afternoon light…
Photo Friday
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Category Archives: Baking
Photo Friday
Last week I made cupcakes for a baby shower, and tried out this petal piping tutorial from Savory Sweet Life.
I’d say they came out pretty well!
Let’s see that from another angle.
And a close-up?
Bialys for #TwelveLoaves May
I didn’t learn to drive until I was 17, an oddity at my high school where brand new cars to fit their brand new drivers started showing up during junior year. When I did learn, however, my dad took me on biweekly drives through Orange County, making a wide circle that climbed a gradual hill and then descended steeply toward, much to my dismay, a stoplight that was always red. One week I vividly remember Smash Mouth’s “Walkin’ on the Sun” playing as I coasted down the hill, hoping to hit the brakes soon enough to show I was paying attention, but not wanting the downhill glide to end. Another week, I remember stopping at a bagel shop just before getting to that glorious hill, and then, poised nervously at the parking lot exit, fumbling for the gas pedal instead of the brake. You only make that mistake once.
But really, the bagel shop is the important part here. My parents moved a lot when I was a kid, and one of the most important components about making a new city “home” was finding a good bagel place. This meant they were always hole-in-the-wall, never big names. This one in particular, though it was a bit of a drive from our house, was special in that it carried a treat I’d never had before: a bialy.
Bialys, if you’re not in the know (which more than likely means not from the East Coast ), are a bagel relative. A cousin, perhaps. Bagels are special because they are a chewy yeast dough that is boiled before it is baked, and they have that signature hole in the middle. Bialys, though their dough is similar in composition, have a depression rather than a hole in their centers, and that depression is filled with sautéed onions, poppyseeds, and sometimes garlic. Because they contain this little gold mine of flavor, they aren’t boiled, but go straight into the oven for a hot, short bake.
It is their filling – that little pocket of gooey caramelized onion goodness – that makes them right for this week. The Twelve Loaves challenge for May was baking with onions. I was stumped at first, but when N. suggested onion bagels, this chewy crusty treat flooded back at me with all the power of Proust’s madeleine.
The recipe I’m using here is a minor adaptation of Deb’s. I’ve added a few twists, incorporating garlic and sesame seeds in with the onion and poppyseed filling, sautéing the aromatics in butter rather than oil because I love the added richness, and combining a few tablespoons of vital wheat gluten with my bread flour to replace the high gluten flour I don’t have in my pantry. Plain bread flour will likely work as well, but the extra hit of gluten adds a chewiness I wouldn’t forgo.
I asked N. to take some photos for me while I rolled, pinched, and prodded the dough, so much of what follows is his work. Some of mine, though, include the rolling pictorials that follow. I’m using my own version of Joe Pastry’s technique, which I’m finding I like quite well. Rather than just slicing off hunks of dough and rolling them, I flatten out a piece, fold up and pinch the edges into a weird starfish, and then follow Joe’s suggestion of lightly rolling the dough in circles around the board inside my lightly curled hand. My system – in pictures – follows, but you can see Joe’s technique here.
Bialys
Makes 12
For dough:
1 ¾ cups water, at body temperature (it should feel neutral – not hot or cold – when you dip your finger in)
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
½ teaspoon sugar (helps the yeast bloom a bit faster)
4 cups bread flour
2 tablespoons vital wheat gluten
2 teaspoons kosher salt
For filling:
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup finely diced onion
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 teaspoon poppyseeds
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
(optional: ¼ teaspoon celery seed, because I’m obsessed)
- Add the yeast and the sugar, if using, to the water and set aside for 5-10 minutes until the yeast is thickly bubbly and smells like bread.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer (it would be quite an intense knead by hand), combine the flour, vital wheat gluten, and salt with the paddle attachment.
- Slowly add the water and yeast mixture, stopping the mixer when the dough becomes wet and clumpy, as in the photo above. Switch from the paddle attachment to the dough hook and knead for about 7 minutes on medium speed. The dough should become smooth and elastic, and tug itself away from the sides of the bowl a bit. If it seems much too wet or much too dry, add a bit more flour or water, just a tablespoon or two at a time.
- When it is well kneaded, heft the dough out of the mixer bowl, oil the bowl lightly, and replace the dough. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside to rise for 1½ – 2 hours, or until doubled. In my warm home office, at about 85F, my dough had doubled in 90 minutes.
- Punch down the dough to release trapped gas by gently but firmly depressing it with your fist. Dump it out onto a well floured board and let it sit for a few minutes to get its breath back.
- Divide the rested dough into 12 equal pieces (they should be about 3 ounces each), and roll each piece into a ball, keeping the others covered with plastic wrap or a cloth. My technique is as follows (as illustrated above): flatten each section of dough like a mini pizza. Then, fold each edge or bit that pokes out to the center. You will make about 8 folds. Pinch them together where they meet to keep them adhered. Flip this over and, positioning your hand like a cage around the dough, fingers curled down loosely to touch the board and palm just touching the dough, drag your hand lightly in a circle, taking the dough ball along with you. Continue to trace your hand in circles until the dough forms a nice cohesive, homogenous ball.
- As you form each ball, set it on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Let these rise, under plastic wrap or a clean kitchen towel, for another 1½ – 2 hours, until they have almost doubled, and an indentation made by pressing your thumb into the middle remains depressed.
- While they rise, make the filling. Heat the 2 tablespoons butter in a small skillet over medium low heat. When it is melted, add the onions and salt and cook gently for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. After 5 minutes, add the garlic and cook gently for another 5 minutes, or until the onions reach your desired level of caramelization (not much more will happen during baking).
- Remove from heat and add the seeds and pepper. Cool to room temperature.
30-45 minutes before you intend to bake, place a cast iron skillet on the lowest rack. Place the other rack just one slot above this, and preheat the oven to 475F. - When the dough has risen again, uncover and create depressions (Deb says “craters,” which I love) in the center of each. Fill with 1-2 teaspoons of the cooled onion mixture. Sprinkle the tops with a bit of flaky salt, if desired.
- Place in the preheated 475F oven, then carefully dump a mug full of ice cubes into the cast iron skillet just below and close the oven door quickly. This creates a burst of steam like commercial ovens use, which helps create a nice crust.
- Bake for 8-12 minutes. The tops of each bialy, around the onion filling, will bronze a bit.
- Cool at least 5 minutes before devouring.
Photo Friday
Rosemary and black pepper sourdough, before and after…
Orange Pan di Ramerino for Twelve Loaves April
Head above water. That pretty much describes where I’m at these days. I’m about a month out from completing my first year as a full-time faculty member at my college: my first real professorship! This means my desk is somewhere underneath a pile of research proposals from one class, reading responses from two more, and the weight of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene providing a ballast (read: another thing I have to work through) in one corner. My world is scattered with attendance sheets, evaluation materials, paperclips, and an amazing image of the shield from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that a student drew for me in February and I still haven’t gotten around to hanging on my wall.
This means that every week when it comes time to sit down and write a post, I scramble. At least it’s getting lighter outside every night, which means the moment when I can photograph the intricacies of one of our dinners – perhaps even on a week night – is coming. But for now it usually means making and photographing something on a Saturday, editing the photos (I do a little fiddling with white balance and noise reduction) and cobbling together a few things to say about it on Sunday, and scheduling it to go live as usual Monday morning.
It’s only a very few things, I find, that I have to say this time around. The Twelve Loaves challenge for April was oranges. Bake a bread, any bread, whether it be yeast, quick, muffins, biscuits, savory or sweet, and incorporate orange in some way. This one stumped me for a while until I read a post from my new blog obsession, Joe Pastry. Do you guys know Joe? He runs a delightful site in which he pulls inspiration for post topics from questions his readers ask, and along with some really interesting recipes, he explains the science behind baking.
Recently, Joe posted a procedure and recipe for Pan di Ramerino, a Tuscan take on the hot cross bun that incorporates rosemary and raisins. It’s a not-quite-savory-not-quite-sweet bun as welcome in a breakfast basket as on the dinner table. Joe provides a bit more history about it, but I’ll let him tell you that if you’re interested.
Remembering how much I like the combination of orange with rosemary from one of the first loaves I baked during my dough project, I decided to add a hefty scattering of orange zest to the dough, and replace the apricot glaze Joe advocates for an orange one instead to tie things together. Though I let mine rise a little too long (the room was quite warm and I was distracted by lesson planning) and thus the final product was a bit less puffy than I’d hoped, we scarfed our way through the first bun, and then bun-and-a-half, and then two, in little time. They are a soft, moist offering, not as eggy as challah but reminiscent of it in the sticky elasticity of the dough, with an intriguing herbal note that keeps them from turning resolutely into dessert.
The recipe to follow is adapted very slightly from Joe’s. I ended up with eleven buns, but that was just carelessness and poor counting on my part (thankfully I’m not a math professor…); you will easily be able to make twelve. Easter is over now, I know (head above water, people), but these are a lovely expression of spring for your kitchen, and would make really nice offerings for a bridal or a baby shower. Or, you know, roast a chicken stuffed with a sprig of rosemary and half an orange, and serve these up on the side.
Orange Pan di Ramerino
Adapted from Joe Pastry
Makes 12
3 ½ teaspoons active dry yeast
2 tablespoons sugar
¾ cups warm or tepid water (at or just above body temperature)
¼ cup olive oil
3 sprigs rosemary (about 3 inches each) plus an optional extra 1 tablespoon, finely chopped
⅔ cup golden raisins
3 ¼ fluffy cups bread flour (that’s 17.5 ounces, if you’re being disciplined about it)
1 teaspoon salt
1-2 tablespoons orange zest from one large orange
2 eggs
1 additional egg, for egg wash
Additional dribble of water, for egg wash
Orange glaze, recipe follows
- In a 2 cup glass measuring cup or a small bowl, combine the yeast, sugar, and ¾ cups warm water, and set aside to burble for 5-10 minutes.
- While the yeast activates, heat the olive oil in a small pan over medium low heat. When it just shimmers, add the 3 sprigs of rosemary and sauté for 30 seconds. They will barely brown and the leaves will start to look a little weary. Remove and discard.
- Add the raisins to the same olive oil and sauté them for 30 seconds. Remove and drain, reserving the oil. Let the raisins and the oil cool.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the flour and salt using the paddle attachment. Chop the remaining rosemary, if using, and zest the orange.
- By this time your yeast mixture should be assertively bubbling and smell like fresh bread. Add the cooled oil and the two eggs to the yeast mixture and whisk lightly.
- Add this collection of wet ingredients to the flour and salt and mix with the paddle attachment until most of the flour is moistened. Exchange the paddle attachment for the dough hook and knead at medium speed for 3-5 minutes. The dough will become lovely: supple and elastic.
- Add the additional rosemary, if using, the orange zest, and the raisins to the dough, and knead again until these flavoring agents are incorporated. This will take a good minute or two, since the first inclination of the raisins will be to hang out stubbornly at the bottom of the bowl. You may have to stop the mixing and fold them into the dough by hand a few times to get them to behave.
- Once things are nicely incorporated, the dough will be a bit on the sticky side, but that’s okay. Transfer it to a clean, oiled bowl, or just smear some olive oil around the sides of the bowl you’ve been using, and cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Set it aside to rise until doubled. This could take as many as 90 minutes, or it could take more like 60. It depends on how warm your house is.
- When the dough has doubled in volume, turn it out onto a floured board. You may find it is still a bit sticky, so you want to be sure you have enough flour down to prevent frustration.
- Using a dough scraper, a pizza cutter, or a reasonably sharp knife, divide the dough into 12 equal pieces. If you want to be precise about it, this should mean each chunk will be 2.75 ounces.
- With the palm of your hand, gently roll each chunk into a soft round. Joe has an excellent method for this – take a peek at his instructions if you want a method to work with.
- Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and load them up, six buns on each. Lightly oil the tops of the buns, then cover with plastic wrap or a clean cloth and let them rise again for 45 minutes. At this point, you should also preheat the oven to 400F.
- Once the buns have risen again and the oven is hot, brush the tops with egg wash, made by beating the remaining egg with a tiny dribble of water. Then, with a sharp serrated knife, cut a criss-cross pattern in the top of each. As Joe notes, this produces something less than aesthetically perfect, but it’s traditional.
- Bake in the upper third of a 400F oven for twenty minutes. At this point the tops of the buns should be nicely bronzed. Take them out and let them cool for a bit before topping them with a light layer of orange glaze.
Orange glaze
Makes enough for at least 12 buns
Juice of one large orange
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon orange marmalade
- Combine all ingredients in a small pot or saucepan and let simmer for 10-15 minutes, until slightly thickened. Cool slightly before brushing onto the warm pan di ramerino.
Photo Friday
I’m now feeling secure enough about myself, almost a month later, to share a few shots from my strawberries-and-goat-cheese biscuit disaster… They were pretty, and I love how ethereal the kitchen lighting is, but they were just so. damn. flat. Lesson learned. Jamming a full pint of strawberries into an innocent batch of dough does not fluffy biscuits make.
"blackberry-eating in late September" 