The countdown is on

One of the greatest pleasures of the holiday season for me is to get invited to my best friend Caroline's parents' house. No matter which holiday they have a full house of beautifully dressed, interesting people sipping cocktails and discussing things like art, music and books. This year we're invited for both Thanksgiving and Christmas and I got Big Daddy to agree to Thanksgiving (we'll work on Christmas later - he won't know what hit him).

At any rate, my contribution to these soirees is always dessert and this year I'm pulling out the stops. I have to do something flourless since Caroline's mom is gluten free so my trusty Giada de Laurentis chocolate cake with almonds and amaretti will do nicely (this is from her Everyday Italian cookbook - I'm not normally a Food Network kind of gal but got this as a gift and the chocolate cake is worth owning the book for). Next is my beloved sweet potato bourbon cheesecake. I have to leave out the bourbon since we'll have a couple of people in recovery in attendance but it is spectacularly delicious even without it.

Of course there has to be pumpkin pie but I'm going to do an apple buttermilk pie as well. This pie is the evolution of a recipe that Big Daddy presented to me when we were first married. His version calls for canned apple pie filling and a sweetened condensed milk custard topped with oatmeal strusel. Oh honey, that baby was so sweet I thought my teeth were going to fall right out of my head! I've reworked the recipe to call for caramlized Honeycrisp apples and a buttermilk custard but kept the strusel because it is GOOD. Big Daddy says his version is better but that didn't seem to stop him from eating three pieces of the test pie I made over the weekend.

So that leaves one dessert left and I can't decide what it should be. Different factions are rooting for their favorites - Caroline wants Shaker lemon tart, the kids want Hershey bar cake and I'm leaning towards something chocolate like Claudia Fleming's cheesecake tart only with a chocolate cookie crust instead of graham crackers. Plus I'm in the mood to make a salted caramel sauce and that would be delishment on a chocolate something. Watch this space to see where I end up.

Ciabetter but still not great...

I finally got a picture loaded but with this last batch of ciabatta I got at least one of the big holes that are so characteristic of the bread. I'll be the first to say that a pizza made from this dough kicked butt and took names but the darn dough still wasn't quite soft enough to spread properly. My family is objecting to me making another batch this weekend so I guess I'll have to comfort myself by baking ahead for Thanksgiving. More on that later.

Of course, I did have another disaster that promises to make me nuts for a very long time. Big Daddy gave me what, at the time, seemed like the best birthday present I ever received - 2000 sheets of parchment paper, cut to fit a half sheet pan. Since I am an insane cookie baker, this was the equivalent of giving a big fat Gucci purse stufffed with bling to one of the Real Housewives but I discovered the hard way that this parchment, which he got through their supplier in his kitchen, can't cope with moisture quite the way what I'm used to using can. So, a whole batch of bagels and a gorgeous loaf of no-knead sourdough later, I'm peeling shreds of parchment off the bottom before they can be eaten. Lord help me, what a mess. I keep telling the kids that paper is just another type of fiber and fiber is good for you, right? They're not buying even though I keep selling.

But for the Christmas cookie season I am golden! Or parchment colored! Whatever...

Not bad but not ciabatta...

I guess I was feeling overconfident, buoyed by my bagel success, but I knew from almost the beginning that my ciabatta dough was not wet enough to spread out into the classic slipper shape. In fact, based on the size of the dough after the first proof, it was pretty clear I was looking at the Ugg boot of bread as opposed to, say, the delicate Manolo Blahnik cocktail sandal I was striving for.

So, instead of ciabatta, I ended up with something I can only describe as the type of bread you get at a neighborhood red sauce Italian restaurant - not necessarily bad, in fact it is pretty tasty, but definitely not what I intended when I started my poolish on Saturday.

My misfortune wasn't limited to the dough, either. I attempted to follow Reinhart's directions for baking on a stone with a steam pan in the oven but apparently my oven gets hotter on the bottom than his does because the bottom crust of the first loaf charred before the top got done. I ended up throwing that loaf out and using my trusty cast iron dutch oven to bake the remaining loaves.

Well, live and learn. Lessons for next time? Wetter is better so however much water was in the dough - I need to double it. Also, put the stone higher up in the oven and put the steam pan in the bottom.

Now, the question is what am I going to do with three loaves of Italian-ish bread? I guess Auntie M and Grandma will take one but nobody in this house will eat the other two so I may be standing on the street corner begging passers by to take a loaf off my hands. I don't suppose it would be the strangest thing most people in this town have seen...

BBA Project, First Effort - Two Thumbs Up for Bagels

They don't look so hot, sort of like the Frankenstein of bread products, a bit misshapen and lumpy, but oh, the taste! These bagels come so close to the bagels of my childhood (from the Lakeview Market in Chevy Chase), the crispy crust and chewy crumb, that with one bite I was transported back to my mother's big blue Chevy station wagon, clutching the still warm bag as I sneaked my hand inside to grab a bagel on the ride home. Now that I'm a mom myself, I know my mother knew perfectly well what I was doing (the rear view mirror and all) but she was enough of a bread lover herself that I believe she understood the impulse.

At any rate, I haven't had much luck making bagels in the past but I suspect that was primarily because I don't like to follow recipes very much and with baking, you really need to follow the recipe. This time, I slavishly read and followed every step and I am chagrined to admit the result was well worth it.

A couple of small nits - I do think I'll add a bit more salt next time and also, the malt syrup didn't mix into the dough very well so I'll have to think of how to solve that problem. Except for those two tiny minuses, this experiment got a big A+ from me. I promised Caroline I'd bring her a dozen next weekend that she can throw in the freezer so I will definitely be going into production again this week. I might even make what my New York friends consider blasphemy - cinnamon raisin bagels. I know they're not authentic but I bet they'll taste delicious.

Postscript: I stored the bagels in a zip top bag after they cooled. This morning I took one out and wasn't feeling optimistic about how they would taste after a night in plastic but once I toasted it, mamma mia! Again, delicious with a crispy crust and a chewy interior. Thank you, Peter Reinhart. Today I will pay homage a second time with ciabatta. I can't wait.

My not so serious challenge

After a long hiatus from both baking and blogging, I am ready to get back into the trenches and bake my heart out. Every year on my birthday (election day this year!) I issue myself a challenge for the year (last year it was to start blogging - which I achieved, albeit with some fits and starts) so this year I'm challenging myself to bake my way through Peter Reinhart's "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" until I become expert at every type of bread in there that appeals to me.

Don't worry, this isn't going to be one of those "Julie and Julia" things where I force myself to bake every recipe whether I think anyone in this house will eat it or not (we throw away too much food as it is). I can't see either of my children taking a fancy to cranberry nut bread or some of the other more exotic breads Reinhart gives techniques for. And, although I plan to make stollen for Christmas, I'm going to do it with dried fruits and candied ginger like I did last year, even if I do use the BBA's recipe.

So I guess the short answer is I'm going to do it my way (cue Frank Sinatra here, please).

Because I'm waiting for my order from King Arthur flour to bring me diastatic malt syrup, I won't be starting with bagels, so I think the first to go will be ciabatta, which is just fine with me. I'm all about crust, let me tell you, and ciabatta is pretty much two chewy crusts with a little bit of crumb in between, hard on the teeth but heaven otherwise. I'm heading downstairs right now to mix up my poolish to get started.

Whoo hoo! Another year, another adventure.

Welcome to Cookie Town

I had a big family to-do on Saturday and ended up baking about 20 dozen cookies to take with me. This was for a cookie basket for the assembled multitudes as well as a bag of assorted cookies for one cousin who wasn't here at Christmas to receive his (every Christmas I do cookie baskets or bags instead of gifts - just for grins this past year I also added a jar of Mother Connie's chile sauce as an added gimme). I didn't go as hog wild as I usually do because I had to hit the office two days during the week and that cut very seriously into my baking time. I was mightily annoyed, let me tell you.

Anyway, I made oatmeal chocolate chip, cream cheese chocolate chip with dried cranberries, and the incredible Chocolate 6-Os, made originally for cousin K's 60th birthday. The thing that makes the oatmeal chocolate chip ones different is that I grind the oatmeal up before adding it to the dough. This way the kids don't realize they are eating oatmeal plus it makes the cookies thicker and chewier. Personally, I don't like crispy chocolate chip cookies so the oatmeal makes all the difference. The cream cheese based cookies are a new recipe I made for the first time this past Christmas. They are soft and delicious and I use mini chips along with the dried cranberries. Yum! Chocolate 6-Os are just a force of nature. Six kinds of chocolate as well as a ton of espresso make these babies high test. I can't let my kids eat them after 6:00 in the evening or they will be up all night.

Happily, when we left the family event, there was barely a crumb left. What can I say? Being the cookie lady makes me happy.

Big, Bad Biscuits

That clanging noise you hear in the background is my arteries slamming shut after making biscuits not once but twice this weekend. The kids had been bugging me for Nana's butter biscuits, buttery little hunks of deliciousness based on a recipe from my mom's 1956 Betty Crocker cookbook. These are biscuits made without shortening that are then rolled in melted butter and baked. The tops get golden but the bottoms actually fry a little bit in the leftover butter in the baking pan and are so greasily wonderful I could eat a whole pan full myself (hence the aforementioned artery thing). For some reason my offspring like to break them into pieces and dip them into tomato juice for consumption, which I would suggest you try before you dismiss it out of hand. It actually isn't bad.

So that was Saturday. Then Sunday we had our once in a while Southern fat-fest, better known as sausage gravy and biscuits. There weren't enough butter biscuits left over so I had to start all over again with the traditional baking powder version. I love to bake but it isn't often I do two batches in two days! I'm posting both recipes so you can compare and contrast. They are similar but just different enough that you might want to try both.

Butter Biscuits

6 tablespoons butter

2-1/4 cups all purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 cup buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Put the butter into an 8x8 square baking pan and put in the oven until melted.

Mix the remaining ingredients together to make a soft dough.

Turn out onto a floured board and knead lightly then pat out to about 1/2 thickness.

Using a round cutter, cut 12 rounds. Coat the round in the melted butter and arrange in the pan.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until dark golden brown.

Traditional Baking Powder Biscuits

2 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

3/4 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Mix the dry ingredients together and, using a cutter or two knives, cut in the butter until the mix resembles cornmeal.

Add the buttermilk to make a soft dough.

Turn out onto a floured board and knead lightly then pat dough out to about 1/2 inch thickness.

Cut with a round biscuit cutter and place on an ungreased cookie sheet or stoneware pan.

Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown.