, and let rise for 2 hours.  Half an hour before the end of rising, heat a Le Creuset (or other enameled, cast-iron casserole pot) closed in an oven at 475°F for 30 minutes.



Remove the pot from the oven.  Carefully and gently (and un-hand-burningly), flip the dough into the hot pot.



Cover, and put back in the oven.



Bake in the closed pot for 30 minutes.  Uncover.



Bake for another few minutes until browned.  I find the non-whole wheat loaves take another 10 minutes to brown.  This whole wheat loaf took closer to 20.  Remove, and let cool for at least an hour before cutting into it.



Mrs. Dude loves the crackling the crust makes as it cools.  Serve.  This bread is a little heavier than the previous one.  But it makes fantastic toast, and a great dipping bread for soups.  Love it.

No knead bread

I was reminded today of our mortality, our frailty. What matters in life. Family. Time on the beach. A nice dinner with friends.

Here's an easy loaf of bread to accompany a meal, adapted from the book, My Bread. It requires almost no effort, just a little forethought, and a scale:

400 g bread flour

8 g salt

¼ tsp active dry yeast

300 g water

additional flour for dusting

Mix everything together until the flour is wet.

Let rise in a warm place, 12-24 hours.

Coat your fingers with dry flour, then scoop the dough out of the bowl and fold it into a loaf in as few motions as possible. Dust the loaf with flour.

Take a smooth, cotton tea towel (has to be smooth, terry cloth sticks), and dust heavily with flour. Lay the loaf smooth side up on the towel, dust the other side, and cover lightly with the towel. Let rise 2 more hours.

Half an hour from being done rising, heat an enamel pot in the oven (like this one) at 475°F. After half an hour, remove the pot from the oven, and gently drop the loaf into the hot pot (careful, you don't want to burn yourself here). Close the pot, and place back in the oven.

Bake 30 minutes, lid on, and another 10 minutes, lid off to bronze the loaf. The closed lid acts to keep steam in the pot, giving the effect of a humidified oven. Then opening the pot helps to darken the loaf. To give you this:

The extra long rising gives it a nice fermented flavour that I haven't found in other breads. Delicious.

Cool loaf 1 hour, then serve to loved ones.

Buttermilk buns

So game day, I'm at home. I'm going to be smoking a pork butt all day, and relaxing anyway, so I figure I might as well make the buns that we're putting the pulled pork on. And I love baking bread and buns. It's just like smoking meat. Even when you aren't doing anything, work is happening. Yeast is growing, dividing and making your bread rise. Call me nerdy, but I find that exciting...

Conveniently, Michael Ruhlman just posted a fun bun recipe, so let's try that:

28 oz all-purpose flour

20 oz buttermilk, room temp
2 ¼ tsp active dry yeast
½ oz salt
2 tbsp honey
butter for greasing a springform pan
1 egg
~1 tsp poppy seeds

Mix the flour, buttermilk, yeast and honey until moist. Let sit for 20 minutes, then knead in the salt, for around 10 minutes, or until the dough gets to be a nice, elastic bread dough. Cover and set aside to rise. Or if you're a weirdo, take the dough outside, photograph it, then move it back inside, covered, to rise.

I forgot about it for about 4 hours (isn't making bread grand? 2 hours to rise. 4 hours. whatever). And it looked really great.

Butter a springform pan. Cut off roughly 4 - 4 ½ oz chunks of dough, and roll them into little balls. Fit them snugly into your pan, like this:

Cover, and let rise in a warm place another hour or so. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Beat the egg until a uniform colour and consistency. Homogenous.

Brush a really, really thin layer on the risen buns. The first time I ever egg-washed a bread-dough, I was wayyyy too aggressive with the egg, and the bread ended up tasting like it had a layer of overcooked scrambled eggs on top. Yuck. So now I'm pretty careful. Really, you just want to wet the surface of the buns.

Then sprinkle on the poppy seeds, to whatever thickness is your fancy.

Bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes, until nicely browned (took me about 32 minutes). And shriek in girlish delight when you remove them, and they look like this.

Oh, yeah, baby! Remove from the pan, tear off a bun, slice in half, and serve. I served them with pulled pork. Yum. A tiny bit too tall for pulled pork sandwiches (oops), but really, really awesome.