createdbycarlene

I loved this bread!  I put the sponge ingredients together and took off for my morning walk and visit to the farmers market.    When I returned, about 2 1/2 hours later, I had a nice bubbly sponge.  I put the sponge and the rest of the ingredients in the bread machine on the dough cycle and let it do the kneading. I checked occasionally to add a bit more flour, but did not end up using all that was called for in the recipe.  I did decrease the amount of salt from 2 teaspoons to 1 teaspoon and it was more than enough salt for my taste.  When the kneading was complete, I turned the machine off and set my kitchen timer for 2 hours.  It rose nicely during those two hours in the warm environment inside the bread machine.   I didn’t quite understand  how they wanted it shaped,  so I just made a round loaf.  Then I let it rise another 2 hours and slashed and baked it.  I got a bit carried away with my slashing, once again, I didn’t really understand what the recipe was asking.  A couple of the slash lines were a bit close together, but it worked just fine. I do have a lame which I purchased from King Arthur Flour a long time ago.  Using the lame with its curved blade makes it easy to slash loaves without deflating them.   We ate half of the loaf with a bowl of soup that evening and then finished it off the next morning with some homemade apricot jam.

If you would like to try this recipe you can find it on page 102 and 103 in Baking with Julia.   Or check out the beautiful loaves of the hosts for this week on Tuesdays with Dorie, Anna and Renee have kindly posted the recipe.

Anna of Keep it Luce and Renee of The Way to My Family’s Heart

This is a great biscotti recipe.  It was easy to make and the result was excellent! I did not vary at all from the recipe, but I really think that next time I will add some chocolate chunks.  Hazelnut and chocolate are so wonderful together.  I have made biscotti before, but have never had a recipe that said to do the second bake on the cooling racks.  That was such a great idea.  No turning the cookies over halfway through the bake, and they turned out perfect!   I haven’t always achieved crispy biscotti in the past.  The recipe says they will keep for a month, but as good as they taste that’s not likely to happen around my house.

The recipe can be found on page 315 of Baking with Julia, or you can find it on the blog’s of the hosts for this weeks Tuesdays with Dorie bake.  Jodi of Homemade and Wholesome  or Katrina of Baking and Boys!

This is strawberry shortcake presented in a beautiful cake.  I must admit that I was a bit intimidated by this recipe.  But it really wasn’t as hard as it sounded.  You start with the Genoise cake.  This was the first time I ever attempted a Genoise cake.  The actual steps aren’t hard, it just tricky folding in the flour.  I was so afraid of deflating the batter, I didn’t fold in the flour quite as well as I should have and as a result the bottom of my cake was a bit tough.   The recipe says to sprinkle the sifted flour over the batter, which I did, sort of.   I read a suggestion, after I had already made mine, that it works better to sift the flour over the batter.   So when I try this again, I will sift the flour into the batter to avoid clumping and will hopefully avoid the tough bottom.  My cake ended up an 1 1/4 inches high.  I cut it into three layers as the was specified in the recipe.

Actually, cutting it into layers went better than I thought it would.  I used the technique that I learned last year, that is to cut about and inch into the cake all the way around, measuring the height of the cut carefully.  Then you have a grove for your knife to follow as you cut through the entire layer.  It works like a charm and produces nice even layers.  The texture of the top two layers was quite nice, but as I said earlier, the bottom layer was tough.  It was still edible, but just not the nice texture that was in the top part of the cake.  Had I realized this while I was putting in the strawberry filling,  I would have added more juice to the bottom layer to soften it up a bit.

The whipped cream frosting was excellent and easier to apply than I had imagined.   Using whipped cream for frosting means that you need to keep the cake refrigerated until it is served.  I had used about a cup and a half of cream instead of the 1 1/4 cups called for, because I had read in the comments that some had run out of whipped cream.   In my opinion, running out of whipped cream would have been a tragedy!  I had plenty with the added amount and only had enough leftover to top off a cup coffee.  I shared this cake with my friends at the yarn shop and had about a third of the cake left to bring home, where my husband and I finished it off BEFORE dinner, tough bottom layer and all.

The recipe for this delicious cake can be found on page 273 of Baking with Julia.   Our fabulous hosts for this week are Sophia of Sophia’s Sweets and Allison of Sleep Love Think Dine, where you can also find the recipe.  To read about everyone’s adventures baking this cake take a look at the links left in the comments at Tuesdays with Dorie.

P.S. It’s 11:30pm on the West Coast–where it’s still Tuesday!

Tuesdays with Dori’s recipe for this week was flat bread, but I didn’t exactly get flat bread.  What I had was good and we ate it all, but it wasn’t very flat.

I only made half the recipe because there are only two of us and it said this was best eaten when just baked.  Since I was only making half the recipe I decided to let my Zojirushi bread machine do the kneading, which worked out fine.  I put the dough in the refrigerator to rise because I had to leave for several hours, then took it out of the refrigerator and let it sit for about an hour and a half before shaping and baking.  Half the recipe made four naan.   I don’t have dough stamp or a pastry docker as was recommended in the book, so I used a fork to prick the dough full of holes.  The dough was warm and my kitchen was warm, especially since I was preheating the oven to 500 degrees AND it was over 80 degrees outside, so it seemed the dough rose up almost as fast as I rolled it out.  

I do have a baking stone and so I baked them directly on the stone.   It was still edible the next day, but it is at it’s best right out of the oven.  I love the taste of cumin, so I was generous in sprinkling it on the top of the bread.

This naan recipe was contributed to the book by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid.  I have a Dal recipe of theirs that I printed from the Food Network in 1997!!!  Wow that’s old for the internet.  So we had Oasis Naan and Dal for dinner.  I checked and the dal recipe is still available on the Food Network site,  Lentils with Garlic, Onion, and Tomato.   I always make it with yellow dal.  They look like yellow split peas.  My first yellow dal was purchased at an Indian specialty store, but I have also found it in my local health food store.

You can find the recipe for the Oasis Naan on page 149 of Baking with Julia or on this weeks host’s blogs–   Maggie – Always Add More Butter and  Phyl  – Of Cabbages & King Cakes

I love pecan sticky buns!  However, these are not your average sticky buns.  These buns were the assignment for this week’s  Tuesdays with Dorie.  They are made with brioche dough–a rich yeasted dough with eggs and lots of butter.  I worked on this over the course of 2 days as the dough needed a rest in the refrigerator over night.  I had never worked with laminated dough before and it wasn’t as difficult as I imagined.   Just many, many steps involved, rolling, adding butter, folding, chilling and rolling into a log, chilling.   Then, after slicing and putting in the pans, a 2 1/2 hour rise before baking.

I would have liked a bit more sugar and cinnamon in the filling.  I think you could easily double the amount called for in the recipe.  The only problem I had was that my brown sugar and butter in the bottom of the pan did not caramelize.  The only reason I can think of is that I did not exactly follow the directions about catching the drips.  I just put sheets of foil on the bottom rack instead of lining a jelly-roll pan as the recipe instructed.  Maybe the foil covered too much of the bottom shelf and deflected too much heat from the bottom of the pan.  The tops browned nicely, but I had sugar crystals and melted butter in the bottom of my pan instead of caramel.  They still tasted good and were eaten in short order.

The recipe for the Sticky Buns is on, page 190, of Baking with Julia, and the recipe for the Brioche dough is on page 43.  If you don’t have the book and would like to try making them, you can find the complete recipe on the blogs of this weeks hosts — Lynn of Eat Drink Man Woman Dogs Cat and Nicole of Cookies on Friday.

You can also read about everyone’s adventures with this recipe by clicking on the links left in the Tuesdays with Dori post, LYL: Pecan Sticky Buns.

I love lemon desserts!  This is a dense cake,with a pound cake like texture.  It tastes great with a cup of coffee.  It was extremely easy to make, just mix and bake.  The only part that could be hard is grating the lemon zest, but ever since I bought the Microplane Zester/Grater,  lemon zest is no longer a problem. 

This is a good basic lemon loaf recipe that I am sure I will make again sometime.  The recipe can be found on page 252 of Baking with Julia, or on the blogs of one of the two hosts for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie assignment — Truc of Treats or Michelle of The Beauty of Life.

I made a vegetarian version of Pizza Rustica, for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie assignment.  I read the comments of others planning to do a vegetarian version and decided to use roasted red peppers and Kalamata olives.  I was in San Francisco for a business meeting last week and so went to the ferry building to shop and found the olives and the red peppers at the Village Market and of course, bought the Romano cheese at the Cowgirl Creamery, my favorite cheese store.

I made the crust in the food processor and it worked wonderfully.  I had never done a lattice top before and was a bit apprehensive about it, but it turned out good, and wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.  As you can see this is not a regular pizza, it’s more like a cheese pie.

It tasted really good and it looked great.  This pie would certainly make an impression for a dinner party.  You could use all kinds add ins as the cheese provides a perfect palette for experimentation.  I used the whole 10 ounce jar of the Kalamata olives and the taste of the olives overpowered the roasted red peppers.  When I do it again I will use maybe half the jar.  I will try this recipe again sometime and try some onions and maybe artichoke hearts.  If you would like to try it out you can find the complete recipe on page 430 of Baking with Julia, or visit one the following blogs — Emily of Capital Region Dining or Raelynn of The Place They Call Home.

I got the baking done in time, but just didn’t get the blog entry done in time to post on Tuesday.  Thank goodness this was very easy or I would not have even done the baking.  This has been one of those weeks!  Just four ingredients, stirred together and baked…so easy.   While this tasted good, I will have to admit that I am a much bigger fan of other types of bread.   It was excellent with some homemade Kumquat Marmalade and we also used it under Sloppy Joes for dinner one evening.

Shaped and slashed and in the pie plate ready to bake

Out of the oven

With Marmalade–Yum!

The recipe for the Irish Soda Bread can be found on page 214 of Baking with Julia or on the blogs of the hosts for this weeks “Tuesdays with Dorie” assignment — Cathy of My Culinary Mission and Carla of Chocolate Moosey

The marmalade recipe can be found on page 38 of the Ball Blue Book of Preserving, 2006 edition.