New Items!

Folks, we're having a small change in direction. While I've enjoyed exploring all kinds of breads and biscuits and bready cakes, we are getting into fall. That means, apples, pears, and pumpkins and all kind of yummy desserts. It means holiday dinners, dinners with friends and pot lucks, While I realized that I needed to make decisions about what to plan to make and bring to various events, I realized that you're probably in the same boat. So, throughout the holiday season, I'm going to be offering various seasonal desserts that can be purchased. Below is a first installment, with more details to come throughout the week and more options to show up weekly. Sign up on the blog for updates and contact me at yourbusybeebakery@gmail.com with any questions or suggestions.

Enjoy!

New this week:

Chocolate -Dipped Dates Stuffed with Spiced Nuts

Gateau de Sirop

Grape and Apple Pie

Peanut-Pecan Butter and Outmal Cookies

Poached Apples with Vanilla Yogurt

Pumpkin-Pear Crisps

Vanilla-Spiced Caramel and Pear Tart

Currant Biscuits

Currant biscuits bring us a little sweetness. They have little dried currants, a little extra sugar and are topped with cinnamon sugar. Yum!

I have a few tips for forming the biscuits. The dough needs to be rolled out evenly. When you cut the shapes, cut straight down instead of twisting. Space the cuts as closely as possible to minimize scraps. You can roll out the scraps and make more biscuits but the more you do this, the tougher the dough gets. Placing them upside down on the baking sheet gives you straighter sides and brushing the tops with eggs or milk gives you  some extra browning.

Cheddar Biscuits

Everyone wants a cheddar biscuit! They’re no different from regular biscuits except that I get to add a ton of cheddar to the dough. I should have added even more.

So far, all of these biscuits have been mixed using the biscuit method. This means mixing all of the dry ingredients, cutting in the shortening, combining the liquid ingredients separately and then mixing it all together. It only gets kneaded lightly. Different people like different variations of their biscuits. If you like a flaky biscuit, use more shortening and don’t mix it in as thoroughly. If you like a tender, crusty biscuit with less volume, don’t knead the dough.

Buttermilk Biscuits

A slight variation on the biscuit is the popular buttermilk biscuit. The only difference is that is uses buttermilk instead of milk, reduces the amount of baking powder and adds baking soda. 

The trick to a good biscuit is that it should only be lightly kneaded. This develops some flakiness but avoids toughening the biscuit.  Using chemical leavening agents like baking powder and baking soda creates a different texture than yeast. You want a biscuit to be tender instead of chewy. The key to this is only slight gluten development. The more you knead, the stronger the gluten gets, the more your biscuit will resemble a hockey puck and nobody likes eating hockey pucks. Fortunately for me... these ended up pretty fluffy.

Biscuits

This week, we’re having quick breads. After working with yeast products for a couple of weeks, this is a welcome relief. Now there is no longer a need for fermentation time.  First up are plain biscuits. Biscuits are made from soft doughs. They can be rolled out and cut into desired shapes.  I used a 2 inch cookie cutter for mine but larger sizes are probably more traditional and square shapes are fine too. I kind of like my mini biscuits. I thought they were cute.

Banana Tarte Tatin

If there is one thing I’ve learned in life, it is that sometimes, despite our best intentions and planning, it is the accidents that are most delicious and most rewarding. Such is the story of the tarte tatin…both versions.  In one version of the story, the chef left the apples cooking in butter and sugar for too long and decided to try to save it by adding pastry dough on top and tossing it in an oven.  In another version, the tart was cooked upside down by mistake. I’m not sure how one can bake a tart upside down by mistake without noticing so I’m going to place my bet on the first theory. Either way, the guests at the Hotel Tatin were pretty happy with the result.

Fast forward 110+ years and I’ve got a book club brunch planned. I’ve been meeting with a group of girls once every month or two for the past few years. Over time we realized that we don’t always read the books we pick and sometimes we don’t spend too much time talking about them.  Nontheless, it’s a great excuse to get together, eat and chat. We each bring a dish, usually inspired by whatever the book selection was. In case you’re wondering, we do sometimes pick the book based on what we feel like cooking. This month, we were planning to have brunch. What better dish to make than individual tarte tatins for a group of sweet girls with an appreciation for life’s accidents. Being in Miami, I figure it would be fun to use bananas instead of apples. I pre-assembled the tartes at home in individual ramekins and then baked them on site. I added a little French vanilla ice cream while they were nice and hot right out of the oven and suddenly, nobody cared that I never found he time to read this month's book!

Hot Cross Buns! Hot Cross Buns!

If the crosses are missing, can you still call them hot cross buns?  Yes, in my world, absolutely!  It’s not that they weren’t applied. It’s just that the icing I used ended up clear and runny. (The picture in this post is pre-cross).  I’ll work on perfecting the icing some other time. In the meantime, that extra sugar on the top of the buns was just what they needed.

Technically, these are supposed to be served hot or toasted on Good Friday, with the crosses as a symbol of the Crucifixion. Some think that these buns pre-date Christianity and that the cross honors goddess Eostre (Eostre =>Easter).  Apparently there are a few superstitions to go with these little buns. Sharing a hot cross bun ensures friendship throughout the coming year. On ships, they protect against shipwreck. If hung in the kitchen, they protect against fires and ensure that breads turn out perfectly. Giving one to a sick person helps to cure them. Powerful stuff!

These rolls are spiced and have raisins and little dried currants in them. The glaze on top and the cross (clear or visible) adds just the right amount of sweetness to make these scrumptious, moist little balls of yumminess.  This was my surprise favorite of the week.

The Hills are Alive!

Today we’re visiting the German/Austrian cousin of the babka.  We’re having Kugelhopf!

How do you pronounce that? KOO-guhl-hopf.

Kugel is ball in German and hopf means jump, as in the dough jumps or rises.  This is ironic considering that it seems to be a pretty common challenge to get kugelhopf dough to rise in the pan. (There seems to be very little trouble getting the first rise. It’s the second rise in the pan that is troublesome).  What pan do you ask?  A kugelhopf pan. This may or may not be easy to find.  A lot of people just use whatever bundt pan they have available but it should be noted that a bundt cake (rising with baking powder and baking soda) is very different from a kugelhopf (a yeast rising bread). I did manage to acquire the appropriate pan but I can see that my storage space in my kitchen leaves much to be desired and I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out where to put it now that my kugelhopf experiment is complete.

The kugelhopf is like a less-rich brioche with raisins and almonds and unfortunately, I find it goes stale pretty quickly. The remedy for that is slicing, toasting and topping it with butter and honey or jam. Add that to a nice pot of tea and breakfast is served. It’s no wonder that Marie Antoinette brought the recipe with her to France.  It’s still an iconic bread in Alsace and the French still say it was their idea.

A trick for next time would be to soak the raisins in kirschwasser (cherry brandy) before adding them. For now, I’ll just sit down and enjoy my breakfast.



You Can't Beat A Babka

Today we eat something very similar to yesterday’s stollen, but with less fruit and more cardamom. Aside from those changes and a change in appearance of course, that just about covers it. The doughs, although similar, do have a different history.

Babka or baba means grandmother in Polish/ Belarusian/ Ukrainian/ Russian.  Some say that the bread got its name because the Polish Easter babka is usually made in a bundt pan with ridges, making the bread take the shape of the pleated skirt of a grandmother. I just think that a lot of Eastern European grandmothers baked A LOT of these breads. One might as well name it in honor of the baker.

Breaking it down, there are basically two versions of a babka. There is the Eastern European spongy, brioche-like cake with fruit (usually raisins) with a fruit flavored icing. Second, there is the Jewish version that has cinnamon or chocolate and is topped with streusel.  What happens if you’re baking for Jewish Eastern Europeans?  I’m not sure, but I made the brioche-like cake with raisins and topped it with streusel. In retrospect, I’m seriously regretting the omission of oodles of chocolate. Serious. Regret.

Because of the mistake I’m now left with raisiny, slightly cinnamony fluffy babka. How I suffer. A small note though. It doesn’t stay fluffy forever. I recommend toasting, adding butter and serving with a side of scrambled eggs. In the words of Elaine Benes, “you can’t beat a babka.”

Stollen

I’m not an advocate of Christmas creep but I don’t see anything wrong with practicing well before the holidays. Besides, this week is the first week of the season where the high temperature for the day in Miami is below 80 degrees. It’s officially winter!  Not quite, but whatever. Details.

Staying in the family of rich sweet doughs, we’re tackling stollen. This is one of those breads that people either love or hate. Really, it isn’t fair to the stollen. There are soooo many recipes and variations.  Like many people, I’ve also tried the stollen that was hard as a rock and seems filled with petrified unidentifiable fruit. I always questioned the concept of bread that can be wrapped up to last “forever”.  To the uninitiated, it’s hard to find a way to describe it without uttering the word, “fruitcake”, at which point people cringe remembering some long ago uncomfortable visit to an elderly distant relative that insisted you try it and take an extra one home, despite it being two years old.  It doesn’t have to be this way!

Yes, stollen is a bread-like fruitcake. There are thousands of variations on this tradition. I wanted to stick to something traditional that included its distinct flavor so as not to offend stollen enthusiasts, but without inducing cringes by everyone else. I set out to convert people to the brighter side of stollen. The major change…traditionally, it would include glaceed (candied) fruits.  This is what I think might be the dealbreaker for many people. Biting into dessert bread and having your teeth crunch into hard candy does not a happy Christmas caroler make. I opted to stick to raisins and dried fruit (cherries, cranberries, blueberries). No glazes. Next time, I might soak the fruit in brandy first but it is only October after all.  I guess I wasn’t that festive yet.  Some people include a marzipan “rope” in the middle of the dough but it isn’t my preference. I just used some almond extract. 

The end result was a bread that was not as dense, tasted distinctly stolleny and didn’t hurt anyone’s teeth. Woohoo!

Here’s an interesting factoid:  Stollen used to be tasteless and hard due to a lack of butter. In the 15^th century, in the Saxon royal court, the Advent season was a time of fasting and the Catholic Church required bakers to use oil instead of butter.  After writing letters to various popes and waiting 40 years, a “butter letter” was sent by Pope Innocent VIII granting the right to use butter, without requiring payment of a fine, but only to the Prince-Elector and his family and household. So how is it that Saxons came to enjoy buttery stollen during the holidays without paying a fine?  Saxony became Protestant.  Good thing too. While I was more conservative, I've heard that some European bakeries keep an enormous pot of melted butter handy to dip entire loaves in.  yum.

Tomorrow… we eat babka!

Sweet Rolls

We have moved on to rich yeast doughs!

The difference between these yeast doughs and the ones I made before for bread is that now, I’m using more sugar and fat. This means two things. First, fermentation is inhibited and second, it creates a softer dough. To balance these effects, I add extra yeast and reduce the quantity of water.

Last night I made a batch of sweet rolls with a streusel topping. This roll isn’t quite as rich as some of the others that I’ll be making but I admit that it’s kind of a relief to finally move on to some sweets.

“Streusel” is a typically German. Streuen in German, is a verb meaning scattering or sprinkling, which makes sense considering how streusel is a crumb topping of butter, flour and sugar that is common on so many desserts.  I added some cinnamon to this one.

Once again, I got started too late. I thought I was out of the woods with the long fermentation times. WRONG.  Once again, I wasn’t finished until about 2 am. I have always heard that bakers tend to burn the midnight oil but I was hoping to avoid that with good planning. So much for that theory.  The bigger issue is that I wrongly assumed that I no longer needed my baking stone. About 10 minutes into baking I was greeted with an unpleasant burning smell. It looks like the bottom of most of the rolls got too dark. Overall, I'm disapointed. It looks like I will have to do some serious adjustments. 

French Bread (Sponge Method)

I had promised one more French bread, made with a different method than the previous versions. I finally got around to delivering.

There are two issues to cover. First, in previous posts, I had mentioned baguettes and afterwards I referred to the loaves simply as French bread. I should clarify. These terms cannot be interchanged. I should not have referred to baguettes earlier. I will make baguettes at a later date but so far, I’ve only been making French bread.  The French have various breads that are not actually a baguette, no matter what shape they are formed into. The baguette has a crispier crust and cannot include syrups, sugar or fats (butter, shortening or oil). The dough for the baguette is actually defined by French law. Understandably, they take this stuff pretty seriously.

Moving on to methodology. The French breads made previously, including the whole wheat, involved  mixing by a straight dough method. This means mixing the yeast with warm water, adding flour, the rest of the ingredients and mixing and then fermenting. Simple enough. Today’s bread was created using a sponge method. This means combining the liquid, yeast and part of the flour and letting it ferment for a LONG time. Afterwards, the rest of the flour and the remaining ingredients are added.  In French, this method is known as levain-levure.  This is not the same as the yeast starter or pre-ferment used for sourdoughs. Sourdoughs recycle portions of old starters or mother dough. The sponge method is made from fresh ingredients.

So what is the difference really, besides some technicalities?  Bread made with the sponge method has a better taste, softer texture and a larger volume. Unfortunately, it also takes quite a bit more time. In colder climates, I might have been able to let the dough ferment overnight, but Miami isn’t that kind of place and four hours was plenty. After getting started, it meant that the dough was finally fermented at 12:30 am.  By the time it was out of the oven, it was 2:20 am. I suppose the consolation was fresh bread for breakfast after needing to wake up at 6:30 am. Note to self:  Don’t try using the sponge method on a weeknight.

So this brings me to the end of lean doughs (at least for a while). Coming up next, I'm moving on to rich doughs. In other words, bring on the sugar and butter!

Pizza Pantalon!

Things have been busy around here and I have some serious catching up to do!

Last weekend included typical but good chaos. On a personal note, I should give some background.  On an average day, the only person here to try out my creations is my boyfriend. However, his two teenage sons spend every other weekend with us. They will definitely be testing out many of the things that will appear on this site.

We had a lot of bread to be made into an unlimited quantity of grilled cheese sandwiches but it was the pizza dough that got everyone’s interest. I had been told that the dough I had made a few days earlier was very similar to a beloved “Pizza Pantalon” from Salerno’s, which is a popular pizzeria in Cali, Colombia, their hometown.  Pizza Pantalon is a Calzone. Not one to shy away from a challenge, I tried to recreate the sauce, got a consensus on what everyone’s preferred filling was and embarked on using the previously tested pizza dough formula to make Pizza Pantalon. I made the same quantity of dough but instead of making two pizzas, I made three calzones and one pizza. The end result was delicious! One had a ham filling, one had a mushroom filling and mine was another Margarita with tomatoes and basil and buffalo mozzarella. One Pizza Pantalon could easily have fed two people but we pretty much devoured our servings the same night, after which everyone was feeling fat and happy.

Buon appetito!

Whole Wheat French Bread

I definitely got off to a late start last night. I'm going to need to be more efficient by baking more on the weekends and spreading out the posts. Baking every day is a herculean effort.

The results of last night's efforts was a whole wheat French bread. I'm finally happy with the crumb inside of the bread. I'm still working on the crust. This time the dough was hand kneaded and I gave it a much longer proof. Unfortunately, during the proof both loaves expanded to the point that they were touching and I fear that in the process of separating them and shoveling them into the oven, the crust lost some of its surface tension. Aside from that, I included a pan of water on the lowest level of the oven to provide steam for the first 10 minutes. However, in the rush of things and in a desperate desire to get some sleep, I don't believe that I let the oven preheat long enough. It may have been 425 degrees but the stone should have been heated longer and the water should have been steamier before I added the dough.

Tonight is my last bread attempt for a while, as it is time to move on to other things. There is so much to cover! I'll be doing another french bread but will use the sponge method this time. More on that later.

French Bread

Bread is tricky. I've baked a lot of cakes and pies and cookies and never spent much time on bread until now. Baking decent bread isn't too difficult, but I can see that making great bread involves a lot of trial and error. Humid conditions and an old oven are probably not helping much but I'm going with the theory that anything is possible with enough effort. How very German of me... I know.

So far, my French bread attempt has been my favorite. That's not to say it's a perfect loaf of bread. Far from it. But... this has been the first loaf of bread that really had that lovely aroma of freshly baked, home made bread. There was nothing that was going to stop me from tearing off an end of the loaf as soon as it came out of the oven so that I could have a taste. It tastes as good as it smells.

On to the challenges:

• Crust:  The crust was crusty last night when it was baked. This morning... not so much. Too much humidity? Not sure. Proper french bread should get crustier, stale even, after sitting around for a while. I tried a different method for steaming. I sprayed the bread a few times in the first 10 minutes of baking. This turned out to be a bad idea. The loaf closest to the spray ended up bursting on the side with the most moisture. Will need to try another technique next time.
• Center: It's delicious and there are bubbles, but I suspect some of the dough is still too dense. The culprit is likely that I'm underproofing.

More proofing time and different steaming technique will be tried out later when I try a whole wheat french bread. Wish me luck!

Pizza Night!

I thought it might be a good idea to put all of these dough supplies to good use and make some pizza. Quite frankly, as much as I've been enjoying the bread, I was pretty excited about eating something other than sandwiches this week. Basically this pizza dough was the same as the Italian bread, but with the addition of some oil and sugar.

After mixing the dough and setting it aside to ferment I ran out to the grocery store to pick up toppings (a lot of cheese, ham, tomatoes and basil). Once it was time to roll the dough, it was already pretty late and perhaps I wasn't as lucid as I had hoped. I seem to have made a slight misjudgement. I've made pizzas in the past using various different doughs, but none of them were a "proper" or "traditional" Italian bread pizza dough. In other words, none of them rose quite like this one did. I could easily have made four large personal pizzas with the quantity of dough I had but instead I made two.

The result.

Well, the downside is that I ended up with a pretty thick crust. The upside is that the crust was delicious. They weren't the prettiest pizzas ever but needless to say, they took "midnight snack" to a whole new level.

Coming up next, French baguettes!

Whole Wheat Italian Bread

Had my first official baking session on a week night. In a way, this wasn't too bad. Bread isn't as labor intensive as some other baking ventures, but waiting for it to ferment requires patience and inevitably, a late bed time.

This Whole Wheat Italian Bread has all of the comfort of a traditional Italian bread, but has the healthy feel of a whole wheat. It isn't made entirely of whole wheat. If it was, it would lose the lightness in flavor and texture of an Italian bread.

Tonight will be the last of this round of Italian breads. I'm going to put all of these bread supplies to good use and make some pizza!

Happy Bread Week!

It looks like we’re going to be eating a lot of sandwiches around here this week. Out of the oven today were hard rolls, Vienna bread and Italian bread.  All of these breads are known for their crisp, thin crusts. They have little to no sugar or fat (although that can be remedied depending on what you plan to have with the bread!)

Tricks and tips I picked up today. If you can’t steam bread in your home oven, just take an aluminum roasting pan and invert it over your bread for the first 10 minutes of baking. This can be problematic when the bread is bigger than the roasting pan, but I may just start baking smaller portions at a time. Also, if you can’t find malt syrup, maple syrup will suffice in a pinch. Malt syrup can be ordered online with advance planning, something that I need to get on the ball with.

First up were the hard rolls.  Not too bad.  Definitely lovely right out of the oven. The crust is somewhere between crispy and flaky. I think I’ll leave them in a bit longer next time just to let them get a bit crustier.

I did a better job with that in the following Vienna bread. This will make great sandwich bread and would be great with a French onion soup.  The Viennese developed the steam method to create the crust. It is often prepared as a long loaf and is a precursor to the better known French baguette.

Before I get to the baguette, I took a detour to Italy. It is softer than French bread, due in part to the addition of oil. This one came out with a better split down the middle of the top of the loaf. It makes me want to have something saucy or soupy to mop up. 

I’m afraid that my mother won’t revert back to grocery store bread after this was delivered to her house.

Coming up next will be a whole wheat version of the same Italian bread. Anybody want some?

 

Introductions

Let me introduce myself. I’m Helga. Pause. No, I don’t look like a Viking, nor do I look like a Nordic supermodel. I do live in South Florida (where there aren’t many people that share my name).  I’m an engineer by day. I tend to keep myself pretty busy at work and outside of it, which is why you may find it strange that I would embark on this adventure. For those that know me, this should come as no surprise.  I tend to keep myself…. busy.

I’ve been baking for a few years, entirely for friends and family.  It turns out that I’m getting pretty good at it and even better…I really enjoy it.  I want to bake more. A lot more.

The plan (because every engineer likes a plan):

Bake as much as possible, considering time and funding constraints.  There is a lot that I want to learn and recipes I’d like to perfect. I can’t possibly eat everything I bake, so I’m hoping that my friends and family can help in that area. In the interest of maintaining waistlines, I suspect they will start donating these baked goods to their friends, families and coworkers. Should someone like to purchase one of these creations, I’d be happy to oblige…and so… a bakery can be born. A Busy Bee Bakery that is.