Daily bread.

That’s what pane quotidiano means and that’s what I kept thinking about as I had the lovely experience of making French bread thanks to Mary of The Sour Dough and Sara of i like to cook.

They were the hostesses of the February 2007 Daring Bakers challenge and they chose French bread as the task we were all to attempt.

I’ve told the story many times that growing up, a meal could not begin in our house unless the bread and wine were on the table. And I’ve also shared with you the joy I’ve discovered ever since I started baking bread on a more regular basis.

Mary and Sara decided to throw the French bread challenge at us and they chose the great Julia Child’s recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 2, as the starting point.

One of the truly dynamic things about this baking group is the variety of reactions to each month’s challenge. While I think Mary and Sara chose wisely, there was some consternation among members of the group over the length of the recipe and the instructions that came with the recipe. Some people appreciate lots of instruction and advice, while others just want to cut to the quick.

To be honest, I have so much respect for Julia Child that I’ll happily read whatever she advises. However, having had some experience baking bread, I also wouldn’t be intimidated by getting straight to the recipe.

Either way you cut it, I loved the end result of this recipe. I chose to make three small baguettes out of my dough. The bread had a lovely crumb and beautifully golden, crusty exterior. In fact, I was quite impressed with the results that I got from my humble home oven.

Here’s a little photo essay of the making of the bread.

The dough after the first rise:

Shaping the dough into a pillow for the second rise:

Shaping the baguettes:

Ready to go into the oven:

So what did I do with the bread? Well I’ll be honest, most of it was eaten with butter.

But I did save one baguette to finally try a lovely appetizer recipe from Tyler Florence’s Tyler’s Ultimate: Brilliant Simple Food to Make Any Time. There’s an incredible recipe for Caramelized Onion Toast that features a butter-slathered baguette covered in caramelized onions, anchovies, thyme, olives and Parmigiano Reggiano.

I made do without the anchovies and also made a few other changes but the end result was fabulous! And it was even better because the bread had come from our own oven.

Mary and Sara, I thank you!

Ciao!

As usual, if you want to see what all the other Daring Bakers did, please visit the blogroll.

For the full French Bread recipe, please visit Mary and Sara.

Here’s the recipe for my version of the Caramelized Onion Toast:

1 baguette
1/4 cup butter, softened
a few tablespoons of unsalted butter (for sauteeing the onions)
a few tablespoons of olive oil
3 onions, sliced thinly
several sprigs of thyme
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup of olives, pitted (any olives will do)
a handful of grated Parmigiano Reggiano
extra olive oil for drizzling

In a large pan, heat the few tablespoons of butter and olive. Once hot, add the onions and thyme and cook slowly over low heat (uncovered), until the onions are golden and wilted. You’ll have to stir the onions every now and then to ensure they don’t burn. This could take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on how low the heat is.

Once cooked, add salt and pepper to taste and remove the thyme branches (the thyme leaves will have fallen off while cooking).

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Slice the baguette in half lengthwise and spread the quarter cup of softened butter equally over both halves of the bread.

Pile on the caramelized onions and then dot the onions with the pitted olives. Sprinkle with a bit more salt and pepper and then drizzle lightly with olive oil.

Bake for 15 minutes or until the bread is golden and toasted.

Remove from the oven and sprinkle liberally with grated Parmigiano Reggiano.

Serve immediately and enjoy!

Technorati tags: daring bakers, bread, french bread

When I announced at the beginning of February that I would attempt to make every post this month about chocolate, a number of people left comments asking if I would attempt a savoury chocolate recipe.

Well here you have it! For today’s Magazine Mondays post, I decided to finally try a recipe for Braised Short Ribs with Chocolate and Rosemary from the January 2006 issue of Bon Appétit magazine.

I love short ribs and recently had them at a friend’s house. She slow-cooked them in the oven and then served them with polenta. They were so good that I was dreaming about them for days.

While looking for a savoury recipe with chocolate, I came across this lovely dish and thought, “Why not?!”

I halved the recipe, for starters, and I must admit that when it came time to add the chocolate and cocoa to the sauce, I wimped out slightly and added just a bit less than what was called for. Still, though, the end result was delicious.

It’s hard to put into words how the chocolate and cocoa enhanced the sauce but suffice to say there was a distinct huskiness to this sauce. The flavour was very deep and the sauce was a dark, rich colour as well.

This was perfect for a slow Sunday lunch. I hope you’ll give it a try.

Have a great week, everyone!

Ciao!

For the recipe, click here.

Technorati tags: magazine mondays

I don’t have a Magazine Mondays post for you this week but I do have another example of what a great cookbook Maxine Clark’s Chocolate: Deliciously Indulgent Recipes for Chocolate Lovers is.

This time it’s a pretty chocolate marble cake.

Some cakes look pretty in pink. But some look even prettier in marble.

I never tire of trying out marble cake recipes just for the simple of pleasure of marbling batter, yet another example of how artistic and fun baking can be.

I wish all of you a wonderful, chocolate-filled week!

Ciao!

Marbled Butter Cake
Adapted from Chocolate: Deliciously Indulgent Recipes for Chocolate Lovers by Maxine Clark.

Note: This recipe doesn’t yield a huge cake but can easily serve 8. It’s very buttery and will keep nicely at room temperature either in an airtight container or well-wrapped.

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/3 cup whole milk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
3 tbsp. cocoa powder
icing sugar for decoration

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour a standard-sized bundt cake pan or kugelhopf mold (if you have one).

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy.

With the mixer on low, slowly add the beaten egg and continue to mix until well incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Add the vanilla extract and mix well.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder. Add the sifted ingredients to the batter and mix on low speed until incorporated, scraping down the sides of the bowl.

Remove half the batter and place in another bowl. To the batter that’s still in the mixer bowl, add the cocoa powder. Mix until well combined.

Take your prepared cake pan and dollop spoonfuls of the vanilla batter into the bottom of the pan. Then take the chocolate batter and dollop spoonfuls over the vanilla batter. Repeat until all the batter has been used.

Take a knife and dip it into the batter, all the way to the bottom of the pan. Gently begin swirling the batter with the knife, working your way all around the pan.

Bake the cake on the middle rack for 50 minutes, checking to see if it’s done with a cake tester or toothpick. If it’s done, the tester will come out clean after piercing the cake. The cake will also spring back if you touch it lightly. If it’s not done, bake for an additional 5 to 10 minutes.

Let the cake cool in the pan before unmolding it. Dust with icing sugar and serve.

Enjoy!

I love crullers.

I have been known to eat … ummm … quite a few in a row without stopping or even taking a breath. I love their glazed exterior and sweetly soft interior. I love the way they melt in your mouth and slide down your throat in a rush of fried dough bliss.

When Peabody and Helene announced their doughnut event, I briefly entertained ideas of creating a new doughnut but my heart kept coming back to a recipe I’d seen in Marcy Goldman’s A Passion For Baking. For those of you that haven’t heard of Marcy, she’s the baker behind www.betterbaking.com. Her most recent cookbook is now gracing my bookshelf and from the moment I set eyes on her recipe for French Cruller Doughnuts, I knew I had to try them.

And here’s the the really shocking thing about this: these doughnuts are baked, not fried! Now I am never one to shy away from calories, but based on what everyone who tried these told me, you’d never guess that they weren’t fried.

And because I promised a month of chocolate, I decorated some of my crullers with melted dark chocolate for an added touch.

I’d like to thank two of my favourite bakers, Peabody and Helene, for hosting this great event! Here’s hoping it becomes a regular one!

Ciao!

If you’re interested in making crullers, check out Steph’s blog a whisk and a spoon for her entry to this event.

People will often ask me what my favourite thing is to bake and my answer is always cookies and pies. I love pies for their versatility. There’s nothing you can’t put in a pie. They’re also forgiving as no one will ever know about that rip in the bottom crust.

And cookies I love because they each represent a little baking story unto itself. Every cookie is its own beginning, middle and end. While a cookie may be related to its brethren in the batch, in the end, it stands alone.

For this edition of Magazine Monday, I had a strong urge to bake cookies so I turned to a recipe for Chocolate-Dipped Espresso Shortbread Cookies from Issue #61 of Fine Cooking magazine (my very favourite food magazine).

Judging from the looks of pleasure on the faces of all those that tried these cookies, they’re most definitely a keeper. Of course, I would not be able to tell you how good they were as I did not actually eat one.

I have given up sweets for Lent.

That’s right.

Me. No sweets. Six weeks.

And we’ll just see how well that turns out.

I wish all of you a wonderful, sweet-filled week!

Ciao!

Here are some Magazine Monday posts on other blogs:

Quellia of All Things Edible made a number of goodies.

Linda of Make Life Sweeter! made an incredible Cashew Nut, Honey & Vanilla Pie.

Technorati tags: magazine mondays, shortbread, espresso, chocolate

There was a time in my life when I devoured books (no pun intended). But the long haul of university essays followed by a career where I spend a good part of my day reading and writing resulted in a long break in my pursuit of leisurely reading. Recently, though, I’ve felt the inner call again. That voice that whispers, “Pick up that book. Go look for that old novel you always meant to read. Go spend some time in the library.”

It reminds me of the days when if you wanted to find me, you just had to look for the nearest book. I would read them the way I breathed the air. I couldn’t get enough of them.

This past December, I rediscovered a bit of that reading magic when I read a book that had been sitting, abandoned, on my bookshelf for quite some time. I began reading Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, and fell instantly in love.

Kostova’s novel is about a young girl who, through a series of letters and discussions with her father, uncovers an incredible link to Dracula.

Yep. Christmas reading at its finest! While it may seem highly incongruous that one would read such a book during the holiday season, I tell you I couldn’t put it down.

While the heart of the story is enthralling and suspenseful, the novel also focusses on the magic of history and storytelling.

At around the same time that I was reading the book, I was flipping through Maxine Clark’s Chocolate: Deliciously Indulgent Recipes for Chocolate Lovers which as you know is my Flavour of the Month. And wouldn’t you know, I came across a recipe for Dracula’s Delight. It’s an incredible concoction consisting of a layer of cranberry compote topped by a rich and dark chocolate mousse.

It was every bit as sinful and luxurious as it looks.

I must say. Between the novel and the recipe, Dracula seems most sweet. Darkly so, but sweet nevertheless.

Ciao!

Note: I didn’t make any adaptations to the recipe so I’m not going to share it with you. But you can easily try it at home by making a cranberry compote or cranberry sauce and topping it with your favourite recipe for chocolate mousse.

I’m so happy to see that you’re with me during my month of chocolate. For those of you that haven’t read my last post, I am attempting to post food made with chocolate for the entire month of February!

Today’s post, accomplishes a number of things. First of all, the little cookies you see above are in fact chocolate chip cookies so there’s my chocolate commitment fulfilled. Secondly, this is a Magazine Mondays post as the recipe for those chocolate chip cookies is one that I’d bookmarked awhile ago and finally got around to trying. And finally, I get to tell you about my little eggy friends.

It’s been awhile, but some of you may remember the Traveling Egg Meme. These sweet little creatures were created by Hannah of Bittersweet who gifted them to my sweetie Helene of Tartelette. Helene then decided that rather than keep them to herself, she’d share them with the world via a meme.

These little sweethearts travelled far and wide and made their way to my home last fall thanks to Peabody. Now the idea is to spend some quality time with the eggs and then send them back out into the world, to find a new home and to grace another family with their presence.

Just one problem. I didn’t want to give them up!

During our time together, I grew so attached.

We spent Christmas together.

We played in the snow together.

We read cookbooks together.

We watched hockey together.

We even baked together.

And through it all, I secretly hoped that Hannah and Helene and everyone else would forget the eggs and forget that they were with me. I know. That’s so selfish. But this way my little friends would stay with me always and we would be so happy.

But after a few gentle reminders, I had to face the unhappy truth. It was time to send my little eggs back out into the world.

We spent our final hours together baking these chocolate chip cookies from the May 2007 issue of Martha Stewart Living.

To the person who will soon be receiving my little eggy friends, enjoy them as much as I did!

Ciao!

Well, February certainly isn’t shy.

She has announced herself with much snow and bluster around these parts, anyway. But I don’t mind. The weather has given all of us the perfect reason to hunker down and indulge in hot chocolate and cookbooks.

As I perused The Overburdened Bookshelf for a book to feature as the Flavour of the Month, my eye kept coming back to a recent addition to the bookshelf, Maxine Clark’s Chocolate: Deliciously Indulgent Recipes for Chocolate Lovers.

I bought this book because when I opened it, the very first picture I saw made my mouth water. I immediately snapped it shut and marched to the checkout counter.

Picky shopper, I am not.

Anyway, the experience has given me an idea about the month of February. What if, for the entire month, all my posts were chocolate-related? Can it be done?

Let’s just see, shall we …

Ciao!