Recently in Bread Category

Have you ever walked by a bakery right when the bread comes out of the oven? I'm getting hungry just thinking about it right now. A slice of hot, fresh bread, slathered in butter, is one of my great pleasures in life. I don't have it very often, though, for several reasons.

1. Hot, buttered bread isn't all that healthy.
2. Baking my own bread takes at least 3 hours from mix, to rise, to bake.
3. Home baked bread is rarely as tasty the second or third day as it is the first.

Given how much I love fresh bread, I was thrilled when read about a new book, Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. Really? 5 minutes a day? Could it really be true? Could I have fresh bread every day? Or even a couple of times a week?

Well, the reality wasn't quite what I'd hoped, but it wasn't bad either.

I'll talk more about this cookbook over the next few weeks, both here and on the Cook Local Examiner site.

Today, I'll show you my first loaf of bread and tell you how I made it.

Isn't that pretty? It was probably about 8 inches across with a nice crusty exterior.

So, how did I do it? I used Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day's Master Recipe.

• 3 cups lukewarm water
• 1 1/2 Tbsp granulated yeast
• 1 1/2 Tbsp kosher salt
• 6 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• Cornmeal

The directions are exceedingly simple. Use water that's around 100 degrees. Put the warm water in a large bowl and add the yeast and salt. Give it a stir (but don't worry about getting it all to dissolve).

Mix in the flour with a spoon. You don't need to mix it too well, just until the mixture looks pretty moist and there aren't any large clumps of dry flour remaining.

Cover the bowl with a lid and let it sit on the counter for 2-5 hours. Then put the dough into the fridge and you're done for the day.

The next day (or any day over the next two weeks), take a pizza peel and cover it with cornmeal. Coat your hands with flour. Grab a decent lump of dough and "cloak" it. This was a new term to me, but it basically means that you take the dough lump and stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all sides, forming a ball. Put the rest of the dough back in the fridge.

Let it rise for 40 minutes. About 20 minutes into the rising time, preheat the oven to 450 and put your pizza stone in there to preheat as well. On the bottom shelf of the oven, place your broiler pan (without the top).

Dust the top of the loaf with flour and make several cuts in the top of the loaf.

Slide the risen dough onto the pizza stone.

Take 1 cup of hot water and fill the broiler pan. CAREFUL! This will steam pretty heavily. Don't get too close.

Bake for 30 minutes, transfer to a cooling rack, and eat when the outer surface is (mostly) cool. 

The principle of Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day is that you only have 5 minutes of ACTIVE work each day. This, however, doesn't count the time you must wait for things to happen. While I was hoping to be able to come home, throw bread in the oven, and eat it as soon as it baked, the reality was that you still need to let the dough rise. You just don't have to let it rise, punch it down, and let it rise again. You can have fresh bread within about an hour and ten minutes of coming home. Not bad for fresh bread.

Hi there hey there ho there, friends and neighbors.  It's the other half of Cook Local here, the Mister to the Missus.  And I'm here to talk about bisexual Scottie dogs.

...

Sorry, I've just been informed that there wasn't actually a space in the email, scotti wasn't a typo, and I'm actually supposed to be talking about biscotti.  My bad.

Which, I guess, is good, because I wasn't sure how cornmeal and apricot worked into the dogs and I'm not sure I actually wanted to know.

Recently, during a bout of worklessness in my life, P and I sat down and looked at what we spent money on and we realized that coffee and our morning snack was a serious money drain, but we weren't particularly willing to give up that daily passion of ours.  As our wedding rolled around, we started looking at home espresso makers.  Since I was unsure of my ability to learn how to make a proper espresso with a manual machine, I was pushing for an automatic machine, which we promptly put on our registry.  While we didn't get it for our wedding, we did get it for Christmas, thanks to my wonderful in-laws, a scant 3 days later, along with a small outlay of cash from our own accounts.  We realized that the machine we put on our registry wouldn't be sufficient for our needs, but the most inexpensive machine we could use was still too expensive for a gift.  So, the in-laws got half, we got half.  Happy news is that we have actually paid it off already in savings on our daily purchases of coffee.  Hooray for us!

But, this is all background, a rich Columbian (and Costa Rican, Konan[?], Rwandan, Panamanian and who knows where else) tapestry, if you will, leading to what I'm supposed to be talking about.

So, in addition to making our own coffee, we still needed our morning treat.  After all, my blood sugar tends to dip in the morning after our workout and a little protein snack we've previously shown you how to make.  So, we started making our own biscotti.  We've gone through probably seven or eight different recipes trying to not only find a great one, but also not to get bored.  And we think we finally have one we'd like to share.

But wait, there's still more background.  Seattle has a very, very wonderful bakery called Cafe Besalu.  One of their items is a cornmeal, apricot and sage cookie, and it was such a novel, unique taste, we've tried to replicate it in so many different ways.

Which lead to me doing a Google search for cornmeal biscotti and, eventually, led me to this recipe (which, of course, we'll be writing up below in our own style, along with a couple changes and planned changes.  In fact, make sure you read to the end first, because this recipe wasn't as perfect as we wanted it and I'll share some tips about what we're going to do next to, hopefully, make it better.

So now, to make a long story even longer... The recipe. 

Cornmeal Apricot Biscotti

adapted from Pittsburg Needs Eated who adapted from Alice Medrich's Cookies and Brownies

Ingredients

1.5 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cornmeal
.5 tsp baking powder
.5 tsp salt
4 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
.5 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest
1 cup chopped dried apricots

Now, looking at that list, we didn't do too well on the locavore front.  We didn't use a local flour, we don't even have a clue if you can get local cornmeal (we're working on it tho), salt and sugar are both non-local staples.  Heck, I think, generally speaking, the only local in this was the eggs, the butter and the apricots.  We can do better, of course, with a local flour and cornmeal.  We could fudge the lemon if we have my in-laws zest some of their lemons next January and we figure out how to store lemon zest for the long term.

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Mix flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt in a bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, beat butter and sugar just until blended.
4. Add eggs, vanilla and lemon zest and beat until light and fluffy.
5. Add mixture from step 2, stir until all ingredients are moistened.
6. Add apricots and mix just until blended. 
7. Spread some cornmeal on a cookie sheet.
8. Flour up your hands and form the dough into a log, about 6 inches wide, an inch tall and whatever length it comes to.  It isn't that hard to figure out when you're doing it.
9. Throw the cookie sheet on the middle rack for about 35 minutes.  The top should be cracked and golden brown.
10. Carefully slide the biscotti onto a cooling rack.  If the innards of the biscotti loaf didn't fully cook, it will break apart.  But it will still be good to eat.  Let cool for about 5-10 minutes.
11. Using a serrated knife, cut the loaf diagonally in slices about half an inch thick.  Give or take.  It isn't science.
12. Now you have two options for crisping the biscotti
    1. Lay the pieces cut side down on a baking sheet, bake for five minutes or until browning at edges.  Flip pieces, bake for five minutes, or, again, until browning at edges.  Remove and cool on a rack.
    2. Lay the pieces cut side down on an oven safe rack, bake for 10 minutes, or until browning at edges.  Remove and cool.

Makes roughly 18 pieces, give or take, and should last for 2 weeks in an airtight type container.

You know, even if you screw this up, it'll still be tasty and, honestly, it's a very inexpensive recipe, especially if you go to the bulk section.  Heck, the most expensive thing are the apricots, and those are barely $7 a pound.

Now, if you look at the 'original' recipe we used, you can see that we changed it a little bit.  To be honest, the above recipe is our second attempt at the recipe, the first just followed the Pittsburg Needs Eated recipe. 

The next time we make it, we're going to cut .25 cup of flour and add the same amount of cornmeal.  The above ingredient list produced a biscotti that was just a little... dry?  That's not the best word.  The best word I can come up with is it just tasted too much of flour and not enough of cornmeal.  The original recipe had equal amounts cornmeal and flour, so I think we need to switch back to that ratio.  Cutting back the sugar, however, didn't seem to have a negative effect.  Perhaps we'll use stevia or agave nectar instead.  I'm also thinking these could be made into excellent cookies, something I'm going to try this Sunday, I think.

I'll admit I'm not that good at using my cast iron pan, but I'm getting better, something Patricia can attest to.  I've only been in a situation where I would have set off the smoke alarm once or twice in the past week few months.  And that's just been during heating and cleaning moments.

If you know me, you know I read a lot.  And I buy a lot of books.

And, since we both like to cook, we tend to have a few cookbooks.  Or more than a few. 

But we haven't had much luck with them.  Or I haven't, at least.

Jump to a month or so ago, when I was at Crate and Barrel picking up some little things when I saw a cookbook called The Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook: Recipes for the Best Pan in Your Kitchen and I thought of the two cast iron pans I have, and how little use they get, and how much I want to be able to use them.

So I bought it, owing to my total lack of impulse control.

We've made four recipes from this book.  And we've had four successes.

A fennel-seared pork tenderloin's ingredients proved so good, we've decided the fennel salt itself is worth using over and over on whatever we can.

But the other three recipes were all breads; a fennel-ricotta skillet bread (which, while good, wasn't our favorite), a moist cornbread (which was quite good and will be the basis for another recipe, a cornbread pudding), and tonights fresh baked bread:  herbed skillet bread.

Breads have always scared me, probably because I never had a Kitchen Aid stand mixer.  That makes it all the easier.  I've always had issues with breaking eggs too, but luckily, this recipe doesn't call for any eggs.

The Ingredients

• 1 tblspoon sugar (I used Diabetisweet) - Not local, not organic.
• 1 cup 105F water - Really local.  Right out of the tap.
• 1 package active dry yeast - Organic, Rapunzel brand Rize, not local.
• 2.25 cups of flour - I used local, organic emmer flour from Blue Bird Grain Farms
• 2 teaspoons of sea salt - Not local, that I know of.
• .25 cup + 2 tbl olive oil - organic, but not local.
• 2 cloves of garlic, sliced (by the recipe, I diced it) - organic and local.
• 2 sprigs fresh rosemary, chopped - slightly organic, very local.  Our rosemary plant is right out the back door.  The starter was organic, the dirt likely isn't.  I don't remember.

Recipe is pretty simple.  Sugar and half the water into a bowl with the yeast for five minutes.

Add the other half of the water, flour, .5tsp of salt, 1/4 cup of olive oil.  Stir until it makes dough.  I actually added some extra rosemary the second time I made this, because I wanted a more thorough rosemary taste.  In the end, I'm not sure it actually made a difference. 

 Throw it in the kitchen aid (or knead it manually until smooth).

Ball it up and throw it in a well oiled bowl, saran wrap it and let it sit on the counter for 45 minutes.

Oil up the cast iron pan and press the dough into it. Score the top with a sharp knife and brush the top with olive oil.

Sprinkle the rest of the sea salt, the garlic and the rosemary on top.  The recipe actually calls for sliced garlic, but I minced it instead, thinking it might be better.  Not sure if it was, but I think it works better. 

Let it rise for another 45 minutes.

While it's rising, or near the end of the rising, heat the oven up to 400F and put a shelf in the middle.

Throw the pan in and cook for 20-25 minutes.  Remove from pan immediately after cooking to maintain the crisp bottom. 

And believe me, it has a very crisp bottom.

Drizzle with olive oil and serve it up in wedges.

I like this bread. Even with the emmer flour.  It's salty, rosemary-y, olive oil-y and all around goodness.

Also, before you make the bread, if you wash your cast iron pan and dry it in the oven, make sure you've given the pan time to cool before you put the dough in the pan.  Which I seem to forget.  Almost every time.

As for its effect on my blood sugar, it was pretty good to me.  Especially with the emmer flour.