Goat Cheese and Bacon Biscuits

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Chelsea

I’m not one of those people who is crazy for bacon in everything. The idea of pairing it with chocolate still weirds me out a little, and I’ve never tried it in brownies or ice cream. That being said, bacon is probably the top reason I would have trouble being a vegetarian. Crisp, sandwiched with some dripping heirloom tomato slices and lettuce on toasted sourdough, and I’m dreamy happy. Salty fatty fried chunks studding my bowl of baked beans, and my evening is made.

What I am generally crazy for is breakfast. But not at breakfast time. I can’t handle a big savory meal early in the morning. A fried egg sandwich, okay (and with a little sriracha in the mayonnaise? Be still my heart!). A pancake or three, maybe on occasion. The big, multi-course breakfast is, for me, wasted on the morning. I’m a breakfast-for-dinner kind of girl.

This week, in need of comfort as spring break drew to a close and allergy season burst wide open, we decided breakfast sandwiches were just what we needed. Eggs, bacon, fluffy buttery biscuit, and why not, a little goat cheese?! But layering these components together would not suffice. Thick slices of bacon smashed against a cloud of scrambled egg and crumbles of goat cheese seemed like a mess waiting to happen. I’ve incorporated cheese into biscuits before with great success, why not do the same with the bacon?

The result: goat cheese bacon biscuits. A simple revelation, but let me tell you, a spectacular base for a scrambled egg sandwich. Crisp squares of bacon, cold cubes of butter, crumbles of chevre, and a healthy glug of buttermilk.

These are pretty cinchy to make, though thanks to the addition of the goat cheese your biscuit dough will be a little stickier than usual. Try not to add too much flour – you don’t want them to get dense. They bake up into lovely little puffs, and the bacon stays crisp against the soft dough. The goat cheese wasn’t as strong a flavor as we were expecting, though after the biscuits cooled a bit we did pick up a pleasant tang from the larger crumbles. Loaded up with a simple layer of scrambled egg, and you have a perfect, three-bite sandwich with all the right trimmings. And because it’s only three little bites, you can have two or three without any guilt to speak of. Or four… or…

The funny, blackened stakes lying in a pile in the background of this photo are roasted rainbow carrots. They were incredible. And don’t just take my word for it – I knew they were the real deal when N. carefully sampled one, turned to me, and said “wow.” If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time you will know that N. is not intentionally grudging when it comes to food praise; he’s just not particularly effusive about it. A “wow” is like fireworks.

Breakfast-for-dinner slam dunk, then. What’s your favorite?

Goat Cheese Bacon Biscuit Sandwiches

2 cups flour (All-Purpose is fine)

2 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

2 TB baking powder

4 slices bacon, diced and fried until crisp, drained and cooled (do this a bit ahead of time so the bacon has time to cool off – if you toss it into the mixture hot, you’ll heat up the butter and your biscuits will be less fluffy)

6 TB cold butter, cut into chunks (chunking it isn’t absolutely necessary, but it does make it easier and quicker to incorporate)

½ cup crumbled goat cheese

6 oz. buttermilk

Preheat your oven to 400F and line a baking tray with parchment paper.
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Whisk in the cooled, crisp bacon.
Add the butter and incorporate using a pastry blender or your hands. When the chunks are about the size of lima beans, tumble in the goat cheese and blend it in until there are no more large pieces. The pebbles of butter should be about the size of peas when you are done.
Pour in the buttermilk and fold it into the dry mixture. I find using a fork works best for this – the tines pick up and jostle around the flour mixture better than a spatula or wooden spoon. Don’t overmix, but be sure the buttermilk is well incorporated.
When your mixture is evenly damp, abandon the fork. You can turn the whole mess out onto a floured board, or you can just reach in with flour dusted hands and knead the dough a few times in the bowl until it comes together.

Pat the dough into a plump something-like-a-rectangle on a floured board. The thickness and therefore the size of the rectangle is really to you, but mine was probably just under an inch thick. Using a biscuit cutter or the floured top of a glass, punch out biscuit rounds by pushing straight down all the way through the dough. Don’t twist your cutter as you go down; you’ll disrupt the craggy layers in the dough and the biscuit won’t rise as high or as evenly.

When you’ve punched out as many rounds as the rectangle of dough will allow, place them on your parchment lined baking sheet at least an inch apart, gather the dough scraps, knead them together a bit, and pat them back into a new rectangle. Continue punching out biscuits and reshaping the scraps until you run out of dough. Given the small size of cutter I chose, I managed 16 sweet little biscuits. You will have more or less depending on size and thickness.

For a small biscuit (2 inch diameter), bake at 400F for 12-14 minutes, or until the layers have puffed and the top is golden. Larger or extremely thick biscuits will take longer; try 15 minutes to start.

If you just want to eat them as is – and I’d sympathize completely if you did – you’re all set to go. Dig in. If, however, you want them as sandwiches, split them down the middle of the puffy, buttery layers and insert a fold of softly scrambled egg.

These are best the day they are cooked, so I’d advise only baking as many as you and your dinner partner(s) are going to eat. The remaining biscuits can be frozen, still unbaked, and enjoyed another day. To freeze them, set them on a piece of wax paper or parchment in a single layer on a plate or baking tray. Wait until they are frozen, then relocate them to a zip-top freezer bag. They don’t even need to be defrosted, just pop them into a preheated oven for a few extra minutes (maybe 15-18 for a small biscuit) and dinner – or breakfast – is served!

Mom’s Challah

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Chelsea

Friends, this is the motherlode. Or, if you’ll forgive the terrible pun, the Mother loaf.* In that same red binder of recipes I received as a wedding gift that contains my Nana’s sweet roll dough recipe, my mom included her “secret” recipe for challah (in my recipe collection, Mom promises that she’s only given this challah recipe to one other person. This, as it turns out, has become a lie. Both my Aunt Nancy and my cousin Julie have this recipe. Who knows how many other people do too, by now!). When she was much younger (read: before two children kept her waking hours a blur of busy), Mom baked bread a lot. I don’t know where she got this recipe for challah, that wonderful, doughy, braided loaf of egg bread traditionally prepared for Jewish holidays and the sabbath, but even in our gentile household it became a holiday essential for us.

For the past few years, my sister has taken up the challah mantle and has been preparing it, with Mom’s help, on Christmas Eve so we could slather it with apple butter or cinnamon sugar or honey to enjoy on Christmas morning. It’s not an easy bread (are any of them, really?). With an incredibly sticky dough, not one or two, but three rises, and a tendency to overbake, it has always intimidated me. At any phase of the process, something could go wrong! If I could master challah, I thought privately, I would really have a handle on this bread thing.

So, a number of loaves under my belt, with Easter coming up, and this month’s Twelve Loaves challenge of holiday breads, it seemed like the right time. Friday morning, after quizzing my mom on a few details, I pushed my sleeves up, swallowed the disparaging warnings of that little gargoyle of doubt who often sits on my shoulder, and dove into Mom’s recipe.

This is, as I mentioned above, a sticky dough. After kneading it becomes elastic and smooth, but there is still a tackiness about it that leaves your bowl streaked with gummy strands and your hands, if not well floured, stringy with delicious remnants. It takes a long time – with three rises averaging over an hour each, you aren’t starting this loaf in mid afternoon and expecting it to be ready for dinner.

I’ve seen plenty of recipes suggesting overnight refrigeration time – Michael Ruhlman’s blog, in fact, has a guest post on challah by Marlene Newell that begins the night before it is baked – but Mom has never done it that way. If you’ve scheduled a lazy day at home, or perhaps a day punctuated by laundry, tidying up, and the odd brief errand carefully placed during a rise, this could just become your best friend. It’s soft, it’s rich and tasty, it looks impressive (even if, like me, you only do a three strand braid instead of the more traditional six strand), and it keeps fairly well, provided you wrap it well in aluminum foil. I find plastic storage gives the crust an unpleasing texture. Of course, it’s so tasty that I can’t imagine it needing to keep well – it will be gone within a day or two. On that topic, I’ve never understood the comments that it makes wonderful french toast. In our house, the full loaf has dwindled to half by lunch time, and as the afternoon wears on slice after slice seemingly evaporate, until the bread board contains only a lonely half heel and a small pile of crumbs. This is the first time I can remember, with only N. and me indulging (Lucy asked with pleading eyes of liquid velvet, but it’s too good to share), that the loaf has made it to day three of existence.

Despite my lingering doubt, I had only a few moments of anxiety as I put together this loaf. The stickiness of the dough stressed me out a little – even after adding the full amount of flour in the recipe (as I will note again below, you only incorporate part of the flour at first, adding in additional ¼ cups at a time as needed to work the dough), thick gobbets clung to the sides of my mixing bowl, my dough hook, and my fingers. One rise down, however, and the stickiness diminished.

Faced with three thick strands of dough, I forgot how to braid for a moment. Heavy, stretchy worms of raw dough are a far cry from pigtails or Barbie hair, my braid targets in a past life. But braid made and ends tucked under, I had something that actually looked like my mom’s longed for loaf.

A quick glaze of egg wash and a generous sprinkle of poppy seeds, and I started getting excited. A quick, almost half hour in the oven later (the loaf goes from moist and springy to overbaked in what feels like an instant), and I was staring at a near perfect replica of Mom’s bread.

It’s hard to wait the requisite 15-20 minutes to let the bread cool and the internal structure solidify, but you should. It makes slicing much more successful. And once you have waited, you should cut thick slices, and garnish them with butter or jam or just your own teeth and tongue. Happy Sunday, whatever you might be celebrating.

Mom’s Challah

1 tsp + 1/4 cup sugar, divided

½ cup warm water

2 tsp active dry yeast (or 1 package, which contains 2 ¼ tsp)

½ cup vegetable oil

½ cup warm water (again)

2 tsp salt

2 eggs, lightly beaten

3 ¾ – 4 cups flour (I used bread flour, but Mom has always used all-purpose)

Poppy seeds or sesame seeds for sprinkling

1 egg yolk beaten with 1 TB water

Dissolve the sugar in the first ½ cup warm water in a large bowl (or the bowl of your stand mixer, if you are using one). Sprinkle yeast on top and let it stand to burble and breathe for about 10 minutes.
When your yeast has woken, and smells like bread and beer, use your paddle attachment (if you are using a stand mixer) to incorporate the oil, second ½ cup of warm water, sugar, salt, and beaten eggs.

Add 3 cups of the flour and beat well. The dough will be very sticky, but as Mom says, that’s okay. Cover the sticky mass with a cloth and let it rest for 10-20 minutes.
If you are using a stand mixer, exchange your paddle attachment for the dough hook and begin kneading at low to medium speed. As needed, add the additional flour by ¼ cups at a time. Knead for 8-10 minutes or until the dough passes the windowpane test. When I asked Mom about this, she looked at me like I was speaking a different language, then said “I always use the baby’s bottom test,” which got the same look back from me. She was talking about smoothness and texture, but considering she often gives the dough a little smack when she’s done kneading it, I wondered about the ethics of this measuring device…
If you are kneading by hand, turn the sticky mass out onto a well floured board. With equally well-floured hands, knead for 10 minutes, incorporating more flour as needed, until the dough is smooth and has a shiny surface (and feels, apparently, like a baby’s bottom).
In either case, now is the time to place the ball of dough into a lightly oiled bowl and stow it in a warm place to rise for 1-2 hours. I like to use my oven, letting it heat for 5 minutes and then turning it off for 5 minutes before putting the dough inside.
After the dough has risen to double in size, punch it down (Mom notes “this is fun!”), cover it with a clean cloth, and let it rise again until doubled again – about 45 minutes.
Divide the dough into three equal parts. Shape each third into a long rope, place on a greased or parchment lined baking sheet and braid together loosely, pinching the ends firmly and tucking them under on each side. Cover with a cloth or kitchen towel and, once again, let it rise for 45 minutes to an hour. See why you need all day for this loaf?

When the braid has swollen again, preheat the oven to 350F. While you wait, beat an egg yolk with about a tablespoon of water to make an egg wash. Brush the top and sides of the braid with your egg wash, then sprinkle with poppy or sesame seeds (we prefer poppy, in our house).

Bake in your preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until the internal temperature of the bread is 180-190F. The top will be golden brown and the bottom will feel delicately hollow when thumped. Hot ovens tend to overbake this bread, so be sure to check at 30 minutes, or even just before.
When the bread tests done, take it out of the oven and let it cool on its baking sheet for 15-20 minutes, to allow the delicate internal crumb structure to firm up a bit. This will make for easier slicing.

Thanks, Mom!

* still not as bad as N.’s pun: he keeps saying “holla for challah!” and even though he admits this is neither in good taste nor particularly funny, finds he can’t stop doing it…

Pizza Pretzels

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Chelsea

I have these moments when I realize I’ve just said something. I don’t mean this to sound like I’m unaware of or not in control over my own speech, but I am a classic case of speaking before I think, at least when it comes to food.

A few weeks ago, N. and I were on the verge of no longer enjoying our morning errands. On Sundays, we frequently run errands before going to our local Farmers’ Market, and because one of us is occasionally a bit of a lazy slouch on weekend mornings (I’ll leave the guessing up to you), we often don’t hit the shops until after 10am. This is not a huge problem, except that my body is programmed to begin its hinting that “lunch would be nice, please” at about 11:30. By noon it’s more of a demand, and by 12:15 you’d better feed me, because I’m about to devolve into full-on hangry (which I remain convinced is one of the best portmanteaus ever invented. It’s right up there with spork). N. is keenly aware of this schedule, and yet for several weeks in a row we’ve found ourselves food-less during the half hour that takes me from peckish to crotchety to downright unpleasant.

Despite this, I retain a sense of snobbishness when it comes to choosing what I will eat to relieve this condition. We play a game when it comes to choosing food, especially when the choices are undesirable; I affectionately call it the “bleh” game. It consists of one or the other of us facetiously offering “we could eat there…” which inevitably engenders the titular response. This game was in full effect as, plagued by my hangriness, we walked past one of those soft pretzel stands at the mall we were ambling through and N. suggested it. I looked in at the pizza pretzels – studded with cheese that looked painted on, pepperoni grease slowly cooling and solidifying, and declared, loudly, “psssh, I could MAKE those.”

Suddenly, I was beholden to it. N. isn’t always taken in by my crazy food schemes, but apparently the idea of a homemade pretzel masquerading as pizza was something he’d never known he always wanted. It fell to me to create a version that wasn’t sodden with grease, wasn’t packed with questionable preservatives, and wasn’t luke-warm and pressed behind plastic with its sad, sorry brethren. My typical response to this would be to turn to the internet. This time, however, I had Nana’s sweet roll dough to guide me, and I wondered whether I could achieve my objective by creating a savory version of her lovely elastic dough.

Removing the sugar and adding savory Italian herbs to the mix was a successful experiment. The kitchen smelled like foccaccia while my dough rose, and I was thrilled with the flavor in the piece I pinched off to sample. I divided my dough into eight little balls, rolled them into long stringy ropes, and surprised myself when careful looping and twisting resulted in a pan full of something that actually looked like pretzels.

But here’s where things started to go a bit imperfectly. I topped my plump little pretzels with chunks of sundried tomatoes, mounded them with shredded mozzarella, and draped slices of pepperoni over the top. They lost their definition and looked more like piles of cheese than like pretzels, but that didn’t bother me much.

Upon baking, however, a bit of their charm dissolved. In the time it took to bake the dough, the cheese didn’t brown or bubble they way I’d hoped. Further baking time led to overly charred edges on the tomatoes, and the cheese that had fallen onto the parchment paper I’d laid down as extra insurance went from bubbling to black. N. ate them with gusto anyway, devouring several for dinner that night and taking foil-wrapped leftovers to work for the next few days. But I wasn’t satisfied. Not only were there overcooked elements, but the result didn’t taste quite like a pretzel. It was good, but lacking in that toasty, crunchy exterior that makes a soft pretzel great. I’m going to give you the recipe I used, but first consider these alternatives and, if you try any, let me know how they work out.

Next time, I’m going to mix the sundried tomatoes right into the dough along with the herbs. Their flavor will still be there, but I think they will stay chewy and moist instead of burning. I’m also toying with the idea of stuffing the pretzels with the cheese rather than sprinkling it on top – this would result in an oozing, melty, stringy core to each pretzel, and it would allow you to boil the pretzels before baking them, which contributes to the classic texture of the exterior my version was missing. I would flatten each individual dough ball into a rectangle, sprinkle it lightly with cheese (leaving a generous border on all sides to prevent leakage), then roll and pinch tightly before making a rope and twisting as before.

I’d then boil the pretzels (Alton Brown has a recipe that looks really promising, no surprise there), drape them with pepperoni or olives or onion, and bake as before. This would, I suspect, eliminate charring, create a better texture, and perhaps introduce a more successful alternative to the travesty that is stuffed crust pizza.*

These would be delightful dunked in some garlic butter, or basil spiked marinara, or even seasoned and pureed roasted red peppers, if you’re into any of those sorts of things. But either way, you’ll have a remedy for the sneaky Sunday afternoon hangries that far excels anything you’ll find at a food court.

Pizza Pretzels

Makes 8 sweet, slightly stubby 4-inch pretzels

2 tsp active dry yeast

¼ cup warm water (stick your fingertip in; the water should be about body temperature)

1-2 tsp honey

¼ cup scalded milk, cooled

¼ cup melted or very soft butter

1 egg

1 tsp salt

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp dried basil

1 tsp dried oregano

2 ¼ cups bread flour

1 3oz. package sun dried tomatoes (not packed in oil – these would be, I suspect, too wet for this recipe)

½ – 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

24 slices pepperoni

Combine yeast, honey, and warm water in the bowl of your stand mixer (or in a medium bowl) and set aside for 5 minutes, or until the yeast is bubbly and smells like bread.
Meanwhile, heat the milk and combine with the butter, swirl until the milk is cooled and the butter is melted.
Add cooled milk, melted butter, and egg to the bubbling yeast and mix on low speed with the paddle attachment until the egg is broken up a bit and things are slightly combined.
Add flour, spices, and salt (you could probably add any combination of spices you like, including crushed red pepper for some heat, or rosemary for a woodsy flavor. I’d stick with dry spices, though, for easier distribution and that classic pizza flavor) and mix with the paddle attachment until a wet, sticky, uneven dough forms. You could also add the tomatoes at this point, if you want to incorporate them directly into the dough.
Scrape clean the paddle attachment and switch to the dough hook. Knead at medium-low speed for 5-8 minutes or until dough is smooth, elastic, and willing, if you pinch a bit between your thumb and finger, to stretch out about an inch without tearing.
Dump your ball of dough into a glass or ceramic bowl greased with olive oil and turn it over once or twice until it is coated in oil, then cover with a clean kitchen towel and stow in a warm, draft-free place for 1½ hours, or until it has puffed and doubled in size.
When you return to your dough, after you admire its impressive swell and the way it already smells of pizza, gently deflate by pressing your knuckles into the center of the puff. Let it sit for a few minutes to get its breath back.

Turn the dough out onto a barely oiled surface (I don’t have a marble stone or anything fancy like that, but I do have a pizza peel, which was a little small but otherwise worked just fine) and divide into eight even pieces.
If you want to stuff the centers of your pretzels with cheese, roll each dough ball out into a thin rectangle and sprinkle a few tablespoons of mozzarella over the surface, leaving a wide margin on all edges to prevent the shreds from escaping. Then wind it up tightly and pinch the edges to secure.

Whether you are stuffing with cheese or not, now is the time to roll the ball (or coil) of dough into a long skinny rope 18-24 inches in length. The best way to do this, I found, is to use the palms of your hands and start in the middle. Push the rope of dough firmly away from you, then back toward you, starting in the very middle and then, as the dough bulges toward the outer edges, follow it along moving outward until the rope is even in thickness and at least 18 inches long.
To form your pretzels, bring the ends of each rope toward each other into a horseshoe shape.

Then, about a third of the way down each end of the horseshoe, make a twist. Take one end of the rope and twist it fully around the other (that is, the left side of the rope should end up back on the left side once you’ve twisted it completely around the right end).

Gently grab the ends above the twist and flip them over, pressing them into the bottom of the horseshoe loop to adhere. You’ve made a pretzel!

Place all eight of your formed pretzels on parchment lined baking sheets (I found I needed two), cover them with a kitchen towel, and let rise for 30 minutes. During this time, you should preheat your oven to 375F.

When the pretzels have risen again – it won’t be a dramatic change, but they will get a bit plumper – add your toppings. If you’ve integrated the tomatoes and cheese already, just drape a few slices of pepperoni over them and you’re done.

If you haven’t integrated the tomatoes or cheese, stud the tops of each pretzel with the tomato pieces, sprinkle with cheese, and then add the pepperoni on top. Be careful not to get too much cheese on the parchment paper, as it will burn and lend an acrid taste to your pretzels.

Bake your topped pretzels at 375F for 20-25 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and the dough is fully cooked. The cheese won’t get quite as brown as it does on a pizza, but it will still be melty and delicious.

Let cool for 5 minutes before eating, so the dough has a chance to firm slightly.

We had ours with a salad inspired by pizza toppings: spinach, artichoke hearts, olives, tomatoes, and some pine nuts for crunch, tossed with mustard lemon vinaigrette.

* I love, love the idea of stuffed crust pizza. Forcing more cheese into an already cheese-laden dish? Yes, please! But the reality of it is so disappointing: a thick block of semi-melted sludge inside a soggy crust, like someone wrapped a stick of string cheese that had been lying in the sun for an hour in some sandwich bread and called it a day. It’s a worthy notion, but the execution just hasn’t been perfected.

Honesty and Irish Soda Bread

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Chelsea

It seems like admission and honesty are the motifs of the moment in many of the blogs I read. A few weeks ago Joy the Baker created a beautiful list of things to remember while blogging – things like despairing over the cuteness of other people’s pages isn’t worth it. Things like not stressing over ratings, and remembering that the internet is always changing, which means it’s okay to not be involved in every single new trend. She has just ended a week on that most humble and most basic of vehicles for deliciousness: toast. Simple. Honest. Real. (Also, can you tell I’m kind of crushing on Joy the Baker right now? This is about honesty, after all…). Shauna on Gluten-free Girl and the Chef has been writing for herself lately, not for ratings or comments or trends. In fact, she has closed comments on her blog; she’s writing in the undisturbed beauty of what is important to her, not what is important to others making demands on her. Just Monday, Irvin at Eat the Love published a beautiful, real, excruciatingly honest piece he’d been sitting on for over a year about jealousy and perfection and measuring up in the blogging world. (Lately I’m crushing on Irvin too; he just seems so nice! And sometimes he responds to my tweets! Squee…).

These are courageous posts. It’s hard to be real here in this virtual world. It’s hard to admit to imperfection or doubt or dissatisfaction or envy. These are ugly ideas. Yet we have them, and our impulse is to hide them behind the veneer of beautifully crafted pages, or photos with the white balance adjusted, and cropped just right to edit out the dish soap we forgot to move, or fluffy, romantic sentences with words like “mouth-feel” or “buttery crumb” or “silky texture.”

And I do it too. Despite my assertion that you are going to see imperfect products or read about unsuccessful attempts, of course I want every item I post about here to be beautiful and balanced and insurmountably delicious. Of course I don’t want to admit to the doubts and worries and sneaky hate spirals that sometimes result from something as simple as turning away from grading papers to bake a loaf of bread and then half an hour later I’m trembling before a monster of despair that maybe by cooking instead of researching I’m throwing away all that work I did on my PhD because my dissertation might never become a book. That by insisting on making dinner every night and posting every week, I’m sabotaging my own search for a better job and therefore I’m never going to “make it” in the adult world. That I’m wasting my time as a blogger because I don’t have – and will likely never have – the same kind of following as Deb or Ree. That there are a billion food blogs out there and I’m just adding to the clamor without bringing anything original or special or any of the things I hoped to be when I started writing.

But I don’t want to tell you all that. Despite my doubts, I, too, want to be a “good blogger,” a “popular blogger” with a following and cooing comments over the little messes I arrange just right so they look like masterpieces on screen, so I try to do the things that will make this happen. I want to be an authority. I want to spring to people’s minds when they think of food sites they like. I want to talk about food and I want to be real, but I still want to find that magical, imaginary combination of words and photos and style and design that pulls people here in droves. Those days where my little stats bar doesn’t even tick from zero to one are too real. I never tell you that.

But I think this desperate, ugly, gasping kind of honesty can be a good thing, even if it only emerges now and then. It’s a sign of strength and a sign of independence. It forces you – it forces me – to reassess, to remember that I am doing what makes me happy for the reasons it makes me happy. And maybe that is part of what Spring is about: cleaning out your assumptions. Stripping down the need for perfection and presenting a more naked, more truthful, more real version of yourself to your audience. Even if that version is a little ugly.

Let’s call it mental Spring cleaning.

This week I made Irish Soda Bread. Simple, rustic, honest. Lumpy. Rough. Uneven. No yeast, no eggs, no herbs or dried fruit or fancy techniques or browned butter or sifting. I didn’t even wipe down the counters first to make you think my kitchen is always spotless. I shuffled through a few recipes and found suggested combinations like golden raisin and rosemary, or candied orange peel and bittersweet chocolate. Those didn’t feel truthful. They were too dressed up – too showy. So I turned to the most basic, most honest cookbook I have: Baking Illustrated. BI is willing not only to present you with a recipe, but to explain why they made the choices they made, and what happened when they tried things in other ways. They talk about the cakes that came out gummy or runny. They talk about overly eggy batters and dry loaves and dense biscuits. They show you what a less-than-perfect product looks like. And then they tell you how to fix it. This was the kind of Springtime honesty I needed.

I changed very little from the original recipe, only using brown sugar in place of white granulated sugar for a deeper flavor, and taking up the suggestion to bake the loaf in a deep covered pot to enhance the texture of the crust. Since I’ve been doing that with success in my yeast experiments, it seemed worth trying out here too, and I have to recommend it highly. Our loaf was surprisingly tender – almost like a giant scone – and the crust was springy and buttery – it felt like it must be loaded with eggs even though there are none in the recipe. I like the flavor the baking soda provides, which is a different kind of tangy breadiness than yeast. After weeks of churning out loaves that require hours and hours and multiple rise times, it was nice to have a quick-bread that rose just enough on baking time alone, and left behind concerns like proofing and kneading and windowpanes and tucking and shaping. Honestly.

Irish Soda Bread

adapted from Baking Illustrated

3 cups all-purpose flour (BI recommends one with a relatively low protein content, like Gold Medal or Pillsbury) plus a scattering for your work surface

1 cup cake flour (even lower protein, which makes for a more tender end product)

2 TB brown sugar

1½ tsp baking soda

1½ tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp salt

2 TB softened butter

1½ cups buttermilk

3 additional TB butter, divided

Here’s the final product, when I edit and trim.

But since we’re being honest here, this is the set-up; I just push all that other stuff aside and crop it out…

Preheat your oven to 400F. BI says to position a rack in the upper middle portion of your oven, but I left mine near the bottom and things turned out fine.

Whisk the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

Cut in the softened butter with a fork, your fingers, or a pastry blender until it is distributed in small crumbly bits. The mixture, BI says, should resemble coarse crumbs.

Add the buttermilk and combine with a fork just until the mixture begins to come together – the coarse crumbs should clump into slightly wet crags.

Turn out onto a floured board and knead slightly – 12 to 14 turns – just till the dough becomes “cohesive and bumpy” (43). You don’t want to overknead this bread because it will become tough. The intent here is not to stimulate gluten production, as it would be in a yeast dough. We just want a homogenous mass that stays together.

Pat the dough into a 6 inch round (about 2 inches high) and score an X in the center with a sharp knife; use 2 TB of the additional butter to grease the bottom and sides of a dutch oven or similar covered pot. Place the loaf carefully inside, cover, and bake with the lid on for 30 minutes. Then remove the lid and continue baking for an additional 10 minutes, or until the internal temperature is 180F.

Melt the final TB of butter. As soon as you remove the loaf from the oven, brush the top with the melted butter to keep the crust soft and tender.

Wait about half an hour before you attack it – this bread is delicate and it needs the extra structural support gained by cooling. Earlier slicing will result in squashing and crumbling, and as honest as that is, we’d rather have nice slices or, as N. and I prefer, thick wedges for dunking.

Pizza and Beer

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Chelsea

Sometimes, a week calls for pizza. But you don’t want the delivery variety dripping with grease and lazy with a smattering of mix-n-match toppings. You want something fresher. Better. You want the feel of dough you can stretch under your hands and control over the size and shape of the pie and choice in the quality and variety of ingredients.

Homemade pizza.

N. and I have often talked about pizza memories, and how, when we were kids, pizza just wasn’t the same without a side of root beer. It had to be in one of those hard plastic molded glasses, and it had to be with a clear straw. And sometimes, you forgot you’d ordered root beer instead of Coke or Pepsi, and that first gulp with its spicy depth would be a tremendous surprise.

As we got older, the “root” part of the equation melted, and suddenly it was pizza and beer, plain and simple, one of the mother food and beverage combinations (is that a thing? Like mother sauces? It should be. After all, beer is the third most popular beverage worldwide, and variations on pizza have been around since ancient Greece).

As I thought my way through this pizza plan this week, I wondered whether they had to be separate. I mean, yeast makes bread dough and beer possible. Beer is liquid, and there seemed no logical reason why it couldn’t be substituted for the water I’d ordinarily use to make a pizza crust.

Once this idea was lodged in my head, it wouldn’t go away. This just seemed too perfect. Beer and pizza, kneaded together – a truly complete meal.

Even though beer is essentially water with yeast and flavorings, I wasn’t sure what would happen when I mixed the two. I heated a bottle of amber ale in the microwave with a couple teaspoons of honey, just until it was body temperature. When I added the yeast and engaged the lightest of stirs, the whole measuring cup erupted with bubbles and I had a head at least three inches high. This slowly collapsed, but I took it to mean the yeast was satisfied with its new spa treatment.

I used a combination of bread flour and whole wheat flour, and produced a spectacularly nutty tasting dough that was also the stickiest I’ve ever worked with. It slithered and dripped off of my stand mixer’s dough hook and plopped thickly into the oiled bowl I coaxed it into, and I crossed my fingers and hoped that after its six hour chill in the fridge it turned into pizza crust.

When I liberated it and faced it again, it wasn’t the easiest dough to work with, but it did work. It wouldn’t deign to be tossed like a pizzeria pie, but I stretched and spread and pushed it across a cookie sheet liberally spread with cornmeal, and it turned into a rustic, bubbly, delicious crust. Topped with mozzarella, sausage, and sun-dried tomatoes, it baked into a glorious symphony of assertive flavors. We sprinkled on a few leaves of fresh basil while it was still steaming hot, and declared it one of my best homemade pizzas. This is a sticky, wet dough, but it works. I’m going to make it again and tweak the quantities of flour and olive oil, but trust me: this is worth fooling with for the flavor alone. The beer comes through right at the end of each bite as a deep yeasty earthiness. It lends the tiniest bit of bitter flavor that contrasts really well with the fatty sausage and tart sun-dried tomato. And really, why shouldn’t it? It’s beer, and this is pizza. They were made to be together.

Beer-crust pizza

12 oz. beer (I used an amber ale. I think a darker brew would be even better)

2 tsp honey

2 tsp yeast

¼ cup olive oil

2 ½ cups bread flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 tsp salt

¼-½ tsp black pepper

Heat the beer and honey in the microwave (or a small saucepan) until the liquid is body temperature – you should feel only the slightest heat when you dip in a curious finger. This took about 45 seconds in the microwave for me. It will take longer if your beer has been refrigerated.

Swirl the mixture to distribute the honey, then sprinkle the yeast over the surface and set it aside for 5 minutes. If you stir the yeast in, you will get a tremendous amount of foam on the surface, so in case of overflow I think it’s better to just let it sit.

While you wait for the yeast to perk up, combine the flours, salt, and pepper in a mixing bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer.

When the yeast and beer have married to create a thick foam, stir in the olive oil, then add the liquid mixture to the dry ingredients. Using the paddle attachment (if you are using a stand mixer), combine at low speed just until ingredients come together into a rough, uneven dough. Replace the paddle attachment with the dough hook and knead on medium-low speed for 5-7 minutes.

This dough will not pass the windowpane test. It will not even stay together particularly well. It will seem like an exercise in futility and disaster, and you will be sorely tempted to add more flour. But if you resist, and plop it into an oiled bowl, and cover that bowl with plastic-wrap and leave it in the refrigerator for 6-8 hours, it will turn into something more like normal pizza dough. I promise.

90 minutes before you intend to bake, take the bowl of dough out of the fridge and set it on the counter to finish rising and come to room temperature. After this time has passed, and the dough is considerably increased in size (it may not quite double, unless your counter is quite warm), stretch it to your desired shape – it easily makes a thick 9×13” rectangular crust, and might be coaxed into 2 medium sized, somewhat thin round crusts – on a cornmeal or flour speckled board or tray. I just doused my cookie tray with cornmeal and pressed and pushed the dough directly on it until I was happy with the shape.

When adequately stretched, add toppings and bake in a preheated 450F oven for 12-15 minutes, or until puffed, crisp, and golden. Wait 5 minutes before you cut it, to give the cheese time to congeal just a little.

We ate this in embarrassingly large squares and left enough in leftovers to serve as lunch the next day. Cut slightly smaller and for slightly less voracious eaters (or if you add a side salad), this would be an adequate dinner for 4.

Go-to Dough III – Orange and Rosemary loaf

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Chelsea

First, thank you. Thank you to you lovely people and the lovely way you responded to last week’s post about my sweet rolls and my Nana. Old friends, new friends, family, it warmed me to see your comments. I so appreciate you making yourselves known and sharing your own experiences and memories – I’m motivated to delve into more old family recipes and more new experiments. That probably sounds a little cheesy, but I mean it.

So I suppose you could call this a thank you loaf. It was delicious, it was easy (well, as easy as baking bread can be, I suppose), and I made it for you.

I wanted, as I’ve noted, a basic recipe, though I can’t resist adding a tweak or two to keep things interesting. My first boule was overbrowned; my second utilized an overnight leavening procedure I didn’t think added all that much to the final product. So the third had to be just right – the charm, you might say – and I really do think it was. Goldilocks bread.

I went back to Ruhlman’s directions for cooking the loaf in a pot. This strategy for maintaining the shape and for holding in moisture by using a lid makes so much sense, and I wanted to give it another shot.

This time I decided to add some fat to the bread in the form of olive oil. This made the crumb a bit moister and I think it kept the bread tasting fresh longer. To make the yeast extra happy, I proofed it (them? Is yeast grammatically plural?) with a few tablespoons of honey. This didn’t contribute noticeable sweetness to the final product, but it did make for an extra foamy yeast party. You could probably increase the honey if you wanted a sweeter end product. Since I was still on a high from the orange marmalade triumph, I decided this bread would benefit from some orange zest and, just for fun, some fresh rosemary too. I ended up with a really beautiful loaf: puffed, thin but crisp crust, moist dense crumb. The orange and rosemary creep up on you – perfumed subtlety lingering in the background until you’re almost finished chewing. Then they suddenly become present. It’s not a punch, it’s a slow sloping into flavor.

This was perfect for sopping up sauce from baked beans (it would make stellar toast for beans on toast), complementing the sweetness and the fatty bacon flavor with its subtle herbaceousness. I could see adding some dried cranberries to the dough for a wintry take on a breakfast slice. It dances well with a slick of salted butter, plain and simple, but its shining moment this week was as an open faced sandwich spread thickly with cream cheese and fig preserves. The orange and rosemary played beautiful back-up to the cream cheese and the fig, and I bolted it before I even considered taking a photo to share the triumph. If you make this bread – and you should, oh you should – don’t miss this combination.

Orange and Rosemary loaf

12 oz. warm water

2 TB honey

2 tsp yeast

2 TB olive oil

20 oz. bread flour (or 4 cups, give or take)

2 tsp salt (I’m currently obsessed with a gray French sea salt, which I found at Cost Plus World Market)

2 TB fresh rosemary leaves, minced

zest from 2 oranges

Combine the warm water, honey, and yeast in a small bowl or a measuring cup, and stir lightly. Set aside for 5 minutes or so to let the yeast revive from its hibernation.

In a medium bowl (I use my stand mixer), combine the flour, salt, orange zest, and rosemary.

When the yeast is bubbly and smells of bread and beer and awesome, add the olive oil to the wet mixture and stir lightly.

Pour the wet yeast mixture carefully into the dry ingredients, then stir to combine until you have a wet, shaggy mixture (if you are using a stand mixer, try the paddle attachment. I know it’s one extra thing to wash, but it brings the mixture together much more quickly than a dough hook).

Once the dough is shaggy but workable, knead for 8-10 minutes or until a small knob can be stretched gently between your fingers to a point of translucency. This is called the windowpane test. If you’re getting help from a stand mixer, use your dough hook and knead on medium speed, checking after 6-7 minutes.

Your dough should be warm, elastic, and smooth. Turn it into an oiled bowl and flip it around until all sides are lightly oiled. Let it rise in a warm, draft-free environment until doubled, 60-75 minutes (My preferred method is to turn my oven on for five minutes, turn it off, wait for five minutes, and then put the dough inside. This creates an environment warm enough to help it rise, but not warm enough to start it cooking already).

After the dough has doubled in bulk, push it down gently with your fist to release the gasses trapped inside, then let it rest for 10 minutes to get its breath back.

On a floured board, shape your bread. Since we are going for a round loaf, spin the dough in a circle, pushing it away from you with one hand, and using the other hand to tuck it under so you form a smooth, round ball. (There are a lot of videos and complex step-by-step series for this procedure, involving pinching seams, smoothing and pulling, spreading and folding and turning the dough, and a host of others to prevent the loaf from spreading rather than maintaining its round shape. Letting it rise and then baking it in a round pot takes care of many of these concerns. I haven’t been particularly firm about pinching seams, and my loaves have turned out nicely rounded.)

Transfer the loaf to a dutch oven or similar lidded pot and let it rise for another 90 minutes. I lined my baking vessel with parchment paper this time so I wouldn’t have to use olive oil, which I suspect made my previous attempt too brown on the bottom. This seemed to work fairly well.

When your dough has risen again, it will be puffed and pushing against the sides of the pot. It’s now time to score it with a sharp knife, drizzle it with olive oil and sprinkle it with salt, then bake it with the lid on in a preheated 450F oven for 30 minutes. Keeping the lid on traps some of the moisture inside, so you don’t have to bother with flicking or spraying the inside of the oven, or even with adding a pan of water.

After half an hour, remove the lid and continue baking for 15-30 additional minutes, or until the bread is done (it should register 180-200F on an instant-read thermometer and sound hollow when you tap the bottom). Mine only took an additional 15 minutes before it tested done.

The result: goat cheese bacon biscuits. A simple revelation, but let me tell you, a spectacular base for a scrambled egg sandwich. Crisp squares of bacon, cold cubes of butter, crumbles of chevre, and a healthy glug of buttermilk.

Breakfast-for-dinner slam dunk, then. What’s your favorite?

Goat Cheese Bacon Biscuit Sandwiches

2 cups flour (All-Purpose is fine)

2 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

2 TB baking powder

4 slices bacon, diced and fried until crisp, drained and cooled (do this a bit ahead of time so the bacon has time to cool off – if you toss it into the mixture hot, you’ll heat up the butter and your biscuits will be less fluffy)

6 TB cold butter, cut into chunks (chunking it isn’t absolutely necessary, but it does make it easier and quicker to incorporate)

½ cup crumbled goat cheese

6 oz. buttermilk

Preheat your oven to 400F and line a baking tray with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Whisk in the cooled, crisp bacon.

Add the butter and incorporate using a pastry blender or your hands. When the chunks are about the size of lima beans, tumble in the goat cheese and blend it in until there are no more large pieces. The pebbles of butter should be about the size of peas when you are done.

Pour in the buttermilk and fold it into the dry mixture. I find using a fork works best for this – the tines pick up and jostle around the flour mixture better than a spatula or wooden spoon. Don’t overmix, but be sure the buttermilk is well incorporated.

When your mixture is evenly damp, abandon the fork. You can turn the whole mess out onto a floured board, or you can just reach in with flour dusted hands and knead the dough a few times in the bowl until it comes together.

For a small biscuit (2 inch diameter), bake at 400F for 12-14 minutes, or until the layers have puffed and the top is golden. Larger or extremely thick biscuits will take longer; try 15 minutes to start.

If you just want to eat them as is – and I’d sympathize completely if you did – you’re all set to go. Dig in. If, however, you want them as sandwiches, split them down the middle of the puffy, buttery layers and insert a fold of softly scrambled egg.

Faced with three thick strands of dough, I forgot how to braid for a moment. Heavy, stretchy worms of raw dough are a far cry from pigtails or Barbie hair, my braid targets in a past life. But braid made and ends tucked under, I had something that actually looked like my mom’s longed for loaf.

A quick glaze of egg wash and a generous sprinkle of poppy seeds, and I started getting excited. A quick, almost half hour in the oven later (the loaf goes from moist and springy to overbaked in what feels like an instant), and I was staring at a near perfect replica of Mom’s bread.

Mom’s Challah

1 tsp + 1/4 cup sugar, divided

½ cup warm water

2 tsp active dry yeast (or 1 package, which contains 2 ¼ tsp)

½ cup vegetable oil

½ cup warm water (again)

2 tsp salt

2 eggs, lightly beaten

3 ¾ – 4 cups flour (I used bread flour, but Mom has always used all-purpose)

Poppy seeds or sesame seeds for sprinkling

1 egg yolk beaten with 1 TB water

Dissolve the sugar in the first ½ cup warm water in a large bowl (or the bowl of your stand mixer, if you are using one). Sprinkle yeast on top and let it stand to burble and breathe for about 10 minutes.

When your yeast has woken, and smells like bread and beer, use your paddle attachment (if you are using a stand mixer) to incorporate the oil, second ½ cup of warm water, sugar, salt, and beaten eggs.

Add 3 cups of the flour and beat well. The dough will be very sticky, but as Mom says, that’s okay. Cover the sticky mass with a cloth and let it rest for 10-20 minutes.

If you are kneading by hand, turn the sticky mass out onto a well floured board. With equally well-floured hands, knead for 10 minutes, incorporating more flour as needed, until the dough is smooth and has a shiny surface (and feels, apparently, like a baby’s bottom).

In either case, now is the time to place the ball of dough into a lightly oiled bowl and stow it in a warm place to rise for 1-2 hours. I like to use my oven, letting it heat for 5 minutes and then turning it off for 5 minutes before putting the dough inside.

After the dough has risen to double in size, punch it down (Mom notes “this is fun!”), cover it with a clean cloth, and let it rise again until doubled again – about 45 minutes.

When the braid has swollen again, preheat the oven to 350F. While you wait, beat an egg yolk with about a tablespoon of water to make an egg wash. Brush the top and sides of the braid with your egg wash, then sprinkle with poppy or sesame seeds (we prefer poppy, in our house).

Bake in your preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until the internal temperature of the bread is 180-190F. The top will be golden brown and the bottom will feel delicately hollow when thumped. Hot ovens tend to overbake this bread, so be sure to check at 30 minutes, or even just before.

When the bread tests done, take it out of the oven and let it cool on its baking sheet for 15-20 minutes, to allow the delicate internal crumb structure to firm up a bit. This will make for easier slicing.

Thanks, Mom!

* still not as bad as N.’s pun: he keeps saying “holla for challah!” and even though he admits this is neither in good taste nor particularly funny, finds he can’t stop doing it…

I have these moments when I realize I’ve just said something. I don’t mean this to sound like I’m unaware of or not in control over my own speech, but I am a classic case of speaking before I think, at least when it comes to food.

Pizza Pretzels

Makes 8 sweet, slightly stubby 4-inch pretzels

2 tsp active dry yeast

¼ cup warm water (stick your fingertip in; the water should be about body temperature)

1-2 tsp honey

¼ cup scalded milk, cooled

¼ cup melted or very soft butter

1 egg

1 tsp salt

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp dried basil

1 tsp dried oregano

2 ¼ cups bread flour

1 3oz. package sun dried tomatoes (not packed in oil – these would be, I suspect, too wet for this recipe)

½ – 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

24 slices pepperoni

Combine yeast, honey, and warm water in the bowl of your stand mixer (or in a medium bowl) and set aside for 5 minutes, or until the yeast is bubbly and smells like bread.

Meanwhile, heat the milk and combine with the butter, swirl until the milk is cooled and the butter is melted.

Add cooled milk, melted butter, and egg to the bubbling yeast and mix on low speed with the paddle attachment until the egg is broken up a bit and things are slightly combined.

Scrape clean the paddle attachment and switch to the dough hook. Knead at medium-low speed for 5-8 minutes or until dough is smooth, elastic, and willing, if you pinch a bit between your thumb and finger, to stretch out about an inch without tearing.

Dump your ball of dough into a glass or ceramic bowl greased with olive oil and turn it over once or twice until it is coated in oil, then cover with a clean kitchen towel and stow in a warm, draft-free place for 1½ hours, or until it has puffed and doubled in size.

When you return to your dough, after you admire its impressive swell and the way it already smells of pizza, gently deflate by pressing your knuckles into the center of the puff. Let it sit for a few minutes to get its breath back.

Turn the dough out onto a barely oiled surface (I don’t have a marble stone or anything fancy like that, but I do have a pizza peel, which was a little small but otherwise worked just fine) and divide into eight even pieces.

If you want to stuff the centers of your pretzels with cheese, roll each dough ball out into a thin rectangle and sprinkle a few tablespoons of mozzarella over the surface, leaving a wide margin on all edges to prevent the shreds from escaping. Then wind it up tightly and pinch the edges to secure.

To form your pretzels, bring the ends of each rope toward each other into a horseshoe shape.

Then, about a third of the way down each end of the horseshoe, make a twist. Take one end of the rope and twist it fully around the other (that is, the left side of the rope should end up back on the left side once you’ve twisted it completely around the right end).

Gently grab the ends above the twist and flip them over, pressing them into the bottom of the horseshoe loop to adhere. You’ve made a pretzel!

Place all eight of your formed pretzels on parchment lined baking sheets (I found I needed two), cover them with a kitchen towel, and let rise for 30 minutes. During this time, you should preheat your oven to 375F.

When the pretzels have risen again – it won’t be a dramatic change, but they will get a bit plumper – add your toppings. If you’ve integrated the tomatoes and cheese already, just drape a few slices of pepperoni over them and you’re done.

If you haven’t integrated the tomatoes or cheese, stud the tops of each pretzel with the tomato pieces, sprinkle with cheese, and then add the pepperoni on top. Be careful not to get too much cheese on the parchment paper, as it will burn and lend an acrid taste to your pretzels.

Bake your topped pretzels at 375F for 20-25 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and the dough is fully cooked. The cheese won’t get quite as brown as it does on a pizza, but it will still be melty and delicious.