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Good Friday: Honey Corn Rolls

4/18/2014

Good Friday for supper we had baked cod (no surprise there!) and I wanted to make something homemade but not too fancy. I settled on honey corn rolls, which are hearty and filling as well as tasty, and on a day when we get only one full meal, that's an ideal combination. The recipe will appear in my new cookbook , The Breadhead Bible, which will be available May 1st, but here's a sneak preview.

I had a lot of dough, so I made a couple of round loaves as well, including this one with a bee design, which I cut into the dough with a tomato knife just before it went into the oven. I thought it might distort a lot more, but it turned out pretty well. This loaf is about 8" across, just to give you some perspective. I think I'll have to try some other designs on other breads, just for fun.

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Holy Thursday: Whole wheat rounds

4/17/2014

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Every year for supper on Holy Thursday I like to serve whole wheat bread, usually medium size loaves with a cross cut in them, one loaf for every set of four monks. This year they turned out unusually pretty, or at least the photo did, so I thought I'd share it. As I often do, I added some potato to the mix for a tender crumb and used honey as the sweetener. We have plenty of honey (although we lost more than half our hives over the long, hard winter) but my friend Dan gave me some of his that had sugared up pretty heavily. You can easily restore crystallized honey by warming the jar in a saucepan of water over low heat, but in this case just pulled out a few tablespoons and added it to the liquids. Honey makes for a beautifully browned crust, but it can also cause the crust to get too dark. Many bakers recommend turning the oven temp down by 25 degrees, or covering the loaves lightly with foil for the last half of the baking time. I did neither, but I like the results I got. Hope the brethren will, too.

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Breadhead Roadtrips

4/12/2014

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This is Joan and her mom, a pair of Bread-heads who contacted me earlier this week in the hope of arranging a brief visit to the abbey. I met them at a bread demo in St. Peter MO a couple of years ago, and Joan said that a visit to the abbey was on her Bucket List. Since I was free for the afternoon I was happy to receive them. We toured the abbey church and some of the public areas of the monastery proper, saw a little bit of the grounds, and ended up in the monastery refectory eating Magic Bread with homemade apple butter, before they left with a blessing and the rest of the loaf.
My only point in posting this brief log is to let Breadheads know that they can indeed visit the monastery, stay as overnight guests and even make a weekend or week-long retreat here. We find it difficult to properly host people who just "drop by" unannounced, in part because the guest rooms may be full and/or the community at work or prayer. But you can always contact me through this website to arrange a visit. If I have enough free time, you can even get a bread lesson!

On an entirely unrelated note, here is a picture of a sandwich-size cutting board with a matching butter spreader I made out of vintage oak salvaged from our old choir chapel. I also posted this picture on my Facebook Page, and from the response I gather that I will need to make a lot more of these and make them available for sale online!

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Useful tools

4/6/2014

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After a demo I'm often asked about the tools I use, and some Breadheads who attended my Eureka demo asked about them. The polka dot rolling pin was made by my father, using cherry wood with maple inserts. It's a little bit wider than standard rolling pins, and not quite so big around. It took me awhile to get used to a pin without a center rod---one solid piece of wood---but now I prefer it, in part because it allows you to push as hard as you want on stiffer doughs. I keep trying to convince my brother to take up the mantle and start turning these on the lathe he inherited from dad's shop--we'll see.

The center tool is a brotpisker or Danish dough whisk. It's the best utensil around for mixing bread dough, muffin batter, cookie dough, cornbread, waffles---any time liquid and flour meet in a bowl. My mom got my dough whisk for a quarter at a rummage sale in 1979, and I've used it to mix up thousands of batches of bread dough. They're available online from several sources, including King Arthur Flour, Amazon, and Sur La Table. They come in two sizes (14" and 11") but I'd just get the larger one, unless you never mix anything but pancakes.

Only paid $19.99 at the local Ace Hardware, so wait for a sale.

The other useful utensil in my toolbox (and yes, I keep my baking gadgets in a DeWalt toolbox) is a flour wand (see photo above): a tool made of wire with a squeeze handle and a spring coil on the end. Also called a Flour duster, it was first developed in Victorian times when pie making become especially popular. When the handle is squeezed, the spring opens up, which is then swirled in the flour container. Releasing the handle traps the flour in the coil, which is then shaken gently to sprinkle just the right amount flour onto the counter top. If you’ve ever had both hands covered in raw pie crust or sticky bread dough and have been reluctant to reach into the flour canister, you’ll understand why this tool is particularly valuable. They are available in some specialty shops and on several websites online, including the ones mentioned above. However, I recommend that you pay a little more and buy one from Best Manufacturing of Portland, Oregon. There are cheaper models out there, but theirs is far better-made and long-lasting. The price ranges from $10 to $17 on Amazon, so you can put it on a wishlist and wait for the price to go down.

Can you be successful at baking without these specialized tools? Sure---thousands of generations of bakers did just fine with wooden spoons and a wood burning stove. But they can make your baking experience easier and more enjoyable, and the pleasure that comes from using a well-made tool makes me want to bake more often, and none of my brother monks ever complain about that!

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Eureka Illinois: "Herb Breads with a Meaning"

4/5/2014

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Today at a fundraiser for Eureka College Women's Board I made "Herb Breads with a Meaning" and since I'm trying to reduce the amount of paper I use/waste, I'm posting all the recipes here online, so that people can download them to computer or tablet. I know I throw away about 75% of the handouts I receive at meetings and workshops, so I figured this would be a good way to "go green." The recipes I presented:
Chocolate Mint Muffins
Housewarming Rolls
Herbal Encouragement Bread

Here are some photos from the event

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Pizza Party!

3/30/2014

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A few photos from my most recent pizza party, with a couple older photos mixed in---didn't always have time to take a picture! Had great help from an alum and his wife, both with kitchen and waitstaff experience. The dessert course was a big hit: double chocolate biscotti and maple pecan biscotti served with pistachio almond ice cream. The chocolate biscotti recipe you can find all he over Internet, but the maple pecan recipe came from HERE.

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Whad'Ya Know? Not Much!

3/23/2014

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Yesterday I was interviewed on Michael Feldman's "Whad'Ya Know?", for a live broadcast from Five Points in Washington IL. It was a fundraiser for Peoria Public radio (WCBU 89.9). What a great event! They had a good crowd, and the musical guest was David Hoffman, who played with the Ray Charles Orchestra for many years---that alone was worth the price of admission! The show's producer Adam had been in contact with me for several weeks prior to the event, and he said that after looking over my recipes, Michael said he wanted me to bring Monkey Bread and Deer Poop! I pointed out to him that neither of those recipes actually require me to mix dough, which is, as they say, "my thing"! He said to use my best judgement, so I brought along some Magic Bread as well, which led to one of the bigger laughs on the program. Here's the whole program---I'm in the first segment, after the monologue, at about 11 minutes in.

Notice we're being photobombed by a stuffed ostrich!

Here are the recipes we talked about:
Deer Poop Candy
Monkey Bread Muffins
Magic Bread
Herbal Encouragement Bread

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Baking a memory

3/4/2014

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Today is Mardi Gras ("Fat Tuesday" or "my feast day", as I sometimes call it) so I spent much of last night making treats to celebrate the last day of bread-based indulgence. I'll still be baking during Lent, but there will be a lot more Multigrain Breads and very few caramel pecan cinnamon rolls.

I started out by mixing a batch of spudnut dough (donut dough with mashed potatoes added, and if you haven't tried it, put it on your "What I'll make After Lent" Pinterest board). While it was rising I made skillet cornbread, with whole corn kernels mixed in. We had corn for the vegetable at supper and there was a bit left over to use up. Besides, Abbot Philip prefers his cornbread that way, and anyone who has to bear the burden of being my religious superior deserves a little spoiling now and then. I have to say that it turned out perfectly---golden brown, darker and slightly crisp on the edges, tender in the middle.

I still had some time before donuts would be ready, so I made a batch of "Sunday Waffles" from an old Farm Journal bread book. They are perfect for Mardi Gras: only two cups of flour, but a whole cup of butter and four eggs! Pancakes and waffles were (and are) often served on Shrove Tuesday in order to use up butter and eggs before Lent, as in some countries and during certain periods, they were forbidden during the penitential season. I was mysterfied that they didn't get quite as poofy as usual, until I checked the package for the baking powder and discovered it had expired last year! Go check your baking powder, baking soda, and yeast packages right now, so you won't have any unpleasant surprises for your Easter baking. Yes, now---I'll wait.

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Before I began baking I ran over to the gym to rehearsal for the spring musical---one of my carpenter dads was bringing a window unit he made for us. There were some girls from my junior religion class, and I told them that I had all the ingredients for Fruit Poop (like Deer Poop Candy , but with white almond bark and Froot Loops) except the cereal, and that if they picked some up after rehearsal, I'd make some for their class to enjoy for Mardi Gras. After the cornbread and the waffles were finished, I started on the donuts, and they arrived with cerreal in hand just as the first test donut emerged from the fryer!

My enthusiastic students helped me make a couple dozen donuts with chocolate hazelnut frosting on some and French vanilla glaze on the rest, with cinnamon sugar on the donut holes. They washed dishes, cleaned counters, put away ingredients. We laughed, talked about Lent, religion class, the musical, etc. They left a little after 10 p.m. (kinda late for a school night---ooops!) and I made the Fruit Poop and went to bed.

So why no photos? The "No Image Available" icon at the top of the page is not a mistake. Several times throughout the night I thought: I should go get my camera--this would look great on Facebook, or the school website. The breads, the happy kids, chocolate smeared on smiling faces. But I made a conscious choice just to experience and remember the moment, not merely to record it. I take pictures of my baking all the time---last night I chose simply to enjoy the company of my theatre kids.

We seem to have an obsession with keeping a record of memorable moments, to the point that we're so busy getting "The Shot" that we're missing the event. How many parents haven't watched a soccer game or recital except through the viewfinder of a camcorder or cell phone? This is not a new idea, and journalists, commentators and bloggers have made the same point, more eloquently than I can. But I have to say I never expected that problem to invade the monastery.

Fear not, Breadheads--I shall continue to document my culinary adventures, I'll still be posting pictures of my latest recipe testing or an especially fine example of an old favorite. I enjoy seeing posts and likes on Facebook and comments on the blog. But it's good for us all to remember to unplug from the social media machine every once in awhile, turn off the CoolPix or the iPhone, and just enjoy baking a memory.

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An Elegant Soda Bread

3/2/2014

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Since it's the month of Saint Patrick's Day. I'm sharing my recipe for Elegant Soda Bread again. The added sugar and coriander make it a little different than the usual fare, and you can serve it pretty much at any meal. I like it best as an accompaniment to fish.

When I was in my first year of priestly studies at St. Meinrad School of Theology, I used to visit Louisville, KY, about 70 miles away. In my first trip there with my friend John, we found a guide of the top 60 restaurants in the city. We decided that we would attempt to eat our way through the guide over the next four years, (leaving out anyplace that required dressing up too much!) Of course, we never got past the first 20, because we found a few we really liked and stuck with them. One of these favorites was a classy but unpretentious place called Jack Fry’s on Bardstown Road. They served a coriander soda bread with every entrée, and I used to eat baskets of it. The addition of coriander gives the bread an undercurrent of citrus that is subtle and exquisite.

Elegant Soda Bread
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. salt
¼ cup sugar
1½ tsp. ground coriander
2 cups buttermilk

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Sift dry ingredients into a medium size bowl. Gradually add buttermilk, stirring until smooth. The dough will be quite soft---do not over mix. Divide dough in half, and using floured hands, form each half into a round, slightly flattened shape. Place in greased pie plates, and cut a cross in the top to keep it from splitting during baking. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 to 60 minutes, or until bread sounds hollow when tapped both top and bottom. Remove from pans to cool on wire racks. While loaves are still hot, you may brush the tops with butter.

If you omit the coriander, reduce the sugar to 2 tsp., and add a 15 oz. package of raisins, you’d have my mother’s favorite Irish soda bread recipe. She got it from Mrs. Jones, the mother of a priest who taught my mom in high school in Denver. Mom used to make this for the bake sale at St. Francis Hospital, which was always held the week before St. Patrick’s Day. She’d tie a green ribbon through the cross, to make it more attractive for the sale table. But she needn’t have bothered---the people working behind the counter often bought it right out of her hand!

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Pesto and Prosciutto Pizza

2/23/2014

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When a Loretto sister asks you if you'd be willing to do a fundraiser for an orphanage, you'd better say "yes" or you'll go straight to hell. That's what went through my mind when Sr. Mary Ann of the Loretto community at Lockwood Center in Webster Groves asked if I'd be willing to provide some kind of auction item for St. Vincent Home for Children. "Pizza Party for Eight" I said, with only the slightest hesitation---after all, you never know if the person who buys your party is going to have decent ovens or be any fun to be around.

Happily, for my most recent venture I was lucky on all counts: lovely home, enjoyable company, gracious hosts and a pair of terrific ovens. The pizza menu (voted on by the guests) included Pesto and Prosciutto, Italian Beef, Four Cheese Tomato Top, and Pizza Diavolo (the hot one!). The pizza pictured above was our first of the night, made with pesto cream sauce and prosciutto rotola.

"Rotola" is a product made by Volpi Meats in St. Louis and as a pizza topping it's nothing short of spectacular. The folks at Volpi roll up sheets of mozzarella with prosciutto, salume, basil, or sun dried tomatoes, so once you lay down a little sauce, all you have to do is cut slices of the rotola and arrange them on top, and there's your cheese and toppings in one step. I added some red onions to the one pictured above, but the rotola alone works just fine.

Actually, just "fine" is an understatement, because what you end up with are pools of melted mozz with a spiral of fried ham embedded in the center of them. Here they are on top of a regular tomato-based pizza sauce (OK, I say "regular" but it's actually completely homemade from Br. Luke's tomatoes and my herbs!) Want to check out Volpi's rotola? Click HERE, and if you get a chance to visit their shop on the Hill in St. Louis, bring a cooler to take home some fresh salsiccia as well.

(And no, I don't work for Volpi and they haven't paid me for this post, although I am friends with some of the staff and sometimes they give me free guanciale!)

Okay, I know you're dying for the pesto cream sauce recipe, but I can't really give you much here except the base sauce:

Béchamel Sauce
2 Tbs. butter
2 Tbs. all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
salt and pepper to taste

In a small sauce pan, melt butter over low heat. Add flour and whisk until smooth, being sure to get all the flour out of the corners of the pan. Cook until a light tan color, whisking constantly—about 3 to 5 minutes. Gradually add the milk and continue to whisk over medium high heat until mixture is thickened and coats the back of a spoon, about 4 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Any kind of milk will do from skim to half and half, or even (as I used for the party last night) heavy cream. Then I whisked in about a quarter cup (??) of pesto sauce, just the stuff from a jar, and some "pizza sprinkle" herb mix I found in an Italian grocery somewhere. This produced way more sauce than a needed for one pizza, but some lucky guest at the party went home with the rest to make a knockout pasta for her Monday brown bag lunch.

Here are some photos of the other pizzas as well: