Thanksgiving 2008 - the main event

Our thanksgiving menu doesn't vary much from year to year. That being said, I love to experiment with new recipes, so I try to change up at least one or two of the sides each time. I didn't make all of the food pictured, so I'll fill in details where I can.

My mom's roasted turkey
Flaky dinner rolls - I make these for every holiday

This is a pretty traditional stuffing - cubes of no-knead bread, mushrooms, celery, water chestnuts and fresh herbs.

This dish of sweet potatoes with caramelized apples was one of the new recipes I made. I combined recipes from Ina Garten and Martha Stewart to come up with what I think was an outstanding sweet potato dish. I think this will be on the menu for years to come.

Cranberry sauce with cardamom and vanilla bean - this is another recipe that's become a tradition.

Brussels sprouts with pomegranate and walnuts - I made these a few weeks back, and we liked them so well that they were added to the thanksgiving menu.

Also on the menu but not pictured here - classic gravy, mashed potatoes, peas with pearl onions, berry jello and romaine salad with pears and walnuts.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's dessert recap!

Beer and cheddar bread

I will admit, I don't really like beer. However, I don't mind it in cooked dishes. I bought some beer for a recipe, which of course only used one bottle. The other five bottles sat in our fridge for a little while until I could figure out what to do with them. Then, I came across this beer bread recipe. Problem solved! I leave out the onions and substitute cheddar for the fontina cheese in the recipe. The bread comes out with a crispy chewy crust and an airy interior. Best of all, it's a quick bread, so you don't have to wait for dough to rise. I used up the rest of the beer by making one of these breads each week. Last time we were at the store, my husband picked up another six pack solely for the purpose of making this bread! I think that's pretty telling, don't you?

Rustic potato bread

This recipe is from Baking with Julia. The dough is made of mashed russet potatoes, all purpose flour, olive oil and salt. The nice thing about this recipe is that the total rise time is less than an hour. Sometimes I just don't have the time for a bread recipe that takes all day. The dough is formed into a torpedo shape with a flap of dough folded over the top to create the giant crack in the middle. It's very rustic, but in a good way!

Sesame bagels

I've been making a lot of focaccia recently, so I decided it was time to add some new recipes to my bread baking repetoire. First up was bagels. I thought that it would be a pain to boil and then bake the bagels, but it actually wasn't too bad. Peter Reinhart's recipe from Bread Baker's Apprentice is pretty straightforward. First, you make the sponge which sits for about two hours to expand and get bubbly. Then, you add the rest of the ingredients (bread or high gluten flour, salt, and barley malt powder or syrup). Afterwards, you make 4.5 ounce rounds out of the dough, shape them like bagels, and then they go in the fridge overnight. In the morning, the bagels go directly from the fridge into the boiling water. I used a large deep skillet, so I was able to boil 4 bagels at a time. The bagels are baked in a very hot oven for about 10-15 minutes. They are definitely an improvement over store bought - the outsides are crispy and the insides are soft and tender. My only complaint is that the sesame seeds didn't stick that well. The recipe says to top the bagels with seeds immediately after they come out of the water, which I did, but next time I think I'll use an egg wash.

Poor man's brioche

This recipe is from the Bread Baker's Apprentice. The book provides three recipes for brioche; rich man, middle class, and poor man. The difference between the recipes is the amount of butter used. Rich man uses 4 sticks of butter for 2 loaves, while poor man uses a more reasonable amount of 1 stick of butter. I thought the poor man's brioche was rich enough with the single stick of butter - the crumb was very light and flaky. This bread would make a great french toast or bread pudding. I was happy simply eating it with strawberry jam.

Dried fruit focaccia

I saw this recipe on Martha Stewart's talk show. It looked really good, but I didn't like the thought of using a whole cup of oil to make focaccia - too many calories. So I decided to alter my standby focaccia recipe (Peter Reinhart's pain a l'ancienne) to get a similar effect without all the oil. I used the same amount of dried fruit as Martha, and used the fruit soaking liquid instead of water in the dough. I also cut the amount of salt in half and added 2 tablespoons of sugar to the pain a l'ancienne dough. I let the dough retard overnight in the fridge, and proceeded with Peter Reinhart's instructions for shaping focaccia. I ended up with a lot of dough, enough to fill a 12 x 17 pan and an 8 x 8 pan. Before baking, I generously sprinkled the dough with sanding sugar.

This bread was delicious - the dried fruit adds a lot of flavor and the sanding sugar adds sweetness and crunch. I will definitely be making this again soon.

Cheddar jalapeno bread

This recipe is from a recent issue of Gourmet magazine. The texture of this bread is amazing. It's soft and airy on the inside with a crisp crust on the outside. Shredded cheddar and parmigiano reggiano cheeses add a lot of flavor. I used two seeded medium jalapenos, but I think I'd go up to three next time. I left the ribs on a few of the pepper slices to add some heat. I left almost all of the olive oil out of this recipe. I felt there was enough fat and flavor from all the cheese. Next time I'd omit the olive oil entirely, it's really not necessary.

Bread Baker's Apprentice - Pain de campagne

This recipe from Bread Baker's Apprentice is noted as a good dough for making different shapes with. I haven't had a lot of practice with shaping dough, so I gave it a try. The dough is comprised of a large amount of pate fermentee, and has a small amount of whole wheat flour for color and flavor. I ended up making two loaves, each weighed a little over a pound:

tresse

fougasse

Artisan bread at the California Culinary Academy

I took an artisan breads class yesterday at the California Culinary Academy. It was very fun, and I picked up a lot of useful information.

One of the breads we worked on in class was ciabatta. I haven't made ciabatta before, so it was good to see what the consistency of the dough should be like. Here's a picture of the final product:

We didn't get a chance to bake the challah dough, so we got to take it home. I ended up with a little over 2 pounds of dough. Half of the dough went into a loaf pan:

I added chopped pecans and dried cranberries to the other half of the dough. I shaped the dough into 2 ounce knotted rolls and sprinkled the tops of the rolls with coarse sugar before baking.

Bread Baker's Apprentice - hamburger buns

I made hamburger buns using the white bread recipe (variation 2) from Bread Baker's Apprentice

I used buttermilk as Peter Reinhart suggests. I buy buttermilk for baking and usually end up with a few cups left over. This is a great way to use it up.

The recipe yields a very soft dough - I ended up with 11 buns that each weighed a little over 3 ounces. Some were topped with sesame seeds, others with poppy seeds, and I left a few plain. The texture of the bread is airy with a light crumb.

More focaccia from the Bread Baker's Apprentice

I made more focaccia over the weekend from the Bread Baker's Apprentice

I used the Pain a l'Ancienne technique again, but this time with a few changes. Instead of baking the bread in a half sheet pan, I used a 9 x 13 pan to get a thicker bread for sandwiches. I also added 2 tablespoons of chopped fresh rosemary to the dough.

The Bread Baker's Apprentice - Focaccia (Pain a l'Ancienne method)

I wanted to make some focaccia, but I didn't like the idea of using nearly a cup of olive oil in the standard Bread Baker's Apprentice recipe. So I decided to use the Pain a l'Ancienne technique which creates a rustic dough that develops its flavor over a long fermentation period.

I also decided to use a basil infused olive oil to top the focaccia rather than the herb oil recipe in the Bread Baker's Apprentice because I didn't want chopped herbs on top of the bread. I didn't think it would freeze well that way.

I had great success - the focaccia had an extremely light texture and good flavor. The rustic Pain a l'Ancienne dough is very sticky and therefore hard to handle, but definitely worth it! In the end, I only used about 1/4 cup of olive oil, a large calorie savings.

Dough before the final rise

Slab of focaccia

Cut into triangles

Flaky dinner rolls

These flaky dinner rolls taste as good as they look. The folding technique isn't that difficult, and it gets easier each time you make them.

Dough

Doubled in size

Out of the oven

Pane Siciliano - Day 3

When I pulled the dough out of the fridge this morning, it had risen enough to be baked. I baked the loaves at 450 degrees on a pizza stone and added a pot of boiling water to the bottom rack to create steam which develops a nice crust. Here's the finished product.

Pane Siciliano - Day 2

Today I used the pate fermentee I made last night to create the dough for my bread. I cut up the pate fermentee into small pieces and combined it with bread flour, semolina flour, olive oil, salt, honey and instant yeast. I kneaded it for about 10 minutes and let it rise for 2 hours. Then I shaped the loaves. This is what they look like:

They went into the fridge for the night and will be ready to bake tomorrow.

Pane Siciliano - Day 1

Pane Siciliano is a semolina flour and sesame seed bread. The first step in the process is to make the pate fermentee, also known as a pre-ferment. A pre-ferment's main purpose is to improve the flavor and structure of the bread.

I combined 5 ounces of all purpose flour, 5 ounces of bread flour, 3/4 teaspoon grey sea salt and 1/2 teaspoon of instant yeast with about 1 cup of water. I kneaded the dough for about 5 minutes and left it at room temperature for a little over an hour to ferment.

Now it's in the fridge for the night and will be combined with the rest of the bread ingredients tomorrow.