This week The Modern Baker group got started with the first recipe from the book by the same name by Nick Malgieri, Fennel Fig & Almond Bread, pages 42-43.
The book is organized in sections, and we will be baking from this quick bread section from now until June. Phyl, the mastermind behind the group, issued a call-out for the bakers in this group to "claim" a recipe to blog for each section so that we don't all have to blog all of the recipes in the book, that we are free to just bake and not blog them if we like. What a relief. If you would like to see the write-up for this bread (we are not publishing recipes from the book, so if you like what you see, buy the book and bake along with or without us), here is the connect for Sara's blog, Three Clever Sisters.
The bread was really different, which is one of the reasons I wanted to join this group and bake from this book...lots of different sounding recipes. Fun to try something outside my usual recipes now and again. I thought the combination of flavors, i.e. fennel, figs, and almonds, was surely something that didn't really sound as if it all would go together in a pleasing manner. Wrong. The bread is great, a new flavor combination for us. Who knew that ground up fennel seeds could create such a wonderful flavor accompanying the figs and almonds? A nice surprise.
If you would like to bake along or be a part of the Modern Baker group, you will find all that and the blogroll here.