Grandma's Kitchen Table

Baking Rose's Breads: Quintessential Corn Muffins

       The fifth recipe I made from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Bernabaum was Quintessential Corn Muffins (pages 112-114).  We love a good cornbread muffin, and this is one of the best I’ve had or made.

        Ingredients: cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, egg, sour cream, and melted butter. 

        This is an easy and quick recipe full of flavor, it stands on it’s own well, not a lot of fancy add-ins.  The sour cream makes it so tender and light, just really lovely.  The recipe called for (optional) a sprinkling of cornmeal on the top of the muffins before baking, I had never seen that before so I was eager to see the results of that, we were both very pleased with the little crunch it gives the tops of the muffins. Definitely doing that from now on. I have made the same cornbread recipe for years and years because we love it, but this one might be a contender for new favorite, it’s that good.

        If you would like to bake along with us, leave a comment.  You will need access to The Bread Bible recipes and you can blog it or not as you wish.  I don’t publish recipes that belong to cookbook authors out of respect for their work but sometimes you can search for and find the recipe online if you don’t have access to the book. We’d love to have you join us.

       

 

 

Baking Rose's Breads: Traditional Challah

       The fourth recipe I made from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Bernabaum was Traditional Challah (pages 516-521).  I had made Challah once before in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice group and remember the bread was good but my shaping left quite a bit to be desired so I was happy when Laurie suggested making it as it would give me a chance to try shaping it a bit better, and we could use the bread for French Toast on Ash Wednesday this week.

        Ingredients: flour, yeast, water, honey, eggs, salt, corn oil, and cider vinegar, 

        The recipe does not require a lot of hands-on time, but the different times for rising required a lot of patience. It’s good for me to practice patience. The starter required a short time to mix up and an overnight rest in the refrigerator. The next morning it was gloriously bubbly and active. I was so excited that this would mean shorter rising times for the next steps.  Wrong. The first rise took about 4.5 hours to double. The second rise took 3.5 hours and still was not doubled so I parked it in the refrigerator (she gives this as an option) and hoped that somehow overnight it would be ready to go by morning…after all, three days to make a bread??? Sure enough, by morning it was nicely doubled and I set about shaping the loaf and letting it rise for the last rise before the oven, which, as the recipe said, did take an hour. It baked 30 minutes total in the oven and I had one very pleasing loaf of Challah.

       I followed her recipe ingredients and all the steps for making the bread, making only one change, and that was that I made a half recipe for a smaller loaf as there are just two of us here and a huge loaf of Challah wasn't needed. The smaller loaf was a very nice size, and it was so cute...I'm all about the cute in food, so I'm happy that I made that change. I did read that if you decrease the yeast by half (for a half recipe) that the rising times can be longer, so that could account for the longer rising times for my loaf than the ones she gave in the book.

       Mark is always happy to see homemade bread sitting on the counter, and even happier with the lovely taste. The taste was superior to any Challah I’ve ever had before, so maybe my patience will need some more practicing and I can pull together more loaves in the future. I’m really looking forward to a piece of French Toast with it tomorrow night.

        If you would like to bake along with us, leave a comment.  You will need access to The Bread Bible recipes and you can blog it or not as you wish.  I don’t publish recipes that belong to cookbook authors out of respect for their work but sometimes you can search for and find the recipe online if you don’t have access to the book. We’d love to have you join us.

       

Baking Rose's Breads: Rich and Creamy Ginger Scones

        The third recipe I made from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Bernabaum was Rich and Creamy Ginger Scones (pages 143-146).  

        Ingredients: butter, cream, flour, sugar, baking powder, ginger, salt, lemon zest, crystalized ginger, and turbinado sugar.

        The recipe has a lot of steps, none of them complicated, and all of them produce a delicious lemony ginger scone that is probably one the of the best scones I’ve ever eaten. Mark liked them. We aren’t really scone-eating people so I can’t say that they will be a regularly featured item around here, but they were good and I will possibly make them again. It was fun baking them with a few baking friends and Gaye blogged hers, click here, and Margaret posted hers, click here.

        If you would like to bake along with us, leave a comment.  You will need access to The Bread Bible recipes and you can blog it or not as you wish.  I don’t publish recipes that belong to cookbook authors out of respect for their work but sometimes you can search for and find the recipe online if you don’t have access to the book. We chose two recipes for February, the first one is Ginger Scones (pages 143-146) and the second one is Challah (pages 516-521).  We’d love to have you join us.

       

Baking Rose's Breads: Cheddar Loaf

       The second recipe I made from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Bernabaum was Cheddar Loaf (pages 280-284).  This was an all-day project but almost all of it was various rising times (it’s winter here and I keep a cooler temperature kitchen, so very long rising times for me).  The actual hands-on part was maybe a half hour spread out through the day.

       Ingredients: flour, water, malt powder (or honey, sugar, or barley malt powder), yeast, dry milk, cheddar cheese, butter, Dijon mustard, cayenne pepper, and salt.

       The recipe is written nicely with easy to follow directions and tips to help along the way.  There are a couple of places that I was happy to have some bread baking experience in the past, but nothing that would stymy a newbie.  I am very happy with the way it all went and definitely very pleased with the taste of the bread.  The inside is nice and airy and light and the outside crust is soft but crispy which doesn’t seem really possible, but there you have it.  When I sliced the bread, I saw all the holes that you see in the photo and had a bit of a panic…are these supposed to be like this in there? Is it from where the cheese melted? Is it because I formed it wrong before putting it in the pan? Did it rise too much too fast in the oven? It’s a mystery, so if you know, please comment and help me figure it out, thanks in advance.  (All that said, we didn’t mind the holes at all, they were just fine and the bread was light and airy, always a good thing.)

       Despite the long rising times (again, this could very well be from my cooler temperature kitchen in winter) and the need to be present several times throughout the day to facilitate the process, this bread is worth all that and I will be making it again.  Because the taste of the cheese is so prevalent in the final product, I would recommend buying a really good cheddar that is full of flavor, you will appreciate having done that when you taste that first bite. Our plans for using it, besides just eating it in hand, are grilled cheese sandwiches, ham sandwiches, a take on bread pizza, and I’m sure we will come up with many more ideas as this is really really good.

        If you would like to bake along with us, leave a comment.  You will need access to The Bread Bible recipes and you can blog it or not as you wish.  I don’t publish recipes that belong to cookbook authors out of respect for their work but sometimes you can search for and find the recipe online if you don’t have access to the book. We will choose two recipes for February, the first one will be Ginger Scones (pages 143-146). We’d love to have you join us.

       

 

 

Baking Rose's Breads: Rosemary Focaccia Sheet

     
        Christmas has come and gone and I’m diving into a cookbook I received as a gift: The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Bernabaum with another friend, Laurie, who I met through the original Tuesdays with Dorie baking group back in 2008 and have baked with over the years. I already have Rose’s books The Cake Bible (a gift from my baking buddy Margaret) and The Pie Bible. I love how detailed her recipes are with the processes (she even gives the speed at which to set the Kitchen Aid Mixer when mixing) and measurements (she gives volume, ounces, and grams for the recipes). We are keeping it loose…not really advertising it a lot, although anyone who wants to join in can just do so at any time, no commitment necessary.  We decided to call our little group Baking Rose’s Breads as that’s really all we are doing, baking our way through this particular book, I decided to put mine on my blog so I can look back and remember what I’ve made along the way.  Our first recipe, Rosemary Focaccia Sheet (pages 205-208), we actually made together last Friday just chatting through the process and sharing photos and tips along the way, she in her kitchen in Pennsylvania and me in my kitchen in Indiana.  It was a fun day and while we might not be able to time the bakes so we can do it together, we are making the same recipe each time. 

       Ingredients: all purpose flour, instant yeast, water, sugar, salt, extra virgin olive oil, dried rosemary, and fluer de sel. (I decided to also use pizza seasoning on the top of the Focaccia.)

       We both enjoyed watching the very soupy dough come together into a ball while mixing in the mixer and then becoming like melted mozzarella pouring it into the rising container…as Laurie said, “It’s a miracle!” Fascinating.  It took longer to rise in my cool kitchen so I boosted it with a heating pad on low under the container and Laurie used her oven low/off so we could get to the required doubled status in a timely manner (about an hour longer than she had specified). When it came time to form the dough on the baking sheet pan we both felt that the dough was thinner than we thought it would be. Again, maybe we should have increased the rising time to account for our cooler kitchens this time of year.  I’m going to make it again at some point, maybe boosting the yeast a tiny bit and using a pan with slightly smaller dimensions to see if this will net me thicker pieces in the end.  Or maybe just letting it rise longer after formed in the pan will do the trick.

     
       The taste was really nice, and we did like the thinner pieces that had a crispy bottom with that light airy texture on the top.  I served it with a Donna Hay recipe that I made for this week’s group (warm meatballs, olives, tomatoes, and mozzarella) and it was perfect with all of that, definitely a repeat worthy recipe.

        If you would like to bake along with us, leave a comment.  You will need access to The Bread Bible recipes and you can blog it or not as you wish.  I don’t publish recipes that belong to cookbook authors out of respect for their work but sometimes you can search for and find the recipe online if you don’t have access to the book. We chose two recipes for January, this one and the next one we are making: Cheddar Loaf (found on page 280-284). We’d love to have you join us.