Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Challah!

May’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge was pretty twisted – Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to make challah! Using recipes from all over, and tips from “A Taste of Challah,” by Tamar Ansh, she encouraged us to bake beautifully braided breads.

Yet again, the Daring Kitchen forces me to cross another item off of my list! Making challah was on there because braiding dough seemed like it would be somewhat tricky, but this was totally not the case. Way easier than French-braiding your own hair, that’s for sure.

Ruth provided a few recipes with the challenge, and I went with the first which was for a wheat challah. The dough seemed strange: it was almost cookie dough-like and kept sticking to everything! Since I had never made challah, I didn’t know if this was normal or if it was an issue with the yeast or measurements (used my scale), but persisted. I ended up adding what seemed to be quite a lot of flour, but maybe it wasn’t more than 1 cup. For the first rise, I put the bowl of dough on the front porch in hopes that the almost 90F heat would encourage it to rise. It did!

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Armenian Nazook!

The Daring Bakers’ April 2012 challenge, hosted by Jason at Daily Candor, were two Armenian standards: nazook and nutmeg cake. Nazook is a layered yeasted dough pastry with a sweet filling, and nutmeg cake is a fragrant, nutty coffee-style cake.

So Jason said we could make the nazook and/or the nutmeg cake for this challenge, and when given the choice of yeasty vs. cakey, I will always go with yeast. The nazook also had a fun name, though it kept making me think of the Nazgûl from Lord of the Rings. These are the Ringwraiths, or the nine semi-dead/alive king servants of Sauron, also known as Dementors in Harry Potter. (For all of the hardcore LotR and HP fans, that was a joke.)

Making the nazook was much like making cinnamon rolls, only they’re baked on their sides aren’t topped with icing in the end. Mine also did not have cinnamon, but some of the other bakers included it in the filling.

Banoffee Pie

So here I go from posting about pizza made with local strawberries to a dessert made with biscuits from over 4000 miles away. I made this pie two weeks ago for Easter and for some reason have been struggling to write about it ever since. Was it gross? No, quite the opposite! Was it complicated to make? No way! Do I want to keep it all to myself? Well, it’s not like I made it up…

Basically, I wanted to address my Anglophilia along with this pie since it’s partly my preoccupation with the British that led me to the recipe. It’s just that I have so much to say about the subject (Doctor Who! castles! moors! Jane Austen! Radiohead! Benedict Cumberbatch! tea! Hot Fuzz! the BBC! Harry Potter! accents! humo(u)r! Irn Bru! Monty Python! etc.), but not in a very coherent way. Indecision and procrastination, I shake my fist at you!

Ironically, I’ve never been to the UK even though I have a small handful of friends scattered throughout, from London to Glasgow. Whenever I do go, I’m making a beeline to the Royal Albert Hall for a photo op. It’s a name thing that makes me feel like we’re related.

Balsamic Strawberry Basil Pizza

I was pretty stoked to find out that a farmer’s market now takes place at my Y every Tuesday morning. Produce and elliptical in one trip! Health made easy! And yeah, Tuesday morning maybe seems like an odd time, but I wasn’t the only person there. I guess there are other people here who keep odd hours and like fresh, local food.

I had been thinking of making a pizza with the swiss chard and zucchini because, heck, there is NO PIZZA on this 1.75 year-old baking blog. But then I started to worry about the strawberries and how ripe they were. I can throw strawberries on dough and call it pizza…right? How about letting them hang out with basil in some balsamic vinegar first? I like where this is going!

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Dutch Crunch Bread!

Sara and Erica of Baking JDs were our March 2012 Daring Baker hostesses! Sara & Erica challenged us to make Dutch Crunch bread, a delicious sandwich bread with a unique, crunchy topping. Sara and Erica also challenged us to create a one of a kind sandwich with our bread!

rice flour-based topping

Sara and Erica told us that they chose this challenge because they live in San Francisco where Dutch crunch bread (or Tijgerbrood/Tiger bread) is a popular item in bakeries and sandwich shops. For those of you like me  who hadn’t heard of this type of bread, it’s basically a soft loaf that is topped with a yeasty rice flour mixture right before going into the oven. While baking, the topping cracks and browns, giving it the tiger-like appearance. I think giraffe-like might be more precise.

Carrot Oatmeal Whoopie Pies with Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting

A little over a week ago, my roommates and I ate at a new restaurant not far from our East Side abode: Hillside Farmacy. As one may guess from the name, they use locally-sourced ingredients (except for, say, the oysters), which seems to be an excellent trend among Austin eateries. Oh, and speaking of trendy, so were the waitstaff along with most of the customers. I never feel cool enough in this town, especially during SXSW days.

During the brief wait for a table, we ogled what was housed in the bakery case. The presence of macarons will never not excite me, plus there were pastries, cupcakes, chocolates, mini tarts, and what looked to be carrot cake whoopie pies. These all come from local bakeries.

After our tasty sandwiches, Maddie and I decided to split a macaron (rose) because she had never had one, and one of the whoopie pies since they looked/sounded good and were recommended by the waitress. The tasty not-so-little cookie sandwich inspired me to make some myself!

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Quick Bread!

The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lisa stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavor profiles.

Goodness, it’s been quite dull around here! But what’s this? Today is the 27th. This is the Daring Bakers’ Challenge reveal date. I am posting on time! It’s highly possible that a pig just flew by.

Perhaps I was eager to give this Marbled Banana Bread a go. Banana + chocolate is always a winner, but this bread is special because it’s vegan! No eggs, milk, or butter were harmed in the making of this loaf, but I promise that they are not missed. The final product is very moist and flavorful, plus lower in fat and not too sweet. And my, what a looker!

The only vegan-y thing that the recipe calls for is almond milk which you can replace with any milk substitute (I used flax milk) or milk itself. All of the other ingredients are probably residing in your kitchen: ripe bananas, sugar, vanilla, oil, flour, baking soda, salt, unsweetened cocoa powder, and water. Convenient if you’re a non-vegan who has run out of eggs!

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Scones/Biscuits!

Audax Artifex was our January 2012 Daring Bakers’ host. Aud worked tirelessly to master light and fluffy scones (a/k/a biscuits) to help us create delicious and perfect batches in our own kitchens!

I almost said that I’ve never made biscuits from scratch, which seems crazy for a Texan who loves to bake…but I’ve made scones! Looking back at those, they weren’t too pretty, but they sure tasted good and had a light texture. Not convinced that I’d mastered scone or biscuit-making by any means, I was happy about this challenge, especially since Audax was hosting! He always provides such a wealth of knowledge and help for both the Daring Bakers and Cooks that I felt confident with his instructions.

I fully expected my first batch to be a flop, and it was. I went with the basic scone recipe and think the problem was that the dough was way too wet; I shouldn’t have used the full amount of milk. Audax did say that a moister dough makes lighter scones, but I definitely passed that point! However, the amorphous lumps were still light and I had no problem polishing them off… 

Madeleine Trials

Less than a week ago, I had never even tried a madeleine. I have now eaten some absurd number thanks to Jill’s birthday last week. Since she loves the things, I decided to make her a batch and give her the pan. It’s kind of hard to justify buying one-purpose kitchen things for yourself, isn’t it?

Having never made madeleines, I turned to Emma’s blog, Of Agates and Madeleines, because if someone has the very specific thing that you want to make in their blog title, that might be a good place to start. She had made these pretty pumpkin spice madeleines a couple months ago (hey, she’s a string player, too!) and since she used Dorie Greenspan’s recipe as a base, I decided to use that as mine as well.

You know me…I have this tendency to want to make a recipe different even if I’ve never tried it before. Jill really likes coffee and cardamom (and coffee with cardamom), so I came up with that flavor combo pretty quickly. The only problem is that I didn’t really know how much coffee (brewed? ground? instant?) or cardamom to use. The closest recipe I could find for coffee madeleines was for mocha ones and since it used a tablespoon of finely ground espresso, I figured I’d do the same, but increase it by half. Also I started out with a teaspoon of ground cardamom and then added an extra quarter of it after sampling the batter. 

Sourdough Follow-Up: Second Spawn of Brutus

So my first attempt at sourdough (AKA the December Daring Bakers’ Challenge) was a bust, but I persevered! That night I started feeding Brutus the Starter again from Day 1. He developed a voracious appetite and grew so much more than in the first week!

After reading through all of the posts in the challenge reveal thread of the DB forum, I felt better knowing that others had some related problems. A few things were different this time around: I used my scale to measure everything while making the dough, and resisted the temptation to over-knead. The production leaven was definitely bigger and more bubbly, and the dough itself was more wet than last time, which is supposed to be a characteristic of sourdough. There were also a couple differences due to being in my kitchen rather than my parents’: this loaf is round (different proofing vessel!) and it was a whole new oven and slightly different climate.

I also crossed my fingers while the dough was resting.