Yeah, I know…I’m about the 931,834,762 person to make the batard joke. I just can’t help it, folks. Anyway, this month’s Daring Bakers challenge was an incredibly intimidating recipe for French Bread from Julia Child. Go ahead and look; it’s pretty scary (11 pages!). Like several others, I grumbled at the length of time it would take to make the bread…most reports back were marking the total time to be on the order of 8-10 hours. Yikes! I put it off for weeks, and finally ended up using a trick to cut the time down by about 5 hours.

Although I have very little experience baking bread, I’d heard about retarding dough overnight in the fridge, so the fermentation occurs slowly. The literature I’d seen, however, seemed divided on whether it was okay to retard after the loaves had been shaped, or on the very first rise. Not having anyone of authority to ask, I decided to throw caution to the wind and let the dough ferment overnight on its first rise, mainly because that was the longest one at 3-5 hours. I started making the dough around 10:00 or 10:30pm and took it out of the fridge around 9:30am the next day, letting it warm up a bit on a radiator that was covered with a towel. I then proceeded with the second and third fermentations as usual.

Resting the dough before shaping

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Baking, Daring Bakers | 22 Comments »

I made these colorful little carrot gnocchi/dumplings the other day from one of Marcella Hazan’s books (that I got on remainder, which might have been an omen right there):

They look rather serene on their little bed of pesto, except when I tasted them… bleh. Too soft, bland, and almost gluey, even though I poached them until they were as firm as possible. I’m not quite sure what could have gone wrong; this was my first experience with homemade gnocchi, but I followed the recipe very carefully. As you can see, they also ended up being a little bloated, but only because smaller attempts fell apart completely in the poaching liquid.

The recipe is not much like traditional potato gnocchi or even ricotta gnocchi in that it has a very tiny amount of flour - a measly 3 tablespoons - for holding together the pureed carrots and egg yolk. Instead of rolling them into logs and slicing or trying to fashion shapes by hand, they must be spooned out and dropped into the water (which also accounts for the slightly irregular shapes). Marcella does say they are supposed to be tender, but these were flaccid to the point of mush. Usually Marcella’s pasta recipes are reasonably detailed and have very good results, and this one in particular was pretty straightforward. So what gives?

Well, I’m vowing to not let this experience make me gnocchi-shy. I might try a different recipe in the next few days… so if anyone has a gnocchi recipe they love, feel free to leave it in the comments or email it to me!

Grains & Pasta | 3 Comments »

The recipe at the end of this post is nothing particularly unusual; in fact, many of you have probably already seen it and/or made it before. But I can’t help sharing a short but sweet little love story between myself and a most unlikely suitor: cocoa powder.

I have always been insistent upon only chocolate - the unsweetened kind - rather than cocoa in brownies. My experiences with cocoa brownies found them to always run a little too dry and cakey for my taste. Like anyone who loves brownies, I have a decidedly opinionated idea of how the best ones must be: fudgy, dark, and moist (but not downright wet), and, importantly, furnished with that highly desirable chewy crust. After having a major brownie craving last night with no bars of chocolate to be found, I bit the bullet and turned to everyone’s favorite chocolate queen, the lady Alice. And of course, when Alice talks chocolate, we would all do well to listen. She told me (in a soothing and authoritative voice in my head as I read her words in Bittersweet) that it is not chocolate, but cocoa that produces my coveted candylike crust, because the only fat and sugar come from the butter and added sugar rather than the chocolate itself. How on earth did I go so many years without this important knowledge?

Well, I think you can guess how this tale ends…I made the brownies, going all-out and using my fancy Valrhona cocoa powder and organic butter, and of course, she was right. The brownies are downright killer, with hearts so dark and rich they’re nearly black. They are neither dry nor soggy. The texture is, in a word: correct. If you haven’t tried this recipe before, please do, and I can promise you won’t regret it. Oh yeah, and even if you agree that the whole “beat vigorously for 40 strokes” sounds oddly like a Victorian girl’s hair-brushing regimen, just trust that this is part of the magic. Happily ever after, indeed.

Can you believe I had to lighten this photo? These babies are dark.

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Baking | 18 Comments »

Hooray - I’m back from the land of February doldrums and an unusual week of multiple-day migraines, although without a recipe to share, I’m afraid. However, I hope to make up my absence by participating in a meme, since I’ve been tagged not once but twice: by Gabi at The Feast Within and Erika at Tummy Treasure. With all this attention, you’d think I was hiding some juicy secrets somewhere! As this was my first meme, I probably thought too much about what to share…and can someone who has a blog still consider herself a “private” person? Still, there’s a balance of sorts in sharing personality tidbits without getting too cozy with the Mysterious Readership. I mean, surely no one cares about such things as how many times a day I brush my teeth and what size jeans I wear. At least I hope not. Ok, ok, enough bellyaching…since one meme asked for 5 facts and the other 7, I’ll take a page from Brilynn’s book and go with a median 6:

6 Facts About Cookworm

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General | 8 Comments »

For my first foray into tuiles, I expected high stress and possible burns from the scary-sounding step of grabbing a sheet of hot cookies immediately from the oven and hand-rolling them to get that distinctive curved shape. I was sure they required callused fingers and nerves of steel. Not at all, it turns out. Although the first batch I set in the oven was not exactly perfect - too large and congealed into a thick, chewy mass - once I understood that dropping the batter by a teaspoon really does mean only a teaspoon, making the tuiles is actually quite easy. Even the rolling was pretty much a breeze and I didn’t burn myself once.

I was intrigued by the use of heady scents like lavender and jasmine in delicate, paper-thin tuiles from the new Alice Medrich book, Pure Dessert. The tuile recipe itself is really a foundation, and adaptable to all sorts of flavors, from lemon (add 1/2 teaspoon finely grated peel) to herbs and flowers of all kinds. I was very pleased at the way the lavender’s warmth built up slowly and was present but not too assertive. I think even those who are not crazy about lavender might like these, as they did not taste flowery so much as softly herbal. The jasmine flavor, on the other hand, was almost nonexistent, which was a bit disappointing. The tea I used was a fresh package of Choice Organic brand, but maybe next time I will try one that is stronger and more aromatic (there’s one from the Republic of Tea that comes to mind, which has whole jasmine flowers).

Some of the measurements in Pure Dessert are a little odd; Medrich often calls for quantities such as 3/8 of a teaspoon of something (like the lavender flowers). I’m not sure if those are typos, but I ignored this silliness and rounded up, which did not cause the tuiles to be too strong at all. Thus, the quantities you see below are the ones I used (lavender) or would use (jasmine, upped from the virtually unnoticeable 1/4 teaspoon) The flavors are very mild, and if you prefer things to be a little stronger, go ahead and add a pinch or two more than the recommended amounts. Be careful not to go overboard, though, as some degree of subtlety is key here.

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Baking | 8 Comments »

Are you a wheat bran person or an oat bran person? Or are you a no bran person? Like it or not, the stuff is good for you, and as I try to bring my white sugar and flour consumption back to acceptable levels, these bran muffins have taken up residence at my breakfast table. You can make them with either type of bran, although I personally find oat bran to be a bit stronger and more bran-y (or perhaps simply less familiar) than wheat bran. I like it, but it might be less welcome for the bran-shy.

The currants, nutmeg, and orange peel are a nod to the flavors of pice bach, or Welsh cakes. I really enjoy these flavors and am particularly keen to make healthy food extra-flavorful, so no one will feel deprived. It does bear mentioning, though, that while these muffins are hearty and satisfying, they won’t last too long on the counter due to the very small quantity of butter. I suggest freezing them in a heavy zipper-lock bag the day of baking and letting individual muffins thaw naturally or in the microwave. Warm muffins are always much nicer, anyway!

Oat Bran Muffins with Currants

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/4 cups oat or wheat bran
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups yogurt
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1/3 cup honey
2-3 tablespoons cane sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup currants
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
freshly grated peel from half an orange

Preheat oven to 425ºF

Mix flour, bran, salt, and baking powder in a large bowl.

In a medium bowl, combine egg, yogurt, butter, honey, sugar, nutmeg, and orange peel. Make a well in the dry ingredients, and pour the egg and yogurt mixture in, mixing just until combined. Fold in the currants just until combined. Scoop into greased or lined muffin tins and bake for 15-18 minutes, or until a tester inserted in a muffin comes out clean. Cool on racks.

This recipe yielded me exactly 12 muffins.

Baking | No Comments »