Tag Archives: Dessert

Grape Focaccia

Posted on by
Reply

Bread amazes me. It’s the under appreciated universal dietary staple. You can go anywhere in the world, and there is some type of chewy cooked leavened dough. Every country, even region has their own unique take on it. Think about how amazing this is – baguette, lavash, naan, chinese steamed mantou and even pita are all yeast raised doughs that were developed thousands of years ago.

After some research I discovered that the first “bread” was eaten over 30,000 years ago in areas of Europe. It was a mixture of grains ground down between rocks and mixed with water, most likely cooked over fire. There are records of Egyptians buying a flat bread in 1,200 BC and Sumerians eating a barley flat cake around the same time. Ancient civilizations from all over the world all created their own versions of bread out of their indigenous grains – maize in the Americas, rice in the far east, and sorghum in sub-Saharan Africa.  (I don’t know why I think this is so fascinating but, but I’m truly astonished) All of these ancient civilizations separately discovered that leaving the dough to rest resulted in it rising! I know I probably sound like a mad scientist going off on a weird tangent, but I think it’s amazing that so many civilizations separated by mountains and oceans and thousands of miles all developed leavened bread.  It’s pretty cool.

Now, it is much more convenant to go to the store and pick up a loaf of white spongy preserved stuff than make your own. But its really not hard to make a great tasting bread. In all seriousness, if neanderthals could make bread, any person reading this blog is capable too!

I think the best way to start is with one of the more basic breads out there, Focaccia. I like this bread for many reasons: you can put what ever you want on it, you can forget that it’s proofing for hours without any serious consequences to texture or flavor, and you don’t have to shape it.  It’s also great to take a bbq, pot luck or party.  Homemade bread just screams impressive.

Recipe (adapted from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice)

4 ½  cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons instant yeast

2 cups water, at room temperature

6 Tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon sourdough starter (optional)

20 grapes, halved

2 springs fresh rosemary

1/2 cup olive oil

Directions:

  • Mix flour, yeast and salt in large mixing bowl
  • In a separate bowl mix water, olive oil and starter if using
  • Pour the liquids over the dry ingredients and mix with hands (or stand mixer) to incorporate. The dough will be shaggy at first, but keep mixing and it will come together. Add up to an extra cup of flour of it seems to sticky.
  • Transfer the dough to a clear container (so you can check the rising) and place in a warm, draft free place.
  • every hour or so check on the dough. If its risen above your container fold it over its self by using damp hands to pull dough from the bottom of the mass up and over onto the top. Let it proof and fold it over its self for around 6 hours. Or you can refrigerate the dough overnight to develop a deeper flavor. It will look like this when ready:
  • Pour 1/4 cup of olive oil into a rimmed 11 x 17 inch baking sheet.  Pour the dough out onto the pan as well.
  • Pour an additional 1/4 cup of olive oil over the dough and use your fingers to spread the dough out as much as possible. Let the dough relax for 10 minutes and continue to spread the dough out.
  • Place the grapes and rosemary on the focaccia ( I recommend cut side up, as the ones I had with the Skin up burnt)
  • Preheat the oven to 500 F and let the dough rise for about 30 minutes while the oven heats.  Bake focaccia untill crisp and golden brown – about 25 to 30 minutes.

Grape and Rosemary Focaccia

Peach Cake

Posted on by
8

One of my favorite flavors in a baked good is yeast. Sourdough bread, maple bars, cinnamon rolls, challah – it’s all good.  My love for yeasted pastries and breads is so real that I have cultivated my own sourdough starter. While I love using my starter to make interesting breads, my absolute favorite thing to do with yeast is an active dry application, my Grandma Helga’s fruit cakes.

Grandma is from Germany, or Poland, or a city that is now Poland, but was annexed by Germany when she was growing up before World War 2. All of her recipes are characteristically Eastern European, and have a very strong Jewish influence.  Her cakes are not what American’s think of as cakes. No buttercream, no pretty stacked layers of the spongy stuff, and not overly sweet. These fruit cakes are a yeasted dough, similar to challah or brioche, with a layer of fruit and either a streusel topping or a dusting of sugar.

I grew up on two version: apple cake with a streusel crumb topping, and plum cake with lemon juice, melted butter and sugar poured on top. The plum cake is a family favorite made with italian prune plums that are only in season towards the end of summer ( I’m already checking the farmer’s market for them). Legend says that Grandma used to make one of these cakes when the plums were in season and freeze it so my dad could have his favorite cake on his birthday (Christmas day) when he was younger.

My mom learned how to make these cakes after my parents got married, and she would make them occasionally. I would help as much as I could, and after dough was all mixed we would always separate the dough into halves and one of the halves into quarters. My mom would make the real sized cake, and me and my sister would both have our own ball of dough to make our own miniatures. I remember loving the smell of the proofing dough; I’d even sneak in to take a pinch off of the dough ball and eat it raw.

Since then, I’ve taken over the cake baking. I started playing around with the recipes and straying from the traditional apple or plum. Any type of stone fruit works well in place of plums; nectarines are fantastic, so are apricots and even cherries. But today I used peaches, correction – A peach. It was so big I only needed one!

Since I was on the fence about if I should make a cake or a tart using James’ giant peach, I thought I’d try a hybrid idea and add a layer of a frangipane-like almond cream to a yeasted base. To add some extra texture to the cake and tie the flavors together, I decided to use almond meal in the place of some of the flour in the dough as well. Success!

Too much of a success – my dad cut into it before I was able to take a picture of the finished product. And our pastry loving pup wouldn’t leave my side as I was photographing it. Ill be submitting this to yeastspotting!

Layla is a seriously strange dog. If that were a steak she would have no interest, but pastry! carbs! She goes nuts for the stuff. Dogs really do resemble their owners…

Recipe

Cake dough:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup almond meal

1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup luke warm water

1/2  cup milk

3 Tablespoons butter melted

1 package yeast

1 teaspoons vanilla

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Filling:

3.5 oz (1/2 tube) almond paste

4 Tablespoons sugar

2 eggs

1-2 Tablespoons cream or milk

Peaches

1 peach the size of your head

4 tablespoons sugar

juice of 1/2 a lemon

Directions:

To make cake:

  • Mix flour, almond meal and sugar together on a large mixing bowl
  • Place warm water, warm milk and yeast in a small bowl and let proof
  • Pour yeast mixture into the flour and add the extracts and butter. Mix together. I prefer to use my hands, but you can do this in a stand mixer with a dough hook
  • Add more flour if needed to create a dough. You want it to spring back and not be too sticky
  • If mixing by hand knead a few times on a floured surface before placing in a lightly oiled bowl
  • Place in a warm, draft-free place to rise for about an hour, or until doubled in size

To make filling:

  • Place almond paste in food processor and pulse to break up.
  • Add sugar and keep pulsing (the sugar crystals will help break up the paste further)
  • Add the eggs and keep the processor running
  • Add a tablespoon of cream or milk, if it seems to stiff and that it would not be pour-able, add 1 more tablespoon.
Peaches:
  • Cut peach
Assembly:
    • Grease a 13 x 9 glass baking dish
    • Take the dough out of the proofing bowl and roll out into a rectangle and press into the baking dish
    • Poor the almond cream filling over the dough
    • arrange the peach slices on top of the filling carefully
    • Squeeze half of a lemon over the peaches
    • Sprinkle with sugar
    • Cover with plastic wrap and let proof for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 375° F
    • After it has risen for a second time bake for 45 minutes to an hour – until the top is golden and the dough the glass is nicely browned.
    • Serve warm, or have it room temperature for breakfast the next morning, or really anytime

Brioche Peach Cake on Foodista

Brioche Peach Cake

Chocolate Sheet Cake

Posted on by
3

I love to find the most complicated recipe in a book and spend hours in the kitchen.  It’s the way I prefer to spend my nights, weekend, and sometimes early mornings before work.  I don’t believe in box mixes, canned frosting, or dough from a tube – I probably haven’t used any of those products since I was in grade school.  I’ve never been scared of making anything from scratch, and I think that my mom’s family recipe for Chocolate Sheet Cake is the reason.

I remember my mom supervising me making this cake since my eyes could barely see over the sauce pan on the stove. After the frosting was poured on, she would carefully place pecans on only half the cake (since us kids didn’t like nuts) and we would eat it warm with the frosting barely set.

When I think of this cake, I can taste it. I know exactly how gooey it feels in my mouth with the glaze-like frosting melting into the cake. And then there’s that hint of cinnamon that makes the whole experience feel like you’re 6-years-old getting a giant hug from your mom standing on her knees.

This recipe is the closest thing that side of my family has to heirloom.  It’s written on a piece of paper by my aunt who passed away and has a sketch of her husband in the corner. It’s been kept behind the cover of my mom’s original yellow Pillsbury cookbook for years and is covered in kitchen stains and is wrinkled on the edges. I’m always fearful one day I’ll go to look for it and it won’t be there, so I figured my blog would be the perfect place for safe keeping. And sharing…

Recipe

Chocolate Cake:

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups sugar

1 cup water

¼ cup vegetable oil

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter

1 egg (large)

4 Tablespoons cocoa

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons vanilla

Icing:

1 stick (1/2 cup butter)

4 Tablespoons cocoa power

1 box powdered sugar (4 cups)

6 Tablespoons cream or milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup nuts (Pecans)

Directions:

To make cake:

  • Preheat oven to 350° F and grease a 12” x 18” sheet pan
  • Mix flour and sugar together on a large mixing bowl
  • Bring water, oil, butter and cocoa to a rapid boil in a medium sauce pan
  • Pour boiling mixture over flour and sugar – and don’t was the pot yet.
  • Add the cinnamon, buttermilk, baking soda, egg and vanilla and mix until incorporated
  • Pour batter into prepared pan – you will think that there is not enough batter, but there is – and bake for 15 to 20 minutes
  • Prepare icing while cake is baking

To make icing:

  • Melt butter in the same sauce pan as used for the cake
  • Add cocoa and powdered sugar and mix well – you will think you added too much sugar, but you haven’t, I promise
  • Add the milk or cream and vanilla and stir until glossy
  • Pour over cake immediately when taken from the oven
  • Place pecans on top of cake – I was always told to lay the pecans out like this so each pecan can be cut into a guiltless bite-sized square
  • Let icing set before cutting and eating

Croissants

Posted on by
4

I had a really hard time finding something special enough to make to be my first real recipe post. I struggled with picking a recipe I felt was special enough for weeks, maybe months. But while flipping through the Tartine Bread book I found it – 100% handmade from scratch croissants.

I don’t particularly like croissants, but one can’t deny that they’re special. If you disagree I dare you to look at through the pictures in the Tartine Bread book of the yeast dough, butter, laminating, folding, cutting, rolling and proofing and tell me you still feel that way.

I grabbed my starter (that has been alive and well for 9 months), weighed out my water and flour, and mixed the leaven right away. I created the poolish of water, flour and the packaged yeast (I feel like a cheater using it) as well. I followed the recipe (below), let the dough rise, punched it down a few times and put it in the biggest ziplock I could find. Then I realized it was a Sunday night (that meant 5 days of work were standing between me and finishing these croissants), and I sadly put my hard work in the freezer.

All week as I fed my starter after work I wondered how my dough was doing. I opened the freezer took it out anxiously on Thursday and saw the air bubbles still there, and placed it in the fridge to thaw out. Friday all I could think about was getting home to my dough! I might have left early because I was so anxious. I rolled the dough out, smashed a disturbing amount of butter into a rectangle and folded it up into the beautifully smooth yeast dough. I rolled it out an hour later, folded it up nice and tight and repeated the process 2 more times. Finally I rolled the dough out, and starting cutting the triangles.

All of a sudden it dawned on me, there will be way more croissants than I can eat – I should make half of them chocolate. And so I took some bittersweet chocolate chips out of the pantry and wrapped them up in the second half of the dough. Covered 2 trays of pretty little uncooked pastries with plastic wrap and put them in the fridge.

I honestly couldn’t stay asleep, these needed to be in the oven. At 5 am I couldn’t pretend to sleep anymore, got the dough out of the fridge, heated the oven up and made an egg wash. In the oven they went and I sat on the floor, right in front of the oven window waiting for them to rise and brown.  Best decision I’ve made in a long time. Turns out I was right, I don’t like croissants. I love them! And the effort and anticipation made them taste that much better.

Recipe (adapted from Tartine Bread):

Poolish:

200 grams all-purpose flour

200 grams water (75 ° F)

3 grams active dry yeast

Leaven:

1 Tablespoon mature starter

220 grams all-purpose flour

220 grams water (80 ° F)

Croissants:

450 grams whole milk (room temperature)

300 grams leaven

400 grams poolish

1000 grams bread flour

28 grams salt

85 grams sugar

10 grams active dry yeast

400 grams butter

½ cup all-purpose flour

All-purpose flour for rolling

Egg wash:

2 large egg yolks

1 teaspoon heavy cream

Directions:

To make poolish, mix flour, water and yeast in bowl and let stand 3-4 hours room temperature or in the fridge overnight.

To make the leaven, mix the mature starter in a bowl with water and flour and let stand for several hours, or until when a small amount dropped in water floats.

To make the croissants:

  • Pour the milk into a large mixing bowl. Add the poolish and leaven and mix by squeezing with your hands.
  • Add the flour, salt, sugar, and yeast. Mix again with your hands until all flour is incorporated. Let the dough rest for about 30 minutes.
  • Transfer dough to a clear container and let the dough undergo its bulk rise/ fermentation in a warm 75- 80 ° F place for about 90 minutes

  • Every 30 minutes give the dough a turn: dampen your hands (so the dough doesn’t stick) with warm water and gently pull dough up from the bottom of the bowl and fold onto the top a few times – this takes the place of kneading the dough.
  • Transfer the dough to a large plastic bag, press to flatten in a rectangle and chill in the fridge for 2 to 3 hours (or freeze).
  • While dough is chilling prepare the butter. Cut the cold butter into cubes and pound the cubes with a rolling pin until they come together into a sheet about 8” x 12”. While doing this incorporate the ½ cup of flour. You want the butter mass to be similar in consistency to the dough, and to be slightly pliable without getting to warm. Once you have your rectangle place on parchment paper and keep cool until ready to use.

  • When you are ready to begin laminating take the dough out of the fridge and roll out into a rectangle about 12 “ x 20” on a very well floured surface.

  • Work quickly to place the butter block in the center of the dough. Fold the right and left portions of the dough over the butter as if folding a letter.

  • Immediately turn the dough 90 degrees and roll it again into a rectangle about 12” x 20”. Fold the dough over itself like a letter once more. (This is the first “turn”). Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, but not long enough for the butter to re-harden.
  • Take the dough out and on a well floured surface turn the dough a second time; roll it out into a 12” x 20” and fold the dough over itself like a letter.
  • Refrigerate for an hour and repeat the turning process again. But this time after you fold up the dough (you should have about 8” x 12” block about 2” thick) wrap in plastic wrap or parchment and freeze for about 1 to 2 hours. If you plan on baking them in the morning keep the dough in the freezer until just before you go to bed and transfer to the fridge for the night.
  • When you’re ready to shape the croissants, like 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or silpats.
  • Roll the dough out into a rectangle about 18” x 24” and about a ½ inch thick. Cut in half (I like to use a pizza cutter) to create two long 9” x 24” rectangles. Cut each rectangle into 6 to 8 equal sized triangles (or rectangles if you plan to fill with chocolate)
  • Roll up each triangle (or rectangle with chocolate inside) starting with the wider end and place on the prepared baking sheets at least 1 ½ inches apart. Let rise at a warm room temperature for about 2 hours – they should be 50% larger than their original size. (You can cover with plastic wrap and put in the fridge over night at this step as well)
  • When ready to bake preheat the oven the 425° F.
  • Make the egg wash and brush over every inch of the croissants. Bake until the croissants are deep golden brown, crisp and flakey, about 30 minutes.

      • Serve warm.