recipes

A More Sour Sourdough

Norwich Sourdough, which was My New Favorite Sourdough when I wrote about it last year, is still my number-one no-fail go-to bread. (In fact, I was thinking of renaming it Three-Compound-Adjective Sourdough.) It’s mildly sour and goes with just about everything.

For those times when a more assertive tang is the order of the day, this variation serves nicely. It’s essentially the Norwich sourdough formula but with 50% more rye flour and 33% more levain. Just as Norwich Sourdough is based on Jeffrey Hamelman’s Vermont Sourdough, this is adapted from Vermont Sourdough With Increased Whole Grain, both from the essential Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes.

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Little Bones

Pan de Muerto, the sweet bread traditionally made for Mexico’s Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), is typically shaped into a round loaf and decorated with huesitos (little bones). In a variation on the theme, I made this “bread of the dead” into individual bone-shaped rolls.

Because the dough is rich and soft, the shaping is a bit tricky. I suggest dividing the chilled dough into the individual roll portions, rounding them into balls, and chilling them again for an hour or so before the final shaping. Periodically cooling your hands on an ice pack while shaping is helpful.

The bones are shaped by rolling a log with knobby ends, then using a sharp knife to make a small cut in each end, forming the condyles (for all you anatomy geeks). I rolled my bones about four inches long; in the future, I would shape them longer and thinner, as they expand outward considerably (but not much lengthwise) during proofing.

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Sweet Potato Gnocchi

There’s a reason I don’t give dinner parties: I’m not a good cook. So I really can’t explain what possessed me to have a dinner party in honor of my husband’s birthday last year, especially since the guest list included a number of card-carrying gastronomes. Luckily, they are nice people too, and much too polite to do anything but dutifully eat the less-than-perfectly-done osso bucco that was put in front of them.

We did have some pretty good bread (because I do like to bake) and a perfectly serviceable salad (hard to screw that up) and a delicious pear cake for dessert (because I do like to bake), but I think the thing that really saved the meal was some little orange pillows of goodness and light. And believe me, no one was more surprised than I was that these sweet potato gnocchi turned out so well that people actually asked me for the recipe. I can’t remember the last time that’s happened with any non-baked thing I’ve made. Now that I think about it, maybe it’s never happened.

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Roasted Garlic Bread

This is a bread I’ve had on my list for a while, and now I’m wondering what took me so long. Besides looking pretty, it’s heaven on earth for garlic lovers. That would be me, and this summer I’ve been lucky to have a virtually unlimited supply of garlic from my brother-in-law’s prolific garden. I’m happy to share this loaf for the World Bread Day event hosted by Zorra (1x umrühren bitte).

The recipe comes (with a few adaptations) from one of my favorite baking books, Maggie Glezer’s Artisan Baking. Whether you are a beginning baker or an old hand, I think you’ll love the meeting the farmers, millers, and bakers profiled therein who share a wealth of baking knowledge, skill, and recipes. This bread is from Della Fattoria, a small northern California bakery featured in the book. We don’t get their bread in my immediate neighborhood, but I can tell you that on the occasions when I have picked up one of their loaves at the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market in San Francisco, I have not been disappointed.

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A Sweet Fast Track to Power and Charisma

If you want to win friends and influence people, you could read Dale Carnegie’s book and get some excellent advice. But I’ve found a faster way: bake cinnamon rolls and sticky buns.

Which is not to say that my way is at all inconsistent with Carnegie’s. Here are some of his principles:

Arouse in the other person an eager want. Simply pulling these rolls out of the oven should do the trick.
Start with questions the other person will answer yes to. “Can I interest you in a cinnamon roll? How about a sticky bun?”
Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest. “I suggest you clean the garage and then you can have one.”

See how that works? They will be putty in your hands.

You can of course tailor the recipe to your own tastes and those of your influencees. Substitute another spice, or a combination of spices, for the cinnamon. Add chopped dried fruits to the filling. Try a little citrus zest in the dough.

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Flaxseed Flatbread

Chances are you can have these mixed, shaped, baked, and on the table before you can master saying “flaxseed flatbread” five times fast.

I’ve been a little busy this week and haven’t had time to wait for yeast to do its thing, but unleavened flatbreads are an easy and quick way to still have fresh bread for dinner. These very crisp breads are adaptable to a wide variety of flour and flavor combinations, and are in fact a variation on the Sesame-Semolina Flatbreads I wrote abut a few months ago. Roll them in a pasta roller or with a rolling pin, as thinly as possible for maximum crunch.

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