There is nothing I enjoy so much as spending a day in the kitchen, baking, just for the fun of it, and listening to a good book. So last week I made Country Bread and Challah, both from Baking with Julia.
I had made Country Bread many times before, using Jeffrey Hamel's recipe. Both recipes require an overnight pre-ferment. This recipe produced a little heavier, denser bread than Hamel's, with an almost sour dough taste.
I liked it but I also like Hamel's. The Official Taster, however, declared this superior. The recipe calls for shaping the dough into one large boule, but take my advice, that would be a VERY large boule, so better to divide it into two reasonably sized ones.
The second recipe, Challah, is not like anything I've made before. I've been wanting to make brioche and decided, for some reason, at the last minute to make challah, which the recipe says is like "eastern European brioche". It uses several eggs and lots of butter! The technique sounds a little daunting, but isn't really. It mixed up beautifully. What a lovely dough to work with - rich and supple. The real fun was in the shaping - in this case, a braid.
It looked somewhat underwhelming when I left it to rise the second time, but enlarged quite a bit. However the really impressive rise was in the oven! The loaves were HUGE, and, thanks to the wash applied before and during baking, beautifully shiny and dark.
The Challah tastes good- it's almost sweet, very rich and tender. My only problem is trying to decide what you actually DO with it. It's not the kind of bread you have before or with a meal; it wouldn't taste right as a sandwich. My daughter keeps saying "French toast" and "bread pudding" - neither appeal to me. Perhaps I'll try Bostock, a recipe in Cyril Hitz's book that calls for applying yummy things like almond paste to brioche and baking it....or perhaps that's just too decadent, even for me. It might be interesting toasted. Whatever - I need to figure it out because I have two very large loaves in my freezer at the moment!
Finally, I made Royal Wedding Scones, from Food52, which are really just blueberry scones. I found the directions really explicit and helpful in avoiding the over-working that is such a temptation with scones and biscuits. For example, the dry ingredients are mixed in the food processor, then the very cold butter is pulsed. After the wet ingredients are added, the mixture is folded with a fork and then a plastic bowl scraper into a ball shape. (As an aside, those little plastic half-moon bowl scrapers are worth their weight in gold.) This gentle handling really paid off! They were perhaps the most tender scones I've ever made, and they rose to a satisfying height. This recipe recommended freezing them until solid and then baking. Cyril Hitz always letting scones sit for 30 minutes before baking. I did neither - just couldn't wait. I should have conducted a controlled experiment, freezing one third, allowing one third to sit for 30 minutes, and baking one third immediately...but I only thought of doing that later, while I was eating them. Guess I'm not much of a scientist.
I made some changes to the recipe. Nobody needs that much heavy cream! I used 3/4 cup of fat free buttermilk and 1/4 cup of 18% (coffee) cream. Unfortunately, I didn't substitute regular for the recommended Kosher salt....but I will the next time. I find those little bursts of salt offputting in a sweet blueberry scone. And of course, I used Nova Scotia wild blueberries because, as we all know, they are the world's tastiest :)
Next up for the Baking with Julia group is Pizza Rustica - a double crusted cheese pie, with proscuitto. I'm looking forward to trying this different dish (complete with lattice crust), although I'm ambivalent about the proscuitto - I never eat pork or beef - so perhaps this will be a dish for a dinner party or for the Official Taster to keep all to himself....Stay tuned...
