It's amazing what a base of flour and water is capable of. Though breads often take a back seat, as accompaniments to main courses, cheeses or more, today we celebrate bread worthy of standing on its own, the ultimate mobile comfort food -- not to over-toot the French, but gloriously buttery croissants and crunchy, subtly salty baguettes spring to mind.
So get baking! For holiday inspiration, with the addition of pumpkin and spices, bread becomes the complex Pumpkin Spice Bread or a moist Pumpkin Cheese Bread with cream cheese, or can even serve as a worthy Thanksgiving side dish, in our Savory Bread Pudding recipe.
What are your most cherished baked breads? Share your favorites in the comments!
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Sweet bread pudding tends to be delicious, and this one looks to be no exception -- a fair assumption considering it's made with bananas, milk, cream, eggs, Nutella -- Nutella! -- and not just any old bread, but brioche. But what if we said it also smelled like roses? Marc from No Recipes added three tablespoons of rose water to the recipe because ... why not?
Though he pulled this bread pudding together from scraps in his kitchen, Marc writes that the result was "swaths of buttery brioche crust enrobed in a fragrant chocolaty custard, holding bits of tender sweet fruit in its folds." We couldn't have said it better ourselves -- unless, of course, we'd had a chance to taste it.
Marie Antoinette may not have been the one to say "Let them eat cake!" -- we'll never know for sure -- but one thing is certain: whoever said it first wasn't talking about the sugary stuff, but about bread. The phrase is translated from the French qu'ils mangent de la brioche. If said brioche is baked to a perfect golden brown and topped with sesame seeds, we say, "Oui!"
Just in time for Bastille Day, here is an ideal-looking hamburger bun from across the pond. The American treat was given a French twist by Deb at the Smitten Kitchen, who consulted nearly 100 recipes in search of the ultimate bun. In the end, she went with a technique that ran in the New York Times; the buns turned out "plush and mildly sweet and slightly buttery."
Suffice it to say we're feeling fully fired up for Bastille Day. Bon appetit!
I'm quite happy to have some Scottish ancestry. It's led me to the dry and delicious world of scones, the simplicity of shortbread, the warm and satisfying bite of Scotch, and the utter tastiness of haggis. Now, it's led me to warm and tasty baps.
Scottish baps are simply bread rolls made with yeast. They must be kneaded and allowed to rise a few times before being flattened, left to raise again, and then pinched to keep them from rounding out while baking. They only need to be baked for 20-30 minutes, and they're the perfect sort of bread for beginner bakers. The recipe is incredibly easy, it familiarizes you with kneading and rising, and it is hard to mess up. The flavor of a bap is simple, yet rewarding. It tastes much like a freshly made biscuit while having the texture of a well-worked piece of bread. The outside is wonderfully crisp while the inside is soft, airy, and just waiting for a slab of butter.
There's really no limit to the foods that can be slid inside a bap, and Wise Geek notes that regional favorites include bacon batties (bacon, butter, and a brown sauce), baps served alongside Lincolnshire sausages, and fritter rolls that pile potato fritters inside.
There's one food preference that I could not understand -- dedication to all things crustless. It just never made sense to me -- how could anyone give up the flavorful crust, whether it be crunchy with fresh bread, or brown and thin on that ol' soft white bread?
While other kids requested crustless sandwiches, I would insist that they stay on -- not only that, but I'd prefer my sandwiches be made with the crusty ends, or with baguettes that would give me a whole sandwich of brown crunch. Perhaps this is because my family had a thing for bread beyond that preservative-laden soft stuff. Perhaps it's due my father's love of all things crisp and crunchy. Whatever the case, to this day, I'll grab the end piece off every loaf of bread I buy, to enjoy it at its freshest. It's that good.
And it's not just breads. No matter how many times I see it, I can't believe it when people indulge in pizzas and leave the crust. The thought of one of those center pieces of crustless, square pizza ... it's such a waste and just not the same. But what say you? Weigh in below!
Writing in Slate, Jewish food maven Joan Nathan ponders the bagel, that thick steering wheel of boiled dough that's such a cultural touchstone for American Jews. Now, a new book, The Bagel: A Cultural History delves into the subject, sussing out the bagel's ancient roots and exposing amusing details of the bagel's role in 20th century life.
Apparently, breads with holes have been around for centuries. Italians had hard crackers called taralli, Romans had something called buccellatum and the Chinese something called girde. Egyptians, Nathan adds, had their own - you can see the doughnut-shaped rolls in hieroglyphic displays at the Louvre. Polish Jews may have invented the modern bagel, when the Polish king first allowed Jews to begin commercial baking (they had previously been banned) and a baker made a round bread in his honor. Bagels found their way to the Lower East Side by the 19th century, and they burst into the non-Jewish American consciousness in the 1950s, when Lender's frozen bagels were invented. Today you can get them in Dunkin' Donuts stores from Albuquerque to Bangor.
Because Thanksgiving dinner often features so many heavy foods, too many households pass up the opportunity to serve up a delicious and festive bread with the meal. Check out these autumn-inspired breads that will fill your Thanksgiving kitchen with a yummy aroma and please guests of all ages and tastes.
1. Cranberry Walnut Braid from Epicurious. I made this yesterday, and was thrilled by how beautiful it looked and wonderfully seasonal it tasted.
The above is one of the most insane things I've ever seen, and not because of the hugely enthusiastic Japanese voiceover. This is a clip showing you how to make bread with a rice cooker. Why would you want to use a rice cooker? Ease? Speed? If you guessed either, you'd be wrong.
I guess that these guys never heard of no-knead bread, and find bread machines to be too easy. To make this bread, you have to do all the required kneading yourself, along with the waiting and punching. But unlike regular loaves, which get thrown in the oven and simply baked after all those steps, you have to turn this bread a number of times while it cooks in the rice cooker. So basically, it's bread with extra hassle.
I guess, at the very least, it'd come in handy for someone who has a rice cooker, but not a oven, toaster oven, or bread machine.
Still, I think I'll stick with the tasty, and easier, no-knead varieties.
The magic of wheat flour is its ability to produce leavened bread. Wheat is the only grain that can do that because it is the only grain that can make gluten, the three-dimensional protein structure that can stretch and expand and hold air, then set when baked into glorious bread.
That stretchiness and ability to expand both have a name. Elasticity, the stretchiness, is the tendency for the dough to want to shrink back into its previous shape. It's like a rubber band: after you stretch it out the band snaps back into place. The ability to expand is called extensibility. The dough becomes more extensible, it will expand, as the gluten structure is allowed to relax.
The give and take between elasticity and extensibility is what makes yeast raised bread what it is. It is able to be worked into desirable shapes and to expand with the gas inside of it. Because of the elastic element, bread dough has to be rested several times during the process to allow it to be more extensible, but you don't want to get rid of either aspect. Without elasticity, the dough would simply be a slack mess, unable to hold it's shape. The two elements work together to form the bread that we've depended on for a good chunk of human history.
Have you ever taken note of the bread you're served at restaurants in the pre-meal bread basket? I suspect that unless you're a bread snob, the answer is no. As a self proclaimed breadie, I actually have had conversations about the bread at restaurants with other bread lovers. Some of my bread friends refuse to eat bread out, just like I had friends in art school who would cover the bad art in hotel rooms so as not to be exposed to the negative vibes.
However, I haven't met anyone who would bring their own bread to nibble on. According to the Guardian, that's exactly what bread scholar Steven Laurence Kaplan does. He even brings his own bread to very high end places in France, the bread capital of the world, because he says that even in France bread is an afterthought in restaurants.
I have had good bread in one restaurant, but that place is directly across the street from the best bakery in town. I agree that bread is usually an afterthought in dining establishments, but would you, or should you, bring your own? Take the poll below to throw in your own two cents.
Attention all people-who-would-really-love-to-make-bread-but-just-can't-find-the-time: The New York Time's Mark Bittman, AKA "The Minimalist" has figured out how to make no-knead bread even easier. Just add more yeast.
Bittman, who made no-knead bread inventor Jim Lahey a foodie household name when he first published his recipes two years ago, knows that Lahey himself wouldn't approve. Lahey thinks bread is best fermented slowly with just a small amount of yeast. But while Bittman's may not taste quite as good (which he freely admits), it only takes four and a half hours to rise. So basically you could mix the dough in the afternoon before a dinner party and have fresh hot bread to pass around the table with your beef tenderloin and roasted new potatoes.
All you need is a standard loaf pan. Check out the recipe here.
The Georgian Feast is now officially my favorite cookbook. I've been meaning to get around to making the spice bread, Nazuki, for a while now and I'm glad I finally did. This one made the house smell so fabulously delicious that I'd make a killing if I could bottle the scent. Next time I sell my house, I'm making Nazuki every day (in case you didn't get the "Good Eats" reference, Alton did an episode where the premise was to make sticky buns for a nice homey aroma in the house so it would sell more quickly).
As with most of the recipes I've tried from my Georgian cookbook, this one was pretty simple. The author calls for active dry yeast, but that needs to be bloomed prior to use and adds an extra step. I just substitute instant yeast, aka bread machine or rapid rise, which can be mixed in with everything else. That way, all you have to do is throw everything in a bowl and mix it all up in one step (called the straight dough method).
My sister could not wait for the Nazuki to come out of the oven, and she cut into it as soon as it was cool. Sadly, my Georgian friend has been pretty busy this week, so he didn't get to try it and tell me if I got it right. Either way, it's delicious, and it will definitely be one of my holiday breads this year. Check out the gallery, and the recipe is after the jump.
This weekend I got it into my head that I really wanted to try some bread from my Georgian cookbook. Up til now I've pretty much stuck to vegetables and sweets, but it was high time that I made one of the delicious looking bread options. I chose the Lobiani, which is a simple bread with a kidney bean filling, because I had most of the ingredients. I only had to get sour cream.
The Lobiani was very simple to make, you'll just need plenty of space to roll the dough out (which can be a problem in my tiny kitchen). I have an extra large cutting board that I use for rolling out bread doughs. The dough is made from sour cream, eggs, butter and flour, and it's leavened by working baking soda into the dough after it's mixed. The filling is made with lots of onions and kidney beans, plus seasoning and coriander.
Let me just tell you, I will make Lobiani again! It is so good, with the mild kidney beans mixing quite nicely with the sweet onion flavor and coriander. I took a loaf over to share with my Georgian friend and he told me more than once how delicious the Lobiani was.
I did change a few things. First off, the recipe said not to leave the dough out for more than 8 hours or it'll turn sour. Of course I did (just FYI, don't fall asleep on the couch at about the time you're supposed to be starting a baking project), but I just threw the dough in the fridge overnight and let it warm up the next morning and everything was fine. I actually liked the sour taste. Also, I used canned white kidney beans because I had them. Other than that, I did everything the recipe told me to do, and everything was great. The recipe after the jump.
Even though the crust of your pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving turned out flaky and buttery, consider everyone "pie"-ed out. Try these non-pie ways to use up leftover disk of dough.
Writing in Slate, Jewish food maven 
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