homemade bread – In Good Taste

BBA Challenge (Week 20): Multigrain Bread Extraordinaire)

Maris Callahan — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 15:41:00 +0000

Remember the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge? Well, that’s okay. I don’t either. Last May (or maybe it was June?) I signed on to bake my way through Peter Reinhart’s book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, along with a bunch of other bloggers who would be baking their way through the book. The rules, very Julie-and-Julia style, were that you had to bake each bread from A-Z, no skipping, at a clip that suited you. For awhile I baked a bread each week, sometimes two breads. That didn’t last long. So here we are, on #20, which is actually a bread that I would make again and again. I’ve made it twice since my initial trial and love that you can shape it into a lovely little boule, my favorite bread to bake or follow the instructions for a more traditional loaf. If you’re serving a heavy meal like pasta but bread on the table is non-negotiable, this is a good one to try. It’s full of grains so you’ll get a dose of filling fiber and wind up eating less bread and saving more room for the main dish, whatever that may be. We aren’t blogging the recipes (buy the book!) but […]

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BBA Challenge (Week 19): Marbled Rye Bread

Maris Callahan — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:00:00 +0000

As you can see, I’m using the term “marbled” very loosely here, as the bread you’re looking at is not even remotely marbled. Before I start making excuses, maybe I’d better tell you how we got to this point to begin with. Last May (or maybe it was June) I accepted a challenge along with a group of bloggers, to bake our way through The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. With fervor, I baked light wheat bread, herbed focaccia bread and homemade English muffins. I met a couple of roadblocks along the way, especially when an attempt at producing a flawless loaf of French bread resulted in Plan B: a trip to my local market. Well, I know it’s been awhile since my last Bread Baker’s Apprentice post, so now it’s time for the excuses. Between starting a quasi-new job and taking an apartment without a dishwasher, I’ve unarguably done less baking since my move to Chicago than I used to do. But the real reason that it took me eons to bake marbled rye bread is that one of the key ingredients, light rye flour, was nearly impossible to track down at my grocery stores. Yes, from the grocery stores in […]

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BBA Challenge (Week 4): Brioche

Maris Callahan — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:00:00 +0000

I love that at weekend brunch, you can eat traditional lunch fare like salads, burgers and sandwiches or you can pick a meal reminiscent of breakfast and order omelets, French toast and home fries. Another thing that restaurant brunches have going for them is all you can drink mimosas or sangria. And finally, I’ve learned that a bread basket is a highly underrated element in the restaurant world. There are plenty of restaurants that offer quasi-stale crusty Italian bread along with an entrée but that isn’t necessarily a good bread basket. It’s vanilla, there is nothing remarkable about stale dinner rolls made with white flour and warmed under a heating lamp seconds prior to serving. A good bread basket has a nice variety of breads – white and wheat, rolls and slices, sweet and savory, salty and buttery. The best brunch-table bread basket might have some soft, fresh rolls and thick slices of crusty multigrain nestled between blueberry or bran mini-muffins and brioche. Soft, thick brioche that practically melts in your mouth with each bite and a savory, buttery crust. Brioche is great on its own in a bread basket, when turned into indulgences like French toast or bread pudding […]

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Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes A Day: Sourdough Boule

Maris Callahan — Tue, 05 May 2009 08:00:00 +0000

There are few things better than freshly baked bread, be it wheat bread for sandwiches, biscuits to slather with butter at Thanksgiving dinner or a crispy baguette to dunk into soup at lunchtime.Recently, Zoë Francois and Jeff Hertzberg published Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, a book that helps even the most novice home baker, create fresh bread in their own kitchen. In the book, you’ll find a recipe for just about every type of bread you could want to make. Some are simple, some are more complicated but they’re all based on the principles of one master recipe. You can store the dough in container in your refrigerator for a week, cutting off individual pieces so that you can bake a loaf of bread anytime – with only five minutes of hands-on time per day. Save Print Artisan Sourdough Boule Author: Adapted from Zoë Francois and Jeff Hertzberg Recipe type: Weekend Cooking, Breakfast and Brunch Prep time: 6 hours 20 mins Cook time: 30 mins Total time: 6 hours 50 mins Serves: 4 1-pound loaves Ingredients 3 cups lukewarm water (about 100º F) 1½ tablespoons granulated yeast 1½ tablespoons kosher or other coarse salt 6½ cups all-purpose white flour (no need to sift) […]

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