Almond buns (small batch)...with an almond paste filling

Calling all almond lovers - this one's for us!

Soft almond buns/rolls - filled with almond paste, toasted slivered almonds & a little dark chocolate

Ever since I had that atypical craving for cinnamon rolls early last year and made some from scratch, I've been hooked!  I've made those chocolate and orange cinnamon rolls several times and now, I have some amazing almond buns (or call them "almond rolls" or "almond cinnamon rolls") to share with you! 

I've now discovered yet another great use for almond paste, and I'm so excited because I'll jump on any excuse to eat more almond paste and almond-based pastries!  The idea for these almond buns came from Sweet Paul's Eat and Make.  In the book, he has a recipe for almond buns that featured grated marzipan and slivered almonds as part of the filling.  That got my attention!

Main ingredients for filling: toasted slivered almonds, grated almond paste, and finely chopped chocolate

I took that amazing-sounding idea and adapted it to suit me.  I used the small batch cinnamon roll recipe I've been using, which makes 4 beautifully soft and pillowy rolls, and instead of marzipan, I used almond paste.  Marzipan is sweeter than almond paste.  I've never used marzipan for baking, and knowing what I do about almond paste (it is sweet enough for me), I was pretty confident it would work just as well - if not better - for this purpose.  I was intrigued at the idea of how the almond paste (or marzipan if you go that route) would melt into the dough while baking to create this gooey almond filling for the buns.  After eating it, I can tell you it is divine!    

I also added a bit of chocolate.  Honestly, I showed restraint here.  I added a mere 1/2 ounce of dark chocolate in total to these 4 rolls.  I wanted the look and taste of some chocolate without overpowering the almond flavor.  And almond is most definitely the headliner here.

To amp up the almond flavor even more, there are crunchy almonds in the form of toasted slivered almonds in the filling.  Other than that, I have a little bit of butter, sugar, and a touch of cinnamon to pull it all together.  It's hard to describe properly in words but...fresh from the oven, it's basically biting into a warm pillowy mound of gooey almond bun.  It's literally oozing with almond flavor and especially tasty with a drizzle or two of the super simple almond glaze I made for them.  

I tasted the buns without a glaze and they are good even without it because there's enough sweetness and moisture from the almond filling.  But in the end, I'm glad I whipped up a quick glaze.  I simply whisked some powdered sugar together with milk (or use almond milk if you have it) and a few drops of almond extract - heavenly!  I think I'll stick with the glaze going forward because it just makes for a more tactile, more memorable experience.  And if you're going to have a sweet bun or roll like this, you might as well go all out and fully immerse yourself in it!

Classic American loaf bread

Having finally worked up the nerve to start using yeast and making breads like the English muffin loaf and multigrain bread, there was a classic that I really wanted to try.  That would be the basic American loaf - or sandwich - bread...otherwise known simply as: white bread.

Nowadays, I'm all about whole wheat breads both for nutritional reasons and because I actually prefer that inherent nuttiness you get with them.  But growing up, it was all about the white bread and it certainly has a special place in my heart.  Sometimes, only a good slice or two of classic old-fashioned white bread will do.  And a piece of buttered white toast is like a taste of childhood; it makes me think of breakfast at the local diner and the stack of very-buttery white toast I used to devour. 

This white sandwich bread recipe from Cook's Illustrated did not disappoint.  It turns out a big loaf of the best kind of fresh, sweet white bread that you might find at a good bakery.  It reminded me of the loaves I buy at Japanese bakeries when I get the chance, and was better than the ones I sometimes pick up at an Asian bakery nearby.  The one thing that always bothered me about the white bread at that bakery was how thin/hallow the bread is.  Once toasted, I could barely butter a slice without ripping it.  No such problem here.  This bread was sturdy enough to be sliced as thin or thick as I liked.

I enjoyed the nice chewiness to the bread, and more importantly...the flavor!  I think it's easy to forget that white bread can actually have great flavor because of the bland options we're used to from the supermarket.  Combined with the lovely sweet aroma, homemade bread is something a girl can get hooked on. 

One thing I was taken aback by was how huge the loaf turned out!  I'm not complaining because I'd much prefer a big, lofty loaf to a squat, flat one but it took me by surprise.  I suppose it was the result of using high-gluten bread flour, without any whole wheat flour in the picture.  When my son and I peeked into the oven, we both thought something had to be wrong.  I half-expected the loaf to collapse but luckily, there were no such problems.

I used bread flour and I've read somewhere that sandwich bread made with it - as opposed to all-purpose - tends to rise higher given the higher amount of gluten.  The recipe called for bread flour but all-purpose can be used as well if not available.  Since I had both flours on hand, I went with the first option.  Next time, I just might use a mix of the two and see how that turns out.

My family and I enjoyed this bread a whole lot.  I've stowed a few of these big slices in the freezer for French toast.  Otherwise, we ate the rest, toasted and slathered with an array of toppings.  

And, of course, it makes a great sandwich!  My son was partial to this grilled cheese and salami one I made for him.  

I love multigrain bread

Happy New Year!  My goodness - it's really 2014 already!  While it may take me a while to remember to write '14 from now on, I'm ready to throw confetti onto the New Year and hope it's the start of a happy and healthy one that's filled with causes for celebration for us all.  

For my first post of 2014, I thought I'd go with bread - that most basic, nourishing, nurturing food that most of us would find hard to live without.

Multigrain bread made with 7-grain hot cereal and pumpkin seeds

I love bread in general, and you might recall my love of english muffins (I straight-up just love carbs), but multigrain bread is one of my very favorite types.  I adore the flavor from the grains and seeds embedded inside.  The nuttiness and texture you get from a loaf of good multigrain bread is so addicting and satisfying.  I love it so much that I tend to talk a lot about places, restaurants, where I can get a good slice or roll of it.  Here's an example...my husband and I used to go to a little restaurant in New York City called King's Carriage House.  It's a cozy place and their food - as in the actual dishes - was terrific (whether for lunch, brunch, tea, or dinner) but what I always think about is a great multigrain roll they served there.  Am I a little odd for putting so much emphasis on the bread?

So for me, good multigrain bread just makes me smile and brightens up my day a little.  It's the little things in life!  And when it's good, I feel it hardly needs anything more than a light toasting because the bread itself is so full of flavor all on its own.  I love to savor it and appreciate all its nuances.

That said...a little salted butter or some jam (as my husband likes to have it) - not to mention ham and eggs on the side for breakfast - never hurts either.  But honestly, I think it's really delicious all by itself.

So given my passion for it, you can imagine I wanted to try this recipe from America's Test Kitchen when I first saw it.  It was bookmarked for a long time, I made a couple of other bread recipes first to get a little experience under my belt, and now I've done it.  And I'm so happy to report that this bread - this monster of a loaf - turned out completely delicious!  It certainly hits the mark in flavor and texture.  It has nuttiness and chewiness in spades. 

The "secret" or shortcut to attaining the multigrains in the bread is hot 7-grain cereal.  Why is it when you want to buy 7-grain cereal at the supermarket, all you can find is 9-grain!  Not wanting to mess up the recipe in any way, I ordered a four-pack case of 7-grain cereal via amazon.  And I'm glad I did.  Not only have I been enjoying bowls of the stuff for breakfast occasionally, this bread is worth searching out the cereal for.

I felt such a sense of accomplishment taking this bread out of my oven and onto our table.  If I can do it, you can bet it was fairly simple.  I have very little experience in bread-making, having only worked with yeast a handful of times and in the last few months only.  What I've learned is that it's a fluid, live process - one you have to flow with and adjust around.  It's honestly exciting and a bit scary at the same time.  Just when I'm feeling confident everything is going according to plan (or the recipe), I'm thrown a curve ball.  In this case, the bread was rising faster - and more - than I expected.  I had to switch the bread pan I intended to use to accommodate the size of the loaf! And what a big, lofty, fluffy (not tough or overly dense) loaf it turned out to be!  It worked.  It really worked.

Bread-making is clearly a skill honed with time and practice, and while I'll never be any expert, it is definitely rewarding.  The other week (before this experiment), I found myself out of bread and with bad weather making it inconvenient to go out and buy some.  So I made my own!  That is a very cool feeling, to make your own bread and provide your family with a basic that is at the same time very special.  I feel empowered as I'd never envisioned being able to make multigrain bread myself, at home, by following a recipe.  Thank you, America's Test Kitchen!

Aside from trying to make good eats to share and linger over with my family at the table, this whole thing of puttering in the kitchen, playing with flour, and what have you, is also about learning and discovery in an area I'm passionate about - food!  I hope to learn more and make a few more discoveries this year...

Homemade bread at last

I finally made bread!  It's been on my list of things-to-try for quite a while now after being inspired by many posts I've seen of wonderful homemade loaves.  After making pizza dough and the brioche pretzels, working with yeast became much less mysterious and intimidating.  So much so that I finally felt ready to tackle homemade bread myself...

So, please...meet my first attempt at actual bread-making - my, shall we say rather "rustic" looking, loaves of semi whole wheat bread!

Despite my love of white bread, I decided to go with a whole wheat combination because it's what my family and I generally eat these days.  I used a recipe from The Kitchn, which calls for an equal mixture of whole wheat and all-purpose flour.  I opted to use white whole wheat flour, which is what I have on hand and like to use for recipes calling for whole wheat.  I like that it's less assertive, milder, than typical whole wheat but offers all the same nutritional benefits.

This is just my third experience working with yeast and I have to say I'm in awe with the process...watching the dough come alive, expand, and ultimately transform into something nourishing. I have a ton to learn but I've been surprised that working with yeast is a whole lot less "scary" than I thought it would be.  I suppose I've always assumed it would be extremely difficult, with little room for error.  I know my first loaves certainly need work but it was a rewarding experience.

I'd go so far as to say the entire process was fairly smooth-sailing, right up until I got to the stage where I placed the dough into my loaf pans.  One mistake I made was not covering the pans with plastic wrap the whole time; that meant the tops dried so that when it came time to slash the loaves before baking, I ended up with a crinkly Frankenstein-scar on the surface.

The loaf pans themselves were another issue.  The pans I used are old - as in late 1990's old - and I think they're slightly larger than "regular" 9x5 loaf pans.  I used them since I happen to have two, which is what I needed for this recipe (for once, I did not divide the recipe in half!) and the only other loaf pan I have is an 8x4 one that I feared would be too small anyway.

I think it might be time to invest in more loaf pans.  Given the pans were a bit roomy, the loaves didn't rise or fill up as much as they should have in the pans and I ended up with rather squat loaves. That's my theory anyway.  It could very well be that I needed a warmer place to let the dough rise in the pans but whatever the case, this is what I got and I'll gladly accept it.

My homemade bread likely came out denser than they were suppose to but they sure made great little pieces of crunchy toast (and that makes me happy because I like my toast very crunchy).  We had fun spreading all kinds of toppings - butter, peanut butter, strawberry jam, Nutella - on them.  Making your own bread is a great excuse to just eat more bread!  I mean, you have to experiment and taste them in all different ways, don't you?

Now that Fall is almost here, I'm starting to crave breads and heartier foods. I might be in the minority but I'm ready for Fall in many ways.  We had a little breakfast gathering over Labor Day weekend to bid an unofficial farewell to summer.  I love a breakfast buffet at home, and cooking breakfast or brunch for a group is far easier and more relaxed than other meals.  I skipped the pancakes this time and went for savory items.  It was an excellent opportunity for me to press some of this homemade bread on my peeps. 

 

Project Pizza

Hi, there!  I hope you had a wonderful 4th of July, filled with good food, surrounded by good people. This year, instead of grilling or having a cookout, we took some time out to do a little something different on the 4th.  My little one and I embarked on a little project I called, Project Pizza!

We finally made homemade pizza - as in dough and all.  It's been something I've wanted to try for a long time.  I think I first put pizza on my to-do list when I saw this post from Joy the Baker. Subsequently, there have been many hunger-inducing homemade pizza tutorials and posts that I've come across.  But things really tipped the scales when I saw pizza week over at little kitchie.  That did it, and I had to check it out for myself!

I procrastinated a long time because there are plenty of terrific pizza options around so I wasn't sure it was worth going to all the trouble (gotta be honest)!  I guess the same can be said of homemade ice cream and look how that turned out.  In other words, I had a sneaky suspicion that, like most things, homemade has its own rewards.  So to satisfy my curiosity, to finally try out Jim Lahey's famous no-knead pizza dough touted by the world and see if it really is as easy and sublime as everyone says, we got to work.

And with pizza being my 8-year old son's favorite food on earth, I thought I'd get him involved and make a little "project" out of it.  Pizza is the one thing he's expressed an interest in making.  So armed with recipes and my young helper, we made a date to work on our project, and it was a lot of fun!

No doubt, we had to make my son's favorite - Pepperoni!

When we talk about making pizza, I think we're really talking about going to the effort of making the dough.  I knew I wanted to try Jim Lahey's no-knead recipe but to confuse me further, it seems there's an original no-knead recipe and then there's the "updated" no-knead recipe, which requires a longer - as much as an 18-hour - rest time.  I planned ahead and opted to go with the updated version.  I've heard raves about it and given the choice, I assume updated is better, right?  We wanted to have pizza for lunch on the 4th so we started the dough the afternoon prior so that it'd be ready for lunch the next day.

As it turns out, making this pizza dough really is pretty easy.  Now that I've done it once, it'll be even easier next time.  The idea of working with yeast has always been daunting but this has gone a long way towards slashing that "fear" for me.  I think I may be on my way to bread-making soon!

This pizza dough needs just four ingredients and you don't do much beyond mixing it together.  Then, you just wait.  Actually, you simply set it aside and forget about it.  It looks like a mess of nothing at first but grows and comes alive, becoming bubbly and more than doubling in size.  My son was pretty amazed and I think it turned out to be a fun lesson for him. 

It's neat to do something you've never done before, and this was all the more fun since I got to learn along with my son.  And we really did learn as we went along.  The dough was a little stickier than I expected so I used a little more flour when handling it.  I had a big hole in the first pie so I just pinched it together - repeatedly - and took my time with it.  The one thing I've learned and that seems to hold true is: don't be afraid.  It's like turning over a fragile cake; it can sense your fear so be confident...at least, that's what I tell myself!

For the adults, a classic Pizza Margherita

Our first pizza-making endeavor was very successful!  The little one gives the homemade pizza a "9"!  We didn't burn anything (what a relief!) and got to have delicious homemade pizza for our 4th of July lunch.  This may sound crazy but the pizza tasted...light and clean.  I know we're talking pizza but there is something about homemade, where you control and know exactly what goes into it, that makes the food simply fresh and good.  The dough turned out better than I expected.  I was worried it'd be soggy but it turned out crispy, with a nice bit of chew to it.  Placing the dough on top of some cornmeal works really nicely and adds a bit more texture to the baked crust.

Our homemade pizzas might not beat one of those pies from a brick oven but I was very impressed by what we could do in our little home oven at 500 degrees.  Having a bite of the pepperoni pizza really took me back to being a kid in Brooklyn, and made me think about all the times I'd go out for pizza with my friends after school.  Food does that, doesn't it?  It creates and melds together with memories, and I have very fond memories surrounding pizza...and I know my son will too.