Cheddar Dill Twists

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Chelsea

It seems fitting that I should do my first post along with the Twelve Loaves bakers during a month that celebrates cheese. On any given day, you can find between three and six different kinds of cheese in the tiny drawer in my refrigerator. My last two posts have featured it as a key ingredient, and in both I’ve waxed eloquent about using not just some, but MOAR. I seriously love cheese. It’s the primary reason I could never go completely vegan. I could give up meat with very little trouble (though I would miss bacon, I must admit). I could wave a cheerful goodbye to fish, to beef, to chicken, and stock my cupboards with vegetable broth and my freezer with coconut based ice cream. I already use soy rather than regular milk on my cereal and in my weekend chai. But I would have serious problems bidding farewell to cheese.

Even though I know this isn’t true – they had their ingredient chosen long before I came into the picture – it feels almost like the Twelve Loaves baking group planned this month’s post just for me. Bake with cheese. Yes. I. Will. Cooking with cheese is exciting because the ingredient offers such variety. Do you want something mild, or so sharp it makes your mouth water? Do you want a familiar flavor, or something tart or funky or stinky like last month’s socks? And then there’s texture. Cheese already runs the gamut from so soft it seems already melted to the firmness of parmesan that requires a knife point to dismantle. Add to that the different reactions it has to heat: some cheeses sigh into liquid. Some pull into foot-long strings. Some – and this is one of my favorite results – some flatten and solidify and transform into crunchy little cheese crisps suitable for nothing fancier than jamming into your mouth as quickly as you can.

With all of these options to work with, I was surprised by how quickly I landed on a choice. I’ve been playing around with a pairing of dill and cheddar, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to showcase it. Dill goes really well with yogurt, so for a different source of fat and moisture, I decided to use some thick, tangy Greek yogurt instead of butter in my dough. The tartness of the yogurt would be nice with the rich sharpness of the cheddar. And since I like to be fancy, I decided to make little twists, rather than a standard loaf.

Guys, these are definitely the right thing to do. The dill-cheddar-yogurt trio is a chamber group on a good night. They bounce off each other in such a lovely way. But it can’t be denied that the star here is the cheese. It melts into little orange pockets while the dough turns into bread, and the smell of it while cooking makes a better homecoming than much else I can think of. I made one tray of twists with cheese sprinkled on top and one without, just to see which was better. As you might expect, more cheese won the day. It drips over the edges into crisp little crackered pieces you can snap off and crunch through before you dive into the main event.

I had the idea that these would make fantastic extra-large tea sandwiches: halve them into long pieces, toast lightly, slather with cream cheese, then layer with long strips of cucumber. Cheese on cheese is rarely a bad thing, and the cucumber would nod to the dill and provide a crisp freshness and a lightness for the perfect spring lunch. Alas, when I reached into the fridge drawer jammed with vegetables, not cheese, my cucumbers were past their prime. So I had to settle for cream cheese alone, with a side of Caesar salad. I can’t say I ended up disappointed.

Serving suggestion: these are perfect all on their own straight out of the oven. But they do make a nice, roll-sized vehicle for anything sausage shaped, and I can’t see many people objecting to using this as the base for a good solid cheesesteak sandwich. If you really wanted to get decadent, the twists could be split lengthwise, spread with a garlic butter, and broiled into a dreamy take on garlic bread.

To capitalize on the tea sandwiches idea, you could make them even smaller, dividing into 16 or even 24 pieces, and creating miniature twists to serve as part of an appetizer spread with the requisite cream cheese and cucumber filling. I haven’t tested this smaller size so I can’t be sure how much to reduce the baking time – start with 12 minutes and go from there.

Cheddar Dill Twists

Makes 8 sandwich sized twists

2 teaspoons yeast

1 tablespoon brown sugar

½ cup lukewarm milk

½ cup plain, unsweetened Greek yogurt (you could use regular yogurt too, but you might need additional flour)

1 large egg

2 – 2½ cups bread flour

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons finely minced fresh dill

1 cup grated cheddar cheese, if not topping the twists. 1-½ cups grated cheddar, divided, if topping the twists

In a bowl or a 2-cup glass measuring cup, combine the yeast, brown sugar, and lukewarm milk. Stir, then set aside for 5-10 minutes until bubbly and smelling of bread.
In the bowl of your stand mixer, or another large bowl, stir together the egg and the yogurt (use the paddle attachment, if you are working with a stand mixer). Add in the milk and yeast mixture, stirring well, then add 2 cups of the flour, the salt, the dill, and 1 cup of the cheddar cheese. Mix until the dough comes together into a rough ball.
Switch from the paddle attachment to the dough hook and set to medium, if you are using a stand mixer. If you are mixing by hand or with a wooden spoon, turn the dough out onto a floured board. In either case, knead into a smooth, slightly sticky ball with some elasticity. If it seems too sticky to work with, add more flour 2 tablespoons at a time. This unfortunate stickiness may increase as the cheese softens; don’t despair.
Plop the kneaded dough in an oiled bowl (I just spray down the sides of my stand mixer bowl and flip the dough ball over a few times), cover tightly with plastic wrap, and leave it to rise for 60-90 minutes, until doubled. Punch it down by gently pressing your knuckles into the center, then let it rest for 5 minutes.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board and divide into 8 equal pieces. Using the palms of your hands, roll into 18-inch long ropes. As you roll, the middle will get thin and the ends will plump up. Prevent this by pushing outwards toward the ends of the rope (so your hands are moving slightly away from each other) as you roll.
Fold the rope over into a long horseshoe shape, then twist or “braid” it by lifting one side over the other in 3 or 4 tight twists, as in the photos above. When you reach the ends, crimp them together and tuck them under for neatness.
Transfer each twist to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, settling them at least 2 inches apart, and let rise again for 45-60 minutes, until noticeably plumped but not quite doubled.
At least 30 minutes before cooking, preheat the oven to 350F.
When you are ready to bake, if you want to top the twists with cheese, sprinkle the remaining ½ cup of cheddar in equal amounts over each – this will be about a tablespoon per twist.
Bake at 350F for 18 minutes, until the twists are golden and the top layer of cheese is melted and slightly crisp.
Cool for 5-10 minutes, if you can, before removing to a rack or directly to your mouth.

#TwelveLoaves is a monthly bread baking party created by Lora from Cake Duchess and runs smoothly with the help of Heather of girlichef, and the rest of our fabulous bakers.

Our host this month is Robin from A Shaggy Dough Story, and our theme is CHEESE. For more bread recipes, visit the #TwelveLoaves Pinterest board, or check out last month’s mouthwatering selection of #TwelveLoaves enter last month’s Italian Breads!

Buttermilk Goat Cheese Biscuits from That Skinny Chick Can Bake
Casatiello from Cake Duchess
Cheddar Chive Bread from Karen’s Kitchen Stories
Cheddar Dill Twists from blackberry eating in late september
Cheese Babka from Hostess At Heart
Cheese Soda bread from Ma che ti sei mangiato
Cream Cheese and Cherry Buns from girlichef
Feta & Olive Swirls from The Bread She Bakes
Khachapuri (Georgian Cheese Bread) from A Shaggy Dough Story
Pimento Cheese Straws from Kudos Kitchen By Renee

If you’d like to bake along with us this month, share your CHEESE bread using hashtag #TwelveLoaves!

Mushroom Puttanesca Calzone

Posted on March 30, 2015 by Chelsea

It would seem that I’m developed a bit of an obsession with well-oiled, aggressively seasoned mushrooms, patiently pan-roasted until deeply, deeply browned and edging toward crisp. Still bouncy on the inside, these golden crusted, meaty little nuggets are finding their way into my cooking more and more frequently. This would be, I think, an entirely good thing in terms of health and waistlines, except I keep drowning them in small mountains of cheese. Last week it was the quintessential quesadilla (which, if you’re wondering, is also stellar in taco format with the addition of tempeh, per my friend S.). This week, a calzone filled with deeply caramelized mushroom quarters, a chunky adaptation of my favorite puttanesca sauce, and of course, the requisite cheese all folded up and pinched inside a swollen half moon of dough.

I love a good calzone, but N. is a little resistant for the same reason he is resistant to lasagna: the not-smooth-enough texture of ricotta cheese. Its strange milky loyalty to both savory and sweet applications is not quite cheese-flavored enough, and the slight graininess of the tiny, tiny residual curds lingering in there weirds him out. Fortunately, in this case as with most cheese-related conflicts, the answer is more. Mashing a healthy dose of grated mozzarella in with the ricotta adds a stronger cheese flavor and ups the salt content, which I think ricotta often needs. Here, I’ve bumped up the flavor and interest even more by folding in a small pile of chopped herbs and some lemon zest. This provided welcomed brightness against the deep earthy mushrooms and puttanesca.

The trick with calzones, as you might expect, is moisture. Because you are sealing up this lovely little packet, it should be baked at a lower temperature than a pizza – the dough tends to be a bit thicker, and because half of it is on the inside, it needs more time to cook all the way through without burning the outside. But what you’ve stacked up inside also has more time to release its own juices, which can result in a bottom crust which is a bit, well, mushy is such an ugly word. Let’s call it soft. Ours certainly was. Calzone dough should be chewy and slightly pillowy but still, there’s a reason it’s called crust.

My thoughts on preventing this are as follows: ensure you are using only the chunky vegetable bits from the puttanesca sauce for the inside. Save the sauce component to spread over the top of the calzone. Additionally, if you have the time, drain the ricotta lump in a strainer lined with cheesecloth or paper towels. Even an hour would allow some of that moisture to escape, which means it would end up in the sink rather than the bottom crust of your dinner.

But even if you do end up with a bottom crust that isn’t as, well, crusty as you might like, you won’t be hurting for flavor. Mushrooms and ricotta – particularly a ricotta jazzed up with mozzarella and aromatics – play incredibly well together, and somehow both hold up to the briny strength of the sauce.
It’s a good dish, then, with which to bid March farewell: still those dark, warm notes of winter, but a lovely springy freshness too, all wrapped up in a chewy, melty package, and just as delicious the next day.

Mushroom Puttanesca Calzone

Serves 6-8

16 ounces pizza dough, homemade or store bought

8 ounces crimini or button mushrooms, stemmed and quartered

2 tablespoons olive oil

pinch of pepper

sprig of thyme (optional)

4 ounces ricotta cheese, drained if desired

8 ounces (1 cup) low moisture mozzarella cheese, grated and divided

2 tablespoons fresh parsley, minced

1 tablespoon fresh basil, minced

pinch of salt

1 teaspoon lemon zest

For sauce:

2 tablespoons olive oil

4-6 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tablespoon capers, minced

¼ cup coarsely chopped kalamata olives

2 anchovy fillets

pinch of red pepper flakes, to taste

1 teaspoon dried basil

½ cup dry red wine

8-10 ounces diced canned tomatoes, with their juice

On an oiled pizza pan, spread out the pizza dough in a rough circle 12 inches in diameter. If it springs back, no worries; let it rest for ten minutes and then stretch it out again. At least half an hour before you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 375F with a rack in the middle position.
In a large skillet, heat the 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium heat. Add the mushrooms, the pinch of pepper, and the thyme sprig if desired and cook until the mushrooms are well-browned. This should take 8-10 minutes with occasional stirring, during which time the mushrooms will suck up the oil, release their liquid, and then accept some of that liquid back again.
While the mushrooms cook, combine the ricotta and ½ cup of the mozzarella cheese in a small bowl with the fresh parsley, fresh basil, lemon zest, and pinch of salt to taste. I find a rubber spatula works well for this. Reserve the remaining ½ cup of mozzarella for the top of the calzone.
When the mushrooms are done, set them aside in a small bowl and discard the thyme sprig, then put the skillet back over medium heat. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil and the minced garlic. Saute for 1-2 minutes, until the garlic is soft and aromatic and edging toward golden. Add the anchovy fillets and mash them around with a wooden spoon to break down. Scrape in the capers and olives and saute for an additional 1 minute.
Toss in the red pepper flakes, the basil, and the ½ cup of red wine and bring to a simmer. Add the tomatoes with their juice and simmer over medium heat for 15-20 minutes, until the liquid has reduced a bit and the flavors are well combined. Remove from heat and let cool for a few minutes.
To assemble, spread the cheese mixture over half of the stretched dough, leaving a healthy inch margin around the edge. Pile the mushrooms on top of the cheese, and then use a slotted spoon to add the chunky portions of the sauce – the tomato and olive and caper bits – on top of the mushrooms (again, keep and respect that inch margin).
With slightly moistened or lightly oiled hands (especially if your dough is sticky), grab the edge opposite the area you’ve been filling and pull up, folding over to meet the half-circle edge along your margin. You’ll form a half-moon shape with the dough. Crimp the edge by pulling the bottom layer of dough up slightly over the top layer in a series of small segments. Press and pinch each one tightly into the top layer of dough about a half inch from the edge. This will form a seal to prohibit the top from opening up during baking. It also looks pretty. Because we care about that.
With the calzone fully sealed along the circular edge, brush the top with some of the remaining puttanesca sauce, then sprinkle on the remaining ½ cup of mozzarella cheese. Carefully place into the preheated oven and bake for 30-35 minutes, until the cheese on top is melted and crusty, and the dough is golden and cooked through. After removing from the oven, wait 5-10 minutes before slicing, then serve hot with any remaining puttanesca sauce, if desired.

Trying-to-be-patient Brown Butter Brioche

Posted on January 26, 2015 by Chelsea

It’s always interesting to see what the Twelve Loaves baking group decides on as a January theme. This is a time of renewal, of fresh beginnings, of starting again or trying again or reestablishing. Last year they asked for simplicity, prompting me to try my hand at sourdough, made by weight rather than volume measurements. This year, they asked for something a little more poetic but just as abstract: bake a loaf inspired by a New Year’s resolution.

I knew immediately I would make brioche. One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2015 is to be more patient. While this would be a good goal in any area of life (or perhaps all of them), for me, it’s very specific. I want to be more patient with Lucy when we take our daily walk. My dog-daughter will be twelve years old in the spring, and though she’s still very energetic and quite healthy, she has slowed down over the years. Some of this is age, but some is insistence on getting what she wants. For her, our outing is not a walk. It’s an extended sniff. She wants to stop at every bush, at every bench, at every blade of grass, it sometimes seems. This can easily push a two mile walk into an hour-long endeavor.

Like most of us, though, I’m a busy person. At least I feel like I am. When I get home from work, after a brief decompression (read: Facebook and a snack), I want to walk Lucy, do a final check of my email inbox, and get on with cooking dinner. Ultimately, I want to get these things done so I can changed into pajamas and deposit myself on the couch. Sniffing every blade of grass impinges on this plan, so over the past year or so I found myself getting frustrated, and even quite angry when Lucy stopped, and stopped, and stopped again.

In November I was getting ready to snap at her about such a stop, and instead I stopped. Chelsea, she’s a dog. This is her daily chance to get outside and experience the world. She doesn’t understand what I’m even asking, let alone why I’m asking, and all my impatience is doing is making us both feel bad. And really, what’s the damage to my schedule if I do let her have an extended nasal examination of the things she’s most interested in? All told, three, maybe five minutes.

I can handle that.

So I am trying to be more patient with her, gently encouraging her to hustle along rather than snapping at her. I’m delivering commands in a calmer voice, and letting the sniff session go on an extra few seconds before delivering that command at all. I’m not at total karmic peace with the extra time spent yet, but I’m working on it.

Brioche is my bread project, then, because it’s a loaf that requires patience. Rich with eggs and loaded with butter, brioche is the “cake” from the famous quote misattributed to Marie Antoinette. To integrate the massive quantities of butter the loaf requires, most recipes detail a process of bringing the fat to just the right temperature and incorporating it into the dough a maddening single tablespoon at a time. Too cold, and the butter won’t mix in. Too warm, and it will collapse the dough into a soupy mess. Too much at once, and the dough will get greasy and separate unpleasantly. It takes, typically, a 20-30 minute knead time to get the gluten chains in the flour tangling nicely and then incorporate all of that butter. After this, a long, slow, cool rise time is required, in part to build flavor, in part to develop structure, and in part just to make it easier to handle – that butter has to chill down before the dough can be manipulated successfully.

By the time you are finally ready to bake the thing, a brioche has usually been under construction for the better part of a day, if not two (sponges and overnight refrigerated rises are common). But the result – a spongy tender, light-as-air crumb inside a deeply browned crunchy crust – is remarkable. It reminds me of challah, another egg-laden loaf requiring multiple rises, but is more finely textured and even a bit richer. If your gourmet burger arrives on a deeply, perfectly rounded bun so shiny it looks lacquered and leaves a sheen of fat on your fingertips when you set it back down on the plate with a sigh, you’ve had brioche. It’s a frequent choice for a truly decadent french toast, and I was prepared, with a cringe, to sink myself into making it.

When I looked around at recipes for points of comparison, I came back, as I often do, to Cooks Illustrated, which featured a practically fool-proof take on brioche. To combat the frequent problems associated with the quantity and temperature of the butter, recipe developer Andrew Janjigian opts for a no-knead approach, relying on a combination of gentle folding of the dough (see photo series above), and time, to stimulate gluten production. The very wet dough brioche requires works well for this method, because the moister the dough, the better the enzymes in there activate the gluten. Janjigian explains that this no-knead method leads to another benefit: since we aren’t kneading the dough, we can’t spend 20 minutes mixing in all the butter. Melting it and stirring it in all at once works just fine.

As I read his explanation of the changes he’d made from the original and recognized the ease involved compared to the traditional procedure, I was almost sold. A small part of me protested that this might be cheating – that if I was really making something to represent the resolve to be more patient, I should go with the typical long knead, slow-and-steady incorporation of butter, and force myself to avoid shortcuts. But in reading the recipe again, I realized this was still going to be a long process. Even before chilling the dough overnight, I would need to perform a series of folds on the sticky, wet mass I’d created to help activate the gluten. Using large chunks of my Friday and Saturday to put this together, attend to timers, coordinate myself through the rising and proofing process, and get through the agonizing final two hours of waiting for the baked loaves to cool enough for slicing, was going to take plenty of patience. I’m only human, and it’s only January. If I’m going to be successful in this resolution, baby steps might be the way to go.

The nail in the coffin, though, was when I checked Joe Pastry’s version of brioche. He suggests pumping up the flavor by using brown butter. Since I was already going to be melting the butter, this was clearly the right thing to do. Tiny speckles of toasted nuttiness running through my dough? Yes, thanks. Now, please.

Well, not now. Two long, patient days from now. But at the conclusion of those days, slicing through a softly shattering crust into a pillowy yellow interior laced with bits of brown butter, it was all I could do to eat each slice in more than one bite. Because, you know, patience.

Serving suggestions: there’s not much you shouldn’t do with brioche. It can be a bit soft for a sandwich, but makes glorious toast and french toast. My recipe is for one regular loaf and 8 small or 6 large buns, and we used the bun shape for veggie burgers. Because they are more compact, the buns hold up to rough handling a bit better than the slices, so feel free to load them with pulled pork, or crab cakes, or egg salad, or whatever moves your taste buds most deeply.

Trying-to-be-Patient Brown Butter Brioche

barely adapted from Cooks Illustrated

makes 1 loaf and 8 small or 6 large buns

16 tablespoons unsalted butter (2 sticks)

½ cup room temperature or slightly warm water

⅓ cup sugar

2 ¼ teaspoons active dry yeast

7 large eggs, divided (but not separated!)

3 ¼ cups bread flour

1½ teaspoons salt + a pinch

Day one: melt the butter over medium heat in a small saucepan, preferably not with a dark bottom (it makes it easier to see the butter browning). As it melts, it will sputter and foam up. The foam will eventually subside, but shortly thereafter it will get foamy again. At this point, tilt the pan a little bit (carefully) to see the bottom – little specks of solids should be getting golden-brown. Let them get golden and then chestnut brown, then turn off the heat and set the pan aside to cool. These little dark bits are what makes it brown butter.
While the brown butter cools (pop it in the fridge for a few minutes if you are nervous about the temperature), combine the water, sugar, and yeast in a large glass measuring cup or a medium bowl. Stir well, then set aside for 10 minutes to allow the yeast to activate.
Meanwhile, whisk together the flour and salt in one bowl (a large one), and 6 of the eggs in another (a small one will do). When the yeast mixture is bubbly and smells like warm bread, add the whisked eggs and stir to combine. Whisk in the cooled brown butter, then dump the whole wet mess into the bowl with the flour and salt. Stir with a wooden spoon until no flour streaks remain. It will be a damp lump that looks more like thick cake batter than like dough.
Cover the bowl of dubious dough with plastic wrap and let it sit for 10 minutes.
Uncover the dough and pull up one edge with your fingertips (sprayed with non-stick spray or lightly coated with oil, if you’re concerned about stickiness), then fold that edge over the middle of the dough ball (see photo series above). Turn the bowl 45 degree and fold again. Repeat the process until you have made 8 folds.
Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 30 minutes. Repeat this folding and rising process every 30 minutes for 3 more times (so you’ll do this folding process 4 times over the course of 2 hours). This helps activate the gluten without the labor intensive kneading process. After the fourth and final folding circuit, replace the plastic wrap and stow the bowl in the refrigerator overnight.
Day two: remove the dough from the refrigerator and relocate it to a well-floured board. Divide it into four pieces. Working one at a time, pat two of the pieces of dough into about a 4-inch round. Around the circumference of the dough, fold in the edges toward the center to form a clumpy ball (see photo series above). Turn the dough ball over and form your hand around it like a cage, then roll gently with very little pressure in light circles on the board to form a smooth, taut round (see Joe Pastry’s excellent tutorial if you need help with this). Repeat with the second piece of dough.
The remaining two pieces are for the buns. Divide each of them into equal thirds or quarters, depending upon whether you want 6 or 8 buns. Repeat the flattening, folding, and shaping process with each of these smaller dough pieces, then cover all dough rounds with plastic wrap and let them rest for 5 minutes.
Grease one loaf pan and one baking tray (or line it with parchment paper). After the dough balls have rested for 5 minutes, flip them to expose the seam side and repeat the flattening, folding, and shaping process with each one. This creates a finer, more uniform texture in the final product – a step worth doing.
Place the two larger balls into the loaf pan, pressing them gently into the corners. They will rise and merge into each other while baking. Place the 6 or 8 smaller rounds on the prepared cookie sheet. Cover both loosely with plastic wrap and leave to rise until almost doubled in size – this should take 1½ – 2 hours. Even after this rise, the loaf may look a bit puny. Don’t worry; it rises quite impressively in the oven.
Half an hour before baking, be sure your oven rack is in the middle position and preheat the oven to 350F. Cooks Illustrated suggests placing a baking stone on the rack to preheat along with the oven, perhaps to create a more even shot of heat.
When the loaf and the buns have nearly doubled, beat the final egg with the pinch of salt. Remove the plastic wrap and brush the loaves with the egg mixture. Set the pans in the oven (on the stone, if you’re using one), and bake until the tops are golden brown and the internal temperature registers 190F. This will take 18-20 minutes for the buns, and 35-45 minutes for the loaf. If you can remember, rotate the pans halfway through baking.
Once cooked through and shiny golden on top, transfer pans to a wire rack and cool for 5 minutes. Then remove from pans, return to wire rack, and cool at least 2 hours before slicing and serving.

Pumpkin Pecan Sweet Rolls – #TwelveLoaves

Posted on November 24, 2014 by Chelsea

The time of peace is coming. I can feel it. I need it. This is week 14 of a 16 week semester, and though I had a brief respite from grading this weekend, this week papers begin pouring in again. And this is not to say that my weekend wasn’t busy. It was crammed, jammed, packed, precariously scheduled. It was just busy with other things. But I felt, for just a moment, the peace I’m craving. I caught myself, about five minutes into dusting the living room, enjoying it.

I’ll wait while that sinks in.

I was enjoying. dusting.

Before you think me a complete freak, let me say this is a highly irregular occurrence. I don’t enjoy dusting. In fact, within ten minutes of noticing this odd feeling of pleasure, I was tired of the activity again. But for those few minutes, there was something so calming, so reassuring, so soft and easy about running a cloth over the bookshelves and the side table and the TV stand. It was a moment that was easy to escape from. It was mentally effortless. I thought, “I need this.” I need this peace, this feeling of being brainless with no guilt.

Fortunately, this time is approaching like a freight train (it would be nicer if it were approaching like fog, or frosting, or some other delicate F word, but we must be honest…). The commercials I try not to pay attention to when I watch television loudly broadcast how many shopping days are left until Christmas. Within my family, texts about gifts have started flying. I may or may not already know exactly what I’m wearing for my family’s Christmas dinner.

But that’s getting ahead of things. That’s the full stop. We do get a funny little moment of pause first, which is what the dusting was for. My parents arrive on Wednesday to celebrate Thanksgiving. It will be the first year my sister doesn’t join us. This is, when I think about it, a stab of selfish sadness. But that only lasts a moment, because instead of winging her way all the way across the country to be with us for one short weekend, she’ll be with her partner and her dog, with his family. This is a joyful thing. She sent me a photo of a batch of pumpkin bread cake pops she made to take along. She said something about “impressing purposes.” She won’t need cake pops to do that.

It does seem like pumpkin is the thing to do these days. I was unsurprised that this month’s Twelve Loaves project calls for that most celebrated of squashes. I typically try to imagine something no one else will have made for the Twelve Loaves challenge, but this month I decided to loosen up. The fact was, I wanted pumpkin sweet rolls. So no matter how many other people chose this too (two so far), I was making them. Originality be damned. Sometimes you just have to make what you’re craving.

For these rolls, I started with my Nana’s sweet roll dough, but used all whole milk instead of water for added richness. I replaced the white sugar with brown, to play with the autumnal feel of the pumpkin, and spiked the dough with all the spices that usually find their way into pumpkin pie. And then, of course, the bright orange vegetal sweetness of pumpkin puree. Once risen and rolled out, I spread it with melted butter, more brown sugar and cinnamon, and a scattering of toasted, chopped pecans. Rolled, sliced, and baked, they puffed into glorious swirls – orange gold, with dark bronze bubbling fissures twisting through them. Pulled apart just like that, they were delicious. Because I didn’t overdo it on the sugary center, they could almost pass as breakfast.

But this is holiday food, and holiday food is so often about excess that I couldn’t help myself. A quick whip of cream cheese with a breath of powdered sugar, a splash of vanilla, and just a touch of heavy cream to loosen it up, and I had a soft, thick frosting to spread over their golden tops.

I left two pans in the department mailroom at work. By the time I left in mid-afternoon, there weren’t even crumbs left.

Making these rolls is an investment. They have a long ingredient list. The dough can be quite sticky. They require two rises. They demand rolling, chopping, toasting, sprinkling, whipping, spreading… but they also require pulling into shreds of sweet chewy dough, and assiduous finger licking. And meditative savoring. And here’s the thing: the holiday season often feels hectic. There is shopping to be done, and traveling to navigate, and wrapping and cooking and impressing family you rarely see, and all of that can feel like too much to squeeze in a complicated baking project.

But I think, if you embark on such a baking project, knowing the time it requires, and sinking into its gentle rising and baking schedule, it provides its own kind of peace. Besides, these are too good not to make. So just make some. Thanksgiving breakfast, maybe. You’ll thank me later.

Pumpkin Pecan Sweet Rolls
Makes about 30

For dough:

4 ½ teaspoons active dry yeast

1 cup lukewarm milk

1 cup + a pinch brown sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

½ cup (8 tablespoons or one stick) soft butter

1 cup pumpkin puree, canned or fresh (if canned, be sure it is not pumpkin pie filling)

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

½ teaspoon ground ginger

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

6-7 cups all-purpose or bread flour

For filling:

½ cup (8 tablespoons or one stick) melted butter

1 cup brown sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 cup toasted, chopped pecans

For frosting:

8 ounces room temperature cream cheese

1 teaspoon vanilla

¾ cup powdered sugar

3-4 tablespoons heavy cream

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine yeast, lukewarm milk, and the pinch of brown sugar. Stir, then let sit for 5-10 minutes until the yeast is bubbling and smells like fresh bread.
Once the yeast has woken up, add the rest of the sugar, the salt, the eggs, the butter, the pumpkin puree, and the vanilla. Mix on medium-low speed with the paddle attachment to combine.
Add 4 cups of the flour and all of the spices, and mix on medium-low again to combine. You will have something like orange cake batter. Add 2 additional cups of flour (this is 6 total) and mix to combine.
Switch from the paddle attachment to the dough hook and knead for about 5 minutes, or until a sticky but slightly elastic dough has formed. It will not become a firm ball, but will pull away from the sides of the bowl in stretchy threads. If the dough is not pulling away from the sides of the bowl at all after the first three minutes, begin adding the remaining cup of flour ¼ cup at a time, kneading well in between each addition.
When the dough is kneaded, spray the sides of the bowl with a non-stick spray, roll the dough over in it once or twice to coat, then cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and set it aside to rise until doubled – about 90 minutes.
While the dough rises, prepare the filling ingredients – toast and chop the pecans, melt the butter, and get the cinnamon and brown sugar measured out for easy application. While you’re at it, spray pans with non-stick spray. I used two 9-inch and two 8-inch cake pans. Square or rectangular pans would work fine as well.
Dump the risen dough onto a well floured board. If it is aggressively sticky, dust the top of the dough with flour as well and knead by hand a few times, until it is easier to work with.
With a dough scraper, a pizza cutter, or a sharp knife, cut the dough in half and stow one half back in the bowl. We will work with one half at a time.
Using a well floured rolling pin, roll the first half of dough into a thin rectangle (about ¼ inch thick, if you can manage it). The size of this rectangle will depend on how much your dough has risen. Aim for thickness rather than dimensions.
Pour half of the butter over your dough and spread it across the surface with your fingers. Leave a border of about ½ inch on all sides.
Sprinkle half of the brown sugar and half of the cinnamon over the surface, again respecting the border. Spread for even coverage if needed.
Sprinkle half the pecans over the buttered, sugared surface.
Now, we roll. Beginning in the middle of the long edge of your dough rectangle, begin to roll up the dough into a long log. Once you have rolled a revolution or two in the center, move your hands toward the edges, rolling them up as well to create an even log. As you reach the end, pull the loose edge of dough firmly against the log you have made and pinch and crimp it into the already rolled dough to create a seal.
Using a serrated knife, cut your log into slices 1 to 1-½ inch thick. To do this without squashing the rolls, use almost no pressure as you saw the knife back and forth.
Settle the slices with the filling swirl exposed in your prepared pans, and repeat the process with the remaining half of the dough.
When all of your rolls are, well, rolled, drape the pans with clean kitchen towels or plastic wrap and let them rise again for 45 minutes.
During the last 30 minutes of this second rise, preheat the oven to 350F.
After their second rise, the rolls should have noticeably puffed and be pressing against each other. Remove the towels or plastic wrap and stow the pans in the oven for 20-22 minutes, until the rolls are nicely browned and the filling inside is beginning to bubble. Remove and set aside to cool while you make the frosting.
In a medium bowl (or, if you’ve been proactive enough to wash your stand mixer bowl, use that), whip the cream cheese until very smooth with a whisk or electric mixers. Add the vanilla, the powdered sugar, and 3 tablespoons of the cream, and mix to combine. You are looking for a texture a touch thicker than condensed milk – too thick to pour, but loose enough to wilt toward the edges of your icing spatula. If it seems too thick, add the final tablespoon of cream and mix again.
While the rolls are still warm, spread with the frosting. This makes enough for about one tablespoon per roll. I found individual dollops, then careful spreading over one roll at a time, made for a more attractive result than just globbing on a pile and spreading over all of the rolls at once.
Separate rolls using a butter knife or an icing spatula and serve warm (they are fine at room temperature too, but if you refrigerate the leftovers, I recommend warming them up before eating, as the dough gets a little dry when cold).

(Not Damson) Plum Coffeecake

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Chelsea

A few weeks ago, my dad sent an email to me, my mom, and his sisters: a reading recommendation replete with a link to a story from All Things Considered. This is, in itself, not unusual. Dad often sends along news items he thinks are important or interesting. What made this one unusual and, frankly, quite special, was that it was about the acute and wonderful memories food makes for us. It was a story about a baker and a request for a very special cake – an old German cake made with damson plums. The request for this cake threw her back years to her childhood and a cake – the same cake – her opera singer mother used to make. As she watches and smells it baking, she feels like her mother Helga is there too, in the oven with that cake, singing through time and death and all those plums, and she cries tears of grief and nostalgia and joy.

Dad sent it because he thought it was a good story, but also because his mother – my Nana – used to make a coffeecake with damson plums, which made this all sound so familiar. He asked if anyone had her sweet dough recipe, and suddenly the emails were flying. He was not the only one who felt the connection here. My aunts were likewise plunged into memories. Though the cake in the NPR story was a shortbread dough topped with plums, Nana’s cake, like the one her mother made before her, used a yeast dough. It was made in a square pan and she always made two at a time so she could share one with Pap, and have one for the three kids. It had to be damson plums or it just wasn’t right. It called back memories of eating, but also of being in the kitchen with their mother. Nana was with them in that cake.

I knew I had to make it. It had called up too many happy memories for my family to remain simple nostalgia. Besides, I have Nana’s sweet dough recipe, and with the details I collected from my aunts’ emails, I felt like I had enough data to piece it together.

But you know me. I fiddle. I adjust and tweak. I ruminate, and things change. So despite my pure intentions, this is not my Nana’s cake. First of all, I couldn’t find damson plums. Even at the stand at my Farmers’ Market that carries at least six different strains of plums and pluots, there was nothing labeled “damson,” and no one knew what I was talking about. A bit of internet research suggested I might try an Italian plum as a close substitute, but without ready access to those either, I settled on a deep, black-purple skinned variety with yellow flesh. The point seemed to be a plum that was not terrifically sweet, since the cake itself is snack or breakfast fare, not a sugared up dessert. From there, with the main ingredient already an adaptation, I felt freer to play a bit as I constructed the recipe.

From Nana’s original dough, I replaced water with milk, exchanged white sugar for brown, and added a healthy dose of cardamom. I suspect Nana never used cardamom in any of her baked goods, and likely never had any in her spice collection, but its pleasant citrusy aroma and warm spicy flavor go so beautifully with plums that I decided it was a necessary update. Since I was already playing quite a bit with what I imagine was Nana’s original procedure, I decided to go whole hog and add a simple streusel to the top just before baking. This was the right thing to do. A little extra spice, a little extra sweetness, turned crumbly in some places and melted into the plums in others, adding caramel loveliness to the whole thing.

Like Nana used to, I made enough dough for two cakes. Obeying the mandates of memory, I did one in a square pan. I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out – just a hunk of dough flopped and poked into a pan – so for the other I tried for a twisted coil, laying the flat snail-shell of dough in a springform pan to rise. Interestingly enough, while adding streusel to the top was a successful adaptation, the pan and shape change was not so ideal. The square shape turned out better because it made for a more even distribution of plums. The coil, while it baked into a beautiful puffy spiral, was smaller to start with, which meant I couldn’t load on as many plum slices. When it expanded, both on the counter and in the oven, the plum distribution ended up a bit sparse (though the outcome was still delicious). The square shaped cake, which had nowhere to expand but straight up, retained its fruit coverage for a final product that can only be termed plummier. That, then, was the one I brought to work with me to share. By the time I left campus in mid-afternoon, only a tiny, plum-less corner remained.

Nana, this is a good cake. I’m glad you made it, and I’m glad it was remembered. I don’t know whether you would have liked my version, and I know you wouldn’t have liked the mess I made in the kitchen while I worked on it. I do think, though, that you’d have liked the fact that I was happy while baking and that I made enough to share. And I think you would have liked that it made us all think about you so fondly.

(Not damson) Plum Coffeecake

Makes two 9-inch cakes – one for you, and one to share

For the dough:

4 teaspoons active dry yeast

1 cup lukewarm milk

½ cup + a pinch of brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

4 eggs

½ cup unsalted butter, soft but not melted

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons ground cardamom

4-5 cups flour

4-5 yellow-fleshed plums, thinly sliced (firm, or even slightly underripe, will be easiest to work with)

For the streusel:

4 tablespoons cold butter

4 tablespoons flour

3 tablespoons brown sugar

1 teaspoon cardamom or cinnamon

pinch salt

Add the yeast and a pinch of brown sugar to the lukewarm milk and stir to combine, then set aside for 5-10 minutes for the yeast to burble and get foamy.
Meanwhile, combine 3 cups of the flour, the salt and the cardamom in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add the yeast mixture, the eggs, and the vanilla and mix on low speed with the paddle attachment to combine.
When the eggs are mostly integrated, add the butter and mix on low speed until it is mostly absorbed into what will look like a wet batter. Add an additional 1 cup flour and mix until combined.
Switch to the dough hook and knead for 5 minutes until a soft, elastic dough forms. If the dough looks very loose or sticky and is not coming together, add the final cup of flour ¼ cup at a time, kneading well between each addition. You may not need the full 5 cups of flour – mine took a total of 4 ¾ cups.
When the dough is soft and stretchy – a bit like an elastic playdough – lightly oil the bowl, roll the dough around in it a bit, and then cover tightly with plastic wrap and set in a warm place to rise for 1 ½ – 2 hours, until doubled.
While the dough rises, slice the plums.
After the dough has doubled in size, punch it down by gently depressing your fist into the dough to release trapped air, then let it rest for 5 minutes to get its breath back.
Divide the dough into two equal hunks, fold, push, or twist into desired shapes, and settle each loaf into one of two greased or buttered 9-inch square or springform pans. Nana did a simple square, but you could also roll the dough out into a long, wormlike log and then twist it like a rope over and over itself, then wind it up in a coil like a flat snail-shell.
Top the shaped dough with plums, slightly overlapping the slices to accommodate for the additional rising time. Adding the plums now allows them to macerate a little and release some juice and flavor into the dough.
Cover the cakes lightly with plastic wrap or a clean kitchen towel and let them rise again for 30-45 minutes. They will almost double.
While the cakes rise again, preheat the oven to 350F and make the streusel.
In a small bowl, stir together the flour, brown sugar, cardamom or cinnamon, and pinch of salt for the streusel. Using your fingers, blend in the 4 tablespoons butter until the mixture is reminiscent of damp sand, and little clumps flatten but cling together when you press them between your thumb and forefinger.
Just before the cakes are ready to go in the oven, remove the plastic wrap or kitchen towel and sprinkle on the streusel, using half for one cake and half for the other. It should be enough to cover the surface completely, but don’t skimp! Use it all, as the cakes will rise again in the oven and thus the coverage will decrease a bit.
Bake 30-35 minutes until the streusel is golden, the tops of the cakes are nicely bronzed, and they are cooked through. Let cool at least 20 minutes before removing from pans or slicing.
This bread, despite how rich it is, bakes up quite light and is best the first day. It will keep three or four days in the refrigerator, well-wrapped, but it does get a little dry. Nothing a quick trip in the microwave and maybe a slick of cream cheese can’t fix, though.

Pesto Parmesan Pull-Apart Bread #TwelveLoaves

Posted on August 18, 2014 by Chelsea

I’ve put off writing this post. I wasn’t sure how to begin. Every time I sit down to think about it, I end up surfing the net, scrolling through Facebook, seeing more and more headlines, reading more and more articles about the terrible things our world has been going through recently. As one of my friends and former colleagues put it recently, “the entire internet needs a trigger warning.”

I don’t often offer political or moral commentary on this site. That’s not its job. And I don’t often try to convince you that seeing things my way is the way you should see. My truths are mine, and yours are yours. But when terrible things happen, and when death and tragedy are instigated and framed through questionable motives – sometimes on both sides of the event – I question my own job here.

I’m not going to espouse to you what I think. Not today, and probably not ever, unless it’s something frivolous and food-related. I’m just going to say, with caution, that unless you have cut off access to emotions, to moral codes, or to the internet itself (I know, gasp!), over the past week or two – certainly over the past month – the world has been pretty depressing.

So that makes a food blogger wonder where she stands. When people are suffering, when people are angry and dying and struggling, for me, there is uncertainty: is it disrespectful or willfully unaware to coo over the cuteness of a cupcake or speckle my posts with just the right adjectives to describe the lusciousness of a sauce? I’ve considered this before, written about it before, and I always come back to the same conclusion: no. Food is important. Food means things, not just about nurturing our bellies but nurturing our hearts and our minds and, depending on what you believe, our souls. I talked to N. about this the other day, thinking again of how to write this post, and he said “we have to have some things to be happy about.” Food seems like one of those things.

Finally, what helped me figure out what to write so as to be aware of, respectful of, but not overwhelmed by these events I’ve found troubling, was the introduction to Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi’s cookbook Jerusalem. Looking back through this lovely book, I was struck by a short section they have titled “A comment about ownership.” In a place – whether that is a city, or a nation, or the world itself – where we feel a need for the power that ownership and control bring us, it is hard to share. We pull ourselves apart from one another in an effort to feel safe, or right, or justified. Ottolenghi and Tamimi argue that searching out the true “owner” of a dish through its national or personal origin is not only difficult, but futile. Either it has been made before, or there exists another, or three, or a dozen, similar dishes claiming different origins: a “variation on a theme” (16).

Though Ottolenghi and Tamimi are commenting on dish origination – which makes sense, as they like to provide a little background about the meals they offer – what struck me was not just where a dish comes from, but where it goes. For a long, long time, sitting down at a table, or a fire, or a bowl, has meant something more than filling your stomach. It means trust, or love, or a forging of bonds. You eat together and you end up sharing more than a meal. I’m not sure that’s still true, but I think it should be.

So weirdly, when it came time to sample this month’s loaf for the Twelve Loaves project, I had chosen something divisive in its very name: pull-apart bread. When you tear into it, this loaf peels into separate bits, as I see happening so often in our world. Yet its richness, its docile tendency to give up layers and hunks and edges, suggests it is meant to be shared. We pull it into soft fragrant pieces, but we’re doing that together, and the act of sharing brings us comfort and happiness.

I’ve wanted to try a pull-apart bread for a long time, particularly after seeing Deb’s nod to Welsh Rarebit on Smitten Kitchen. To answer the call of summer herbs for Twelve Loaves, I settled on pesto, blending the sharp-sweet, fresh licorice scent of basil with the usual garlic, pine nuts, and lemon juice. I amped up the parmesan quotient and included it not in the spread itself, but as a separate layer to melt and cling.

There seem to be two schools on pull-apart bread. One involves rolling little spheres of dough and jamming them into a pan together, so when they cook they swell into one another and form tenuous ties. This is also commonly called Monkey Bread, especially when it is sweet. The other, which I haven’t seen as frequently but which I chose to work with after seeing Deb’s offering, results in something more like a Pillsbury Grands biscuit or puff pastry stood on end. It involves rolling the dough thin, slicing it in long strips, layering those strips and slicing them into squares, then levering those stacked squares – like servings of lasagna or birthday cake – sideways into a loaf pan like a deck of cards to rise into one another and smash together during baking. As you peel the warm layers apart, you get the bite of pesto and the salty richness of parmesan.

I want you to make this. It’s a bit of a project, but it’s so, so delicious. And when you make it, I want you to share it. Pull it apart, by all means. But let that action by extension pull you together.

Pesto Parmesan Pull-Apart Bread

Makes a single 9×5 inch loaf

Adapted heavily from Smitten Kitchen

For dough:

2 teaspoons yeast

2 teaspoons sugar

½ cup milk, warm but not hot

2 ½ – 3 cups bread flour, divided

1 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons soft butter

2 eggs

For filling:

3 garlic cloves, skins removed

¼ cup pine nuts

2 tablespoons lemon juice, or to your taste

4-5 cups packed basil leaves

½ cup (approximately) olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

2 cups parmesan cheese (I know, but it’s so fluffy! 2 cups is practically nothing… besides, you’re sharing…)

In a glass measuring cup, warm the milk. I like to pop it into the microwave for 20-30 seconds. When it is just warmer than body temperature (poke your fingertip in – it should feel just warm to the touch), add the sugar and the yeast and stir it up. Let this sit for 5 minutes or so while the yeast wakes up and begins to bubble.
Meanwhile, combine the salt and 2 cups of the flour in the bowl of a stand mixer and stir to combine. When the yeast and milk mixture is bubbly and smells like bread, add it to the flour and salt and mix on low speed using the paddle attachment until damply crumbly. Add the butter and the eggs and mix on low speed again.
Add an additional ½ cup flour and mix to combine. As soon as the dough starts to come together and there are no longer dry swaths of flour, switch from the paddle attachment to the dough hook.
Knead for 3-4 minutes until a soft dough the consistency of play-dough forms. If it looks really sticky or is not coming together or pulling away from the sides of the bowl at all, begin adding the additional flour 2 tablespoons at a time, kneading for a bit in between each addition. You may not need all of the additional flour – I only used 2 ½ cups total.
Lightly grease the inside of the bowl (or switch to a clean, lightly oiled one), flip the dough over a few times to ensure it is lightly greased as well, then cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set it aside for 50-60 minutes to rise. We are looking for the ball of dough to double in size.
While the dough rises, make the filling. Drop the garlic and the pine nuts into the belly of your food processor and let it run for a few seconds, until the garlic and pine nuts become a fragrant crumble. There is still some blending to go, so they don’t have to be a smooth paste yet.
Add the lemon juice and as many of the basil leaves as will comfortably fit, and turn on the processor. Most of the basil will almost instantly be shredded into tiny bits. If it isn’t, or if nothing seems to be happening, take out the lid from the food chute and begin pouring in the olive oil through this chute in a slow, steady stream.
Once there is room in the food processor bowl again, add the remaining basil leaves, if there are any. Repeat the olive oil streaming process until you have a thick paste. I usually end up adding my basil in two or three batches. You may use more or less olive oil – this is somewhat according to preference, but you do want a fairly thick pesto that you can spread, not pour.
Taste for seasoning; add salt and pepper and pulse to combine. Set aside until dough is finished rising.
When the dough has doubled in size, punch it down by gently depressing your fist into the center. Let it rest for a minute or two, then turn it out onto a well-floured board and, using a floured rolling pin, roll it out to a rectangle of about 12×20 inches.
Spread pesto over the entire rectangle of dough, right up to the edges. We don’t need a bare margin for this loaf.
Cut the rectangle crosswise into 5 strips of 12×4 inches (so the short edge of the initial big rectangle becomes the long edge of each of the 5 strips). Sprinkle one with about ½ cup parmesan cheese – this will be the bottom of the stack.
Carefully, using a spatula with a long blade or a dough scraper to help you, top your parmesan covered base with another strip of dough. Sprinkle another ½ cup parmesan atop this new layer.
Repeat until you have a stack of five layers, though the final layer will not have cheese on top, which is fine.
Gently, exceedingly gently, use a serrated knife to cut the dough layers into 6 segments of about 2 inches each. Turn each segment layer-side up (showing off its stratigraphy) and snug it into a greased 9×5 inch loaf pan. You can turn the pan up on its short end to make this a bit easier – take a peek at Deb’s images (link above) for a visual. Follow this with another segment, and so on, to create a stack of layers. When you finish and set the loaf pan back on its base, Deb says this looks a bit like a full card catalog drawer, and I think this is a good assessment.
Cover your strange, layered loaf with plastic wrap and set it aside to rise again for 30-45 minutes. Preheat the oven to 350F so it is ready when you are.
Once the dough has risen again, which will squash the layers together a bit, remove the plastic wrap and stow your loaf it in the 350F oven for 25-35 minutes until it is puffy and nicely bronzed on top.
Cool a minimum of 10 minutes in the pan (though 15 or even 20 is probably safer; mine collapsed upon removal), then carefully flip it out and serve warm for best flavor and “pull-apart” effect.