TWD: Eastern Mediterranean Pizza

 Great Pizza, easy dough!

The base for this pizza is a pita bread. For a yeasted bread I thought it's relatively easy to handle, two rising/resting periods not more. That's ok.

The Eastern Mediterranean Pizza comes with a tomato topping, some pine nuts and a lot of spices. I added some goat cheese, omitted the lamb (no meat in this house) and gave it some zucchini instead.


I made half the recipe and ended up with for smaller pizzas, just enough for four people for a soccer-
watching-snack. I had some dough-leftovers which I mixed up wit fresh spices and made plain mini-pitas from it (sorry, no pictures). Both - the pizza and the pitas - were really great in taste, even the day after.

Baking time was a bit longer than in the recipe, but maybe the 7,8 mins in the recipe would have even been enough.

To find out about the reciep, have a look at Dorie Greenspans book on p. 156!

TWD: Cheese&Tomato (and Asparagus) Galette

Cheese and Tomato are fine, but asparagus is (still) in season and during this time of the year I could live from just asparagus and strawberries! So I made some changes and turned this galette into a cheese-tomato-aparagus galette.

Honestly, I did not only make some small changes but many bigger ones. But I think it still counts as a TWD-baking :o]

First, I made mini-galettes. I ended up with 5 pieces. Then I left out the Monterey Jack and spread the galettes with some buffallo ricotta I had left. Instead of fresh tomatos I used dried ones (the soft version), gave some leek and aparagus in small pieces on the dough, spiced it with lemon pepper and tarragon, and finished them with a thin aspargus head.
But hey - that's still a galette with cheese and tomato!!

I liked the dough already very much when we made the berry galette because it's a bit like a tart without tart-problems (like a dough getting to burnt or not enough brown). Here I used polenta, what is more or less the same as cornmeal in the end, but chrunchier.

The taste was just great, even the next day when I brought them to office and me and my colleagues nibbled them away. And I really like recipes that allow a lot of variations.

Try this recipe! It's fast, easy and tasty!

TWD rewind and forward: Parmesan Sablés and Golden Brioche Loaf

Only 14 more days to go until Easter sunday, and then I will be back on the actual TWD-recipe rotation!! I am already so much looking forward to it...

For the weekend I had a huge programme: Parmesan Sablés, what I wanted to try since I made the pure Sablés back in December. And because I was a bit ill last week and stayed at home Friday I thought that would be a good occasion to take all my guts and try the Golden Brioche Loaf, as I had enough time. (a recipe that has not yet been on the recipe rotation - is it possible??)

Time is really needed to make the Brioche. But in the end it's oh so worth it.... You need time and patience, because first the dough needs to rest and rise for about an hour. Then you have to regularily deflate it every 30 mins for another two hours. Then it has to rest over night in the fridge. Then you shape it, and then, yes, exactly - it has to rest and rise some more. If you think, well ok, but finally then it is over - not quite. After the appropriate baking time you have to wait for 15 mins before you can take the Brioche out of the pans and molds. And then comes the hard part, that needs not only patience but also self-restraint. Because then you have to wait for at least one hour before you are allowed to taste it. Baking can be so cruel...
But afterwards, believe me, you will be glad you invested all this time and effort and self-restriction. I had some the day I made them, and some more the next day, re-warmed for Sunday breakfast. And I put almost the entire loaf in the fridge and will be making Bostock of it on Easter weekend.

Brioche has always been my favourite escape from my Lenten promise, because it is not really a sweet but definitely a treat. But self-made brioche is even better. I made it without any sugar, and missed nothing.

The Parmesan Sablés turned out pretty good. I love baking savory treats! They turned out a lot like the first Sablés I made in autumn, despite this time they didn't spread (what I suppose they shouldn't, so don't ask me what went wrong in December). And I became a little better at shaping them into logs and get them round. Somehow, I still do have too much wholes in the dough. So I have to re-shape them heavily and cut them very carefully, so they don't break due to the holes in the middle of the circles. Don't know what is wrong. The first and the second rack I made where lovely, just the second got almost burned. The problem might have been that I didn't wait long enough to let the baking-rack and the paper cool down completely. So already after about 8 mins baking time they were dark, dark brown. 

I am eager to do both of them again, but when I see how many new recipes I still have to try out, I doubt if I will find the time. Especially as in 10 days I will start a new, very stressy, but also very exciting job...

TWD rewind: Cheddar-Apple Scones

Prologue
This is my first "Sorry, it's Lenten season, I can't bake without tasting so I am not following the right TWD-recipe-rotation"-entry. I found at least five recipes in Dorie's book where omitting the sugar probably won't make a big difference: Corn &Pepper Muffins, Basic Biscuits, Cheddar-Apple Scones , Sweet Potato Biscuits and the Parmesan Sablés. They all have only 2-3 tabelspoons sugar. Some other scones (especially the Toasted Almond Scones and the Cream Scones) also call for very limited teaspoons of sugar, so it should be possible to leave it out. But the latter two sound almost a bit like a sweet treat and I can better imagine pairing them with nut-spread, chocolate chips or honey than with savory spreads. Lucky me, I love, no, I adore scones and biscuits, no matter if more on the sweet or the savory side.
I only need four recipes for the weeks to come until Easter. I recognized that not all of them have already been in the recipe rotation, and I am afraid it only counts when I "catch-up" with somehting all the other eager and gifted bakers made in the almost two years before I joined.

So I started with the Cheddar-Apple Scones. It was originally due for July 1st 2008 and chosen by Karina of The Floured Apron. The recipe can be found on her blog or on page 32 of Dorie Greenspan's "Baking: From my home to yours".

When I woke up on Sunday morning I decided to get up and bake them for breakfast. Can a Sunday morning breakfast start better than with fresh, warm scones?

In the end, I dawdled away with whatever stuff, and didn't get started before almost lunch time. (Lunch-time on week-days. I believe there is a different time-zone applying for weekdays and week-ends. So it was still like Brunch-time on a weekend. And can a Sunday Brunch start better than with fresh, warm scones? :o])

I followed the recipe as written except that I used a bit more corn-meal and left out some all-purpose (spelt) flour instead, because I started to like corn-meal. Not that I had ever used it (or heard of it...) before I started with TWD, what is not really long ago, but since I really started to appreciate it for the texture it brings about, and I even have the feeling it slightly influences the colour. I switched only 1/4 cup.

I am a big cheese-in-any-ways lover and cheddar is an all-time favourite. I had some grated cheddar left from, uh, no idea. Just had it.

The scones turned out won-der-ful. I made several batches. For the first batch I used tablespoons to spoon them on the baking sheet. I often need less baking-time than indicated in the recipes, no idea why. I got them out the oven just in the very last minute before they turned dark-brown/black. I saved them, but it was nearly too late. And I found out why the recipe asks for grated or very finely chopped dry apples, for what I was too lazy. I only made medium sized chunks, and the pieces on the surface turned very dark. No, that's not true - they actually turned black.(But it didn't harm the overall picture too much.)

For the second batch I used a silicone mold for six minis with flower-shaped bottoms. The second batch I pulled out the oven too early. Hm, alright, I thought, I even have enough batter for a third batch. For this last rack I used a teaspoon to bring them on the baking sheet, because I thought they could be served as tea-biscuits at the office, and therefore it would be better if the scones were mini-scones.

And, what can I say, the third better turned out just fine.

But the best of all was to eat a first test-piece of the very first batch while the second was in the oven. To brake them up, and see them steam. Per-fect.








(I don't have to speak about the taste, do I? Won-der-ful!! Maybe, I thought, some nuts would not have been too bad. But you know what? They are just perfect without. Combining a lot of tastes can be fun, but it's not always necessary to include everything and all that could possibly also go with it. Sometimes more pureness is just adequate.)


Even more lucky me, I used all the wonderful cup- and spoon-measures I brought home from NYC, so I did not waste this huge amount of time I used to for converting measures into grams. Yeah! Baking is even more fun like that!!