Archive for: yeast bread
I used to go to a bakery that, amongst other things, specialized in baking challah. Challah is a rich egg bread that is made with oil and without butter or milk. It has a similar texture to brioche, very soft verging on flakey, and a very rich texture. Traditionally, the bread is eaten by Jewish people around the sabbath and on holidays and loaves are shaped in braids. Tradition aside, this is a fantastic bread all year round. It is moist, soft and fantastic for making sandwiches, french toast, bread pudding and all kinds of good things. It is also outstanding on its own.
Most challah loaves are plain, but sometimes they will have raisins or chocolate chips added in to make them a little bit sweeter and give them a dessert feel. After frequenting a bakery that made a great raisin challah as a kid, I am a big fan of challah with raisins and decided to make a few loaves this year for friends celebrating the Jewish high holidays. And, of course, I made a loaf for me to keep and eat.
The bread comes together easily and can be mixed by hand or with a dough hook in a stand mixer. The dough should be slightly sticky, so I’d recommend working with a mixer if you have one. Once your dough i made and has risen well, you can divide it down into three sections and braid them together. The braided dough will proof again before being baked, and the loaf will look fantastic when it is finished. This recipe makes a fairly large loaf, but it keeps very well for snacking, sandwiches and other uses when stored at room temperature for a couple of days.
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A baking stone is a large, usually thick, piece of stoneware that is often recommended for bread and pizza baking. The instructions usually say to put them on the bottom or middle rack of your oven, then preheat it for an extra-long time before baking. Using a stone is said to improve the crust of both bread and pizza, but often little explanation is given as to why this is the case.
The way that baking stones work is simple. Baking stones absorb and retain heat very well, so when you put them in the oven and allow the oven to run for a while, the stones heat up. They transfer heat directly to the bottom of your bread or other baked good, as baked goods can be placed directly on the stone (or on parchment, then on the stone) so the bread never starts out on a cold surface, as it would when baked on a baking sheet. This allows bread to bake more evenly all over, resulting in a much nicer crust – particularly for artisan-type breads. Since the stones retain so much heat, they also help keep the oven at a much more even temperature and make up for some of the heat that is lost when you open the door to put something in.
You can leave your baking stone in the oven when you’re not using it, especially if it’s on the bottom of your oven. If it’s on a rack, however, you may want to remove it when baking cakes and cookies. The extra heat from the baking stone directly underneath (say, if you’re setting a baking sheet right on the stone) can cause cakes to cook faster and cookies to overbrown on the bottom, so keep that in mind if you do decide to do your regular baking with the baking stone in your oven.
You can buy baking stones at many specialty grocers and kitchen stores, as well as online. I often see unfinished quarry tiles recommended as inexpensive alternatives to commercial baking stones, although an unfinished tile is a bit more likely to become brittle and break-able over time. The thickness of the tile should not have an impact on the results, so choose a stone that fits in your oven well and is light enough that you can handle it easily.
It’s funny what inspires you to bake, sometimes. This Rosemary and Garlic Focaccia was inspired by some really, really mediocre bread that I was served at an Italian restaurant recently. It is completely unlike that bread, and it was the fact that I was wishing for some good focaccia with lots of garlicky olive oil that make me come home and bake my own.
I started out with a plain focaccia dough that had a little bit of olive oil in it, and added in fresh rosemary and sauteed garlic to give it a little more of a savory flavor. Both elements really complement the olive oil’s fruitiness. The finished focaccia isn’t the thick, cut-in-half-to-make-sandwiches focaccia. It is thinner and bakes up to be soft in the center and crisp around the edges. For me, this is the perfect kind of focaccia for dipping into seasoned olive oil when you want a snack before dinnertime.
It doesn’t take too long to make this bread from start to finish, but you will need to allow some time for the bread to rise, so if you want to serve it with dinner it is best to start a couple hours ahead of time. While I used fresh, you can easily substitute dried spices into this recipe and still get a good result. Use about 1 1/2 tsp dried rosemary and 1 tsp garlic powder. I don’t like to overdo it when I’m using dried spices in breads because they can go from subtle to overwhelming pretty quickly. This bread is at its best when it is freshly made, but you can store the leftovers in an airtight container, then pop them in the oven for 5 minutes at 350F to crisp it up again the next day.
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No-knead bread is simple, but when I heard the promise of No-knead Dinner Rolls in an issue of Everyday Food, I was hooked. Dinner rolls always sound simpler and less complicated than baking a full loaf of yeast bread, much like baking a batch of cupcakes just sounds less labor-intensive than baking a multi-layer cake. But like the cupcakes, it turns out that making dinner rolls can take just as much time as the full-sized variation because you have to do all the same work leading up to putting the bread in the oven. A no-knead variation would let you skip messy steps, like kneading dough and getting flour all over the counter. So, I got out my mixer and set to work.
It turns out that the recipe is really only no-knead if you have a stand mixer. If you do, slap that dough hook on and you will only have to shape the bread before baking. If you don’t, I really recommend kneading the dough a little bit because it is very difficult to simply mix it by hand, and kneading it a bit gives it a better texture. Don’t get me wrong here: this recipe really isn’t very much work at all and it makes good rolls – it’s just not entirely no-knead for everyone!
Still, they’re easy to make. These are not as light as some dinner rolls I’ve had, but because they’re more substantial I think they go great with heavy sauces and chilis. You can even use leftovers for some really nice sandwiches! They have a nice buttery, slightly yeasty flavor to them. Since they’re baked in a 9x-13-inch pan, you pull them apart when serving, which means that every roll has nice, soft sides ready to be buttered and enjoyed.
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A slice of toast is always a great complement to breakfast foods, especially egg dishes, whether I’m eating at home or out at a diner. Whole wheat and sourdough make great toast, but I would have to say that cinnamon raisin bread makes better toast still. Most cinnamon raisin bread – including this homemade cinnamon raisin bread – has a buttery, sweet flavor to it to begin with and is just dense enough to soak up a lot of butter when you slather it onto a freshly toasted slice. It’s a small indulgence, but a good one.
Homemade cinnamon raisin bread is a great thing to make because you not only get to enjoy the taste of a freshly toasted slice, but you get to smell the bread while it bakes. The bread is easy to make and bakes in a loaf pan. You can do the initial kneading in a stand mixer with a dough hook attached if you don’t want to do it by hand, but you will need to clear some counter space to form the loaf by hand before its final rise. The dough is rolled out and spread with a brown sugar and butter mixture before being rolled back up into that final loaf. It’s a thin layer that only makes a small swirl in the finished loaf (it’s easy to see in person, however), but it does add a lot of flavor. I like to incorporate the cinnamon and the raisins into the bread dough, rather than trying to stick them only into the brown sugar swirl in the loaf so that they are well-distributed.
This loaf will keep well for a couple of days if you store it in an airtight container, or well-wrapped with plastic wrap on the kitchen counter. It is best to wait until it has cooled completely before slicing, but is easy to slice and makes a delicious piece of toast.
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