Post from: Baking Delights

This was an experiment partly based on the success of the focaccia.

1 cup active sourdough starter, at room temperature
3 cups bread flour, or unbleached all-purpose flour
approximately 1 cup water
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 cup pimiento-stuffed green olives, drained, left whole or halved as you wish

Water in a spray bottle

In a large bowl (or the bowl of your mixer), combine sourdough starter, 2 cups of the flour, 1 cup water, oil, sugar and salt. Stir with a wooden spoon or turn machine on. When combined, turn onto work surface and knead in the remaining 1 cup flour, 1 tablespoon at a time until dough is still a bit sticky but no longer wet. You should be able to form it into a ball. Return to bowl and cover. Leave out for 12-18 hours at 70-75 degrees F, or in your oven with the pilot light on. The dough should double in volume. Turn out onto work surface and knead in the olives until evenly distributed. Divide dough in half and shape each half into a ball. Let rise in a proofing basket, or on a peel dusted with cornmeal or flour.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. If you have a baking stone or quarry tiles, preheat it in the oven at the same time. If not, use an inverted baking sheet. Slash loaves on top, if desired, and slide risen loaves onto preheated surface, several inches apart. Spray sides of oven and close door for 30 seconds. Spray again and close another 30 seconds. Spray one last time and bake 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 400 degrees and bake loaves for 45 minutes to 55 minutes or until golden brown and loaves sounds hollow when bottoms are tapped.

Allow to cool completely before slicing. (Though if you’re like me you’ll probably want a bite once it emerges from the oven!)

Post from: Baking Delights

We had friends celebrating their anniversary one day and the hubby’s birthday the next, and I volunteered to make the surprise birthday cake. Unlike Anita though, I had to put things off ’til the last minute because of other things that came up that week. NOT a good thing at all. What I SHOULD have done was change gears at the last minute and picked a different recipe, but since I already had all the ingredients, I thought I’d give it a try anyway. Big mistake. The cakes turned out great, but I couldn’t wait for them to come to room temperature before slicing in half, and cut them while they were still slightly warm. Then I had to go run for an emergency errand, and left them hurriedly, so by the time I came back, they had dried out a bit. Sigh…. but talk about disaster-in-the-making. When I got back, I only had a couple of hours left to complete the task, so I tried to cook dinner WHILE preparing the cake. Now the way my kitchen is set up, I do my baking tasks on one side of the peninsula and cooking tasks on the other. (We’d like to remodel at some point but for now this is what I have to work with . )

The chocolate cream came out perfectly. It was time to make the white chocolate cream. I turned on the mixer to whip the cream while filling a pot of water for pasta on the other side. Took 15 seconds to turn off the faucet and put the pot on the stove, went back to my mixer and found that the cream was more than halfway to becoming butter. I was ready to cry. I had used up all the cream so I couldn’t even try to salvage it (usually done by adding a little bit more unwhipped to try and get it back to the right texture). And there was no time to run to the store again and get more ingredients. I eventually frosted the cake with it. Then took a last look, glanced at the clock, decided that I still had 20 minutes to run to the bakery and get a nice one for them. There was just no way I could hoist this disaster on a couple celebrating their 10th anniversary! Fortunately, as I said, this was to be a surprise birthday cake, so the couple was none the wiser and enjoyed their store-bought cake very much, thank you.

Fast forward 4 days later. The cake is still in the freezer, and 16-yo daughter is having a little get together with friends, but the question of what to serve for dessert was still open. Daughter and friend had the brilliant idea of serving the cake, perhaps with a raspberry sauce if the first bite determined it to be necessary.

As it turns out, the cake was delicious, especially the chocolate cream filling, which would make any fruity red sauce superfluous. We sliced it up, served it up to guests who gobbled it down happily, and I was left with this last piece to celebrate last-minute decisions that somehow work.

The Last Bite — but if you really want to see how it should look like, hurry on over to Anita’s blog or get yourself a copy of

No. You cannot hurry baking, just like you can’t hurry love. Over and over again this is the lesson I’m being taught. You’d think by now I would have learned this. But that’s also the great thing about it. The pretty, yummy results are always a triumph, but even the disasters have enough going for them to make you want to do it all over again. And I will… one of these days. Dorie’s book will join the ranks of dog-eared, butter-marked baking tomes on my shelf yet.

Post from: Baking Delights

I fed my starter a bit too much, and had to do something with the overflow, so it went into feeding this delightful treat — so delightful, in fact, that my 5-yo had the brilliant idea of shaping them into hearts! My original plan was the traditional shape, and I was just getting ready to open a couple of tins of tuna which is how I made it years and years ago… not English Muffins with Tuna, silly, I used the tins to shape the muffins! But I had to admit using a heart shaped cutter would be so much easier, and would please my little princess. And so I acquiesced.

The recipe comes from baking queen Nic over at Baking Bites, who in turn got it from this little book here:

I just got it from the library and will be trying other things, as these turned out perfectly. But first, the RCS (Requisite Crumb Shot):

Many Christmases ago when I was just beginning to discover the world of good food, I was looking for something to serve on New Year’s Day to visiting guests, and I stumbled upon these lovely English muffins from Wolferman’s. I placed an order for one of their sampler cases, and employed a pack into service as the base for awesome Eggs Benedict. I think the practice should be resurrected come January, as we have now found a homemade version that satisfies and satisfies well.

Oh, and if you’re wondering why these are called English muffins and why they’re so different from regular muffins, visit The Food History site. A different story is recounted at Food Reference.com. Whichever one is the true history, one thing remains: the only way to split an English muffin properly is with the use of a fork. (Or, okay, an English muffin splitter, but I got me one of those gimmicks, and believe you me, they’re not worth it.)

Post from: Baking Delights

No knead bread has been making the rounds all over the ‘net, blogs and otherwise, since the Jim Lahey story and video appeared in the New York Times back in November ‘06. Do a google search for “no knead bread” and you’ll see what I mean. Of course, bread enthusiasts, and especially sourdough enthusiasts, have known the benefits of “letting time do the work”. When working with sourdough you really don’t have much choice anyway. The starter does the work for you. You just have to wait for it!

My starter has been happily growing for six months now, so I’ve also begun to get to know its moods and temperament quite well. Though by no means an expert yet in sourdough baking — I still have a couple hundred loaves to get under my belt — I am starting to get the hang of knowing when bread made with it is “good to go”. It also helps that people have blazed the trail before, so all I need to do is follow.

This plain foccacia is an adaptation… of sourdough expert Ed Wood’s excellent adaptation (LOL) of no knead bread. I didn’t make any changes at all to his ingredient list.

I took the starter out of the refrigerator at 9 pm, let it come to room temperature until 10 pm or so, added the rest of the ingredients, mixed a bit with my hand in the bowl just until incorporated. I covered the bowl and left it overnight in my oven with the pilot light on (it was getting down to the 50’s that evening and I didn’t want the colder temps to affect rise). If you have a naturally warm kitchen this step would be unnecessary. After about 13 hours or so, the dough had doubled beautifully (I should have taken a picture!), was smooth on the outside with tell-tale giant bubbles here and there. I dumped the whole thing into my greased skillet and marveled at the network of gluten strands produced overnight.

As you can see, what I did do differently is to let the bread make its final rise in a 12-inch Lodge cast iron skillet, and bake it, covered (there are 2 notches in the side of the skillet, so it’s not airtight) at 450 degrees F for 1 hour and 10 minutes.

The crust was awesomely crackly, though the bread’s bottom was a bit too brown. Still made for great eating! Next time I’ll use part whole wheat flour, maybe add some wheat bran, flavor it with olive oil and rosemary, and turn it into a panini sandwich when it’s done. Grilled vegetables and some melted cheese would be just the thing for a yummy filling, don’t you think?

Post from: Baking Delights

Aren’t they the cutest things?

3 cups bread flour, divided use
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast, or SAF instant yeast (for a discussion of yeasts, click here)
1 cup whole milk, at room temperature
2 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg, at room temperature
Cooking spray for bowl, or a bit of oil
1 egg, beaten with a bit of milk or cream, for brushing
1 tablespoon celery or poppy seeds (Half of the buns I used celery, the other half poppy.)

In a large bowl, mix 2 cups of flour with the yeast. Add in milk, butter, sugar and salt and mix lightly. In a small bowl, beat egg and add to the flour-milk mixture. Mix with a wooden spoon or mixer paddle just until combined. Cover and let rest for 1 hour at room temperature (ideally 70-75 degrees). Inside your oven with the light turned on is perfect.

If using a mixer, attach bowl, turn on machine and add the rest of the flour. Alternatively, knead in additional flour with your hands. Do this for 8-10 minutes, until smooth and elastic. Be careful not to add too much flour or you will end up with dense, heavy buns and no one wants those!

Spray bowl or brush lightly with oil. Form dough into a ball and let rise at room temperature (or again, in your turned-off oven), covered, until doubled, about 45 minutes to an hour.

Divide dough into 18 equally-sized pieces (a scale is helpful here). Shape into rolls: cup your hand with a dough piece underneath and roll it against your work surface, moving your hand in a circle, until it is tightly round. Bernard Clayton includes instructions for flattening the buns, so if you like the traditional shape, you’ll want to press them into a flattened circle. Arrange on a baking sheet, 2 1/2 inches apart, and let rise a third time until doubled in volume, about 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Brush buns with the egg-cream mixture and sprinkle with a few poppy or celery seeds. Bake in the center of the oven until golden, about 20 minutes. (Mine turned out a nice golden brown, but I’d prefer them to be lighter, so next time I make these I’ll bring down the temp to 400 degrees F.

Remove from oven and transfer to a rack. Allow to cool completely before serving.

Adapted from

What to serve with these? Why, mini burgers, of course! I’ve left these plain because my kids don’t like anything on them. But oooh, a slather of mustard and some mayo….

Post from: Baking Delights

It is my goal this year to develop an allergy-free recipe for this. It’s a family favorite that we’ve had to give up, and the kids have been asking for a safe replacement! If you have any ideas on how to accomplish this, please let us know! I will post as soon as I have some semblance of success.

Post from: Baking Delights

A most excellent way to save some money and ensure that you’re getting a quality product as well. Making your own candied orange peel is easy as pie. All you need are orange peel, water and sugar. If you want to get a bit fancy, use orange liqueur. I used the recipe in Carole Bloom’s , which you can also find here. If you don’t have liqueur, Food Network offers a simpler one, which I’ve also used to great success.

Organic oranges are best since they won’t have that icky, waxy coating. Candied peel can be used in cakes and confections, or eaten by itself — a nice after dinner treat! Dipped in chocolate and wrapped in pretty packaging, it’s a gift idea that only the pickiest recipient won’t appreciate.

Post from: Baking Delights

An excellent indulgence for one or more — this dessert (snack? breakfast dish? all-around mood lifter?) is now #1 on my list for easy to make and easy to impress your guests with (if that’s the goal). You can find the recipe at Veronica’s blog. To make it I used an assortment of chocolates that I had at home — leftovers mostly, really, from various recipes — a bar of Valrhona Manjari, some Scharffen Berger, some Ghirardelli Bittersweet and some Lindt. My chocolate percentages were probably higher than 62% when all was said and done, more like 66%, but my brother and I really loved the darkness and intensity.

Post from: Baking Delights

This recipe is from Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid and went beautifully with some Afghan dishes we were trying out. I must have done something wrong with the dough, as my fingerprints didn’t leave enough of an impression as I was shaping it — it was fully risen and the impressions should have remained…. maybe I stretched it out too much before dimpling them? So I used my little one’s fork handle instead — LOL, obviously not traditional, but the results were still good — those dimples frustrate me though, as we ended up with tiny holes instead — argh! Will have to work more on those.

Post from: Baking Delights