Jane Grigson's Walnut Bread from Southern Burgundy

Yep, it's delicious. Full of walnuts (which I toasted, though I'm not sure how much it made a difference in the final product) and onion (I used red onion, and it was very pretty, and I'd use a little more next time) and walnut oil and milk. The dough was pretty sticky, but it came out okay. It made four cute little loaves! I thought they would be silly and small, but they're really perfect. They'd be great to bring to parties, or give as gifts. They smelled AMAZING while baking, really filled the whole house. But then the flavor of the loaf is surprisingly mild - rich and tasty, but not as strong as the smell led us to believe. Great texture - soft and chewy, with a nice flavorful crunch. A big winner.

Also, it was a little cold in the house, and I thought Where will I put the dough to rise? And then I remembered something someone mentioned once, which is to put the dough in the microwave with a bowl of hot water, and you've got your warm, moist, draft-free space right there (as long as you don't accidentally turn it on, in which case it'd be way too warm and moist, and way too explody, since I used a metal bowl). But it worked so great! The dough rose in no time. Look!

I will definitely use that handy tip again.

Sour-Cream Bread

Laurel, who has previous been mentioned, has been raving lately about Strauss' new sour cream. And then, aha, there's a recipe for sour cream bread! It's like kismet. We got the sour cream. It is, indeed, delicious.

See? Watson liked licking out the container. And we know dogs won't eat just any old dairy product.

Anyway, the best thing about this bread was the dough. It smelled like the breath of angels. We kept sticking our noses up against it and going, "Mmmmmmmmm." The dough was a bit soft, and didn't rise very zestily, but it all came out beautiful. See?

 Very pretty loaf, lovely crumb. But for all that rich dairy, the bread was surprisingly light and fluffy!

 So, not so good for sandwiches - too light. But lovely for toast, because it browns so nicely.

And the french toast we made with it was definitely a winner.

Easy to make, enticing dough, and very respectable product. Hooray!

Basic White Bread Not Really

At my preschool we make challah with the kids every Friday for Shabbat. It's really awesome—we make a big batch of dough, and each kid gets to make their own tiny loaf that we bake in a toaster oven in the classroom. But this year we have one child who's allergic to eggs. But we still want him to be able to shape the dough and make his own little loaf, so I decided to make him some egg-free challah (ie, white bread), which we could freeze in tiny-loaf-sized balls and bring out each week for him to use.

Then I got fancy, I guess, because I thought, well, I'll make a big batch of dough, and some will be for us at home, and some I'll take to school. And I thought I'd throw together the basic white bread, and just do it casually, because I'm an old hand at this now, right? Except apparently not an old hand enough to make sure we have flour before I put the yeast to proof. No all-purpose flour. But we have whole-wheat and bread flour! So what the hell, I'll do maybe 2 cups of whole-wheat and 3 cups of bread and we'll see what happens.

What happens is dough that's very shaggy and tough to knead and slow to rise.

 But it smoothed out eventually, and made a dense, very flavorful loaf. Excellent slathered with butter. Ate it for a few days with butter and radishes.

I don't think I'll try to improvise whole-wheat bread again, but it was a tasty experiment. I'll let you know how the child-in-question likes it.

Pizza Caccia Nanza

Okay, so this is all kinds of belated. Well, actually I guess it's just the one kind, but still. Sorry to all my hypothetical devotees.

Anyway, last week we had a potluck at work, and I thought, "Hey, bread." But I didn't want a sandwich bread, or a sweet bread, and then flipping through I found this one.

It's not pizza. At all. It was actually a lot like focaccia. Apparently the name is Italian for "pizza that you take out before," because back in the day in Italy they'd make bread in a big communal oven but they'd take some dough and make a flat bread and take it out before the other bread because, you know, it'd cook faster. Which still doesn't explain the pizza part of the name but whatever.

The other reason I chose this recipe was because were were going out to a movie, and I wanted something that would be fast and easy, and this was. Except I screwed it up! Because it was all risen, but it was time to go, so I said, I'll put it in the fridge and bake it when I get back! Except when I got back I looked at the recipe again and it called for two rises, but I had to bake it right away before I went to bed, so instead of two rises I got one rise and cold dough going into the oven. And yet: it was still delicious! I can only imagine how tasty it will be when I don't screw it up.

There's less yeast than usual in this one, and no proofing, but it all worked out just great. Shoving little bits of rosemary and garlic into holes in the top was slightly labor intensive, but it gave it exactly the right amount of flavor and scent. And coating that puppy with oil before baking gave it a delicious golden flavorful crust that was a bit messy to touch but great to pick up. Baked it longer than recommended - maybe I didn't roll it thin enough. But mm, tasty. Folks at the potluck were very impressed. It was a great bread for a side-dish, especially cut up into attractive finger-food sizes. Would be nice for an Italian sandwich too. Nom!