When this recipe was posted a few weeks ago on King Arthur Flour, it definitely registered on my radar. I’ve never attempted a baguette, but the main reason was really that every time I thought of making one, I thought of it too late and didn’t have the time to do a starter the night before. This one has a pretty involved night-before preparation routine, but I this time I thought of making it in time. It was both easy and involved in different ways, but it definitely turned out a nice loaf of bread.

Ingredient wise, it’s extremely simple: flour, yeast, salt and water. Because there’s no oil in this, the loaves won’t keep as long, but you get three or so loaves out of this dough and you can leave it in your fridge for up to a week, so it’s pretty easy to just bake one loaf at a time as you need them. I actually used three kinds of flour in this one because I was out of all-purpose: 2 cups of whole wheat, 2 cups of european artisan flour, and 4 cups of bread flour.

They actually have you just mix this in the dough rising bucket, which is pretty genius, and I wish I had thought of it before. You need a pretty large dough rising bucket for this, but I just happened to have the exact 6-quart bucket that they sell on King Arthur.

This dough is really wet, and it doesn’t take much to bring it together.

A couple of minutes with the dough hooks, and the dough looks just about as smooth as it’s going to get. Between the slackness and the whole wheat flour, this is a pretty shaggy dough.

After spending the night in the fridge, the dough has developed some nice gluten. Here you can see where I stuck my fingers in it and pulled it away from the side of the bucket.

I made two loaves at once, and I had enough for a third loaf later on in the week. I pulled two similar-sized lumps out of the bucket and let them rest and come closer to room temperature for 15 minutes.

The way to shape these into logs is not to just roll them out but to fold them in half along their long axes. After you fold it twice it’s elongated itself pretty much to its complete length, and then you can just roll it a bit to smooth it. Here’s one loaf finished, and one after one fold.

My shaping isn’t great, but these don’t have to be beauty queens. If you use enough flour, you’ll get a nice flour coating on the outside that keeps it from sticking to everything and helps it rise better.

Slashed, spritzed and baked. Clearly I didn’t slash the top baguette adequately enough, because you can see where it expanded along the edge. All in all, though, it came out well.

Like I said, it came out well. The crumb was pretty tight in general, interspersed with holes. The crumb was probably a little denser than a baguette in general, but it was good for sandwiches, where a too-loose crumb could mean leaking and falling apart. The flavor was very good, and the crust was slightly chewy but not crisp or crunchy; I’m not sure what it is about my crusts but I cannot get a crunchy crust to save my life. I didn’t try too hard with this one, because honestly the softer crust is better for sandwiches. Eventually I’ll probably figure it out. This split well horizontally for small sandwiches, and a slightly smaller loaf would probably be perfect for a larger sub.

No-Knead Whole Wheat Baguette (adapted from King Arthur Flour)

Ingredients

• 3 cups lukewarm water
• 6 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 tablespoon table salt or 1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon instant yeast

Directions

1. Find a large (6-quart) bowl or bucket, for dough storage in the fridge. Lightly grease the bowl or bucket.
2. Place the water directly into the bowl or or other large container.
3. Add the dry ingredients to the water, and stir to combine. Mix until there are no dry spots; the texture of the dough should be fairly soft.
4. Knead for 1 or 2 minutes in a stand mixer. Cover the container, and let the dough rest at room temperature for 2 hours.
5. Refrigerate overnight, or for up to 7 days.
6. To bake bread: Scoop out a scant 1 pound of dough (about ¼ of the batch, about 14 ½ ounces). Place on a well-floured work surface.
7. Shape the dough into a rough, slightly flattened oval, cover with greased plastic wrap, and let rest for 15 minutes.
8. Fold the dough in half lengthwise, and seal the edges with the heel of your hand. Flatten slightly, and fold lengthwise and seal again.
9. With the seam side down, cup your fingers and gently roll the of dough into a 15″ log.
10. Place the log seam-side down onto a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet, or into the well of a baguette pan.
11. Cover and allow the baguette to rise till it’s very puffy, about 1 1/2 hours. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat your oven to 450°F.
12. Slash the baguette three or four times on the diagonal.
13. Spritz the baguette heavily with warm water, and bake until a very deep golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool on a rack.

Wraps are one of those things that I always figured would be difficult to make at home. I thought that they would be impossible to get thin enough, that they would not stay flexible, that they would just not work as well for sandwiches. Despite this, I decided to try them out because it was way too hot to even consider turning on the oven, and cooking our lunch bread on the stovetop was very appealing. King Arthur has a fairly large variety of wrap recipes on their site, but I went with one that makes a flavored wrap like the ones that are so common in the stores. I had my misgivings, but it turns out I was completely wrong.

The dry ingredients consist of bread flour and potato flour, or potato flakes. I haven’t come across potato flour in my local stores, so I purchased the least-offensive box of potato flakes (i.e., one whose ingredients look relatively natural) for the King Arthur bread recipes that call for them, which is quite a few when you really dive into their list. I went ahead and added the salt and yeast to the dry goods as well, since all the dry stuff should go together, and in hindsight this was a good idea. This recipe has a very small amount of yeast, and it shows; I’m not sure exactly what the yeast does, as this bread doesn’t have a rising period really. But it clearly does something, since it’s in there, be it in a minute quantity.

I had tomato paste concentrate on hand, so I mixed a couple of tablespoons of that up with a little more water than originally called for. The wraps weren’t exceptionally tomato-y, but I find that most “tomato” wraps aren’t especially tomato-y, and are instead identifiable as tomato solely by their orange color. These were definitely orange. But I’m sure you could really up the tomato paste content if you wanted more tomato flavor.

Here’s why I said that it was a good thing I added the yeast and the salt early: after mixing in the liquids with a dough whisk, the dough consisted mainly of crumbles. If I had tried, at this point, to mix in yeast and salt, they would have never been distributed evenly throughout the dough.

I actually “kneaded” this dough (not really like kneading since the dough isn’t very elastic) in the bowl itself, and once I started kneading it, it came together beautifully. The recipe asks you to turn it out onto a well floured surface to knead it, but I’m pretty sure that would be a disaster: no amount of stirring was going to turn the dough into a ball without getting your hands in there, and any more flour would be way too much. The dough wasn’t hardly sticky at all, and no extra flour was needed at all, either in this step or later in the rolling out. Those white pieces sticking out are the potato flakes; at this point I was wondering if I shouldn’t have crushed them a bit first, but they disappeared completely in the finished product.

The dough is refrigerated for an hour (or overnight), then cut into 8 to 10 equal pieces. Eight yields larger wraps, ten gets us through a week of lunches. I went ten.

You have to roll them out very thin, which makes rolling them into circles somewhat difficult. This one happens to resemble a duck foot more than a circle; as long as it wraps around sandwich filling, it’s ok with me.

This one was a little more circular. They got cooked on a medium-hot ungreased, nonstick griddle for about 2 minutes on each side, or until they looked done. I mostly just eyeballed this based on how browned each side had gotten.

Here is the same wrap that has been flipped; you can see the browned portions where the wrap had bubbled. Most of my wraps didn’t really inflate like they can apparently do, but if they do inflate, they’ll deflate upon cooling. The last four wraps I cooked went crazy with the inflation, and I suspect it is because I let them sit in the refrigerator for a few days before cooking them, giving the yeast a bit more time to work its magic. While they were still tasty, the prettier wraps were the ones I made right off the bat.

Once I cooked the wraps I was afraid that I hadn’t rolled the thin enough, and that they wouldn’t stay flexible enough to wrap a sandwich up. It seemed like they would harden up overnight, and if they didn’t do it immediately then after a day they would be stiff. While I thought the fresh made wraps would probably be tastier than the store bought ones, I doubted the ability of them to stay soft without the preservatives they put in premade wraps. I don’t know what it was about them, but I was definitely, and thankfully, wrong. Not only were they limber enough the next day, they stayed flexible for several days. There were one or two that I did roll a little thick, and they were flexible, just not big enough for a complete wrap, so they became like sandwich tacos. This was definitely a recipe I came into as a skeptic, but I was pleasantly surprised by the success of the wraps. Most of all, they’re just a very easy recipe, and a perfect summertime one when you just can’t bear turning on the oven. I know they’ll probably have a regular spot in my bread repertoire.

Tomato Wraps (adapted from King Arthur)

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup (8 1/4 ounces) potato flour OR 1/2 cup potato flakes
• 3 cups (12 3/4 ounces) unbleached bread flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
• 1/2 cup (4 ounces) water
• 1/4 cup (1 3/4 ounces) vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup tomato paste mixed with 1/4 cup water

Directions

1. Whisk together the dry ingredients (potato and bread flours, salt and yeast). Mix the liquid ingredients together and stir into the dry ingredients; dough will be dry and crumbly.
2. Use your hands to form the dough into a ball and knead it until it is smooth, only a couple minutes.
3. Refrigerate the dough for 1 hour (or overnight).
4. Work on a very smooth surface so that the dough does not stick. If necessary, flour or oil it lightly. Divide it into eight to ten equal pieces. Working with one piece at a time, round the dough into a ball, then roll it till it’s very thin, about 1/8-inch thick.
5. Dry-fry the dough rounds on a medium hot, ungreased griddle for about 2 minutes on each side. The dough may puff a little, but will become flat again as it cools. As each bread finishes cooking, transfer it to a wire rack to cool, stacking one bread atop the other to keep them soft and pliable. Store in a ziploc bag with all the air removed to keep them fresh.

King Arthur says that this bread is basically the one that appeared on the back of flour packages as “The Easiest Bread You’ll Ever Bake.” They’re probably right; although it’s not as easy as, say, a no-knead recipe, it’s certainly one of the nicest and easiest to work with doughs I’ve ever made. I substituted the final bits of my 12-grain flour blend and some semolina to give it some more heft, and divided into individual rolls for sandwiches throughout the week; the recipe divided well into twelve sandwich sized rolls.

The recipe is written originally for active dry yeast, so it has built in activation time at the beginning of the recipe. I use instant yeast, so I didn’t really need that step, but I kept it in anyway.

Instead of waiting for things to dissolve, I just whisked everything together and the sugar dissolved well enough. The yeast really broke up as well from their clumps and the whole liquid became kind of milky.

In goes the flour; the original recipe called for 5 1/2 to 6 cups, depending on how humid your environment is, I suppose. 5 1/2 cups was plenty for me and turned the dough into a very workable, only slightly sticky dough.

I mixed it up a bit with my hand mixer, but then I just kneaded it by hand for the most part. Like I said, this has got to be the easiest dough I’ve worked with, very pleasant to knead.

After rising you can see just how pretty this dough ball is. At least, it’s pretty to me. Nice and smooth and easy to work with, you don’t have to worry about this one welding itself to your hand as you try to shape it.

Shaping these little guys was really easy too: just tuck in the bottom all the way around until you have a smooth surface on one side, then put the bottom down on a baking sheet covered in cornmeal.

After the buns rise another time, brush or spray them with cold water and slash them. They go into the oven with a pan of water that has been preheating; this is meant to create steam and result in a crustier loaf, but I even though I did this and let them cool in the oven with the door slightly propped (also supposed to create a crustier loaf), the crust softened like it does in all my breads. Oh well, it’s probably better for sandwiches that way. To be fair, the crust was more robust than in my previous loaves. The crumb was light and the semolina and the whole grain flour added a nice tooth to the bread. While not strictly the absolute easiest bread I’ve ever made, it was certainly one of the nicest in the making process.

Easy Whole Wheat Hearth Bread (adapted from King Arthur Flour)

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon (1 packet) instant yeast
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 2 cups warm water (not over 110°F)
• 1/2 cup 12-grain flour blend
• 1 cup semolina
• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• cornmeal

Directions

1. Mix together the first four ingredients. Let this stand until the yeastt, sugar and salt are dissolved. Gradually add the flour to the liquid and mix thoroughly until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.
2. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface to knead. Knead for 5 minutes, sprinkling only enough flour on your kneading surface to prevent sticking. Let the dough rest while you scrape out and grease the mixing bowl. Knead the dough again for 2 to 3 minutes.
3. Return the dough to the bowl and turn it over once to grease the top. Cover with greased plastic wrap and keep warm until the dough doubles in bulk, about 1 to 2 hours.
4. Punch down the dough with your fist and briefly knead out any air bubbles. Divide the dough into as many pieces as you want rolls (I chose 12). Place the rolls on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and generously sprinkled with cornmeal. Cover the rolls and let rise for 45 minutes.
5. Lightly slash the tops of the loaves 3 or more times diagonally and brush them with cold water.
6. Preheat the oven and roasting pan with water to 500°F for 15 minutes. Brush the loaves with cold water, place in the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Lower the temperature to 400°F and bake for 15 to 20 more minutes, until the rolls are golden brown.

Clafouti is a eggy French custard that is usually served as a dessert, and is most often made with cherries. While looking for something unique to bring to a potluck brunch, I happened across a recipe on Serious Eats for a “Brunch Clafouti“, which is really no different from any other clafouti recipe. Even traditional dessert clafoutis fit in well for breakfast with their eggy, fruity flavors. It’s sweet but not too sweet, and it need no other adornment than a dusting of powdered sugar. While I considered going with the traditional cherries, or other berries which are also popular, I’ve been really taken lately with fresh figs, which have shown up in the grocery store in the last few weeks. The figs wouldn’t really work with the recipe from Serious Eats, but I found a recipe as part of an NPR story from last year for just the thing I was looking for. It happens to be based on the clafouti from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which is experiencing a great upswing in popularity thanks to the movie Julie and Julia. My selection of this had nothing to do with this revival, but you can consider this my obligatory food blog contribution.

Clafouti batter is very thin, composed of milk, sugar, eggs, and a bit of flour. The one thing I added to this recipe that I took from the Serious Eats recipe was a little almond extract, which added a subtle almond flavor to the final project as well as the standard vanilla extract.

I don’t have a very functional blender, so instead of whirling the batter in that to blend it smoothly I used my hand mixer and beaters on a high setting. It worked sufficiently well, and though I could still see a few tiny clumps of flour left, it was not a big deal.

Mmmm, fresh ripe figs. They get quartered for this recipe. They do not need to be peeled, just washed; the skin is perfectly edible and part of their delicious flavor and texture.

The batter goes in the well greased pie pan, then the figs are placed fairly evenly around. French cooking has this reputation for being complicated, but this is one of the simplest recipes ever.

It inflates in the oven, and when you first take it out it’s still pretty puffy, but you can see it’s already starting to sink a bit.

Here it’s pretty much fallen completely. This is how clafoutis are: browned and slightly chewy on the perimeter and eggy, fluffy and custardy in the center.

It looks pretty dusted with powdered sugar. It is usually served warm, but it would probably be pretty tasty cold as well. As long as you greased the pan well enough, the slices should come right out. The taste of the figs and how they meld with the custard is probably pretty different from the berries or cherries in the original, but I think they make a great breakfast with their light, fresh flavor. I’d definitely make this again, for a dessert or a breakfast.

Fresh Fig Clafouti (adapted from NPR, adapted from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking)

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cup milk (low-fat or regular)
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 6 figs, trimmed and quartered
• 1 tablespoon raw sugar such as turbinado (granulated may be substituted)
• Powdered sugar, for serving

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF and coat a 9-inch cast iron skillet or pie plate generously with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Add the milk, sugar, eggs, vanilla, almond, salt and flour to a blender in that order so the flour does not cake onto the blade. Blend on high for 30 seconds. Scrape down any flour adhering to the sides and blend for 30 seconds more, or until smooth. Pour into the skillet.
3. Scatter the figs over the batter and sprinkle the raw sugar (or granulated, if substituting) on top.
4. Bake in the center of the oven for 45 to 55 minutes, or until clafouti is puffed and edges are golden brown. A thin knife inserted in the center should come out clean. Cool for 5 to 10 minutes (clafouti will collapse), sift powdered sugar over the top and serve warm.

Some weekends, you’re in a hurry and don’t have time to mess with starters, or kneading, or shaping, or letting the bread rise twice. Those weekends, it’s time for Blitz Bread, which is basically the easiest foccacia ever. It can be used like any foccacia, accompanying a meal, or on it’s own with some oil and herbs, but it’s just the right hight to be split horizontally and make a fantastic sandwich bread, too.

It really just starts out with all the basics: all-purpose flour, yeast and salt.

In goes some water and good olive oil. Yes, my olive oil really is that green; it’s Greek olive oil (specifically Minerva brand), the only olive oil I’ll use anymore after living in Greece for a few months. It’s somewhat fruitier than Italian olive oil, and to my tastes richer and more flavorful. In any case, it’s worth it to use a good olive oil for this recipe, whatever kind you like best.

It all comes together easily with the dough whisk. Like most no-knead or barely-knead breads, this dough is pretty wet.

This recipe is basically no-knead, but I give the bread a good beating with my hand mixer and dough hooks for a couple of minutes, and it really smooths out and comes together well.

Pan prep. The pan needs to be sprayed with non-stick spray and olive oil drizzled in. Don’t drizzle too much, just a tablespoon or two, or else you’ll end up with soggy bread.

Scoop the dough into the pan, grease your hands well, and spread it out until it fills up the pan (mostly). This process benefits from giving it a few minutes to rest every once in a while, because the dough is very springy and doesn’t really want to go where you push it.

Let the dough rise for about an hour, or until it puffs up a lot and basically fills the pan. Then poke it a few times with a well greased index finger, sprinkle some Italian herbs on it (basil and oregano mostly), drizzle it with a little more olive oil (now you see why the quality is important!), and stick it in the oven. It will deflate a bit when you poke it, but it will spring back up in the oven.

When it comes out of the oven you should immediately remove it from the pan (again, the consequences are soggy bread). This is most easily done if you have two long cooling racks; place upside down on the top of the baking pan, flip the bread over so it pops out (which it should do easily if you greased it enough), then place the other rack upside down on the bottom of the bread and flip it back over so that it’s rightside up.

The flavor on this bread is great, and it has a fantastic crumb. It’s light and a bit holey without much of a crust at all, though the edges are thicker and chewier. Like I said, it makes great sandwich bread, and is probably the least work-intensive bread out there.

Blitz Bread (from King Arthur Flour)

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups (12 ounces) warm water
• 3 tablespoons (1 1/4 ounces) olive oil (plus additional for drizzling)
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 3 1/2 cups (14 ¾ ounces) Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• 1 tablespoon instant yeast

Directions

1. Lightly grease a 9″ x 13″ pan, and drizzle 1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil in the bottom.
2. Combine all of the ingredients, and beat at high speed with an electric mixer for 60 seconds.
3. Scoop the sticky batter into the prepared pan, cover the pan, and let it rise at room temperature for 60 minutes, till it’s become puffy.
4. While the dough is rising, preheat the oven to 375°F.
5. Gently poke the dough all over with your oiled index finger.
6. Drizzle it lightly with olive oil, and sprinkle with the dried herbs of your choice, if desired.
7. Bake the bread till it’s golden brown, 35 to 40 minutes.
8. Remove it from the oven, wait 5 minutes, then turn it out of the pan onto a rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

How do you eat a sandwich on a pretzel? Pretzel rolls, of course!

I’m constantly searching for new and interesting breads that I can use to make sandwiches for lunch during the week. Most of the time I just pour through King Arthur Flour’s website for recipe ideas, but I got this one while photograzing over on Serious Eats. I love pretzel bread, so I had to give it a try, and boy did they turn out well. I decided to use Alton Brown’s recipe for soft pretzels, but formed into small loaves instead of pretzel shapes. Fortunately, making pretzel bread is really that simple, and with fun differences from your standard bread recipes.

The recipe starts out like any other, with wet and dry ingredients being mixed together. The original recipe calls for proofing your active dry yeast; since I use instant yeast, I just combined everything at once.

I managed to get the dough to come together completely just with the dough whisk, after which I busted out the electric hand mixer and the dough hooks for kneading.

The dough was neither too dry nor too slack; it was fairly sticky, but didn’t weld itself to your hand when you picked it up. The dough only rises once, until doubled in size.

The dough is divided up into 8 equal pieces. If the dough is too sticky you can use some oil to manipulate it more easily, but I didn’t really have any trouble.

Pretty good shaping! This dough didn’t seem to deflate as much after it’s first rise and was pretty robust, which I think contributed to my ease in shaping it.

The fun part! Pretzels get their trademark brown, glossy sheen from taking a hot bath in baking soda and water. Thirty seconds in a pan of boiling water and baking soda, and they were ready for baking.

You can see the difference between the one loaf on the right side that hasn’t taken it’s bath and those that have. Make sure you flip the loaf top side down in the water, otherwise your nicely shaped top becomes your bottom (this happened to the first one I did, seen here in the bottom left corner). They also got an egg yolk and water coating after they were boiled.

This time I slashed! Pretzel loaves just have to be slashed so that you can see the white insides peeking out from underneath that shiny, brown top. The loaves grew a substantial amount in the oven, so much so that at least two of the rolls were too large for as single sandwich. I could have definitely gotten a couple more loaves out of the recipe if I had made several of them a bit smaller. The loaves themselves were awesome; they tasted just like pretzel bread, and were fantastic for sandwiches. I decided to forgo the salt this time, since a lot of pretzel breads seem to not include it, but I think a light sprinkling of kosher salt would be a good addition to these rolls. They’ve inspired me to make actual soft pretzels, too; it was so easy and fun, with such fantastic results. Gotta love recipes like that!

Soft Pretzel Rolls (adapted from Alton Brown)

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups warm water
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 2 1/4 teaspoons (1 package) instant yeast
• 22 ounces all-purpose flour, approximately 4 1/2 cups
• 2 ounces unsalted butter, melted
• 10 cups water
• 2/3 cup baking soda
• 1 large egg yolk beaten with 1 tablespoon water
• Pretzel salt (optional)

Directions

1. Combine the water, sugar, salt, yeast, flour and butter in a large bowl and mix until well incorporated.
2. Knead with an electric mixer or by hand until the dough is smooth and pulls away from the side of the bowl, approximately 4 to 5 minutes (by mixer).
3. Transfer the dough to an oiled dough rising bucket or bowl, cover and let rise for 1 hour or until the dough has doubled in size.
4. Preheat the oven to 450ºF. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper and set aside.
5. Bring the 10 cups of water and the baking soda to a rolling boil in a large stock pot.
6. In the meantime, turn the dough out onto a slightly oiled work surface and divide into 8 equal pieces. Form each piece into a small, oval loaf. Place onto the parchment-lined sheet pan.
7. Place the loaves into the boiling water, topside down, one at a time, for 30 seconds. Remove them from the water using a large flat spatula. Return them, right side up, to the sheet pan.
8. Brush the top of each pretzel with the beaten egg yolk and water mixture and sprinkle with the pretzel salt. Slash with a sharp bread knife once or twice. Bake until dark golden brown in color, approximately 14 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack for at least 5 minutes before serving.

Goodness, where does the time go? Teaching this summer is really quite exhausting, and I find myself falling back on old standbys for our meals, like build-your-own burritos or the simple pasta sauce recipe I’ve posted about before. I guess this is my way of saying I haven’t been cooking much that’s too interesting lately. Last weekend I didn’t really cook anything at all, including bread, and the weekends are usually my cooking time. What’s worse is that I actually have a back log of pictures, waiting for posts, but I get home at night and am too wiped to do anything but surf the internet. But tonight I’ve found the energy, and hopefully I’ll get those posts out over this weekend, when (mercifully) I don’t have anything really planned.

Those of you who have been reading this blog since the beginning may remember my quest for rhubarb earlier this summer. Not having any nearby farmer’s markets, eventually found it at a farmstand after much traveling. A few weeks later, our local produce-heavy grocery store had it in bundles for sale, mocking my effort before. At least I knew the stuff from the farmstand was really fresh. Anyway, given that I love rhubarb, I had to buy some more now that it was convenient, and that meant finding a recipe. I didn’t want to go the standard strawberry-rhubarb route, nor really did I want to make a crumble or a cobbler. I like making sweets that are contained in individual servings, so we can easily transport them and eat them for dessert throughout the week. I thought about ice cream, but then I decided to go muffin. I hadn’t really thought about rhubarb and cinnamon/spices before as going together, but when I found this recipe, I had to try it out.

This is one of those one bowl, how easy can it be recipes. The fat in this is actually vegetable oil, which is supposed to keep the muffins good longer than just butter. Since, like I said before, we eat these throughout the week, things that stay good a while are a plus

In goes the flour; the original recipe called for whole wheat pastry flour, which I didn’t really feel like buying specially for this recipe. While I thought about throwing in some plain whole wheat flour for kicks, I decided to go all-purpose instead.

In goes the rhubarb, cut into chunks. Though they’re as crisp as celery when they go in, they soften up completely and nearly lose all structure when baked in the muffins.

That’s it as far as the batter goes: simple as that.

Evenly divided into twelve muffin cups, the batter filled them pretty much to the brim. It’s a little fuller than I would normally fill them, but the muffins puffed up without overflowing too much.

I substituted almonds for walnuts in the cinnamon sugar topping that gets sprinkled on top. In the future, I think I might press the nuts down into the batter a bit to keep them from falling off. As it was, they pretty easily rolled off the baked muffins.

Perfect. The muffins were tender and very moist, helped both by the rhubarb and the oil in the batter. They would make great breakfast muffins, but they were delicious for dessert after dinner as well. Like I mentioned before, the rhubarb hunks lost all their structure and became little bursts of tart rhubarb in between the sweet, spiced muffin batter.

Cinnamon Rhubarb Muffins (adapted from Eggs on Sunday)

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups rhubarb, chopped into 1/2-inch pieces
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup almonds, chopped

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400ºF and line a muffin pan with muffin cups.
2. In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients (flour through nutmeg) and whisk to combine.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients (eggs through vanilla)
4. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and gently fold to combine. Do not overmix. Fold in the rhubarb, and divide among prepared muffin cups.
5. In a small bowl, toss the almonds, cinnamon and sugar together with your fingers or a spoon. Sprinkle over the tops of the muffins and press nuts lightly into the batter.
6. Bake for about 18-22 minutes, or until a tester inserted into the center of one comes out clean. The tops should spring back to the touch when they’re cooked through.

Another week, another sandwich bread. This one, once again from King Arthur Flour, comes on a suggestion from my mother, who said this was a good loaf to try. I ended up having to substitute or leave out various things, due mostly to the fact that I was nearly out of all-purpose flour, and I didn’t have any grain mix or cereal to add. The loaf came out well anyway, and while the shape was not perfect for sandwiches, it worked well enough.

It starts with a starter, unsurprisingly. The starter called for mostly all-purpose flour with a bit of pumpernickel. I possessed neither, so I just used all 12-grain flour (which I am getting low on as well), figuring that yeast love an organic flour for the starter so they would do fine.

Into the bowl goes the rest of the ingredients. The starter was probably the wateriest starter I’ve ever made (it in fact included all the flour in the recipe), and all that had to go in later was the flour and salt. If I had thought ahead I would have substituted some of the water for a little oil, which helps keep the bread fresher longer, but I did not. Fortunately, it stayed good enough for sandwiches for the week, though the edges were getting a little stale toward the end.

It mixed up well with the dough whisk, and was neither too slack nor too dry.

After a good kneading, the dough is smooth (well, as smooth as whole-grain bread gets), and stickier, but not ridiculously sticky.

Probably the best shaping job I’ve ever done. I tucked all the ends in and had a nice smooth surface ready across the top. I probably should have slashed the top with a knife before I put it in, but to be honest I’m still a little skittish about doing that because I always fear my bread will deflate.

My bread came out with kind of a bizarre shape. I think it rose a little too much on the second rise, and it probably settled down after I pulled the plastic wrap off the top. How it cooked in the oven to form a perfectly sharp edge midway down, like the lip of a flying saucer, I do not know. A lot of times if you let a bread over rise you get huge holes in the crumb, but I didn’t have any of that happen. And honestly I’d rather have this happen than the holes, because sandwiches are easier to keep together when your bread isn’t very holey.

A Simple, Rustic Loaf (adapted from King Arthur Flour)

Ingredients

Starter

• 1 1/2 cups cool water
• 1 teaspoon instant yeast
• 2 cups organic 12-grain flour blend

Dough

• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 1/4 cups unbleached All-Purpose flour
• 1/2 cup mixed grains and seeds of your choice (optional)

Directions

1. Mix the sponge ingredients together, and let rest at room temperature, covered, for 3 to 4 hours, or overnight.
2. Stir down the sponge, and add the salt and flour. Mix and knead the dough until it’s smooth and elastic. Knead in the grains, if using.
3. Place the dough in a greased bowl, turning to coat its surface with oil. Cover and let rise in a warm spot for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until doubled in size.
4. Turn the dough out onto a lightly greased surface, and form it into a ball or a loaf. Place on a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet, or into an ovenproof crock. Cover and let rise for about 1 hour. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 450°F.
5. Gently but firmly slash the dough across the top, then spritz it with water. Bake the bread for 30 to 35 minutes, until it’s deep golden brown. Remove it from the oven and place it on a rack to cool. Cool completely before slicing.

After I made the chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream a few weeks ago I decided it would be great if I could have some kind of cookie to go along with it. Chocolate was the obvious choice since it would pair well with the vanilla base of the ice cream. I looked around a bit and found this recipe for Chocolate Brownie Cookies over at Joy the Baker that seemed perfect. I love soft cookies, and cookies with the texture of a brownie seemed awesome. Well, the cookies didn’t come out as planned, but they were perfectly tasty anyway.

First the eggs and sugar are whisked together to form a smooth mixture.

To this, the melted butter and chocolate are added. This is probably where my problem lay. The recipe calls for bittersweet chocolate, but I had none. In more than one location I found the instructions to substitute 1 ounce of unsweetened plus 1 tablespoon of sugar for 1 ounce of semisweet or bittersweet chocolate. I went ahead with this, but a few sites also vaguely mentioned that the ounce-to-ounce ratio would not be equal, or that you might have to adjust the fats as well. I can see how adding an entire half cup of sugar (what I had to add in the end) might change the consistency of the finished cookie.

Once all the ingredients have been added and thoroughly mixed together, the batter-like dough is refrigerated to make it easier to handle when scooping out onto baking sheets.

The recipe calls for them to be dished out by the tablespoonful. I don’t have one of those handy disher scoops, so I used a rounded two teaspoon scoop. I still managed to get plenty of dough on my hands, though.

They baked for 11 minutes, the time given in the recipe, and did not seem to have changed from their original state. I eventually left them in for about 18 minutes. They never really spread out, but they lost their glossy sheen and they cooked all the way through. They turned into tiny little brownie bites with a dark chocolate flavor, which makes a good pairing with the sweet vanilla ice cream. Sometimes things don’t turn out like expected, but they can still be delicious!

Brownie Cookie Bites (adapted from King Arthur Flour)

Ingredients

• 8 ounces unsweetened chocolate (chopped)
• 3 Tablespoons (1 1/2 ounces) butter
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoons salt

Directions

1. In a double boiler, or in the microwave, gently melt together the chocolate and butter. Stir till all the chocolate melts.
2. In a large, separate bowl, beat together the sugar and eggs till they’re thoroughly combined. Add the hot melted chocolate.
3. Stir in the remaining ingredients and mix well to combine. Refrigerate the batter like dough for at least 1 hour, to make it easier to handle.
4. Preheat the oven to 325ºF. Lightly grease (or line with parchment) two baking sheets, three if you have them.
5. Drop the cookie dough by the tablespoonfuls (about the size of a small ping pong ball) onto the prepared baking sheets. You can place them pretty close together, because they won’t really spread.
6. Bake the cookies for 18 to 20 minutes, until their tops have lost their shine and a pin stuck in comes out clean. Wait 5 minutes then transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool.

A friend was having a birthday brunch potluck, so I was looking for a recipe that I could quickly make the morning of, would travel well, and of course be a tasty addition. I considered recipes I’d already made and were thus proven, and I considered sweeter items like muffins or scones, but I ultimately settled on these cheddar paprika drop biscuits from Joy the Baker. I think I’ve only ever made roll-out biscuits before, and the drop kind were definitely simple and delicious.

First the dry ingredients, including the paprika, go in the bowl and get mixed together.

Like a good biscuit, the cold butter is cut in with a pastry cutter (or forks or the end of a whisk) so that it is crumbly. It was pretty warm in my kitchen the morning I made these, so I definitely had to put the mix back in the fridge for a bit to keep the butter from getting too melty. I took the opportunity to prepare my baking sheets with parchment paper.

I finely shredded about 6 ounces worth of extra sharp cheddar and mixed it well with the flour and butter mixture, making sure it got pretty well coated and most of the big clumps of cheese got broken up.

The wet ingredients: only heavy cream, which is mixed well enough so that all of the flour mixture is incorporated, but isn’t overmixed.

The original recipe called for using a half cup measure for giant biscuits, or a 1/4 cup measure for smaller ones but as I attempted to use a 1/4 cup and was winding up with huge biscuits even then, I downgraded to a couple of tablespoons. These got sprinkled with paprika before going in the oven.

The biscuits spread out into little mounds. The cheese was present, but they didn’t have an overly cheesy flavor, nor was the paprika very distinct. All of the flavors kind of melded together for a delicious addition to a pot luck brunch!

Cheddar Paprika Drop Biscuits (from Joy the Baker, adapted from Martha Stewart)

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon paprika, plus more for dusting
• 6 Tablespoons unsalted butter, cold, cut into pieces
• 6 ounces cheddar, finely grated (about 1 cup)
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Line a couple of baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar and paprika.
3. Using a pastry cutter, fork or the end of a wire whisk, cut the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles course meal with a few larger clumps remaining. Stir in the cheese with a fork.   
4. Add the cream and stir until the dough just comes together. The dough will be sticky; don’t over mix.
5. Scoop 1–2 tablespoons of dough about 1 1/2-inches apart of the prepared baking sheet. Lightly dust with paprika.
6. Bake until golden brown, about 15 minutes. Cool biscuits on a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.