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Baking in Denver Part II

7/4/2014

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Here is a gallery of photos taken by my Uncle Bob, from my demo at Holy Cross Parish in Thornton.

I also did two presentations at Bethany Lutheran Church: a practical demo on Herb Breads with a Meaning and a spiritual talk titled "What kind of bread shall we be?" Click HERE to get the recipe handout from the herb bread demo. The events were arranged by Pastor Ron Glusencamp, who is now in another ministerial position but was able to attend nonetheless, so it was good for the parish to be with him. He gave me an amazing pair of custom decorated Chuck Taylors. (To find out more about Christiana Lambert, the young artist who made them, click HERE.)

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EVOO -- A downtown Denver destination

7/1/2014

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While I was in Denver, I had the opportunity to visit a EVOO Marketplace, an upscale shop featuring olive oils, balsamic vinegars, and other gourmet condiments. (1338 15th St, Denver, CO 80202, (303) 974-5784. The building used to house a restaurants owned by my Aunt Norma's family. Click HERE to visit their website.) It's definitely worth the trip for a tasting---chances are you'll come home with something to dip your bread in!

EVOO has banks of shiny canisters with a wide variety of imported and domestic olive oils. You can always find the date of pressing with each oil, so you know how fresh it is. Many of their oils are infused with various flavors, including basil, herbes de Provence, Persian lime, and white truffle. Each canister has a stack of small tasting cups next to it, which suggests to me that you being a small baguette along for dipping. The shelves below have locally sourced pickles, peaches and other canned produce. Their gift baskets must completely rock the soul of any dedicated foodie or chef.

I was impressed with EVOO's selection of Balsamic vinegars, all of which are imported from Modena, Italy and are barrel-aged for 12 to 16 years. They have a variety of flavored Balsamics as well, from fuits like apple, mango, peach and pomegranate, all way to lavender, lemongrass, dark chocolate and cinnamon pear.

I ended up buying some gourmet French mustards, as well as an herbal sea salt my cousin recommended, mainly because they would fit into luggage a little easier than a large bottle of oil or vinegar. But my next trip to Denver I may have to bring a little extra money to have some oils and vinegars shipped home. It's probably a good thing monks don't get individual credit cards, because their online store is temptingly extensive!

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Baking in Denver, part I

6/26/2014

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Some images from my baking adventures in Denver.

I've been having a great time with my cousin and his family, and we've been through 10+ pounds of flour in four days. The beer bread in the top row of photos is part of an experiment with yeasted beer bread--more on that in a post later this week. The caramel pecan rolls were a treat for the family, and the funnel cakes part of a demo I did for Holy Cross Parish in Thornton, the results of which are pictured in the last photo.

The title of my presentation was "Ballpark Breads and The Lessons of Baseball: recipes and reflections of Rockies fans." (I'm hoping some parish in St. Louis will invite to present it for Cardinals fans!) The recipes I presented were breads inspired by the ballpark which I developed for an episode of Breaking Bread with Father Dominic (which never got shot). It was called "Batter Up!" and included funnel cakes, beer bread, and Inside Out Nacho Bread, which features all the toppings for nachos supreme inside a sour-cream based cornbread. Click HERE to get the handout for the recipes.

The Denver baking adventures continue---check out the Events page for my schedule for tomorrow at Bethany Lutheran in Cherry Hills.

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St. Anthony's Bread

6/13/2014

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June 13, is the feast of St. Anthony of Padua. You can read a fine account of his life (not too pious or sensationalized)
on the wesite of the St. Anthony Shrine in Cinncinati; click HERE.

There is a tradition known as "St. Anthony's Bread" of which I found an apt description on the website for the St. Anthony Shrine in Boston MA (click HERE to see their site):

One of the most touching aspects in the life of St. Anthony was his extraordinary love for the poor expressed most often by his feeding the hungry. This practice became so well-known that St. Anthony’s Bread for the Poor became a popular way for people to emulate the spirit of the saint by feeding the hungry. Through monetary contributions from people like you, St. Anthony Shrine is able to feed the homeless, the working poor families and the elderly. We believe that no person should be hungry in our country in this day and age, and the fact that so many are is a grave injustice that must be resolved.Traditionally, Franciscans worldwide distribute small loaves of bread on St. Anthony’s feast day to remind us to follow his holy example.

This last line, about distributing small loaves of bread, is how I came to spend my afternoon baking 14 dozen whole wheat rolls. My friend Claire works at Sacred Heart Church, a Franciscan parish in downtown Peoria, IL. Evidently her pastor asked her to bake the bread, and rather than resort to frozen dough, she turned to me in extremis. A portion of the results are below.

I used my go-to recipe, for Best-Ever Crescent Rolls, but subbed 2 cups of whole wheat flour for two cups of the white.

So today would be a great day to take canned goods to the local food pantry, or bake some goodies for a single mom in the neighborhood, or make a donation to a relief program like Sophia's Kitchen or Pennies for Bread, both organizations you can trust to use your money wisely and well. Remember, the word "companion" comes from the Latin cum + panem: "with bread". Let's all share our bread with our companions on life's journey, especially those who have no bread to break of their own.

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Butter knives and spoon jewelry

6/7/2014

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Pinterest has become one of my favorite forms of social media, and I came across this pin last year. What a clever use of mismatched butter knives! You could imagine the delight of your guests finding these on the holiday buffet table. Naturally this led me to start collecting vintage butter knives at flea markets and antique malls on my days off. It's surprising how cheap they are--rarely more than $5, unless they are particularly ornate and sometimes not even then. Then I ordered a set of metal stamps and a heavy metal bench plate off of Amazon---I already had several sizes and types of hammers backstage. Naturally I looked online for a tutorial: click HERE to see a particularly detailed one.

So here are some of the knives I've stamped recently. Obviously I need some practice at getting things in a perfect line, but the people who have received these from me haven't complained so far! I'm mostly making them for door prizes for my bread demos (check out the Upcoming Events Page page to find out if I'll be near you anytime soon) but have also sold a few at events where I was selling books and abbey products.

While I was exploring metal stamping on Pinterest I also came across some pins about spoon jewelry, and since I make rosaries and already have all the tools and equipment for that craft, I decided to try my hand at it. Not bad for an amateur's first try! I gave this pendant to a facebook friend as part of my Pay It Forward initiative, which I wrote about back in February (click HERE to read about it). I don't think I'll be doing as much of this kind of work as the butter spreaders, but it might inspire you to get out those mismatched spoons in the drawer and transform them. By the way, silver and silverplate work well for this sort of thing, but not stainless (too hard and slippery, I think).

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Old Fashioned Cake Doughnuts

6/6/2014

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In honor of National Doughnut Day, I got up the morning at 4:30 a.m. (surprisingly easy when you go to bed at a decent hour) to make old-fashioned cake doughnuts for the brethren. I felt a certain moral obligation to perform this service because I had mentioned the holiday in a homily earlier in the week.

Fortunately, I have the perfect equipment: a commercial deep fryer and Popeil's Donut Maker. As you can see from the photo, this little mechanism is vintage kitchen ware from the 40's. They came in red, yellow, and green plastic, and they were still making them in the 70's. I've seen a number of them at garage sales and antique malls and there are lots of them on e-Bay. They were recently revived by Ronco (I believe Ron Popeil is the son of the original manufacturer) and you can get one on Amazon for $5.95 right now (click HERE).

I used the original recipe from the box, except that I used canola oil instead of shortening, both for the recipe and for frying. I got great results, but here are some precautions: 1) Do not "scoop" the flour when you measure it. You'll compact the flour and end up using too much. Use the "spoon and level" method. 2) When you depress the level to dispense the batter, hold the device just above the hot oil so that the doughnut doesn't get distorted and you don't splash hot oil all over. 3) The batter will be a little thick and will come out of the dispenser rather slowly. Resist the temptation to add more milk to the batter, or you will risk having doughnuts that look like mutated DNA. This is a matter of personal experience.

You will be surprised at how good a fresh, homemade doughnut can be, even when unadorned by sugar or frosting. You will also notice that the doughnuts are much more modestly sized than most commercial doughnuts today. That's a good thing--you eat a couple of these and you feel like you've had a well-deserved treat rather than enduring a sense of dietary failure and bloated guilt. I doubt I'll be making doughnuts every week, but as a special treat they are well worth the effort.

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Gluten Free Cake Donuts from a mix

6/5/2014

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June 6, 2014 is National Donut Day, a holiday instituted by the Salvation Army: you can find the history HERE, and some interesting facts HERE. I'm going to be getting up early on the 6th to make fresh fried cake donuts for the brethren, but I decided to do a little gluten free baking as well.

I've been experimenting with gluten free yellow cake mix recently, specifically the one from Hodgson Mill, so I wondered about GF cake donuts from a mix. Turns out there are several versions out there. The one I followed (using regular cake mix) is HERE, and I got good results by just subbing the GF mix in a comparable size. My GF tasters (three generations of ladies, starting with a picky four year old) found them to be deliciously moist and not at all grainy (like so many GF products). They especially liked the glaze I made with 2 cups of powdered sugar and five little servings of hazelnut flavored half and half--30 seconds in the microwave makes it liquid enough to use as a glaze.

We all agreed that they could have been baked longer than the recipe called for, as they were fully baked but fell apart easily. I also added a quarter teaspoon of nutmeg (a classic donut flavoring) to the dry ingredients before mixing in the wet.

Since many people who go GF are concerned about healthy eating in general, I decided to bake the donuts instead of frying them. Wilton makes these donut pans---I got mine at Ace Hardware---or you can use one of those donut making machines which can often be found at garage sales and Goodwill for cheap. We all agreed that they could have been baked longer than the recipe called for, as they were done in the middle but fell apart easily. I also added a quarter teaspoon of nutmeg (a classic donut flavoring) to the dry ingredients before mixing in the wet.

I find that the donut making machines will give you more even browning, but you have to get the amount of batter just right. Don't let this manufacturer' photo fool you---they probably made about 4 dozen donuts to get 6 perfect ones for the shot. The recipe in the link above calls for buttering the pans, but some of the donuts really resisted removal from the pans, so I wonder if pan release spray would have done better. In any case, here's another use for GF cake mix---other recipes will be posted eventually, but I figured I needed to get this out for donut day!

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Fabs Nutty Goodness Rolls

6/3/2014

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Haven't posted a recipe in awhile, so here's a classic from my TV series, recently re-published in The Breadhead Bible. Pecan rolls, sticky buns, Fabs' Nutty Goodness---doesn't matter what you call them, they are the ultimate in breakfast self-indulgence. Click HERE for the recipe.

In the comments below, Breadhead Julie asked about the two different amounts of nuts. 1/2 cup goes in the filling, 3/4 cup in the pan with the caramel. Lots of nutty goodness!

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A death in the family

5/12/2014

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A few readers have been wondering why there hasn't been a blog post in awhile. Unfortunately, it's because we had a death in the community: our Abbot emeritus Claude Peifer. He was an internationally known scholar in scripture (he was on the editorial board of the New American Bible), monastic studies (co-editor of the 1980 translation of The Rule of Saint Benedict) and patristics (author of several articles for the Dictionary of the Middle Ages and the New Catholic Encyclopedia). Burying him was like watching a library burn to the ground.

You can read Fr. Claude's full obituary HERE, but I want to share something about the circumstances of his death. He had suffered from heart problems since his 40's (he was 87 when he died) and had a serious heart attack last June. It was a long, slow recovery, but he had returned to his previous activities in the monastic library and elsewhere. On the morning of May 1, he came to morning prayer and sat next to me, his usual place at choir, and waited for the signal for prayer to begin. Within a few seconds, he slumped over against my shoulder, breathing heavily. When I asked if he was all right he didn't respond, so Prior Michael went to call the ambulance and Br. Nathaniel went to get the oil for anointing . By then Abbot Philip had arrived at choir, and he knelt next to Fr. Claude. Fr. Claude groaned once, gave a deep sigh, and slumped in his chair. I could still see a thready pulse in his neck, so the abbot anointed him. By the time he reached the final prayer, the pulse had stopped.

As sudden and shocking an experience Fr. Claude's death was, we all agreed that it was also a blessed death. He died with his mind composed for prayer, strengthened by the sacraments, and surrounded by his beloved community---so may we all. It was a privilege to hold my brother's hand, to have him lean on my shoulder as he passed from life through death to Life. As sad as it was, that day was not like a Good Friday; it was an Easter Sunday, a resurrection experience, a sign of the reward of perseverance.

Fr. Claude was habitually abstemious, but one bread that he relished was Honey Mocha Bread--I saw him go back for seconds and thirds at lunch one day. So I'm sharing the recipe in his memory: click HERE.

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Luterans and Lectio Divina

4/25/2014

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Wednesday I spoke with a class of Lutheran seminarians about Benedictine spirituality. It was great fun and they were completely engaged, PLUS it was an excuse to make a rich egg bread and serve it with real butter and St. Bede honey. Part of my lecture had to do with Lectio Divina, the traditional monastic method for meditation on and prayer with sacred scripture. If you're interested in the subject, click HERE for the text of chapter four of my book Bake and Be Blessed: bread baking as a metaphor for spiritual growth. It's a basic introduction to the method.

Another very fine spiritual resource for bakers is Becoming Bread, a book of poetic reflections about embracing the spiritual in the everyday, by Gunilla Norris. I used it for a private retreat one year and was profoundly affected by it---find it on her website HERE.

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Baking in Denver Part II

EVOO -- A downtown Denver destination

Baking in Denver, part I

St. Anthony's Bread

Butter knives and spoon jewelry

Old Fashioned Cake Doughnuts

Gluten Free Cake Donuts from a mix

Fabs Nutty Goodness Rolls

A death in the family

Luterans and Lectio Divina

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