Wild Yeast

Chocolate and Raspberries, and Ice Cream and Cake

Susan — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 07:01:30 +0000

The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home.

Well now, this is a little embarrassing. Looking over my last few Daring Bakers challenges, I see that I have chosen to do a raspberry/chocolate combination for the latest three, and four of the last six. And I wonder why my friends find it so easy to predict what dessert I’m going to order in restaurants.

Not that I’m regretting a minute of it. Chocolate and rasberries go together like, well, ice cream and cake.

And although I have never been big a fan of Swiss rolls (I’m quite certain there is an early-childhood run-in with Little Debbie lurking in my long-repressed recesses), and although my cake looks on the outside like it’s had a run-in with something or other, this bombe was the bomb.

I followed Sunita’s recipes for the Swiss rolls that form the bombe’s outer layer, and for the fudge sauce that ended up sandwiched between the two home-made ice creams inside. My ice creams, churned with my KitchenAid mixer’s ice cream attachment, were both adapted from David Lebovitz’s wonderful book, The Perfect Scoop. I added cocoa nibs (crushed unsweetened cocoa beans) to the vanilla, and I made the raspberry with Perfect Purée supplemented with a little puree of frozen mixed berries.

Of course it wouldn’t be a DB challenge if I didn’t wind up up with a list of ”do-next-times” so here it is:

Notice how my Swiss roll slices are rather crumby? This happened upon slicing, and freezing thoroughly before slicing would help.
I think I’d like a fudge sauce based on cream rather than water; this became a bit icy when frozen.
Reversing the ice cream layers (raspberry on top, vanilla on the bottom) would give a better contrast between the ice cream and the Swiss roll layer.
Whole raspberries should go in there somewhere.

I believe some of the other Daring Bakers offer suggestions for flavor combinations that are not chocolate and raspberry. I might have to grudgingly admit that they might be good too.

Ginger-Pecan Sourdough Biscotti

Susan — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 04:00:34 +0000

Sourdough biscotti have been on my mind for a while, but they posed a bit of a challenge: with sourdough starter comes water, and extra water is not something that we usually want in any cookie dough, never mind biscotti. For these “twice-baked” cookies, the dough is formed into a log and partially baked, then sliced and baked again until dry. Extra water is just not helpful here.

The solution I came to, in addition to using a stiff (50%-hydration) starter, is to cut down on the sugar, which behaves very much like a liquid ingredient in a dough. (If you don’t believe me, try taking a basic unsweetened dough and mixing in a bunch of sugar; you’ll swear you just dumped a bucket of water in there.) So these have about 30% less sugar than you’ll see in many biscotti recipes, but interestingly, they taste plenty sweet to me. I would not market them as “diet biscotti.” They’re definitely dessert.

The dough is still plenty wet, and log-forming is a little tricky. I found a plastic dough scraper helpful to scrape up and shape and smooth the sides once the dough is on the parchment-lined pan. But even if you make your log nice and compact, it’s going to start flattening out before it even hits the oven, and after a few minutes in there will look like a praline on a hot New Orleans sidewalk. Don’t panic. It will rise (a little) and have a pretty good biscotti shape by the time it’s done.

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YeastSpotting 7.23.10

Susan — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 07:01:15 +0000

YeastSpotting is a weekly collective showcase of yeasted baked goods and dishes with bread as a main ingredient. For more bread inspiration, and information on how to submit your bread, please visit the YeastSpotting archive.

See this week’s yeast spottings…

Look Mom, No Flour!

Susan — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 19:17:54 +0000

Yes, they’re Beautiful, Bold, and Brilliant. But who knew that the Bread Baking Babes, whose monthly exploits take them into the far-reaching corners of the global oven, were also Beastly, Brutal, and just plain Bad? That’s the only conclusion I’m left with after undertaking my first bread as a newly-inaugurated Babe. Consider me duly hazed.

Here’s the thing: this bread contains no flour.

When you bake bread with flour, the miller has done a lot of work on your behalf. She has selected the right wheat berries at just the right stage of development, tempered the flour for the proper moisture content, and maybe added malt so the dough will ferment at the right rate. When you bake with no flour, you’re kind of on your own.

Gee, thanks, Babes! Love you too. Do I now have to streak across campus in order to be fully ordained into Babehood?

The procedure goes something like this: You don your Birkenstocks. You sprout some wheat berries. You whirl them up in the food processor with some yeast, salt and honey, and work it by hand a little to make a pretty nice dough. You let it rise a few times and bake it in a pan. You get a heavy, dense, gummy-in-the-middle but crumbly-at-the edges, whole-wheat loaf that transports you back some [mumble mumble] years to your college co-op days when everyone wanted to volunteer for weekly bread-baking because it beat toilet-cleaning, but no one really knew how to do it.

But here’s the other thing: it’s really not half-bad, considering the no-flour thing.

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YeastSpotting 7.16.10

Susan — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:01:35 +0000

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I’m Simply Going Nuts

Susan — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 20:20:54 +0000

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

What I loved about this month’s Daring Cooks challenge — aside from being the second challenge in a row where I made something that’s perfectly paired with good bread or crostini — is that the concept is simple (nothing is much simpler than tossing a bunch of nuts into the food processor and turning it on), but the possibilities are limitless. (Actually, now that I think about it, that seems a good axiom: the simpler the concept, the greater the possibilities. I must remember to keep this in mind.)

I made Walnut and White Bean Dip (based on walnut butter) straight from the challenge recipe, as well as a pumpkin seed butter (yes, I do know that pumpkin seeds are not nuts, but the idea is the same), which was an … interesting color, but went very nicely on whole wheat bread with a smear of fig spread to top it off.

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YeastSpotting 7.9.10

Susan — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 07:01:18 +0000

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Wordless Wednesday: Work in Progress: Ginger-Pecan Sourdough Biscotti

Susan — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 07:01:40 +0000

Grape Schiacciata

Susan — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 06:00:45 +0000

I always feel a little presumptuous posting about regional breads, especially ones that are new to me. On the other hand, limiting myself to writing about breads that I’ve known intimately since childhood would mean an entire blog about Pepperidge Farm White Sandwich and Dutch Dill breads, and that might get old fast.

I hope it’s understood that most of what I write here about new breads comes from what I can glean from travels with my virtual surfboard and a fairly good sampling of bread books like these. I also hope it’s understood that I welcome anyone who has any firsthand knowledge of these things to correct, expand upon, or otherwise edit my neophytic commentary. I particularly invite my Italian friends to chime in on this one.

That said, here’s what I think I know about schiacciata:

Schiacciata is a Tuscan flatbread, similar to — or is it a type of, or another name for? — focaccia.
Schiacciata is pronounced something like skya-CHA-ta, and means “crushed” or “squashed” in Italian.
Schiacciata can be plain or filled with fruit, vegetables, meat, or cheese.
Grape schiacciata (schiacciata con l’uva) is a traditional version that celebrates the Tuscan grape harvest. It typically uses wine grapes (with seeds). I used seedless black grapes.
Schiacciata can be made as a rich, sweet pastry with eggs and lard, or as a rather lean dough. The one I made contains just a little sugar and olive oil in the dough, and a little more on top.
Anise seed is not an uncommon addition to sweeter versions of schiacciata. Fennel seed, which I used, seems to be less common but not unheard of.
I did not find semolina to be an ingredient in any of the schiacciata recipes I looked at. I included some in mine because I like the hint of golden color and nutty flavor it adds to dough, and because I’m wild like that.

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YeastSpotting 7.2.10

Susan — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 07:01:53 +0000

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