Raisin Pecan Bread

I just love fruit and nut breads so when I came across the recipe for Cherry Pecan Bread on Bread Cetera I knew that I would be baking this bread, except I would substitute the cherries, which I am not a fan of, for either raisins or cranberries. Actually the original recipe which was created by James McNamara, of Wave Hill Breads in Wilton, Connecticut called for cranberries, but SteveB of Bread Cetera is not a fan of cranberries so he substituted them with cherries, hence the name Cherry Pecan Bread on his site, and now it has since had two reincarnations in my kitchen as a Cranberry Walnut Bread and a Raisin Pecan Bread.

I expand the sourdough culture the day before I plan to make the bread and the next morning, putting the recipe together is pretty straight forward except that while I am measuring all the ingredients and reading through the steps I feel like I’m following instructions for a lab experiment rather than a recipe. Also, I think a novice baker would find these recipes a little frustrating as they are written assuming you know a thing of two about bread baking. Nevertheless SteveB has links to formulas and procedures, helpful videos and some of the nicest photos of bread I’ve ever seen, and if the rest of the breads are as good as this bread is then it is worth reading through the site and learning as much as possible before starting out.

The recipe makes two large loaves but I decided to divide the dough into four smaller loaves and shaped two in a fendu and two as batards. The bread pictured on Bread Cetera’s site is shaped in a Fendu, French for split: you shape the dough into a boule, flour the middle top lengthwise and with a dowel, press along the floured area and roll the dowel back and forth creating a "valley" in the centre about two inches wide. Then you bring the dough on either side of the “valley” to meet creating a crevice in the center and gently turn the loaves up side down on a floured couche to rise. I don’t have a couche, so I made a makeshift couche with a folded tablecloth and instead of making a mess with flour I placed the shaped dough on parchment. This worked out just fine except, I didn’t get the nice effect of flour on top of the finished loaves that a floured couche would give. Just before baking you gently flip the loaves right side up again and place on a sheet pan lined with parchment. I was anxious to see what they looked like so I flipped them before I should have and let them sit on the baking sheet and they began to pull apart in the middle so you can see mine didn’t turn out quite right.

The very first time I made this bread I used cranberries and walnuts and now that I’ve made it with raisins and pecans I can honestly say they were both very good and excellent served with a soft blue cheese like cambozola.

Apple Pie

Every year I make two apple pies to bring to my parents for Thanksgiving dinner. So on that weekend my husband Randy and I go to the apple orchard in King City, a twenty minute drive north from where we live and pick Northern Spy, my favourite pie apple. They are the very best apples (in my opinion) because they are slightly tart and hold their shape beautifully during baking.

I could kick myself this year for not bringing my camera with me. In all the years that we have been picking apples I don’t remember ever seeing trees laden with apples so abundant that they showed no mercy to their branches drooping low to the ground. I was able to fill my bag from one tree leaving plenty for someone else to pick, whereas in past years I would walk the entire row looking for the perfect apple, eventually filling my bag and irritating my husband to no end. Much to his shock I had filled my bag quickly and only had one more bag to fill, but this time with MacIntosh and Cortlands for eating, and there were plenty still on the trees even though picking these varieties had begun earlier.

My family celebrates Thanksgiving on Sunday so that morning I made the pies. I have been using the same recipe for the pastry for years because it works so well for me. My method of making pie dough is the antithesis of everything I have read about pastry as I don’t chill my pastry. I know there is merit to this rule yet my pastry is always very flaky without chilling. I was taught in high school home economics class to never overwork pastry if you want to achieve a flaky crust and I have applied that lesson ever since. After I’ve cut the fat into the flour I use ice water to bind the mixture and I use a fork to lightly stir the mass until it just comes together and then use my hands to ever so gently pat it together to form a ball. I cover the dough and let it rest while I prepare the apples. Hubby had peeled the apples so I just had to cut them up, add the sugars, flour, lemon rind, salt and cinnamon and toss. I lined two glass pie dishes with the pastry, piled in the apples, dotted the filling with some butter and rolled out the remaining pastry to cover the apples. I fluted the edges, cut a few slits to allow the steam to escape, brushed it with a bit of milk and sprinkled turbinado sugar on top and it was ready for the oven.

The aroma of apple and cinnamon wafting through the house was wonderful, no wonder they say if you are selling your home, put a pie in the oven for a quick sale. In about 50 minutes the pies were done.

Served barely warm with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream it is a heavenly dessert.


Deluxe Apple Pie

Crust
From Crisco’s No Fail Pastry
Make a double crust

2 cups all-purpose flour
¾ tsp. salt
1 cup shortening*
6 – 8 tbsp. ice cold water

In a bowl stir flour and salt together. With a pastry blender or two knives cut in cold shortening until it resembles course meal. Add the ice water and with a fork stir the mixture just to combine, do not overwork. When it comes together, gather the mixture with your hands and form into a ball, again not over working the dough. Divide the dough into two portions and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate until ready to use.

A mixture or shortening and butter can also be used for a richer crust.

Deluxe Apple Pie
From Five Roses – A Guide to Good Cooking

6 apples, preferably Northern Spy
6 tbsp. brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. salt
2 tbsp. butter
½ tsp. grated lemon rind

Preheat oven to 450 F. Prepare pastry and line a 9” pie plate, reserving some for top crust. Core, peel and slice apples. Combine brown sugar, sugar, flour cinnamon and salt together, then mix with apples. Spread apple mixture into unbaked pastry shell. Dot with butter, sprinkle with lemon rind then cover with top crust, sealing carefully and making slits to allow steam to escape. Bake in a hot oven then reduce heat to 350 F. and bake 30 to 35 minutes.

Onion Foccacia and Apple-Cinnamon Crumb Coffee Cake

October 31, 2009

I had been out and about most of the week so I hadn’t baked anything and now it was Saturday, it was gloomy outside and I wasn’t going anywhere so I was itching to bake something, but what? I’d been thinking about pizza but I didn’t want pizza for dinner, I had already taken out some chicken breast from the freezer. An onion foccacia is similar to pizza, and it would make a nice accompaniment to dinner. I had also received my copy of the Heavenly Cakes this week and really wanted to make the Apple-Cinnamon Crumb Coffee Cake as I had plenty of apples from a recent visit to the orchard even if I only needed one. I would make both.

I mixed up my regular pizza dough recipe which is really a fougasse recipe but makes a great base for either pizza or foccacia. As a matter of fact I use this recipe to make baguettes also. When you find a winner you stick with it. Once the dough was mixed and in my makeshift bread rising container (a large plastic tub, that had originally contained bread crumbs, just the right size for 1-1/2 pounds of dough) I thinly sliced four onions and threw them into a fry pan with some olive oil and a few sprigs of rosemary, freshly cut from my rosemary plant, and a sprinkling of salt and pepper. I turned down the heat and let the onions cook slowly until translucent without browning so they would be sweet and delicious.

Assembly was easy enough – stretch out the dough on a large sheet pan, top with onions and let it rise for about half an hour. Bake at 400 F for about 20 minutes and it’s done.

While the dough was rising I made the cake. I assembled the crumb topping, reserving part of it. I made a small mistake here, when I read the ingredients I failed to see “melted” next to butter and used soft butter instead. Oops. When I make mistakes I feel like I’m in a classroom and I’m being docked marks for carelessness. Next time I will read carefully – lesson learned. Next I sliced the apple and added the lemon juice and set it aside. Mixing the cake was easy, though not creaming the butter with sugar etc, throws me for a loop. The mixed batter was light and lovely and ready for the pan. I scraped some batter in the pan, sprinkled in the reserved crumb topping, added the apple slices, overlapping them slightly and topped with the remaining batter. I then partially baked the cake, added the crumb topping, this steps prevents it from sinking into the batter, and finished baking the cake.

The kitchen smelled divine. With the onion slowly cooking on the stove top and the cake in the oven it was like it was Thanksgiving again.

The cake was ready and it looked just like the picture in the book, and it tasted wonderful, not too sweet and the cake was tender and the crumb topping didn’t suffer much from my error, it was lovely.

Basic Bread Dough for Fougasse
By Patricia Wells

Makes 1 ½ pounds of dough

1 tsp. Active dry yeast
1 tsp. Sugar
1 1/3 cups Lukewarm water (about 105 degrees_
2 tbsp. Olive oil
1 tsp. Sea salt
3 ½ cups Flour, plus more if necessary

In the bowl of a heavy-duty electric mixer fitted with a dough-hook attachment, combine yeast, sugar, and water, and stir to blend. Let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes. Stir in the oil and salt.

Add the flour, a little at a time, mixing at the lowest speed until most of the flour has been absorbed, and the dough forms a ball. Continue to mix at the lowest speed until soft and satiny but still firm, 4 to 5 minutes. Add additional flour, if necessary, to keep the dough from sticking. The dough will be quite soft.

Transfer the dough to a bowl, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and place in the refrigerator. You may also let dough rise at room temperature until doubled. Simply punch down the dough as it doubles or triples. Use to make one large or several small fougasse.

In a large baking sheet with sides stretch dough out to cover the pan and cover to rise 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Onion Topping

¼ cup olive oil
4 yellow onions sliced 1/8 to 14 inch.
2 sprigs of rosemary
Salt and pepper to taste

In a fry pan add oil, heat and add onions, rosemary and season with salt and pepper. Cook for about 20 minutes on low heat until the onions are soft and translucent without turning brown.

Scatter onions over risen dough and bake on a pizza stone in a 400 F. oven for about 20 minutes or until edges are golden.

Heart of Wheat Bread

Once in a while I come across a recipe that is so phenomenal that I know it will become part of my repertoire. This was the case with the Heart of Wheat Bread from the Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. In all its simplicity -after all its ingredients are only flour, water, honey, yeast, salt, and a healthful addition of wheat germ - it is perfection. I have made it countless times and every time I’ve made it I’ve doubled the recipe to make two loaves. It is an easy bread to put together; you mix up a sponge, cover it with a flour and yeast mixture and let it sit for four hours. After a 20 minute autolyse you add the salt and you mix the dough for 7 minutes. The dough is silky and lovely to work with. After you give it two rises you shape it and place into a loaf pan and give it its final rise. It is placed in a hot steamed oven where it gives the best oven spring ever. After about 30 minutes it is done, but I turn off the oven and leave it in for another 5 minutes for a crisper crust. I take it out of the oven and - this part is very satisfying for a bread baker - it crackles, it crackles like no other bread does. The bread is talking to me and it’s telling me that I’m in for a treat. How I wish I could cut into it as soon as it comes out of the oven, but I (not so)patiently wait for it to cool, and then I have a slice with butter and it never disappoints. Its crust is crisp and its crumb has just the right amount of chew. The next morning I look forward to breakfast because it makes the most wonderful toast. Rose writes that "..eating it inspires absolute and reverential silence!” That’s exactly how I feel.

Starkey Hill Hike & Pot Luck Lunch

Sunday, October 18, 2009
Fall is a perfect time for a hike. The air is crisp, the trees are ablaze in their autumn colours and there are no mosquitoes to contend with. Our friend Julie, organizer of events, planned an outing where we would hike through a trail close to property once owned by her grandparents. Invitations were sent out and in the end twelve friends met at the trail’s entrance. It could not have been a better day for it, there was not a cloud in the sky and the air was comfortably cool. It was not a long or difficult trail to walk except for a network of tree roots that criss-crossed the path underfoot or rocks menacingly peeking through the earth so that you had to watch your step. I had my trusted walking cane, a broken branch I picked up on a hike many years ago. It is naturally ergonomically shaped - at least I think it is, because it has a natural curve in the middle of it and if you can believe it, it even has a handle. An expert might tell me that it is too long for my height but it has served me well providing me with support for my bad knee and balance and stability through tricky passages. We passed large coniferous forests, with their only pines at the top of the tall trees where they met the sun, and several vignettes along the way, one of which laid a plaque with a dedication to the Starkey family that once owned the land.















We walked in twos as the path did not allow for more than that, and you had to line single file when someone was coming from the opposite direction. I’ve always liked how when you pass perfect strangers on a hike you greet each other with a friendly hello, as this rarely happens on city streets. As we walked we enjoyed a nice conversation with whomever we were walking with, but as we walked along someone would inadvertently fall behind or move forward and you would have a new partner to speak with, so conversation was varied and interesting. Before we knew it, we had walked about four kilometers and we were back were we had started from.

We headed back to Rod and Julie’s for a pot luck lunch that included wonderful butternut squash & pear soup, a delicious spicy chicken chili, lasagna, a tasty artichoke and mushroom salad, pasta salad, coleslaw and Caesar salad and bread followed by a lovely pumpkin cheesecake, brownies and fresh apple cake and coffee.

By the end of the day we were already discussing next year’s hike.

My First Blog

The last time I tried to create a blog I was given message that I could not proceed and I couldn’t figure what it was so I thought providence was sending me a sign that I had nothing interesting to write about so it intervened to save me from embarrassment. Well maybe not, but I left it, thinking I would try again sooner or later so here I am with the help of my computer savvy daughter trying once again and keeping my figures crossed that this time my entry will be accepted.

Marie Wolf (breadbasketcase) made The Best and Easiest Home-made Bread recently and I wrote her telling her that I would give this bread a try, so here it is. I started it on Thursday evening and let the sponge sit overnight in our cool kitchen so that it would be ready for the final mixing and rising Friday morning and hopefully ready for lunch. The dough was pretty easy to handle and I let it rise in my banneton, but the kitchen was cool because it is so cold outside and it took a little longer to rise. I inverted the dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment, slashed the dough and set in the oven to bake. The finished loaf is quite lovely and I was quite excited about it. My son and I had some for lunch and it was good. Thank you Marie for posting the recipe, I’m always happy to try new ones.

My husband and I are joining about 16 friends and acquaintances on a hike tomorrow and then going back to our dear friends Rod and Julie’s home for a pot luck lunch and I offered to bring dessert. I hummed and hawed about what to make and finally decided on a Fresh Apple Cake because apples are in season and thought it to be a fitting dessert for a fall day. The recipe comes from the Fanny Farmer Baking Book by Marion Cunningham. I made this cake years ago and remembered it to be quite good. It is a spicy cake chock full of finely diced apples, raisins and chopped walnuts and perfect with a cup of coffee or tea. Since my husband doesn’t like fruit in desserts I also made a batch of brownies. Hopefully the hike plus the pot luck lunch and good company will become an annual tradition to look forward to.

The recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar but I find that it is quite sweet so I've decreased the sugar to 3/4 cup. I doubled the recipe to make a 13 x 9 inch cake.

Fresh Apple Cake

(one 8-inch square cake)

There is no need to peeel the apples for this moist and spicy cake. It is at its best the day it is made and absolutely delicious plain or frosted.

1/3 cup butter

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

1/2 tsp. ground allspice

1/4 tsp. ground cloves

2 cups finely chopped raw apple

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease and flour an 8-inch square pan. In a large mixing bow, beat the butter until it is smooth and creamy. Gradually add the sugar and continue beating until well blended. Add the eaggs and vanilla and beat well. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and cloves, and sift them together into the butter-sugar mixture. Beat until smooth and well blended: the mixture will be very stiff. Add the chopped apple, rainins and the optional walnuts, and beat well.

Spread evenly in the prepared pan. Bake for about 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Remove from the oven and cool on a rack. Serve warm or cool, with whipped cream or vanilla ice-cream, if you wish.

Fresh Pear Cake. Substitute 2 cups finely chopped raw pear for the apple.

Well here it is, my first blog and thank you Melinda for giving me the push I needed.