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Breadhead Breakfast Testing Countdown: Day 2/120

6/30/2015

Day #2

Fine Tuning

,

The new cookbook is going to have a number of coffee cakes made with the same basic yeasted dough, a variation on my Best Ever Crescent Rolls dough. That recipe produces a soft dough which results in a tender crumb, but it's a little tricky to handle for braiding and some other kinds of shaping---notice the tear in the side of the rolled up dough pictured above, which I made yesterday morning. That sort of fussy dough can be problematic for beginning bakers and even for those with more experience. So I need to fine tune the recipe a little more.

I don't want to suggest that I'm not satisfied with the results---this Nutella-filled babka with a streusel topping turned out just fine. But it was a tad frustrating to handle and I did utter a few words that a monk ought not to use. So I'll try another batch rtomorrow with a little less liquid and see what I get.

The other recipe I made was Apricot Blossoms, which I used to call Apricot Daisy Coffee Cake, until I realized it doesn't resemble a daisy as all. The filling is pastry filling and the icing is made with powdered sugar, orange zest and juice. It's baked on a 16" pizza pan, although you could make a pair of smaller ones with a couple of 12" pans. The secretaries in the Lake Thunderbird club house office preferred these over the chocolate babka, much to my surprise.

Later in the afternoon, I did something I don't do at home very often---almost never during the school year---I took a nap. Ahhh, summer!

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Breadhead Breakfast Testing Countdown: Day 1/120

6/29/2015

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Day 1:

Choosing Recipes

I'm settled at our little cabin at Lake Thunderbird for a week of relaxation, watching movies, and testing recipes. Abbot Philip's parents, God rest their generous souls, gave the community this cabin after it got to be too much for them to take care of. All of my books since Bake and Be Blessed (2001) have been either partially written or edited in this little retreat. For example, all the introductory chapters of Thursday Night Pizza (2010) were written here over the course of four days of energetic typing.

I spent most of yesterday morning shopping for groceries at the local Hyvee and the afternoon rummaging through the walk-in cooler at the abbey. Saturday night I spent baking several loaves of whole wheat bread to keep the community supplied in my absence. Now that I'm here and settled in, it feels like I've unloaded a truckload of utensils, but the cabin's kitchen is equipped for only the most basic cooking, although it does have a decent set of pots and pans thanks to my friends Brittany and John. At least I left a rolling pin and a pizza pan here!

One advantage to the cabin is that it has an ordinary consumer grade oven instead of the convection giants we have in our commercial-size abbey kitchen: I can really test the recipes so people can reproduce the results at home. The sink is a little small---it seems like I'm doing dishes the whole time I'm here---and the counter top feels a bit cramped. But with a laptop you can knead dough and watch a DVD at the same time (see photo above) and since there I didn't bring any bread, the first order of business was to mix up some multi-grain dough and bake sandwich bread and long loaves for hot dog buns.

Actually, most of the recipes for Breadhead Breakfast Treats have been made multiple times, but I haven't always gone to the trouble of writing down exact measurements, nor taken decent pictures. Unlike the kitchen of every other food blogger in the country, the abbey kitchen has little natural light and unnaturally ugly counter tops. Much of my baking is done at night when fluorescents are all that I've got, so I don't get many decent photos unless I set up my photo shoot the next day in another space. The back wall of our little A-frame cabin, however, is almost all window, so there's good natural light for 10 to 12 hours a day, which is how long I intend to spend baking for the next five days or so.

I've been reviewing recipes for several days now, and I think I have the list narrowed down for the most part. (Sorry, not sharing the complete index just yet!) About half of them have appeared in the cookbooks from my TV series (no longer in print), but the rest have been developed since then. All of them are monk tested.

So how did I choose my recipes? I had about 70 possible on my original list, but that would make the book so large that there'd be a risk of pricing ourselves out of the market. My publisher (Josh Stevens of Reedy Press) said that about 40 recipes would make for just about the right size, once you include photos and accompanying notes. So I had to do some recipe triage, which I completed today, although there will probably be some tweaking along the way. I've tried to choose breakfast breads that have been monastery or family favorites, or that got rave reviews from Breadheads over the years. I omitted anything that seemed obscure, overly complex, or commonplace (everyone has a banana bread recipe and there's nothing special about muffins, IMHO).

Although I like making breads with fresh ingredients whenever possible, I realize that scheduling time for baking is difficult in many households, so I'm making judicious use of prepared fillings which can be kept in the pantry for when the baking mood strikes or an afternoon suddenly opens up. This week I'm concentrating on yeasted coffee cakes that use the same basic dough but are all shaped differently, with a variety of fillings.

As I'm typing this, a light rain is falling outside, but it looks like the fireflies are undeterred. One year they were so thick in the woods behind the counter, it looked like a movie set for a fairy tale. Hope I get some sun tomorrow for some good photos. Since we don't have Internet (or even a phone!) here at the cabin, once a day I'll be going to the lake association clubhouse to use the WiFi and post updates. Right now, time for one last sink of dishes before bed.

God bless and happy baking!

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What I did Friday morning . . .

6/26/2015

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That is all.

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Upcycle update and a new assignment

6/25/2015

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On June 1st I wrote a blog about accessorizing my new monastery room with pieces I upcycled from rolling pins, antique silverware, and vintage oak taken from a junk desk. The room feels quite homey and I've settled in nicely, but one thing was missing---a decent trash receptacle.

http://drshell.home.mindspring.com/collection2.html

The room had a garbage can, of course; every monastery room comes with one, in this case an ugly, dented, yellow can made of metal. It had to go. In the past I had made trash bins of scrap plywood from backstage. (For those who who may be mystified by this reference, I'm the stage manager of our high school.) I have one of these in my classroom, painted in our school colors, and a couple more in the dressings rooms. They're designed so you can slip a plastic grocery bag over the handles, rather than buy more plastic for garbage bags. (You can buy them from a woodworker online; click HERE.) But since I'd gone to the trouble to make unique and playful clothes hooks and shelving for my room, I decided to go back to my pile of vintage lumber and see what I could cobble together.

So with a lot of measuring and gluing, a Kregs pocket hole jig and a right angle drill attachment, I got my solid oak trash bin. The lumber didn't cost me a thing--look at that gorgeous grain--and the brass handles to hold the bags were 50 cents at a flea market, so I still feel quite monastically frugal. I learned a lot from the project--for example, old-fashioned shellac is NOT as forgiving as polyurethane--and next time I might go about it a little differently, but over all, I'm delighted with the results.

What does this have to do with baking? Not a darn thing, really, except that my new trash bin sits next to the desk where I type my recipes and compose my blogs. And I believe that having a cozy space with decent, simple furnishings and plenty of natural light is conducive to good writing, which is what I know have in my new room.

Just in time, too. This week my publisher and I agreed to produce another cookbook: Breadhead Breakfast Treats. From now until October my blog posts will be primarily (although not exclusively) a record of the process of testing recipes, taking pictures, and trying to get my part delivered to the editor by October 25 (my birthday). So I'll be spending lots of time with my laptop at my desk, with my new trash receptacle beside me slowly filling up with the shells of sunflower seeds. That is, when I'm not in the kitchen, up to my elbows in dough.

God bless and happy baking!

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Italian Onion Herb Bread

6/17/2015

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Italian Onion Herb Bread in the abbey kitchen, fresh from the oven.

Last night was the annual picnic for the Illinois Valley Herb Guild to which I belong. I heard that beer brats were going to be served, as well as tortellini, so I thought---as usual!---we needed some homemade bread to go along with such alfresco delights. I chose to make skinny loaves of Italian Onion Herb Bread, a perennial favorite here at the abbey, which could be used to house the brats or to mop up bolognese sauce.

After these beauties were out of the oven, I realized two things: 1) I needed to make sweet hot mustard as well; and 2) I had never posted the recipe for Italian Onion Herb Bread on my recipes page. The first task required some experimentation with regular yellow mustard, St. Bede honey, crushed red pepper, horseradish and garlic, and after all the multiple tastings and tweakings, I couldn't tell you the recipe if I tried. A task for another day.

But the recipe for Italian Onion Herb Bread has been duly posted on my recipes page; for a shortcut, click HERE. If you make a dozen of these beauties for a bake sale, I guarantee you'll sell every loaf. I like to make them in "W" pans (usually called "French bread pans") but you can roll out long skinny loaves and bake them on a standard sheet tray as well. Mine look like this and are made by Fox Run, but there are lots of other shapes and sizes out there: HERE's a sampling. The ones pierced with holes are more expensive but create a more crisp crust.

God bless and happy baking!

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Coffee Cake Exceptionale revisited

6/16/2015

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In May of 2012 I posted a brief blog and a recipe for Coffee Cake Exceptionale, a recipe I adapted from a spiral-bound family cookbook---not MY family, but thank you, Kathy Miller of Norway, Iowa!. The original, however, is from Betty Crocker; remember these old recipe cards that came in a yellow or green box?

Anyway, Coffee Cake Excpetionale is a classic sour cream coffee cake, marvelously rich and delightfully versatile. The original recipe calls for a traditional brown sugar cinnamon filling, but over the years I have used fresh peaches sprinkled with ginger sugar and nutmeg, Solo cake filling in various flavors, pineapple ice cream topping, homemade apricot preserves, and store-bought marmalade. Leftover cranberry salad from Thanksgiving? Sure! Some slightly mushy blueberries you would hate to throw out? Don't mind if I do! Whatever fruit's in season, whatever's in the pantry, chances are you've got something that will make a great filling for this breakfast treat.

I got the recipe out again because I had to make a thank you gift for one of the guys who works in the abbey powerhouse who did me a favor. Everybody calls him Scooter, and he looks like a ZZ Top groupie, long beard. tats and all---nicest guy you'll ever meet. Anyway, I owed him a favor, and when we were talking about our various canning exploits, he told me that he had some strawberry rhubarb jam that just didn't set up. With some urging from his wife he discovered that with some ice and milk in a Bullet blender, the failed jam made a great smoothie, but he had a lot of it to use up. So I asked him to bring some in and I would use to make something yummy.

A mid-afternoon snack using my Great-grandma's china.

I've been in coffee cake mode lately, since I just gave a demo on yeasted coffee cakes to the Home and Community Education chapter at Effingham, IL (recipe handout HERE). The one you see on the right has a salted caramel hazelnut chocolate filling (yes, JIF makes such a thing) and a light sprinkling of the kind of streusel topping you'd find on apple crisp. I served it at the HCE demo and it was a big hit. (Incidentally, special thanks to Seimer Milling and to Hodgson Mill for providing quality ingredients and some terrific goodie bags for our attendees. They are both members of the Home Baking Association--more about that organization in a future blog.)

I considered the possibility of just using my Best Ever Crescent Roll Dough, which makes outstanding breakfast rolls no matter what filling you use. But like I was in coffee cake mode and decided to save the strawberry filled swirls for some other morning. The ones here were made just like cinnamon rolls, but with strawberry pie filling mixed with fresh strawberries rolled up in the dough.

In the end I opted for good ol' reliable Coffee Cake Exceptionale, but had to sub Greek yogurt for the sour cream (we'd used up all of the latter on taco salads at lunch). If you're wondering about how much filling you need, I used a 12 oz. can of strawberry cake filling mixed with the pint of runny preserves, and had just enough. Using a more liquid filling like fruit helps keep the coffee cake more moist, too.. I also added a streusel topping, just because that's how I roll. (1/2 cup each of flour, brown sugar, and quick cooking oatmeal, mixed with 2 tsp. of cinnamon and 3 Tbs. of softened butter). The recipe makes a 9" x 13" cake, so I served half in modest portions to the brethren, then dressed up the rest for Scooter and his wife.

Need to tell a co-worker "thank you" this week? Want to show a friend or family member that you think they are "exceptionale"? Ten minutes of prep and and hour with the oven is all you need. Click HERE to get the recipe. (And for those noticed the omission of the sour cream from the ingredients, I fixed it! 1.5 cups).

God bless and happy baking!

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Marcus Aurelius and Coffee Cake

6/11/2015

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Marcus Aurelius’s original statue in Rome, by Zanner. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Recently I started reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher. You might wonder what value there might be in such a project; you'll find a thoughtful blog HERE written by an Oxford professor about the Meditations' relevance today. For myself I offer no explanation other than it seemed to me that a well educated person should have read them at some point, especially someone like me who minored in Philosophy.

Surprisingly, my scholarly reading intersected with my passion for baking yesterday. I have been experimenting with various forms of yeasted coffee cakes, and decided to use my Best Ever Crescent Roll Dough, which I consider the gold standard for soft rolls and anything sweet. The dough, however, proved to be a little too soft and sticky; I had trouble rolling it out evenly and it developed several tears in the course of my making a chocolate-filled babka (click HERE for the recipe that was my inspiration). But I trudged on undaunted by the mess on the counter, my sticky hands, and the lopsided twist in the Bundt pan before me.

The result, however, was surprisingly appealing. In fact, I would argue that its attraction is based on its imperfections: the unevenly-sized twists, the long split that reveals the chocolate filling inside, even the lopsided profile all contribute to what I would not hesitate to call a truly beautiful loaf. Anyone who passed by as it sat cooling on the counter remarked on how attractive the babka was, how the open side revealing the filling made it more so.

Marcus Aurelius, as it turns out, would agree. That very morning I had read the following passage:

[W]hen bread is baked some parts are split at the surface, and these parts which thus open, and have a certain fashion contrary to the purpose of the baker's art, are beautiful in a manner, and in a peculiar way excite a desire for eating. And again, figs, when they are quite ripe, gape open; and in the ripe olives the very circumstance of their being near to rottenness adds a peculiar beauty to the fruit. And the ears of corn bending down, and the lion's eyebrows, and the foam which flows from the mouth of wild boars, and many other things- though they are far from being beautiful, if a man should examine them severally- still, because they are consequent upon the things which are formed by nature, help to adorn them, and they please the mind . . .
Meditations Book III, section 2

There is much to be admired in Marcus Aurelius' character and his writings, but I'm especially drawn by the fact that the most powerful man in the Roman empire of the 2nd century noticed the details of the baker's art, the graceful arch of the bending corn, and the regal structure of the lion's brow. Many of his reflections stress the need to live an intentional life, that no action should be without an aim, no choice be made thoughtlessly. A little something to ponder the next time you select a muffin from the case at Starbuck's, or sit down to enjoy a slice of homemade coffee cake.

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Yeasted donuts

6/4/2015

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Make no mistake--donuts are NOT a "heart-healthy" food. But me no buts about baked donuts or multigrain batters or paleo flours. Donuts made with reduced fat and alternative grains can be delicious, but they simply can't compare with a fresh, warm, glistening Krispy Kreme, cooked in hot oil and drenched in powdered sugar glaze.

As I diabetic, I have to be careful around donuts---I'd probably pass up chocolate cake for a day-old long john---so I don't make them often. But Friday, June 5 2015 is National Donut Day, so I stayed up late Thursday night to make some Spudnuts.

(According to the Nibble, National Donut Day is celebrated the first Friday of June.
The holiday was created in 1938 by the Salvation Army, to honor the women who served donuts to servicemen in World War I. June 8 is Jelly-filled Donut Day, Cinnamon Roll Day is October 4. OK, back to Spudnuts).

Spudnuts was a national chain of franchised donut shops started by the Pelton brothers in Salt Lake City in 1940. Their proprietary donut mix used potato flour for added softness and flavor (this ingredient had just become commercially available---before that fresh mashed potatoes were needed). In 1964 when the brothers sold the company,. there were 314 franchises nationwide. Wikipedia can tell you more HERE. There still individual shops around, sometimes with a recipe adapted from the original. Naturally there is a website for Spudnuts fans which includes a list of existing shops by state.

I've had a Spudnuts recipe in a three ring research binder since about 1999, but there are about a half dozen recipes online, all of them slightly different, one of them really different: the one offered by Saveur magazine uses ground mace, cracked black pepper, and lemon zest. Looking all these recipes over, most of them bear a striking resemblance to my Best Ever Crescent Roll Dough. So that's what I use for my yeasted donuts, except that I use only 1/2 cup of mashed potato.

Some other tips about donuts:
1) Don't over knead or over work the dough, or the donuts will be tough and not tender. After the first rise, don't punch the dough down too hard and never knead it a second time. Deflate it gently and roll it out to about 3/4", using a minimum of flour on the board.
2) Don't twist the cutter, which can seal the edges of the donut and keep it from rising properly. Just press down firmly.
3) Let your donuts rise the second time on individual sheets of waxed paper or parchment. It makes it simpler to ease them gently into the hot oil.
4). The oil should be 375 degrees F. Use a candy thermometer clipped on the side of a deep skillet, or an electric fryer with a thermostat.
5) Don't crowd the pan---3 or 4 donuts at a time, and let the oil reheat between batches.
6) Wait until donuts are almost completely cool before glazing or frosting. And no, I don't really have a glaze recipe, because I never measure anything for it. If you're reading this, you can obviously Google it! Alton Brown has a good one HERE.

Sound like a lot of fussy work? Perhaps these photos will help convince you:

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Pinterest accessorized my monk's cell

6/1/2015

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Some people might be surprised to discover that I'm on Pinterest, but there's a lot of great recipes to be found there--for bread and just about everything else--but lately I've been looking at up-cycling . When I saw the towel rack pictured to the left, I knew I had to make something similar for my monastery room.

One reason I've been thinking about such un-monastic things as interior decorating is that I'm in the process of moving from the third floor to the second floor of the abbey. There are a variety of reasons for this transfer, but one of the best is that it has made me clear out a LOT of old clothes, books I don't read and chachkies that I never dust anyway. Monks aren't supposed to be attached to material things, so this move was as much a spiritual exercise as a practical one.

Simplicity, however, doesn't mean squalor nor sterility, so I set out to add a few personal touches. The first was to have a vintage rolling pin rack for my aprons, bath towel, belt, etc.

I have never been able to watch a piece of vintage hardwood go into the trash, no matter beat up the piece of furniture might be. As a result I have in my scene shop a large selection of oak and cherry boards rescued from desks and tables destined for the dumpster. You can see that the board I used still has part of the desk drawer's locking mechanism. The rolling pins I collected at flea markets when I travel for bread demos. The hooks I made from some antique silverplated forks that came in a box of flatware somebody gave me from an estate sale.

I cut off the bottom part of the forks using a Dremel tool with a ceramic cutting wheel (yes, I always wear goggles and earplugs and you should, too) and then bent them with pliers wrapped in a rag so it wouldn't leave any marks on the metal. Then I shaped and smoothed the ends on a grinding wheel. The forks were really black, but I didn't want them to look too new, so I used some OOOO steel wool to give them a little shine but leave the design accented by the remaining tarnish. I think I need to make more of these---I have a whole box of old silver plate!

Here's another one I made to mount on the door to my room, so I have a place to hang my habit at night. This rolling pin was obviously stored in a garage or an abandoned house, because the other end of it was obviously chewed by a rat! You should have seen the size of the teeth marks---kinda creepy. I'm glad I was able to rescue it and put it to good use.

This "chair shelf" is probably the strangest new addition to my room. Click HERE to see the original inspiration---I think the unpainted chair looks much better. I had a single vintage folding chair back stage and never knew what to do with it. Now it's attached to my wall. In case you're wondering, I used the largest plastic anchors and a couple of extra large screws. You might need toggle bolts of mollys, depending on the composition of your wall.

You know how you take off a pair of pants and figure you're going to wear them again tomorrow? This is the perfect space for hanging up pants, shorts or a shirt, with the seat reserved for my favorite Cardinals hat.

I have a rule that for every ten ideas I "pin" on Pinterest, I have to make at least one of them. Otherwise it's just digital hoarding.

So what am I making next?

Maybe this . . .

Or this . . .

Or even this---I have an antique sewing machine base in storage somewhere backstage, and at least three oak desk tops.

Flea Market Flip's got nothin' on me.

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Breadhead Breakfast Testing Countdown: Day 2/120

Breadhead Breakfast Testing Countdown: Day 1/120

What I did Friday morning . . .

Upcycle update and a new assignment

Italian Onion Herb Bread

Coffee Cake Exceptionale revisited

Marcus Aurelius and Coffee Cake

Yeasted donuts

Pinterest accessorized my monk's cell

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