Tuesday's with Dorie: Pizza Dough

Okay, okay, so I really only made half of this week's Tuesday's with Dorie recipe, which is supposed to be Pizza with Onion Confit (can find the recipe here at The Boy Can Bake).  I didn't make the onion confit, which sounded very interesting, because my husband was horrified by the idea of topping a pizza with so many onions, and I envisioned my house reeking of onions for the next 3 months.  So I decided to make a different kind of pizza, though the dough recipe was followed straight from the book.  Sorry, Dorie and Julia!

The verdict: Pretty good!  Easy to make, easy to work with, tender, soft.  Definitely not a chewy crust (which may or may not be good, depending on your own tastes!), not heavy or dense, and not too breadlike, which is good.  Not especially remarkable though, and no better than my regular pizza dough recipe but takes longer to make since first you make a sponge, let it rise an hour and a half, then make the dough, and let that rise for an hour and a half.  Don't think I'll be making this one again, but we ate it happily and the other half of the dough will be enjoyed later, too.

I made my dough into a good ol' pepperoni and olive pizza, which is our default.  Used my pizza sauce recipe and baked it on my cast iron pizza pan.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Best Ever Brownies

This week's recipe is for brownies!  I have to admit that homemade brownies and I do not have a good track record and I've always been a die hard fan of brownie mix.  It's the only dessert that I thought was better from a package than homemade.  I've only tried making them from scratch a couple of times, and they were always exceedingly "blah."  I've had other people's homemade brownies, too, and no matter how much they brag about them, they too are unremarkable, or at least not as good as the kind from a mix.

Well, my friends, all that has changed with this recipe for Best Ever Brownies!  Theoretically we only have to make one Tuesdays with Dorie recipe each month and I already did mine for November, but since I have had exceedingly good results with all but one recipe from the Baking with Julia book, I decided to go for it!  Absolutely no regrets because these really ARE the best brownies either of us have ever had.  Rich, chocolaty, very fudgy, a little chewy, moist, and with that perfect crackled brownie top.  They also stay good for several days, which is a bonus since we don't feel pressured to eat the entire pan in a day :oD  I am also very happy at the prospect of leaving boxed brownie mix behind forever (or mostly, at least- I have a super easy PB Brownie Bites recipe I'll be sharing soon).

You can view the recipe over at A Beautiful Mess.  The only change I made was to use all semisweet chocolate chips for the chocolate.  It turned out delicious this way, but next time I will definitely use the unsweetened and bittersweet chocolates specified in the recipe so it will have even more chocolate flavor.  I also had to bake the recipe a full 50 minutes, basically twice as long as the recipe said.  This was a common issue other TWD people encountered.  I'm certain my brownies were not overbaked- they were completely liquid at 25 minutes and it wasn't until 50 minutes that my toothpick came out gooey rather than covered with runny batter.  To counteract this, I'd like to try baking the batter in a 9 by 13 pan since the brownies were quite thick anyway, and I will DEFINITELY grease the pan (the recipe said not to) since they stuck to the bottom some.  Those little issues aside, this recipe is awesome and I will definitely make them again and again (and again)!

Tuesdays with Dorie: Buttermilk Crumb Muffins

This week's TWD recipe is for Buttermilk Crumb Muffins.  The recipe is courtesy of Marion Cunningham, a lady who published several well known baking books.  If you'd like to read the recipe, it's hosted over on the blog Easier Than Pie, and you can also watch Marion Cunningham and Julia Child make the recipe together here.  Usually I'm not a fan of cooking shows, but I do enjoy watching the video for Tuesdays with Dorie recipes!

Now, to business.  This was a pretty straight forward endeavor.  I followed the recipe exactly and even mixed up the flour and brown sugar with my fingers like Marion in the video.  Normally I don't like getting stuff on my hands but this was kind of fun!  In the video, they get exactly 12 big muffins by filling the tins almost all the way to the top.  I did the same and my batter loving husband ate what little batter remained, but really it would probably be just as well to make 16 or so muffins instead of 12.

This is what my muffins looked like- just like the video, huh?

Not the prettiest things, but know what?  They sure were good!  They taste very homey and old fashioned.  The cinnamon and nutmeg are pretty mild and the brown sugar gives them a nice, full flavor.  Perhaps not the most exciting muffins ever, but they were FAR from boring.  They actually remind me quite a bit of the glorious Allspice Apple Crumb muffins, only without the apples, a slightly different flavor profile, a different type of crumb topping, and a lot less work.  Admittedly, they are not on the same level as Allspice Apple Crumb muffins, but I can be a bit particular about muffins and I thought these guys were really yummy anyway.  The only part I wasn't completely pleased with was the crumb topping.  It tasted pretty floury and there wasn't a whole lot of it (though next time I could just set aside more!) and it wasn't as crumbly as some, but it was still nice and I think scooping out part of the mixture before adding the rest of the ingredients is part of the charm.

Oh, and sorry there isn't a picture of them out of the pan.  For the love of muffins, use paper liners if you make this recipe!  They didn't stick per se, it's just that they're so soft and fluffy that you end up tearing the tops off the muffins when you try to get them out.  The original plan had been for me to send these to work with my husband, but I don't think his coworkers want to crowd around a muffin tin with spoons, so the muffins will be staying home with us.

Verdict:  A repeat muffin for sure!  Not an every day muffin what with all the shortening and sugar, but good for the occasional treat or to take along somewhere.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Cranberry Pumpkin Loaf

Okay, so this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is for Cranberry WALNUT Pumpkin Loaf: a beautiful yeast bread with a hint of spice and full of pumpkin, cranberries and golden raisins.  I left out the walnuts because there is only 1 kind of bread that I have ever enjoyed with nuts in it.  The recipe also called for fresh cranberries but our store didn't have any, so I used dried cranberries.  I also halved the amount of nutmeg because I'm not the biggest fan of it, and I used allspice to make up the difference.

Must admit this is not a recipe I would usually make, but that is the entire reason I joined this baking group: to broaden my baking horizons.  While I like pumpkin bread okay, I already have a favorite recipe.  Also, neither of us care for dried fruit in our baked goods, especially not yeast breads.  However, the concept of a pumpkin yeast bread was intriguing, so I decided to go for it.

Anyway, to the actual recipe, which you can check out over at the blog This Bountiful Backyard.  This was another easy bread recipe, but definitely time consuming.  After you make the dough, it has to rise at room temperature for a couple of hours, then go into the fridge overnight, then sit out at room temperature for four more hours, then rise for another two hours after being shaped into loaves.  A number of TWD participants just skipped the fridge time and next time I make it (there will be a next time!), I will skip it as well.  I'd also like to try forming the dough into balls and baking them all in a 9 by 13 pan as rolls.  They would be the perfect addition to the Thanksgiving or Christmas table!

The verdict:  This bread is very nice.  The bit of spice is great and surprisingly, we both really like the dried fruit.  Good texture, too, and perfect when cut into thick slices.  I was expecting a dense bread, but it really isn't very dense.  The loaf in my picture looks like it didn't rise much, but it actually rose like a champ- the recipe calls for the bread to be baked in 3 tiny pans but I used 2 big pans so my bread is small.  I love how it looks- the orange bread with the yellow and red fruit is just beautiful, and it smelled wonderful both while the dough was being made and while it baked.  Just like autumn! 

Oh and funny side story- we adopted a stray cat from the local animal shelter last week and named him Declan.  He is a very friendly, laid back guy and spent 5 hours sleeping on the couch this evening, with us periodically nudging him and rolling him over to make space for ourselves.  At one point when the cat was kind of awake, my husband tried to get him to stand by lifting his side up.  As soon as he let go, Declan flopped back onto his side :D  Anyway, the thing that finally woke up the cat was the smell of this bread when we sat down on the couch with our slices!  And boy, was he awake FAST and trying to get his fair share!

Two minutes after we ate our bread, he was back to sleeping, but the next day he yoinked a discarded heel of Cranberry Pumpkin Loaf out of the trash can!

Tuesdays with Dorie: Whole Wheat Loaves

Time for another Tuesdays with Dorie recipe!  Last month one of the recipes was popovers, which I made and promptly forgot to post about.  Oops!  There's going to be a Tuesdays with Dorie makeup day at the end of this month so I might post about the popovers then or else try another recipe.

In any case, this week's recipe is Whole Wheat Loaves.  It's a basic wheat bread recipe that uses half white flour and half whole wheat flour.  This recipe was a dream to make and would be great for a first time bread baker.  I had to sub honey for maple syrup and molasses for malt syrup, AND I got sidetracked and let my dough grow too large during the first rise, but the finished bread turned out perfect anyway:

So far we've only put butter on it, but it would be great toasted with orange marmalade or made into grilled cheese sandwiches.  It's just a nice, standard wheat bread with good texture and good flavor.  Nothing fancy, but definitely good and I will make it again for sure!

If you want to see the recipe, you can check it out at Veggie Num Nums or The Family That Bakes Together.  Enjoy!

Tuesdays with Dorie: Blueberry Nectarine Pie

Holy moly, how did I go a month and a half without posting?!  Not to fear my dears, I am still alive and cookin'.  We went on vacation and had some other stuff going on and my blog just fell by the wayside a bit.  I have lots of recipes to post, though!

On to business: today's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is the amazing Blueberry Nectarine Pie.  As soon as I read the name I knew we would love it, and I was right!  Good crust, delicious and rather unique filling.  Yum.  Followed the directions exactly and my only suggestions would be to 1) increase fhe flour by 1 T to help thicken the sauce, and 2) let the pie cool for at least an hour and a half before serving.  The book said to wait 30 minutes and we managed to resist for 45, but it was still quite hot and the filling ended up pouring everywhere,  Regardless, we loved the pie and I will definitely make again, maybe even the filling alone as a topping for pound cake.  I recommend it to anyone who owns the Baking with Julia book.  If you don't have the book, you can get the recipe over at That Skinny Chick Can Bake or Manchego's Kitchen.

I actually made this for my second wedding anniversary.  My husband loves cake, but loves pie even more and was heartbroken when we couldn't have pie at our wedding reception in addition to the cake.  We wanted pie, but the venue would not allow any desserts from outside (except the wedding cake) and couldn't/wouldn't make pie.  They did make lots of little lemon tarts-- which ended up costing about twice as much as the cake, I might add-- but they weren't very good.  Bah.  So I decided this pie would be the perfect dessert for our wedding anniversary and my husband agreed :)

Tuesdays with Dorie: Oasis Naan

Hooray, finally a new Tuesdays with Dorie post!  Each month the group makes two recipes and participants are supposed to make at least one of them.  I didn't get to make EITHER recipe last month.  For the first recipe, Hungarian Shortbread which is filled with rhubarb jam, I got the date mixed up and anyway it was too early in the season here for the rhubarb the recipe required.  I do plan to make it soon though because it sounds delicious and the people who did make it seemed to really like it!  The second recipe was Pecan Sticky Buns.  Sounds good, but very complicated, and an awful lot of sticky buns for two people to eat since apparently they don't reheat well.  Also neither of us likes pecans in our baked goods.

So I was very happy to join the fun this time around with a recipe called Oasis Naan.  To check out the recipe, visit the blog Always Add More Butter or Of Cabbages and King Cake.  There's also a very helpful two part video that shows the creators of the recipe baking it with Julia Child, as well as a great article with lots of information.  If you've never had it before (I hadn't until tonight!), naan is a type of leavened flat bread served with all kinds of Middle Eastern dishes.  Many types of naan are quite long and skinny, but Oasis Naan is round and puffy around the edges, with coarse salt, green onion, and cumin seed sprinkled on top before baking.  It's baked in a very hot oven until crisp and golden on the bottom with some golden spots on top.  Like I said, this was my first time eating naan, but I thought it was amazing!  The bread itself had outstanding flavor, a wonderfully chewy texture, and the salt and green onion on top was delightful.  I'd imagine the cumin would have been great too if I had remembered to buy it.  Oops!  I love cumin and was a little sad that my naan had to go without, but there's always next time.  Weird as this may sound, I think the dough would make a dreamy pizza crust and plan to try it.  (Update:  I have used this as pizza dough and it is indeed delicious!)

As for the recipe itself, I followed it very closely.  Ended up using an extra half cup of flour in the dough and kneading it in my stand mixer on low for 5 minutes.  The recipe said to let the dough rise at room temperature for 2 hours, but because of timing issues, mine rose for 3 hours and got a little bigger than it was supposed to, though the recipe said it was okay if that happened.  My bread may have been a bit chewier because of this, but it was really, really good anyway and the dough developed a wonderful flavor while it rose.  I did form and bake mine a little differently.  My dough was wonderful to work with and although I started rolling the pieces out with a rolling pin like the recipe said, it ended up working better when I just patted it out with my hands.  As for baking, the recipe said to transfer the naan to a pizza stone or a cookie sheet that had preheated for 20 minutes in a 500 degree oven.  I did preheat my oven and cookie sheet properly, but I don't have a pizza peel or anything so I put my naan on a piece of parchment paper, picked up the paper, and put it on the baking sheet.  It worked out really well this way, though the parchment paper hanging over the edge of the baking sheet got VERY dark!  The cookie sheet also melted my favorite oven mitt when I took it out after the last batch of naan, so watch out for that if you do it this way!

All in all, I really liked this recipe.  It was super easy to make, fun to bake, and tasted great.  If you've never used yeast before, this would be a wonderful recipe to start with because the dough is easy to work with, the rising time isn't too important and it's all the more charming if the finished naan isn't perfectly round!  I served my naan with Indian Butter Chicken and steamed rice and we had a very enjoyable dinner.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Pizza Rustica

My second recipe from Tuesdays with Dorie turned out great! It's not a recipe I would have tried normally but I'm so glad I did because it was really unique and really yummy. This time I made Pizza Rustica, an Italian pie that is often served around Easter but can be served other times as an appetizer or light meal. It really isn't similar to pizza at all, if anything it's more like an Italian inspired cheese quiche, but isn't super eggy in flavor or texture. Really quite hard to describe- My husband kept saying, "I don't know what I'm eating!" when we were having dinner. If it had been served to me in a restaurant I would have had no idea what was in it, not even the ham because it was shaved thinly and then cut up really small. The crust is a bit sweet and also nice and sturdy, while the filling is savory and creamy.

I personally LOVED how the flavors and textures went together, but my husband was a little more reserved in his opinion and felt it was kind of bland (though he liked the leftovers better). That's okay! I can definitely see myself making it again for a very occasional treat, or making it as an appetizer. It would make a good brunch dish, too. It should be fun to mess around with the filling ingredients. I'm thinking sun dried tomatoes and kalamata olives, or green chiles and cheddar cheese instead of mozzarella (to appease the husband).


To see the recipe, check out Capital Region Dining. Someone also found this great video of Julia Child making it with Nick Malgieri. I watched it before making my pie and it helped. My only changes were to use shaved ham from the deli because prosciutto is so, so pricy, and parmesan instead of romano. Oh and my ricotta was the skim milk kind because that's all the store had. For ME, those are very minimal changes at least! My crust was a tiny bit hard to work with because the dough was dry and I added 2 teaspoons water but should have added another. Could have certainly been worse though and the finished product was most definitely worth it! I could even see using the crust to make apple pie. Yum!


As you can see, the pie held it's shape very well. This was the first slice removed when the pie was still warm but not hot. You could easily pick it up and eat it with your hands like in the video, though we used forks. I should also note that the Pizza Rustica reheats well and is good cold, room temperature, and hot :)

Tuesdays with Dorie: Irish Soda Bread

Recently I learned about Tuesdays with Dorie, which is an online cooking/baking group that makes recipes from Dorie Greenspan's cook books. The group spent 4 years working its way through one of her books, and just last month they began a new book, called Baking with Julia. The whole deal is that the group picks two recipes from the book each month, and participants are supposed to make at least one of the recipes and then make a blog post about it on a specific day. Sounds like fun to me both because I would love to improve my baking skills and chatting with other food bloggers about baking is right up my alley.

Before jumping in, it was important though that I like the cook book I would be spending so much time with. My husband and I swung by Barnes and Noble so I could look over Baking with Julia, and I really liked what I saw. The book has recipes from all kinds of top bakers and very detailed instructions. It's quite a hefty book, too; hardcover with over 500 glossy pages and lots of photos. I quickly ordered a copy on Amazon.com and it arrived the other day, just in time to make the second of this month's recipes, Irish Soda Bread. So far I am thoroughly enjoying the group and can't wait to work my way through the book with them. Doubt I'll tackle the wedding cake recipe from Martha Stewart, but I'm game for most of the others, especially croissants.

On to Irish Soda Bread: I posted a nontraditional soda bread recipe the other day, but this is the real deal. Here's an interesting article about soda bread. Only four ingredients: flour (wheat or white depending on the occasion), salt, baking soda, and buttermilk. It certainly doesn't sound very exciting, but it was actually completely delicious!  My husband took a bite and said, "This is AMAZING!" A few years ago I made a traditional soda bread, but this is definitely superior. Flavorful, hearty, tender on the inside but with a crunchy crust. What more could you want in a bread recipe? It also happens to be the easiest bread (or biscuit or roll) recipe I've ever made so it will surely be on the menu frequently. Can't wait to have the leftovers toasted and topped with strawberry freezer jam tomorrow morning!

Part of the deal with the baking group is that participants are not supposed to post the recipe on their blog in an effort to encourage people to buy the book, but each recipe has a couple of hosts that are allowed to post the recipe. This week's hosts are Cathy at My Culinary Mission and Carla at Chocolate Moosey. Additionally, someone found this awesome video of Julia Child and Marion Cunningham (the author of another fantastic baking book I own called The Fannie Farmer Baking Book) making the Irish Soda Bread! My only suggestions are to start with 1 1/2 C buttermilk because I added it all and my dough was very sticky, and check to see if the bread is done after 40 minutes.