Archive for the ‘Breads – Yeast Breads’ Category
Normally, I don’t cross-post things to both this site and Slashfood, but this pizza crust warrants an exception.
This crust is a recipe from the most recent issue of Cook’s Illustrated. It caught my eye because there was a tagline that said “great pizza without an 800-degree oven.” I guess it doesn’t take much to convince me.
I’ve made good pizzas at home, but never a great pizza until now. The crust was incredibly easy to put together and baked up light, crispy and full of air pockets, which I love to see in my crusts. The dough was actually made in the food processor, so it took very little effort in terms of mixing and kneading, and it was also very easy to handle.
The secret to the crust is the use of cake flour. In a commercial pizza oven, the dough cooks so quickly that a high protein flour (like bread flour) is needed to maintain the chewiness of the crust and keep the pizza from drying out. In a home oven, the pizza spends more time cooking because it is done at a lower temperature; the high-protein flour doughs take too long to cook, resulting in a tough pizzza, while the dough made with the low-protein cake flour cooked faster and delivered a crust with a tender interior and crisp crust. You can view a photo essay of the pizza-making process here.
The other key to this recipe is a pizza stone. Pizza stones absorb the heat of the oven and cook the dough from the bottom as well as from the top, producing a crisper, lighter crust. It is imperative that you use a pizza stone to get the best results. I got mine for about $10 at Trader Joe’s. You don’t need an expensive one, any one will do.
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Monkey bread is nothing like monkey bars. It is much more like cinnamon buns, except that the dough is shaped into little balls which are all coated in sugar, piled together and baked. Once the bread is done, the delicious balls of dough can be pulled off – presumably like a monkey – and eaten one by one.No one is exactly sure how the bread got its name, though there are several theories. Never having seen a monkey eat a bread like this one before (nor, in fact, any breads at all), I can’t speak to the validity of the name, but I do like it better than the alternate name, which is “pull-apart bread.”
The first well-known recipe for monkey bread appeared in the New York Times in the 1970s, but it was reportedly popular with home cooks during the 60s as well. It can be made with a yeasted dough, as I did here, and is frequently made with refrigerated biscuit dough for the sake of convenience.
I used a simple buttermilk bread, which I lightly sweetened, for this recipe. There are two options for coating the bread before baking. For a more decadent recipe, as indicated in the instructions below, the balls should be dipped in melted butter before being dredged in sugar. A lighter version of the bread can be made by dipping the dough into milk before the sugar. The purpose of the butter (or milk) is simply to help the sugar adhere to the bread. Granted, butter adds flavor, but the sugar is the key ingredient and all you need to do is make it stick.
Once it has been baked and cooled, the bread should not last long. The sugary puffs encourage nibbling and the loaf will be gone before you know it. The bread itself is very soft and moist, while the sugar coating is caramelized on the sides and bottom of the bread and crisp on top. Don’t skimp on the sugar and, if you want to make a bigger bread, double this recipe and bake it in a well-greased bundt pan.
Note: If this doesn’t look as gooey as other monkey breads, don’t worry. The bottom is plenty gooey, I just chose to put this loaf out top-side up because the crisp sugary layer looked too pretty to put face-down even though monkey bread is usually served that way.
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I’ve talked about batter breads before. Their main advantage is that they are incredibly simple, involving no kneading and still produce an excellent loaf.
It is so simple, in fact, that there is not much to say about it! This recipe makes one loaf with a soft, moist open crumb and a slightly crisp, thin crust. I mixed up the dough in my stand mixer, but you could certainly do it by hand, too. I find that giving it a mixing time of a few minutes is important to help the gluten develop and give the bread a better structure, something which normally happens during the kneading and rising process of other breads.
The loaf has the rich, tangy taste of the molasses, but it is tempered by the honey, so there is no bitterness in the bread. The oatmeal adds a bit of texture, but doesn’t detract from the overall softness of the crumb. It’s great for cutting into thick slices and eating with soup or slathering with butter. I like it best untoasted because of the lovely soft texture, but toast is always a good serving suggestion for breads.
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Everybody is interested in whole grain everything these days. While I am interested in having plenty of whole grains in my diet, I’m not that interested in having things that are enriched with whole grains, like a cereal that has 5% whole wheat flour or something. I like my grains to be either soft and white or totally wheaty. This isn’t to say that I don’t often mix flours for texture and flavor in my breads, because I do. I just don’t call it something it’s not.
These rolls are exactly what they say they are: 100% whole wheat flour buns. I started off the dough with little direction. I didn’t know whether I wanted to do dinner rolls or a loaf of bread. At some point (most likely while I looked at the ground beef in my refrigerator), I thought “this would make a great hamburger bun.” And so it does.
These buns have a great texture, a slightly crisp crust that softens as it cools and a moist, light interior. The rolls are satisfyingly flavorful, with just enough sugar to cover any hint of bitterness that whole wheat doughs can sometimes have and not make the bread sweet. The plainness of the roll makes it very useful. It soaked up the hamburger juices beautifully, but would make a great cold sandwich roll, too. It can also be used to simply sop up marinara sauce or topped with butter and jam.
Store leftovers in an airtight container or a plastic bag. They’ll be good for at least day or two longer.
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I love multi-grain bread. I’m not talking about the kind that you buy in the supermarket, bagged and sliced next to the white bread. I’m talking about the hearty, flavorful kind that you can get on a sandwich at a really great cafe. It’s the kind of bread that is invariably paired with a “California style” sandwich, the one that always seems to include tomatoes, avocado and sprouts. Of course, there might be other things on it, too, but such a sandwich is mostly about the bread.
I have wanted to make multigrain bread for a long time. I started with a recipe on the King Arthur Flour website and went from there. After a few substitutions and eliminating the sunflower seeds because I don’t care for nuts in my sandwich bread, my multi-grain loaf was finished. And it was everything I could have hoped it would be.
The bread was hearty with an oaty, nutty flavor. It was moist and very substantial, but that is a trait that you want in a bread like this, since it can stand up to any filling. It can even stand up to a total lack of filling and be satisfying! The crust is thick and crisp, really excellent.
One of the things that really makes it work is the vital wheat gluten in the recipe. The gluten allows the bread to rise better, creating a lighter product. The “multi grains” in the bread have either low or no additional protein in them, so adding the gluten, which is extra protein, means that you are going to have a less-dense, more tender loaf. If you don’t have vital wheat gluten, you can buy some from the Baker’s Catalogue or look for it at a natural grocery store. If you do not use it, you bread will still taste good, but it will be on the dense side.
I love this loaf. It makes fantastic sandwiches and unbelievable toast. The only thing that I would consider changing is its size, to make a larger bread, because I definitely want more.
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