Bad Romance (And Amazing Pizza Crust)

No no, I have not suddenly decided to leave T!  This is so not what this is all about!

Allow me, for just a moment, to wax all Lady-Gagaesque.  Oh all right, maybe I would cook and eat the steak instead of making a dress, but still – over the past year, I have been having what I can only call a love affair with bread.

Which is for someone who really ought to stay away from too many carbs, is notably a case of bad romance.  But rather than set the bed on fire torch the bread, I have dealt with it by feeding most of the bread to T and assorted friends, and only having a little.  Because, really, what sort of life is it if you don’t even try what you bake?  (And what sort of life is it if you don’t bake at all?!)  So in the end, I live within the best of both worlds – I can bake, he can eat, and I don’t overdo bread-eating.  Usually.

In the case of this pizza however, T had to share equally.  Because, you know, some things are just entirely too good not to have – and had I made two, I imagine we would have both finished one each easily.  I need not sing hallelujah for the pear and blue cheese pairing, nor for the addition of red onion and olive oil-and-balsamic-herb wash for this, for they need it not.  These are all classics, and as such, worthy of many repetitions because they never fail.  No, what made this special is the crust – thin, crunchy, light-as-air and crispy on the outside: the very epitome of what I have always loved about good pizza.  Just when I had thought homemade pizza-making could not be improved, there is was, yet another revelation, bringing me into higher reaches of pizza heaven.

It all began with being lazy.  Because I am, you know, and make no secret of it.  So while I wanted to learn to bake real breads, and was willing to put in the effort for the learning curve, if there are better and easier way to make something, I am always very interested in trying them.  Like the adventures with no-knead bread (including the original spectacular failure!).  And, this – this being the other recently popular method for artisan-style bread for home bakers, the so-called bread-in-five (minutes a day), which is another variation of the no-knead method (allowing time and moisture to develop the gluten instead of pounding the dough like a sumo wrestler), but with the added caveat of it being very wet dough, and stored in the refrigerator to make it less sticky and more manageable.

I would not say that five-minutes-a-day is an absolute claim, because really, that excludes the resting of the bread, preheating of oven, and other such things (as many critics have claimed), but it is true that it is five minutes of actual effort a day if all you are making is a loaf of bread from pre-prepared dough.  And well, as such the claim is true enough – after the initial mixing and such, of course – but that is hardly laborous either.

The method for dough handling outlined on their site (I will go over it in short in a bit) works brilliantly well.  As you can see from the neat and smooth ball of dough on the next photo, the gluten is well-developed and the dough is both, elastic and very relaxed – both very desirable attributes more or less regardless of what you are baking.

Before we go any further, I cannot make any claims as to what quality of loaf the method produces, because I have not tried to make a loaf using this dough yet.  All I have made so far has been a small focaccia on the same day I mixed the dough (post-mandatory-refrigeration), and a pizza this morning for lunch.  Although I can attest that it does hold its shape once shaped into a ball despite very high hydration % (very wet dough), probably due to well-developed gluten after the refrigerated maturing of dough.

Bread experimentation forthcoming, I have to give this method (at its very basic master recipe adjusted to bread flour) two thumbs up for making flatbread that is incredibly crispy and light, with a moist and airy interior.  And the dough is a joy to work with, for someone as clumsy with dough-stretching as me (I make zero claims on my pizza-tossing ability as I imagine it’d end up draped on the overhead lights if I tried – that, or stuck in my hair) – the dough stretches easily, does not resist much, and does not stick nearly as much as you’d think when you initially mix it.  Well… you do need to flour your hands, but that’s it really.

So what does the method for dough-making entail?

The principle is very simple.  You mix a high-hydration dough, you allow it to rise to maximum rise (about 2 hours with regular yeast), and then you place it in the refrigerator and cut off and use as much as you want over the next fourteen days (2 weeks).  All the dough requires before baking is a minimal shaping with floured hands and 30-40 minute rest before going in a hot oven onto a pizza stone or into a cast-iron pan or pot.

The master recipe is listed here, but it is in American measures.  I have converted the recipe to metric and then used bread flour, of which I used proportionally less to same volume of water as advised on the site:

• 3 cups (710ml) barely-warm water
• 1.5 tablespoons dry yeast (this came to just under 1 packet (50g) of Swedish yeast)
• 1.5 tablespoons coarse salt (I used coarse sea salt)
• 6.5 cups (2lb) = 910g all-purpose flour.  I had adjusted this to ~850g bread flour (which absorbs slightly more water)

Mix, cover, allow to rise for 2 hours, and place in refrigerator covered (but allowing a bit of air to escape so don’t screw a lid on tight) for 3 hours to 14 days.  The site recommends using a plastic bucket with a snap lid and a tiny hole in the top to vent the air.  I used a large stainless-steel bowl and covered it with plastic wrap which gets around the danger of blowing-up from gas pressure very well.

To use, sprinkle the top of the dough with a bit of flour, stretch up the amount of dough you want to use grabbing it by that floured bit, and scizzor it off.  Drop dough onto a floured board, and pre-shape into a boule in the classical manner of tucking ends under.

To make the pizza or focaccia base, in my experience the use of rolling pin only makes the dough too tough.  So, I had allowed the dough ball to rest for about 15-20 minutes, then I placed a piece of baking parchment onto a board, preheated my oven with my trusty huge cast-iron shallow casserole bottom in it to 225C, and stretched the dough gently with well-floured hands.  Then dropped it onto the baking parchment without any flouring.  Why?  Because a tiny bit of sticking to the parchment helps prevent it shrinking (See that stuck bit on the right?  Like that.), and because it comes right unstuck during baking – and keeps your cast iron pan clean as a bonus!

The rest, so to speak, is history.  While the crust is resting a few more minutes, cut up your favorite toppings – or whatever happened to be in the fridge (in my case, a bag of pears, a leftover quarter of a red onion, and a small chunk of blue cheese), brush the pizza crust with a bit of olive oil (or leftover dipping oil mixed with balsamic vinegar and herbs in my case), and top it.

Slide onto a pizza stone, or if you are like me, pull out the hot cast iron casserole, and slide the baking parchment with the pizza into it.  Turn oven to 250C and broiler (top grill) on, and bake for a few minutes until done.  Ovens and distance from the broiler will vary, so watch your pizza – half a minute and it may char beyond what you want it to be!

Take it out and cool on the rack for a few minutes (few = not many here!), before cutting it apart and serving, and regretting that you did not make two or three.

And if you are like me and live with sugar sensitivity – eat, but enjoy in moderation.  Complete deprivation never did anyone any good.

Submitted to the lovely baked-goods showcase at Yeastspotting.

Eight Years Without Cheesecake

With Valentine’s Day just behind us, and everyone being overdosed on chocolate and rich desserts, the last thing you may want to be reading about may be the decadence that is NY-style cheesecake.

Lemon and Orange Cheesecake with Shortbread Crust

Unless you are like me, that is, and have gone easy on the chocolate – or, unless you are like me, and the thought of proper, creamy, tender and oh-so-good real New York-style cheesecake makes all else not matter.  I am (last I checked) myself, and therefore I believe that cheesecake is always in time, occasion and season.  So if you are a fellow Cheesecake-worshipper, keep reading.  On second thought, even if you are an infidel among us Cheesecake-believers, you should stay and hear the gospel as well.

So what about the eight-year deprivation, you ask?  Well, as it happens, I adore cheesecake.  In fact, I ate it on any occasion that called for dessert when it was available, back when I lived in the USA, the holy land of cheesecakes.  You may not know it, but Americans actually have a restaurant chain called “The Cheesecake Factory”.  I am not kidding!  And as far as I am concerned, it has to be American cheesecake.  No, I am not interested in the ricotta cakes, or the Swedish traditional ostkaka, give me the tall, creamy but definitively non-gloopy beauty that is NY-style cheesecake any, any day of the week.

Except that I have not lived in USA since 2004.  That is… 8 years, people!  And in that time, between Sweden and UK, I have not had any cheesecake, because I refuse to have any that is less than what cheesecake, in my mind, should be.  And you know what?  Eight years is simply too long to go without cheesecake!

So, having gotten thoroughly cheesecake-frustrated, I have decided that I’ve had it, and I think I’ve completely talked T’s head off about the real cheesecake that I so desired, and in the end I ended up promising him to make the real thing myself.  Because, if you want something done right, you bloody well should.

There is a lot of talk, both in word-of-mouth and on the net and even in cookbooks about how difficult it is to make a cheesecake.  Some people say you have to cook it wrapped in foil on a water bath (really, wtf people, haven’t you heard of the invention of the this thing called an oven thermostat?!  It’s been around for several decades!*), and nearly all preach about how hard it is to mix, and how it will get air bubbles and oh god oh god crack and burn and explode and collapse and… guess what?  After reading a bunch of different sources and then making the actual cheesecake (I write this in a cheesecake-satiated glow after eight years of deprivation!), I came to the conclusion that it is all a bunch of over-hyped hoopla.  Similar, in some ways, to the way people describe sourdough bread-baking – anything to preserve the elitism and scare newbie bakers away from their holy grail.  So, pfft at them!  Making a cheesecake is really really easy.  You need to think about it, and there are some instructions you really ought to follow and not try to improvise, and you need to chill it overnight – but that’s really that!

And if the top cracks a tiny bit – who cares?  If you are serving it to guests, it should get topped with something anyway (melted, chocolate, caramel sauce, good tangy preserves or fresh berries – whatever takes your fancy!), and if you are just cutting a greedy slice to share over the morning coffee, then you can cut along the cracks.  Or simply ignore them.

So, if I have managed to impress upon you that to prepare this dessert royalty you really do not need much effort, what do you need?  Well… first of all, you need time.  Cheesecake must be allowed to set overnight in the refrigerator.  Which means you need to bake it the day before you are going to serve it (or several days – it keeps easily over a week in the fridge if wrapped properly!).

What else do you need?  Ok, here we go:

• An oven.  One of those modern ones with a thermostat knob.
• A mixing bowl.
• A mixer or a whisk and a really strong arm.  I use a small, handheld mixer and it works just fine.
• A springform pan, with bottom inserted upside-down (yes, I mean that!) – meaning, lipped side down, flat side up.  The upside-down bottom ensures there is no “lip” on it once the cake is ready, and it can be easily sliced, or transferred off the flat surface onto a plate.

Recipe is adapted fairly heavily from a saved recipe card that I got mailed as a promotion back when living in USA.  Adaptations include not being able to get my hands on brick cream cheese, not using egg whites, and removing flour from batter (because I like my cheesecake better without).

Ingredients:  (This will make one standard 9-inch form)

Shortbread crust:   Yes, I like that, but if you prefer crumb crust, it’s just some digestive biscuits crushed with a bit of melted butter.  In my personal and highly biased view (as in, it’s going to go into my mouth-biased), lightly spiced shortbread crust is far superior!

• 200g plain all-purpose flour (1.5 to 1.75 US cups)
• Small pinch of salt (1/5 tsp)
• 2 tsp ground ginger (optional, can be replaced with nutmeg or omitted)
• 1 tsp vanilla sugar
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1.5 dl confectioner’s sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• 150g butter, cut into small pieces and slightly softened

Cheesecake batter:

• 1kg full-fat cream cheese.  In Europe that translates to 5 little tubs.
• 200g 10% (full-fat) quark cheese (Kesella or other brand – can be substituted with 10% Greek or Turkish strained yogurt)
• 1 dl full fat creme fraiche (I believe that is 34% fat here in Sweden).  This can be substituted with full-fat sour cream.
• 300ml caster sugar (I used golden caster).
• 2 teaspoons vanilla sugar or 1 teaspoon real vanilla extract.  I used sugar this time, as my vanilla extract isn’t ready yet (I make my own, it’s easy).
• Zest of 1 lemon+1 orange.  If you like your cake less citrusy, you can use either orange or lemon or half of each.
• 1 tablespoon (15ml) lemon juice from aforementioned lemon (try to avoid bottled lemon juice here, it does not taste nearly as good as fresh).
• 3 egg yolks
• OPTIONAL! 3 tablespoons of flour – I did not use those, but they can help the cake set and lessen the chance of cracks.  (Or so I am told.)

Method:

Make and bake the shortbread crust.

• Preheat oven to 175C.  Cut a circle of baking parchment to match the bottom of springform pan.
• Grease the pan and line the bottom with parchment.  Flour the sides thoroughly.
• Mix together all dry ingredients of crust except sugar.  Whisk to combine.
• In another bowl, mix sugar with butter until completely combined and light in color.
• Add egg yolks and mix until incorporated.  You may need to scrape down the sides of bowl at some point here.
• Add all the dry ingredients and mix on low speed until mixture resembles crumbs.  Remove mixer and squish with hands until dough comes together (should be very easy and quick).
• Place clumps of dough into the prepared springform pan, and push at it with your fingers till it is sort of uniform thickness on the bottom and up the sides.  Fork the bottom thoroughly to help avoid puffing up in the oven.  IF the bottom begins to puff up, open the oven, and fork it carefully at the edge of puffed up area.  That should deflate it.  Continue to bake as normal.
• Bake in preheated oven for 15-20 minutes (watch it) until the top edge is just beginning to color and the crust is entirely baked through and opaque.
• Cool on rack without removing from the pan, until completely cool (this may take an hour).

In meantime, bring out the cheesecake batter ingredients out of the fridge and allow them to come to room temperature or close to it (don’t go nuts if it is a bit cool to the touch after sitting on the counter for that long, really).

A useful note on mixing the batter, which comes next – use low speed of mixer.  On low speed, you have far, far less chance of introducing excess air bubbles into it, and it is more than powerful enough to mix softened cream cheese, etc.

• Preheat oven to 250C (475F).  Yes you want it that hot!
• When the crust is completely cool, make the batter:
• Place all the cream cheese into a bowl.  I shook each little tub over the sink a bit to get rid of excess water that is sometimes found in the tubs.  Mix the cream cheese on low speed until it is smooth or close to.
• Add sugar, lemon and orange zest, and quark.  Mix to incorporate.
• Add egg yolks and mix in.  Add lemon juice and creme fraiche and mix until the batter is homogenous.

• Pour the batter into the cooled crust.  Some people suggest banging the cheesecake or such, but I did not bother as the batter mixed on low speed is not very bubbly at all.  It should more or less come up to the top (or over, which is fine) of your crust.

• Put your cheesecake on an oven pan to catch any drips, and slide that into the oven so that the cheesecake is roughly in the middle of it vertically.
• Sit and watch cheesecake for 12 minutes on 250C.  It may start to puff on sides a little bit towards the end of this period.  To reduce the chance of surface singing during this step, I turned the oven setting to only use the bottom element after preheating on top+bottom setting.  If the surface starts to brown at any point during this step, go to next step immediately.  Otherwise, proceed to next step at end of 12 minutes.
• Without opening the oven door, turn oven to use top+bottom elements (no fan setting if possible), and turn the thermostat to 95-100C.  Bake cheesecake at this setting for an hour and a half to an hour and a quarter, until the surface is set, but the center of the cake wobbles under the surface a little when it is jiggled gently back and forth.
• Turn oven off and use a piece of cookware (loaf pan?  Rolling pin?)  to prop the oven door ajar, or take the cake out of oven and set it on a rack to cool.  I used the oven method as it is supposed to reduce cracking.  I suppose I can use the take out onto rack method another time and see if that cracks more, but either is supposed to be fine.
• If using the oven to initially cool the cake, take cake out after another 15-20 minutes and continue to cool on the rack.  When pan is cool to the touch, carefully run a thin spatula or spreading knife around the crust to loosen it from the sides.
• Allow to cool until just warm to the touch before wrapping the springform pan in plastic wrap and placing in refrigerator.
• Refrigerate overnight or for at least 6 hours to set the cake completely.
• The next morning, check that the sides of the crust are not attached to the springform pan sides, carefully unlock and remove the sides.  Now you can either keep the cake on the bottom of the pan, or slide a thin spatula between the parchment paper and the pan bottom to loosen it and use the parchment to grab the cake and slide it over onto a serving plate.

The cake will keep for days in the refrigerator, but please do replace the pan sides (to prevent it from mashing and cover/wrap with plastic wrap to prevent it absorbing odors you and I would rather it didn’t – like garlic for example.

Now, I imagine this would have gone amazingly well with a topping, but after trying just one bite, my boyfriend decided he just liked it plain, and that the lemon-tinged lushness of this did not require any additional dressing.  So, I didn’t.  Does not mean you should not, you know.

The batter for this is very accommodating to added flavoring.  I think next time, I will get my hands on some pumpkin puree (or make it if I must), and make proper pumpkin-pie-spiced pumpkin cheesecake.  Or else go crazy and try a pineapple or mango flavored one, or plain with caramel and chocolate shavings… who knows?  The point is, because it is not baked on water bath, it sets much, much easier and less problematically.  If you are adding fruit or vegetable puree, I would suggest using the optional 3 tablespoons flour with the batter to help set the cake with lower cheese to batter ratio.  Or you know, you can always wait for me to test it first.  I promise you, I will.

Cheesecake baked in this manner, is both, easy, and incredibly forgiving, and yes, it tastes, looks and feels exactly like the really good luxury American cheesecakes that I had missed so much all those eight years.  The moral of the story is that if you want something done right, do it yourself.  I should have.  Years ago.

* As I understand it, the incredible necessity of the foil-wrapping cheesecake and cooking it in a tray of water in your oven harkens back to the times when you baked your cheesecake just outside your cave in the fire on that lightning-struck tree stump.  Yes, back then you’d have certainly needed a water bath to ensure it did not suffer from heat spikes when you tossed another log into the fire.  Or you know, if another tree branch got tossed in by the wind.  But really, with an oven that has 10-degree increments on a thermostat, saying water bath (and consequent mess, boiling water splashing, possible leaks and ruined soggy cheesecake) is necessary is just so much of you know what.

Blueberry-Raspberry-Cinnamon Quick Bread (even for those with egg allergy)

A couple of days ago, on a cold and snowy day (they are all like that now, but I’d be the last to complain), I decided to bake something on an afternoon, because T was out in the freeze (or at least traveling home through said freeze) after a long day, and I though it would be nice if he came home to the scent of baking… something?

But by the time I had this brilliant idea, it was already late afternoon and I hadn’t even started, nor checked what I have in the pantry.  Having rummaged around, I came up with a couple of eggs, a half-carton of aging sourmilk (filmjölk, which is like a luxury version of buttermilk for those of you outside Scandinavia), and some flour.  Mhm.  And then, then I remembered that I had an opened box of a bilberry (wild blueberry) and raspberry mix in the freezer.  So, with time being short and me being lazy (I am always lazy), the solution presented itself – I would bake a quick bread loaf.

Quick bread, for those who aren’t American, is essentially a muffin loaf but with less sugar or fat.  More like the muffins were meant to be, long ago before Starbucks popularized the giant cake-batter muffin.  In fact I imagine it can be baked in cupcake molds for muffins instead of a loaf, but I don’t own a cupcake mold.  And I do own a loaf tin.  And I am lazy, have I mentioned that?  So, quick breads can be made with just about any flavoring – they are essentially a soda, buttermilk (sourmilk for me), and baking powder-leavened loaves that can be sweet, or savory, or plain or chock-full of nuts, berries, cheese, chilies, bacon bits or whatever.  Though you know, if you are baking a savory one, you probably want to modify the sugar quantities and use a tablespoon or so instead.

How is this quick?  Essentially, because it is, and easy to boot.

You simply mix all the dry ingredients, mix all the wet ingredients in a separate bowl, and rougly stir the wet into the dry until a lumpy batter forms (overmixing = bad, lazy stirring = good!), then scrape the thick batter into a greased and floured loaf tin, sort-of level the top, and bake at 175C for 50-60 minutes (how long this bakes will depend on what you put in it – wet things such as frozen berries make it bake longer), until a toothpick or bamboo skewer comes out clean.  Then you let it cool on the rack for about 20 min in the form, run a knife around it and dump it out onto the rack for another 10 minutes.  Best thing?  You don’t even have to wait for it to be completely cool to cut it!

The results are well and beyond worth the minimal effort – this breakfast sweet bread is moist, flavorful, not too sweet, and the sharpness of berries cuts through the warmth and spiciness of cinnamon.  The result is so heavenly aromatic , that it is literally damned irresistible with a cup of coffee, and with or without a bit of butter and honey on it.  I say irresistible, because I tried pretty hard to resist having any alongside T, and failed.  And I do have a pretty high resistance to sweets.

In fact, if you want to take photos of it, you should not do like I did, and figure “I’ll photograph it tomorrow”, because by the time you realize there are photos to be taken, you may just have nothing left to photograph.  Or like me, find one last little slice off the end crust, with huge blueberry-explosion holes left over, and have to take pictures of it… or bake again.

My quick bread recipe is based with a few modifications on this one (which is also very good), but obviously due to an allergic boyfriend, I have adjusted it to remove egg whites.  In fact, I imagine this would work without any eggs, but with additional 60ml of sourmilk (buttermilk or yogurt).  This batter is very forgiving, so feel free to experiment!

What you need:

• Loaf pan, something to mix with, and 2 bowls.

• 5dl plain all-purpose flour.
• 1.2dl sugar
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 0.5 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp fine salt
• 1 tsp finely ground cinnamon
• 2-2.5dl frozen berries of your choice (blueberries and raspberries for me)
• 2 egg yolks (substitute additional 60ml yogurt or filmjölk for eggless, and omit the 1 tablespoon of water in initial batter mix)
• 2.5dl filmjölk or buttermilk or non-strained (regular) plain yogurt
• 1 tbsp water (+1-3 tablespoons more to adjust consistency of batter – filmjölk is thicker than buttermilk, so may not be needed if using buttermilk)
• 60ml vegetable oil or 60g butter (melted on gentle heat and cooled a little)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Method:

• Preheat your oven to 175C and grease and flour a standard loaf tin.
• Melt butter if using.
• Mix all the dry ingredients+berries in larger bowl.
• Whisk all the liquid ingredients (including 1 tablespoon of the water) in another bowl to combine, adding melted butter last.
• Pour the liquid ingredients into the flour mix, and mix with a wooden spoon or spatula till just combined.  Add water by tablespoonful only if batter is too thick and does not incorporate all the flour.  Resulting batter will be very thick.
• Scrape batter out with a spatula into the loaf pan and smooth the top a little.
• Bake in preheated oven for about an hour (start checking at 50 minutes), rotating once about 30 minutes into the baking time.
• Take out, cool on a rack for 20 min, get out of loaf tin and cool another 10 minutes.

Curl up on sofa, make sure your toes are warm, and eat, looking at the snow outside.

Two-Fifths Sourdough Rye, and Some Baking Myths

This week, winter has finally and properly come to Stockholm.

We have -15C in daytime, sparkling white snow everywhere – it only really sparkles when the temperature outside is way below 0C – and the city is bright and beautiful and inviting to wander out and around in, now that there is no more horrible wet and dark November muck that lasted entirely too long this year – about two months too long if you ask me.

This sort of weather calls for comfort food, but not the heavy rainy-day fare, no – this calls for satisfying textures and earthy flavors; and the fact that there is NO way to overheat the apartment (all it takes is opening the kitchen vent and the problem is solved!), it is also a fantastic excuse to indulge in baking.

Rye bread is both, healthful and enormously satisfying to eat, and I happen to adore the flavor of it – nothing, nothing beats real and heavily buttered rye bread for things like pickled herring, Skagen seafood salad, charcuterie or smoked salmon.  Unfortunately, good sourdough rye is not that easy to find in even an average Swedish supermarket (it’s easy to find average quality there, heh!), and I can imagine that in most English-speaking countries it is a specialty item, and many people consider wholemeal rye flour difficult to bake with.

I know, I have been there myself when I tried to make the 100% wholemeal Finnish rye.  It turns out great, but it is a pain in the head dough to work with, really.  Now, that one is a traditional recipe so not up to me to change (I may well come up with a better way to make a high-percentage rye bread later), but this specific recipe I came up with on my own the other day.  And, guess what?  It is easy to make.  Really really easy.

Two things which gave rise to this recipe are my incessant reading on the subject of food, and my recent experiments (the failed and the successful) with no-knead bread.  I wanted rye bread.  I have read that rye flour works far better after a long sourdough fermentation, and I have seen how well and easily gluten develops in long, sourdough no-knead method fermentation.  The difficulties with bread that has a large part of rye are normally:  1. that it does not rise very well because rye gets in the way of gluten development, so you get a brick or a doorstop; and 2. that the dough is awful to work with and even look at – it is unattractively grey, gloopy and it is sticky above and beyond all reason, to the point of resembling actual carpenter glue.  So the problem is that you really don’t want to knead rye bread – and you have to knead to get the gluten to develop… oh wait – the no-knead method… Eureka!  And so this recipe came to be.

As the name suggests, the recipe is two-fifths rye and three-fifths wheat, although that is approximate.  I will test a half-and-half one at some point later and let you know whether that works as well, which I think it will.

The method used for this bread is simple, and is described in detail in the (successful) no-knead post.  I suggest you read that once as then you will not have to ever read it again (it makes sense).  The only things I can add that are specific to the rye bread are that:

• I was really really generous at covering the banetton with wheat bran (fearful of the stickiness).
• The first rise for this much rye is longer than I suggest for wheat – this bread was left for approximately 18 hours (from late afternoon and overnight till next morning).
• The 2nd rise (in banetton after folding) can also take longer than the 1.5 hours for wheat – I left mine for 5 or so hours in a cool kitchen and then baked it.
• The baking time after the 30-minute mark removal of lid or bowl (whatever you are using), is minimum another 20 minutes, but I watched the bread for about 10 minutes after those 20, and simply took it out when it reached the right color for my liking.  Since the ovens and baking dishes vary, so may your mileage.  My advice is that if this is your first rye bread, watch it.  It should get beautifully deep chestnut-golden brown (rye bread color), and if it is too light it is underbaked.

The recipe is even simpler – and here is where I would like to kick a few of the things you commonly read on the internet, and even in reputable baking books about baking bread, where it hurts.  Why?  Because among a lot of good and useful advice, there are also sites and books (no names or links as usual, you will know them when you see them), that tell you that unless you do X in exactly Y way, your bread will not work and it’s your own fault for being a bread sinner not doing it as the holy internet church of bread bakers preaches.

In my opinion, all four myths mentioned below (I think I will probably point things like this out as I go along, but only four of them make an appearance in this recipe) are so much of what comes out the back end of a cow.  If you do one of those and your bread does not work, something else is wrong (weak starter, wrong flour, etc.).  It is not because you have sinned against the holier-than-thou principles which are nothing but so much hot air being blown where the sun don’t shine.

So, recipe!

• 100-150g sourdough starter, (I feed mine with mix of about 2/3 rye and 1/3 wheat flour before baking rye, half-and-half for wheat breads).  100% hydration (1:1 ratio of flours to water).  It should have been taken out of the fridge and fed at some point within the past 48 hours.  Myth: a lot of baking purists say you should feed your starter every 8 or 12 hours or oh god oh god it will die and nothing will work… that’s a load of [unmentionable substance].  If you have a strong and healthy starter (one that wakes up and rises within 12-24 hours of being taken out of the fridge and fed), then it is more than fine to do like I do:  I keep my starter in the fridge, and a day or two before I want to bake, I take some and mix it up and let it rise.  It is then fine to bake with the next day or two.  No, I am not hallucinating all those well-risen breads on this blog.
• 350ml cold tap water.  Myth:  you must gather the first morning dew from the petals of lilies, or get the purest mountain spring water you can find, because the chlorine in tap water kills your yeast!  No, it doesn’t.  Your water does not need to be bottled, brought in a wooden pail from a mountain spring, or filtered unless you live in an area where it is otherwise not safe to drink (like London).  But if you can enjoy drinking your tap water, so can your starter.  People who go on about how you should use bottled water for baking bread are… let’s not go there.
• 500g flour (200g wholemeal finely ground rye and 300g bread-quality high-protein wheat flour).  Myth:  you must always sift your flour.  No you don’t need to sift any of it for bread-baking – weighing it and dumping it into a bowl, adding salt and spices, and swirling around a bit with a dry whisk or a spoon before adding liquids is also just fine.
• 2 teaspoons salt.  Use a measuring spoon.  Myth:  you should use un-iodized salt of one fancy and expensive variety or another or it kills your yeast!  Truth – no; regular iodized table salt is fine.  The trace amount of iodine in it is not enough to kill the microorganisms in the starter.
• 1 tablespoon caraway seeds.  If you don’t love caraway as much as I do, use 2 teaspoons.  Or none, if you don’t want any.  (No, I do not feel the need to toast mine before adding it, but you can if you like.)

Method (the post linked above details it better, but here is the summary):

• Mix starter and water.  Mix all the rest in a bigger bowl.  Mix liquid into flour mix.  Cover with clingfilm and let stand for 18-20 hours.  Dump out onto a VERY well floured board.  Fold, rest 15 min, stick into banetton to rise.  I left mine to rise for nearly 5 hours but it may have been ready before I came home from my walk, so when it is puffed up, it is ready.  May be as little as 1.5-3 hours for the rye.  Bake, cool on rack, do not cut until completely cooled (more important for rye than wheat breads for flavor development).

Enjoy.  And don’t take [manure] from those who tell you baking bread must be difficult.  It really, really does not have to be.

Submitted to Yeastspotting.  :)

Cheese and Cardamom Cocktail Puffs

Of all the nibbles I have offered to my guests over the years, this one, I think, has been the most asked-for recipe.  These, my dear readers, are the cheesiest, lightest, most gloriously flavorsome tiny cocktail savories that I have ever met!  If you love cheese, please, I urge you to make these – they are like all the flavor and richness of cheese but in a light as air and gently spiced puff shape that you pop into your mouth, and… reach for another, washing it down with whatever you happen to have in your drink hand!

Alongside all their culinary virtues, they are also one of the most ridiculously easy things to make, so the reward to effort ratio nears infinity here – my favorite sort!  The only excuse for not posting it here sooner has been the fact that these are usually gone before I have a chance to grab the camera and snap a few photos.

Well, today was different – I made them to take along to an informal dinner this evening, and so they were not ravenously devoured by the hungry horde before I could sneak the camera into the kitchen.  So I did, and now I am posting about them, and then I will pack them into a box, put on a pretty top and head out into the winter night in anticipation of excellent food and a good time, and the rest is history.  Or well, at least now I can just point all the “how do you make those cheese things…?” questions here, and you, too, can make your very own savory and spiced just as you like and oh-so-cheesy and fluffy and light cocktail snacks.

Disclaimer – when I say they are light, I mean it as in not a heavy mouthful of chewy stuff people – this is no diet food of any kind, nor will I make any health claims for it, other than the fact that they are likely still better for you than all their sugary cousins.  So there.

What do you need to make your own?

(This will make about 1.5 baking sheets worth of cookies, depending on how thin you roll the dough and how small you cut them)

• 3-3.5dl plain flour
• 3-3.5dl grated cheeses of your choice – I tend to use a mix of about 2/3 random aged cheese such as strong cheddar or brännvinsost (a Swedish cheese made with spiced vodka of a local variety), and about 1/3 of some hard cheese such as Parmesan, Grana Padano and the like.
• 1/3 – 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 2/3 tsp salt
• 1/5 tsp cardamom seeds (not pods), pounded in a mortar, or a large pinch of ground cardamom.  (Note:  It can probably easily stand up to 1/2 a teaspoon of those really, if you like cardamom!)  Or you can use a little of your favorite savory spice – fennel, rosemary, lavender, whatever floats your cheese!
• 1 egg yolk
• 125g unsalted butter (omit salt above if using salted), cut into small pieces

What you do:

• Preheat oven to 200C (fan) or 210C (regular).  Line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment.
• Mix flour, salt, cardamom and baking powder.  Add butter and cut in till it is the size of small peas.
• Mix in cheese and mix till fully incorporated.  Add egg yolk and mix with spatula for a while, then stick your hands in and start rubbing the crumbly stuff together till it comes together into a dough.
• Wrap dough ball in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 10-15 min while you clear the counters from the mixing clutter.
• Flour your work surface and rolling pin thoroughly, roll the dough out to desired thickness (I go for about 5mm, approximately), and use a small cookie cutter to cut these out.  Generally 2.5-5cm is a good size for these.  The ones pictured were made on the small side.  Space cookies about 1cm apart on the baking sheet.
• Place sheets in oven and bake for 5-10 minutes (depending on oven, thickness and size of puffs, use common sense people!) until puffed up and just barely beginning to turn golden.  You do not want them to brown much at all.
• Cool on a rack, and place into a baking parchment lined airtight container (a tin box works really well).  Puffs will keep for 3-5 days (if they survive to keep that long!)  I have not tried to freeze them so I have no idea how well that would work, but I would hate for these to get soggy.

In my very biased view – and I am a cheese addict! – these work equally well with a glass of bubbly or a glass of a good red wine, or even a coffee if that is what you fancy.  Me, I will have it all, thank you very much!

No-Knead Sourdough Bread: The Glorious(ly easy) Rematch

It would come as no news at all to those who know me that I am a stubborn, stubborn sort.

If something defies me, I will hammer at it until I have gotten it.  That goes for most things I have encountered so far, with the notable exception of tennis.  Notable because after having had friends and an ex-boyfriend try to teach me, owning decent rackets, and having taken a course in it, I frankly, suck at tennis still, for all I would love to play it.  But exceptions only prove the rule, and so it was that the no-knead bread that ought to be easy enough for kiddies to make, had dared to defy me.

Once.

Which, of course, resulted in frantic reading of everything I could find and alternative recipes on the internet, and interrogating bread-baking friends regarding their experiences.  And adjusting the flour/water balance some, and calculating a hydration percentage to check against something a friend had read in this very good book (Swedish, sadly no translation available – but I plan to both, get it and post recipes, so rejoyce!).  And, obviously, more baking.

And boy, did that make a difference!

The bread rose, and it puffed up further in the oven, and the crust crackled gratuitously as it cooled on the rack when it came out – and the crumb… it was truly impressive, just the right amount of moist chewiness and large and well-spaced holes.  This, this is what I had been going after in that previous attempt!  Moreover, I had used 2 teaspoons of dried (and pretty well pounded in a mortar) culinary lavender in the dough, so the aroma was utterly amazing.

If you haven’t ever used lavender in baking, I would really urge you to try – just please, for the love of little green apples, get the culinary-grade one.  You don’t want a mouthful of soap with your bread, and that is what you would be getting if you tried using something out of a potpourri sachet or something intended for a bath preparation!  But, I digress.

Now, after having made all the adjustments, it is a truly lazy-sofa-dweller-easy recipe for gorgeous bread, and the best part is that if you have a sourdough starter, it is also a completely painless, really novice-proof method for sourdough breadmaking.  One that is, arguably, easier than making bread with regular yeast and other methods.  Now, do I have your attention?

If you make it with sourdough starter, it will also keep like a sourdough.  Which is to say it neither molds, nor goes tough outrageously for several days when kept unwrapped, with just the cut side covered in foil, or in one of those neat bread bags that I do not have.  So not only is this easy, it is a good way to make bread that is not in a hurry to go off, making it a good option when you count pennies and do not want to waste what you have bought.  In this case, that is just flour and salt and the optional lavender – sourdough starter, while not free, only needs feeding about once a month if kept in the fridge, so it is virtually free as well.

Behold, the glorious remains of the no-knead bread!

Since my camera was not at home when the bread was cut open originally, and there was daylight around, it was photographed two or three days later, which has done it really no harm!

So, to the recipe (minimal as it is), which is this time NOT adapted from any website, nor do I agree with the original New York Times no-knead bread article – neither about proportions, the time to raise it, nor about the whole proofing-in-towel idea, which is frankly asking for a stuck-dough disaster.

The idea, however, is downright brilliant!

You will need:

• A bowl, a dough spatula, a dutch oven or clay baker or a bottom of a cast-iron casserole and a large steel bowl to cover it (for baking – do NOT preheat the bowl if using).
• To get the pretty stripes and domed shape, a banetton is really helpful.  I imagine you could also raise this bread on a sheet of floured baking parchment or a silpat (non-stick baking mat), and it would turn out fairly decent too.
• If using a banetton, you will need a bit of wheat bran or rye flour or whatever it is you use to powder it before using it for bread to avoid sticking.  I used wheat bran this time.

• Sourdough starter (about 50g, bubbling and awake).  I feed mine with some rye and some wheat flour, it appears to like the combo best, but a pure wheat one will be juuuuust fine!
• 475g bread flour.  I will experiment more with various flours, but pure white bread flour (about 11-12% protein) works fine.
• 1.5-1.75 teaspoon salt.  Iodized table salt works fine, though you can go fancier.  I couldn’t be bothered to grind my sea salt so that is what I used.
• 3.5dl (350ml or 0.35L) cold water.
• 2 teaspoons dried herb of your choice (lavender, oh yes, make it lavender if you have some!), pounded to soft shreds in a mortar.  Bashing is therapeutic you know!  I would say fresh would work too, just make it an even tablespoon then and chop finely instead of pounding.

• Note:  I use a 100% hydration starter so it can be counted as 25g flour and 25g water.  This brings us to 375ml water and 500g flour.  375/500*100=75% hydration.  If you want to adjust the size of the dough, keep the math in mind.  If you just want to use the recipe, it’s a useful thing to remember but not necessary as the quantities are already written above.

What you do:

• Put flour, salt, and any seasoning if using (lavender in my case) into a bowl.  Swirl with a dry whisk to mix.
• Whisk your sourdough starter into your cold water in another bowl.  Trust me you want to do this and not skip this step – since there is barely any mixing, left alone kneading in this method, you want to distribute the starter well into the dry ingredients from the start.  So whisk whisk till it’s all murky water and no large starter blobs clinging to bottom of bowl.
• Pour the water+starter mix into the dry ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon, silicone spatula or whatever.  It will be shaggy and not appear too wet.  Keep stirring and poking it till most of the flour is incorporated.  Or you can cover it and let it sit 10 min to soak through and then stir a bit, pushing bits of dough down the sides of the bowl if any get stuck there.
• Cover with plastic wrap (clingfilm), or put the entire bowl into a plastic bag and seal with a clip.  Put in non-too-cold place in your kitchen.  Doesn’t have to be very warm (don’t stick it on the radiator, but say half a meter from it is good, or on a counter).  Don’t get hung up on temperature as long as your kitchen isn’t freezing cold.
• Leave for about 8-12 hours.  If you do not intend to bake it the same day, leave out for 6-8 hours and then stick the bowl in the refrigerator till the next day.  If your dough was refrigerated, give it about an hour to come to room temperature the day after and then go to next step.
• Flour a board or surface generously and poke the dough out of the bowl onto it.  It will be somewhat sticky but it will not be liquid and it will not actually get stuck to anything.  Or shouldn’t.  It will flatten out some under its own weight.  Flour your hands and sprinkle the top of the dough with a bit of flour too, and do a single stretch-and-fold.
• Powder the top of the folded dough with a bit more flour, cover it with the plastic wrap you used on the bowl (unless it is wet then get a new piece), and leave it be for 30 minutes or so.
• Sprinkle the banetton with wheat bran, or flour a baking parchment/mat.  Pick up your dough, lightly shape it into a ball with your hands, and rest it seam-side down if using banetton, but seam side up if you are using baking parchment or a mat.
• Cover with a towel and allow to rise for 1.5 hours or until approximately 1.5-2 times the size.  About an hour into the rise, pop your dutch oven, pan or clay baker into the oven and begin preheating it to 250C  (yes, that high).
• When the dough is ready and oven is preheated (read this post about safety and handling of really hot cookware for baking!), invert the banetton onto a piece of baking parchment or gently slide the dough off the mat onto baking parchment right-side up (silicone mats are not rated for the sort of temperature we are talking here).
• Take the hot dish out of the oven USING THICK MITTS! and place the baking parchment with dough on it inside.  Edges sticking out are not a problem.  Cover with preheated lid, or the upside-down bowl if using.  Stick back into the oven.
• Bake for 30 minutes covered, then remove the lid or bowl (latter may need a bit of help with a spatula stuck under an edge to lift), reduce heat to 190-200C and bake for a further 15-20 minutes uncovered until the bread is no longer pale.
• Remove from oven and out of the baking dish and cool on rack for 2 hours minimum before cutting.

Trust me, the wait (and lack of effort) is worth it.

The Scent of The Holiday Season – Saffron, Almond and Marzipan Buns!

The holiday season is here!

No, please don’t go after me with a frying pan!  I don’t usually start it this early, but you see, a couple of fantastic friends are coming to visit me next weekend from over-the-puddle England, and I won’t have time to decorate 4 weeks before Yule, so we’re starting to prepare and decorate now.  Also in preparation to that, I’ll be awol for the remainder of this week and possibly early next week, so I figured that I ought to leave you with something wonderfully festive and lovely that Swedes munch on during the holiday season, and which is (sadly and unfortunately!) little-known outside Scandinavia – a situation I wish to remedy: lussekatter or St. Lucia buns – yeasted beautiful saffron-scented golden creations which are the thing you want to eat with your afternoon tea or coffee when by said time the sky outside is pitch dark.  Or at least, I do.  And I recommend them.  A lot.

Saffron is known as the queen of spices for a reason – it is the singularly most expensive (per unit weight) spice in the world (or was last I heard).  But, don’t let that put you off because the reason it’s so expensive is that 1 – a little goes a really long way! and 2 – the spice itself is the stamens of a flower, Crocus sativus – and as such, is both, difficult to cultivate and even more difficult to harvest.  Why bother then?  Well, because the flavor – and the gorgeous deep golden color it imparts – are more than worth it.  And as I’ve mentioned, you really don’t need a lot!

So, if you’ve baked with saffron before, you can probably imagine how lovely these are, but if you’ve never baked with saffron, you should.  And I don’t just mean these buns – later, when I’ve had a chance to bake and photograph it, I’ll post a saffron cake recipe as well – but in the meantime, to start the holiday season up right, you should absolutely make these.  They are soft, moist, amazingly aromatic from the saffron, marzipan and the optional cardamom (only if you like it!), and they just tend to fly off and disappear off plates.  I’ve not actually met anyone who didn’t like them – in quantity!  They are also moderately easy to make – that is to say, a bit more complicated than things I call “easy”, but still entirely doable and by no definition difficult – and entirely, entirely worth the effort!

And – and this bit is not to be underestimated in its value! – they scent your home with the most amazingly delectable luxurious holiday scent as they bake.  The sort that no scented candles can compare to, no matter how much the manufacturers try.  Not that I am putting the scented candles down, you know – I love candles! – but in this case, both are better than one.  And very few things compare to baking saffron buns in the scent department.

Before I get to the recipe – a note about saffron.  You should buy it in threads rather than the powdered form, as it keeps better, and you will need a small stone or ceramic mortar and pestle to grind it.  If you don’t have a small smooth mortar (those huge granite ones won’t work, you’ll just hammer the safron into the stone grooves), then buy it powdered, but only as a compromise.  Better powdered saffron than no saffron, after all!  Saffron threads you buy should be a deep red color, not pale yellow – which is why I buy mine in clear boxes.  But to be frank, supermarket-sealed foil packets have good quality saffron as well, and I am no snob.  Another thing to know is that saffron tends to absorb water from the air, and should be kept in airtight containers – but even then, it should be dried before use (directions follow).

Note about yeast – in Sweden, you can buy specialized yeast for sweet doughs.  It’s a different strain of yeast which can tolerate more sugar in the dough and still rise well.  However, if you can’t buy yeast that is specifically sugar-tolerant, the recommendation is to use more of the regular yeast (I have done so myself when I lived in USA), and it works well.  If you use regular yeast, use 1.5-2x the amount specified.

This recipe is translated and adapted from a Swedish baking magazine “Hembakat”, which is not available on the net (nor in English at all afaik).  Adaptations include more instructions on saffron, swapping types of nuts, and halving the recipe because I’m not a mother of a huge brood and unless I am throwing a large party, I don’t think I need fourty saffron buns in one go.  Or, I wouldn’t mind eating that many of them, but my mirror…   In any case, you can double the recipe if you want more of them, after having tried and gotten addicted!

So what do you need? (makes about 20 buns, but the number depends on how large you slice them!)

Zoe at Dare to Eat a Peach has done an excellent adaptation of this – and posted the recipe in American measures if that is what you prefer.

• 8-9 dl of flour – plain, or a mix of 1/2 bread flour and 1/2 plain.  I used plain.  Possibly a bit more, depending on moisture levels of your flour (and kitchen air… you know how that goes).
• A generous pinch of saffron threads – approximately 0.5g (check how many grams are in your package and gauge from there)
• 50g unsalted butter, melted on hot water bath
• 2.5 dl milk, warmed to 37°C (finger-warm)
• 25g fresh yeast for sweet doughs, or ~40g regular fresh yeast (or equivalent measure of dry granulated yeast)
• 125g 10% fat quark cheese (like Kesella), sieved ricotta, or 10% fat yogurt
• 75ml caster sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon fine salt
• 1 teaspoon finely ground cardamom (optional but very nice)
• Filling and Topping Ingredients:
• ~150g marzipan or almond mass, shredded on a coarse cheese shredder.  If yours is too soft to shred, open it and place in the refrigerator for a while – it will harden.  Store shredded mass in the fridge until needed to avoid it getting sticky.
• ~100g chopped blanched almonds, pistachios or other nuts of choice.
• Pearl sugar (if you can get it) to decorate
• 1 egg yolk and 2-3 tablespoons milk, beaten together into egg wash (boyfriend is allergic to egg whites – you can just beat a whole egg with a drop of water if you aren’t)

How-to:

• (Skip this if you have powdered saffron.)  Place your saffron threads in mortar and heat the oven to 75-100°C.  Dry saffron in the mortar placed in oven for about 5 minutes, until mortar is very warm to touch and saffron crackles a little when you mash it.  Pound the saffron till it’s powdered.
• Melt the butter in a small bowl half-immersed into boiled water.  Add the saffron powder, mix and allow to sit on the water bath.
• Crumble the yeast into the warm milk and blend to disperse.  Let stand for 5 minutes.
• Mix all the remaining dry dough ingredients together (flour, sugar, salt, optional cardamom powder) in a bowl.
• Add the saffron-infused butter to the milk, and mix the milk+butter and quark cheese (or alternative) into the dough.  I use a handheld electric mixer here, but I imagine it can be done by hand as well (with a bit more effort).
• Continue to knead the dough with the mixer until it is soft but elastic and releases from the bowl with not too much effort.  The dough will be somewhat wet, but do add a little flour if necessary.  Note that sweet, fatty dough tends to take longer to develop gluten so don’t rush with adding the flour, but it may be needed towards the end.
• Transfer the dough ball into a clean and very lightly oil-brushed bowl, cover with cling film and a towel and leave to rise in a warm place for 40-90 minutes (depending on how warm your kitchen is), until about doubled in size.  I did a couple of stretch-and-folds throughout that time to help with the gluten development a little, but if your dough is well-behaved, this is not necessary.
• Preheat your oven to 225°C, and prepare 2 baking sheets with baking parchment or those silicone non-stick mats on them.
• Turn dough out onto a floured surface (you may want to prepare a sheet of lightly floured baking parchment to place it on once rolled), and stretch and then roll it out into a large (rough) rectangle.  Place on parchment if using, sprinkle the filling (chopped almonds or other nuts and shredded marzipan) evenly over it, then carefully roll the dough up along the longer side into a sausage and pinch the seam shut.
• Slice crosswise into 2-3cm thick slices and lay them gently on the baking parchment-covered sheets, leaving at least 4cm between the slices (to give space to rise).  Allow to rise under a kitchen towel for about 30-40 minutes (again, depending on the temperature in your kitchen), brush with beaten egg wash, sprinkle with pearl sugar and bake for ~10-12 minutes until beautifully golden on top.  I baked one sheet then the other, rather than risk burned tops/bottoms from having 2 sheets in the oven and the awkward swapping of them to boot.  The baking process is short enough for it to not be worth it – to me.
• Take out of oven and cool on a rack.

These keep for a couple of days in an airtight container or bag in the fridge, and I’ve heard they freeze reasonably well but I’ve never had enough of them left over to freeze, you know…

Yeast, Flour, Water, Salt – Bread. You should bake it.

Today I will be teaching a friend how to bake bread.

Incidentally, I am also back on the LCHF diet as of yesterday to reconcile myself and the mirror, but there’s no reason for that to deter me – I have one of those Scandinavian-model effortlessly-slim boyfriends, and he can eat all the bread I’ll end up baking.  I’d hate him for having such a figure while eating whatever he likes – and chocolate! – if I didn’t love him so much!  But, I digress.

The friend in question is a single young man, university student, and loves to cook.  And bake.  Or try to – as in his case, and in his own words, his attempts at yeasted bread simply won’t rise and result in a brick.  And we aren’t talking about sourdough-starter bread here, which ok, I admit, can be a temperamental piece of… dough.  So, what could be possibly going wrong – is it the yeast?  No, baking with yeast in Sweden is popular and so the regular supermarket-available fresh yeast it, it works like clockwork.  Is it the other ingredients?  Flour?  No, can’t be – flour here is locally produced and is very, very good, even the plain kind.  Is it something else?  What? – I just told him to come on over with a sack of flour and we’ll bake bread together and see what gives.  You’ll see what gives later or tomorrow is my guess, after we solve the mystery.

So, what’s the deal with baking your own bread at home?  Supermarkets are full of bread, and it – at least superficially – is a fairly cheap grocery item.  Or is it?

Turns out, not really.  Pick up a bag of bread and check the back of it – see how much it weighs and what goes into it.  Then check the price for a bag of flour and some yeast (water and salt aren’t really high-ticket items), and suddenly you realise – it does cost one heck of a lot more than flour.  Even counting yeast.  Even if you buy the higher-priced bread flour with higher protein content.  Store-bought bread tends to be expensive even for the price of the raw materials, and as to the quality you are getting – eh.  In Sweden, the situation is better than in a lot of other countries I’ve lived in, but even here the bread is still… eh.  Some of it is healthy and wholegrain, but then it is either expensive, tastes eh, or both.

And besides, the stuff you get from the shop just doesn’t have that freshly-baked smell as the bakery loaves.  And those are expensive.  We are talking about a small (half-kilo) loaf going for 50 sek (about €5) for the artisan-style stuff.  And, is it better than the things I can make at home after a few months’ practice?  Let’s not pretend here that I am some sort of master baker – I so am not, never taken a baking class in my life, in fact.  Microbiology – yes.  Baking – no.  Though the skills do overlap.

Initial attempts - Stockholm Sourdough 1.1. I dropped the dough because it stuck to the floured towel, and then baked it anyway. Behold, its resulting "rustc" looks!

And the answer is – well, no, it’s not.  It’s about at the level of my initial attempts at baking, and the sourdough bread I’ve produced recently knocks the socks off most things I’ve seen in bakeries.  And if someone as lax at the whole instruction-following as me can manage it, so can you.  Going back to the price question – a 2kg bag of flour makes several loaves – and for the good stuff, it costs about 20 sek (€2).  And even if you count the energy in (some 1-2 sek per loaf in a home oven if I remember correctly), it’s still worth it in price.  Oh, and you can put anything you like in it.  And salt and season it as much as you prefer.  And the effort, especially with minimal modern machinery (we are talking a handheld mixer – I don’t even own a bowl mixer!) – is very, very small.

Not to mention, most bread you’ll bake at home (unless it’s dessert!) will be healthier as it’ll contain better ingredients, less random additives, and almost certainly less sugar.

So, now that we’ve established it’s worthwhile, what stops people from baking?

One of a few things, apparently.  What kept me from baking bread for a long time was that it’s harped about as being difficult.  The kneading is labor-intensive, supposedly, and it can fail to rise, or it can collapse in the oven.  And don’t even think of trying sourdough – that, supposedly, will stink up your endire kitchen, if not the entire house!  The horror!  And all of those rumors conspire to tell you that you shouldn’t bother.  There’s perfectly good bread in the supermarket, after all… Well, that’s a load of what comes out of a cow’s back end, frankly.

Focaccia with Young Garlic, Olives and Sea Salt

Baking bread is easy.  (The more mysterious and fascinating is the case of my friend who’s coming in two hours!)  Before you decide to learn about sourdough like I did a few months ago, you should try commercial yeast – simply because it’s easier.  It’s like a well-trained dog:  you tell it to sit and it does.  You tell it to run, and it does.  You learn and you gain confidence and experience.  Sourdough bread is utterly gorgeous – far superior to the regular commercial-yeast bread in many cases, but well, that’s like taming a wild animal for a pet:  very doable, but takes some understanding of the beast.  Hence, get a dog (commercial yeast), and practice first.

Learning to bake with regular yeast, aside from providing you with lovely fresh bread on reasonably short schedule – accomplishes this – it teaches you to handle living yeast (how to not kill it and make it thrive and rise your bread), and it teaches you to develop gluten.  There are as many methods here as there are bakers – some knead the heck out of it, some use and swear by a bowl mixer, some mix it and then do stretch-and-folds*** and avoid kneading altogether, and I use a handheld mixer with a couple of dough hooks until the dough comes together, and then use stretch-and-folds myself.  Once you have learned these two basics – keeping yeast alive and developing gluten, it’s a short step in patience to proofing your bread (allowing it to rise properly), and a hot oven – and if yours is difficult, you can always ‘cheat’ a better oven with a pizza stone or a cast-iron dutch oven (casserole) if you really want to make it easy.

There are gazillions of yeasted bread recipes around, but if you want mine, there are a couple of really easy ones I’ve posted here, here, and also here.  And by easy, I really mean easy.  And there are, obviously, pictures!

So yes.  Bread.  It’s inexpensive, it’s easy, it’s delicious and you should absolutely make it at home – for your own eating pleasure, the sense of accomplishment, for proving the myths wrong, for the sake of your wallet, and for various friends who’ll love eating it, and if you give them a loaf, will totally adore you for it.  I promise.

*** The link is to a website made by a guy named Mike – a baker in USA – which I found amazingly helpful in learning about baking with sourdough bread from point zero.  It also has a lot of good tips and techniques, and even videos which are wonderful at explaining and troubleshooting your baking process.  It may look like a lot of text, but it’s very worthwhile to those wanting to learn to bake.  Sure, you can get a baking book later, but when starting out – free – and good! – advice, what’s not to like?

Cake For T – Coconut and Orange (egg-white free)

Everyone loves cake.

Coconut-Orange Cake - egg-white free

Well, ok, maybe not everyone – some people have more of a savory than sweet tooth, but I honestly never met anyone who actually disliked cake.  My boyfriend Tobias (T for short) is no exception.  Except that – he’s allergic to egg whites.  Not fall-over-dead-if-he-sniffs-them allergic, but allergic enough that if he eats any significant amount, he feels it and it’s not nice.

This is the story of a (rather great) cake designed by me especially for him.  Or – for anyone else who can’t handle egg whites but can eat separated yolks.  Or just for anyone who has leftover egg yolks after making merengues, and loves cake (or hates pasta carbonara and the like).  The best part of this cake is that T can eat it.  The runner-up to that is that it tastes rich and gorgeous and has wonderfully light texture and that both, he and I want to eat it.  The third best thing about it it is how incredibly easy it is to make.

Now, let’s face it – eggs are great for baking.  They give lift and lightness and structure to pastry, and most cake recipes require them.  And yes, one egg per cake is still enough egg white to upset T, so those are out.  And so I have discovered soon after beginning to date him oh, a year and a half ago, that my boyfriend has grown to reasonably adult life without eating much (or any to speak of) cake, which for someone as 1. naturally skinny and 2. having a monstrous sweet tooth as him, is just plain wrong.

Of course, there are many “eggless” cake recipes which can be found on the internet, both for egg-allergy sufferers, and among the vegan community.  Unfortunately, all that I have tried until now have been miserably disappointing.  First, because most of those combine the egg-free with dairy-free and give hideously ugly ingredient lists including attractive items such as ‘vegetable shortening’, ‘[Random-Brand] egg substitute’, ‘tofu’, ‘soy protein isolate’, etc.  Excuse me but… yuck.  Just yuck.  Second, because frankly, none of them looked good – and those I tried (not naming any names here) weren’t “the best” anything, left alone cake.  So there I was, left to figure out how to feed T some cake.  The quest looked a bit hopeless, until I came across this recipe on Radiance Recipes (a vegetarian blog that sadly hasn’t been updated in the past year or so) and thought… ok, at least it’s not dairy-free, and maybe I can try and modify it just so it uses an egg yolk – and so this cake was born.

As I have said, I have modified the recipe somewhat, for one thing because I prefer volumetric measurements, and also because Sweden has no self-raising flour specified in the original recipe.  Also, I think that this cake could carry something like a cream cheese frosting really well, and I suspect it’ll also work great as cupcake batter.  I will have to try it eventually, with pretty piped frosting and all.

Update:  After trying this again, with even better (more moist!) results, I suggest using quark (kesella, 10% fat quark – ricotta cheese can also be used) instead of yogurt, and using a 250g box of it – and also 2 egg yolks instead of 1.  At this point, you can probably omit all or some of the water.  This gave a slightly more solid, but more moist and flavorful cake which we loved even better than the original given below.

In any case, here’s what you will need (makes enough to fill a 9-inch or ~22cm round cake form):

• A handheld or stand mixer.  I have a handheld and it is more than sufficient.

• 2 cups (250g) plain flour (if you want to use self-rising flour specified in the original recipe, omit the salt and baking powder)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoons baking powder (I use a measuring spoon for this, more precise than a random teaspoon out of a drawer)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 3-4 tablespoons dessicated coconut
• 50-60g butter, softened and cut into small pieces
• 0.9 cup (200g) sugar.  I used demerara.
• 220g full-fat (I use 10% Turkish) yogurt OR a 250g box of quark (10% fat kesella – ricotta cheese can be used)
• A few tablespoons of cold water (to adjust batter depending on varying yogurt consistencies)
• 1  egg yolk (from large egg)  (or 2 egg yolks and skip some of the water)
• 1 tsp real vanilla sugar or a few drops real vanilla extract
• Zest of 1 orange

What to do:

• Preheat your oven to 180°C.
• Grease and flour your cake form.  You can line the bottom with baking parchment but I didn’t find it necessary – the cake separated very easily.
• Mix all the dry ingredients other than sugar in a bowl with a whisk to incorporate coconut and leavening agents thoroughly.
• In another bowl, using whipping blades of the mixer, blend butter with sugar, orange zest and vanilla sugar until it resembles coarse crumbs in size.
• Add yogurt and vanilla essence (if using that rather than vanilla sugar).
• Mix until roughly combined and blend in the egg yolk.
• Add the dry ingredients carefully and mix into a thick batter.  If batter is too thick and doughy, add cold water 1 tablespoon at a time (to compensate for how drained your yogurt was) until batter it thin enough to scrape into the form and even out with a spatula, but not runny.
• Place the form into the preheated oven and bake for 35-40 minutes until the top is golden-brown and a toothpick comes out dry if inserted into the middle of the cake.
• Remove from oven, cool in pan for a while and then turn out onto a rack to cool further until powdering with sugar.  If you plan to frost the cake, make sure it is cooled completely before you do.

We ate this fresh, with just a dusting of powdered sugar on top, but I think this is the sort of cake that would also go really really well with some whipped cream and fresh fruit, or as I’ve mentioned, a good cream-cheese based frosting.  I may have to make one with orange oil or zest to match the flavor of the cake which isn’t very strong, but the orange and coconut come through quite distinctly.  A little tang with that would be oh-so-good!

Recipe Test, Success, Sourdough!

Earlier today I’ve posted my current recipe (with some rather lengthy and detailed instructions) for Stockholm Sourdough bread, along with a promise to test it again later – so, the result of said test just came out of the oven.

Stockholm Sourdough

I’d say this is proof positive that the recipe does, indeed, work!  Currently it’s scenting the entire apartment to the point where though I am not too hungry, I want to go and tear a piece off… but, banish the thought!  This one is going to cool well, get wrapped up really pretty and come with us tonight to be given away as a present.