Archive: Bread
Give Us Our Daily Indian Bread
I did something this weekend I've always wanted to do: I made Indian flat bread. I know, that's like saying I prepared "fish;" there are more types of Indian bread than you can count on both hands, an extensive umbrella category that includes north-south India variations as well as immigrant versions in neighboring Pakistan, Malaysia and Singapore, and further afield in Guyana and Trinidad, in the eastern Caribbean. Freshly-griddled roti ready for supper. (Kim O'Donnel) For most Westerners, Indian bread means naan, the pillowy leavened rounds baked in a tandoor oven, which, according to Madhur Jaffrey in "From Curries to Kebabs," is a relatively recent addition to the ancient tradition of Vedic breads. "Delhi and most of India knew little of the tandoor or the naan until after the partition of India into India and Pakistan in 1947," writes Jaffrey. "At that time refugees from western Punjab came bearing portable...
By Kim ODonnel | April 7, 2008; 10:12 AM ET | Comments (40)
Baking Good Luck Charms for St. Joseph
As St. Patrick's Day revelers dry out and recover from yesterday's merriment, Italians scattered around the U.S. and abroad are gearing up for tomorrow, March 19, a celebration of a patron saint of their very own. The saint in question is San Guiseppe, aka St. Joseph (as in Jesus, Mary and Joseph), and he's been known to protect the common worker from a host of calamities, including illness, bad weather, poverty and all-around bad luck. A ring of St. Joseph's bread for some good luck at Casa Appetite. I don't know from experience what it's like to be part of a St. Joseph's shindig, but based on how Sara Roahen describes in her "Gumbo Tales," it's a combination feast and homage and thanks to Guiseppe via offerings of decorative breads, cookies and other sweets. New Orleans is one of the many Italian communities where St. Joseph's Day is a big...
By Kim ODonnel | March 18, 2008; 11:01 AM ET | Comments (8)
Popovers: A Kitchen Experiment
In response to a reader request, the popover is the subject of today's little ditty. The popover, ladies and gents, is a culinary relic, a descendant of Yorkshire pudding, the 18th-century English batter pudding seasoned with meat drippings and originally eaten with gravy (before the meat course) to help curb the appetite. Popovers, just out of the oven: Quick, before they deflate! (Kim O'Donnel) By the next century, the popover made its way into kitchens on this side of the Atlantic, albeit smaller and more of a handheld treat that could be eaten for breakfast. In fact, the first documented popover recipe in this country appeared in Mary Newton Foote Henderson's 1876 cookbook, "Practical Cooking and Dinner Giving, " in which she refers to them as "breakfast puffs or pop-overs." Simple and straightforward, the batter is primarily composed of milk, flour and at least two eggs, which act as the...
By Kim ODonnel | February 26, 2008; 10:30 AM ET | Comments (36)
A Baguette Breakthrough
Last week's piece on bread troubleshooting further illustrates just how many schools of thought there are on the topic. Hats off to "Seattle cooking mom," a self-described active bread baker, who suggests paying less attention to books and more attention to the bread itself. I couldn't agree more with this piece of advice. The remaining portion of my very first baguette. (Kim O'Donnel) A personal pitfall that continues to plague my bread-making is my tendency to multi task. As a cook, I've always got a few things on the stove at the same time, which is why I've got no problem pulling off a multi-course feast, but experience has proven that bread really does require one's full attention. Clear the counter, clear the head and focus on the bread -- and in all likelihood you'll have delicious results. With all the recent back-and-forthing in the blog space, I had lingering...
By Kim ODonnel | November 6, 2007; 10:36 AM ET | Comments (16)
Bread 911
Yeastcrazy: I have been trying to bake a lot of bread -- but I consistently have two problems -- the dough won't take the amount of flour that is called for, and the dough won't rise as much as it should. I have been using a thermometer to make sure the water is not too warm or too cold. The only way I can get the dough to rise (and it's still not enough) is to set it as close as I can to the stove and to turn on the stove -- it needs way too much heat to rise. Any ideas? Although I consider myself a student of (rather than an expert in) breadmaking, I'll share a few pointers that have worked for me and lessons learned along the way. You state that you have been "using a thermometer to make sure the water is not too warm...
By Kim ODonnel | November 1, 2007; 08:44 AM ET | Comments (20)
Eureka! Homemade English Muffins
In this week's What's Cooking chat, a reader from Honolulu asked for a recipe for homemade English muffins To the muffin-y rescue came a reader from Oakland, Calif., who shared a tried-and-true recipe from Winos and Foodies, a New Zealand-based blog. Oakland was kind enough to convert the measurements for us non-metric cooks. Details are below. English muffins getting griddled. (Kim O'Donnel) Also an English muffin virgin, I took this recipe as a cue. It was my turn as well to get griddlin' and see what the fuss was all about. I've always been impressed by restaurants turning out their own English muffins, but for some reason never thought I should recreate the experience myself. I kept thinking I'd never get that nooks and crannies thing down like our old pal Thomas. I studied the recipe several times and kept thinking, what's the catch? This seems so easy. I even...
By Kim ODonnel | March 22, 2007; 10:33 AM ET | Comments (29)
Breakfast Breadcrumbs
After a revelatory experience with a batch of buttermilk-infused white bread, I decided to keep going. I was on a roll, a loaf run, a trail of bread crumbs. (Okay, okay, I'll stop.) Aside from my excitement level that was running on a bread-adrenalin high, I wanted to see what it would be like to bake bread two consecutive days in a row. Breakfast of champions: Raisin-walnut bread. (Kim O'Donnel) With a soft crumb that made me nostalgic for Pepperidge Farm's "Very Thin White Bread" (white paper lining wrapped inside plastic bag), the buttermilk white was a bit tangy by its lonesome, but I loved it with jam, and saw promise in its toastability. Yesterday's lunch was one slice folded over, bookending a piece of leftover roast chicken -- a pairing that was reminiscent of a steamed Chinese bun -- sweet, soft and well, maybe too soft for everyday use....
By Kim ODonnel | January 10, 2007; 10:15 AM ET | Comments (10)
The Bread Life
"Give us our daily bread." "Bread is the staff of life." "Man shall not eat by bread alone." "I know on which side my bread is buttered." We've all heard the above quotes throughout our lifetimes, and they are a just a sliver of what's been said about bread for centuries. The good life: Buttermilk honey bread. (Kim O'Donnel) As a kid, I grew up on bagged white bread, or as Julia Child wrote in 1974, "the cellophaned Kleenex sold at the supermarket." I was a stranger to the stuff of a "homemade loaf, crusty, crumbly and a succor for the eater." So were my schoolmates. Bread was from a bag at the store. I remember my brothers taking those bendable, Gumby-like slices out of the bag and rolling them into balls -- and then pelleting them at their sister. Ouch. Like many of my generation, I tasted homemade bread...
By Kim ODonnel | January 9, 2007; 11:00 AM ET | Comments (29)
Kneading Khubz
In Arabic, the word for bread is "khubz," a general term to encompass all kinds of bread baked in the many countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Similarly, the Italians have "pane," but when it's time to get more specific, they've got words such as foccacia, ciabatta, grissini and piadina. Arab flatbread. (Kim O'Donnel) Americans may be more familiar with the word "pita," a pocket of slightly leavened dough that is filled with falafel and chicken shwarma at Middle Eastern restaurants or torn for dipping into a mound of hummus or baba ghanoush. No matter what you call it, Arab bread is flatbread or a lot flatter than the loaf-style breads of the Americas and Europe. I recently tried making khubz for the first time and the experience was eye-opening. First, I was surprised at how easy it was to make. The dough was clean and unsticky when...
By Kim ODonnel | October 2, 2006; 11:49 AM ET | Comments (9)
