In the “The Dinner Party” episode, Seinfeld says it best: “You can’t beat a babka.” He means the chocolate babka, where dark chocolate zigzags wildly through a sweet yeasted loaf, swirling this way and that. Jerry’s bakery ran out of his object of desire, but you don’t have to depend on a bakery for your babka fix. It’s easier to make than you’d think—you just have to allow time to let the dough rise overnight. And all that gooey chocolate makes it totally worth it. Babka or krantz cake? We ran across the basis for this babka recipe in the Jerusalem cookbook. Authors Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi praise it as “the most popular…
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Cakey and Sweet Cornbread
This soft and sweet cornbread tastes cakey, but you probably wouldn’t mistake it for dessert. Its tiny cornmeal crunch and golden crust make it the perfect all-American side to soups, stews, chili and barbecue. And instead of going all crumbly, it stays moist and fluffy for breakfast or snacking the next day—in the unlikely event you have any left over. So where does this cornbread fit in geographically? Northern or Southern? We first snarfed down cakey and sweet cornbread at the Hangin 8 BBQ restaurant in Eufaula, Oklahoma. So we’d say it comes from right smack in the middle of the country. Our version, adapted from Allrecipes, hits the same cakey chords. The…
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Braided Bread with Pesto (Treccia al Pesto)
Got basil? Whirr it into pesto and swirl it into an elegant braid of Italian bread. You won’t believe how easily this Braided Bread with Pesto (Treccia al Pesto) comes together into a fragrant, flavorful appetizer. And as a side bread, it can spruce up an everyday meal. The twisted braid idea comes from our son-in-law Gordy. His “crown bread” filled with tapenade and blue cheese (from Nadiya Hussain of the Great British Baking Show) blew us away. With its dark filling and gorgeous layers, it got mistaken for dessert when he took it to a party. We simplified the bread recipe and substituted pesto because our garden basil has gone berserk. And…
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Simit, Turkish Bagels
Our friends Ruth and Joe vacationed in Turkey many years ago and fell for twisty rings of sesame-encrusted bread called simit. Nothing like it, they say. A beloved street food, these “Turkish bagels” entice passers-by to grab them from little trolleys, or from vendors carrying them on wooden sticks or on trays balanced on top of their heads. Out of the blue, Ruth surprised us with a simit (the word is both singular and plural) from a local bakery. While simit looks rather bagel-ish, it has little of the heft of a bagel. It nearly levitates off your plate. Its chewy crust, which tickles your tongue with subtle sweetness, encases a fluffy interior. Hooked,…
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Paul Hollywood’s Crumpets
On a recent trip to England, we fell hard for the hot, buttery crumpets served on the 10:03 train from London’s King’s Cross Station to Leeds. We’d splurged on first class with meal service—well worth it just to experience these soft, griddled treats that soaked up butter like sponges. Make these beauties for breakfast, brunch or tea, and you too will understand why Brits love their crumpets. Not English Muffins While crumpets are English and muffins, they are not English muffins. If you crossed English muffins with pancakes, you’d get something like crumpets. Crumpets start with a bubbly yeasted batter, not a dough like English muffins. The batter cooks in rings on a griddle…
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Chapati, Indian Whole-Wheat Flatbread
The people of India usually enjoy their dishes with either bread or rice—not both. We all can make rice, but how about one of those fabulous Indian flatbreads? Simple whole-wheat chapati, AKA roti, makes a nice holiday from basmati. It puffs up when griddled, then flattens into something like a tortilla. Soft and pliable, it’s perfect for scooping up curries and spreading with chutney. A staple in Indian homes for thousands of years, chapati goes from zero to the table in minutes and fits anybody’s budget. A couple things make this recipe a keeper. First, you don’t need to buy whole-wheat atta flour, the kind they use in India. You’ll get a wonderfully toasty…
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Butter-Bran Bread from Uncle John’s Original Bread Book
Braué’s Butter-Bran Bread. Say that three times fast. A bit tough to say, but easy—and rewarding—to make. Tender-crusted and fluffy, this no-knead loaf dates back to Prussia in the 1800s, according to the late actor/baker/author John Rahn Braué, AKA Uncle John. Bread-Bakers’ Gold Braué came from a long line of German master bread bakers. He wrote Uncle John’s Original Bread Book (published in 1961) to pass on “priceless recipes…handed down family to family, baker to baker, friend to friend, tested and retested by my father and thousands of unknowns.” I stumbled upon Uncle John’s book in the cookbook room of the legendary New England Mobile Book Fair discount bookstore, a now-closed Boston institution. What…
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Steamed Chinese Buns (Bao) with Chicken or Char Shu Pork
Our friends Joanne and David made these pillowy Steamed Chinese Buns long before the term “bao” (short for “baozi”) became fashionable. Fluffy and full of flavor, these buns rival those you’d get at any restaurant. The secret is the soft, enriched dough which puffs up high and airy in the steamer. Stuff it with Char Shu Pork or David’s Garlic-Ginger Chicken and you’ll be in bao heaven. Joanne started making this lighter-than-air dough using a recipe she found in the 1986 issue of Better Homes and Gardens. David, who knows his way around a wok, created this luscious Garlic-Ginger Chicken filling to go with it. We’ve also tacked on a sweet and salty Char…
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Anchovy Bread (Sfogliata)
A tiny grenade of umami, the humble anchovy gives chefs a secret weapon for deepening the flavor and richness of sauces and stews. It melts away as it cooks, leaving only salt and a savory meatiness. But Italians take anchovies out from behind the curtain, celebrating them in the dish bagna càuda, in robust pasta sauces, and as a classic pizza topping. And this Italian Anchovy Bread (aka Sfogliata), sliced into colorful little pinwheels with luscious paprika-spiced filling, further proves how anchovies can command center stage. We first learned about this easy and elegant bread from Ruth Reichl’s book, My Kitchen Year. Ruth, the longtime Editor-in-Chief of Gourmet and acclaimed food critic at the…
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Kathleen’s Canadian Oatmeal Molasses Bread, AKA Maritime Oatmeal Bread
This high-rising oatmeal bread features a smack of molasses for a deep color and bright flavor. Who’d guess that a multi-grain loaf could be this fluffy and taste so luscious? Canadian Oatmeal Molasses Bread dresses up a sandwich, makes gorgeous toast, and feels like an indulgence when spread with butter. We snapped up the recipe from our friend Julie’s mom, Kathleen, when we visited her decades ago in the historic seaside town of St. Andrews, New Brunswick. We always figured this bread was just another of Kathleen’s many specialties. Now we learn it’s a traditional bread from Canada’s Maritime region, often called Maritime Oatmeal Bread or Oatmeal Brown Bread. Rich in molasses and often…
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Emily Adair’s Best Biscuits from Sue Aldrich
For as long as we’ve known Sue Aldrich—from way back in the Dark Ages—we’ve loved her light, flaky biscuits. They’re simply the best. She credits Emily Adair, her great-grandmother and namesake—middle name—for this classic recipe. As Sue tells it, “My paternal grandmother, Ora McKim, was a teenager in Michigan when her father came home with a new wife—Emily—after a brief trip to the city. The ‘city’ was probably Cass City, Michigan, population around 1,200 in 1915.” Emily raised Ora and her sister Cecil, who were barely younger than their new mother. “I’m sure everyone loved Emily—except of course Ora, who saw her as competition,” says Sue. She adds that Ora turned into a bit…
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Basic Yeasted Flatbread
Is it Indian? Israeli? Italian? All of the above. With a dough this universal, Basic Yeasted Flatbread passes for all sorts of nationalities. It scoops up curry just like naan, dips into hummus like pita, and doubles as perfect pizza dough. Soft, chewy and heavenly when served warm from the griddle, it reminds us why we love our daily bread. This recipephany came from Mollie Katzen, a hero ever since her 1977 Moosewood Cookbook. In Sunlight Cafe: Breakfast Served All Day, she confessed her special relationship with this flatbread. She always had dough in the fridge, and made flatbreads all hours of the day. And we can see why—it has proved itself a loyal friend…
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Easy, Fluffy, Fabulous Sandwich Bread from “Mr. King Arthur” Himself
Baking hobbyists like to get their kicks at the King Arthur Baking Company. If you’ve seen their mail-order catalog, you know it peddles baking porn at its most seductive. Just looking at those specialty flours, secret ingredients, shiny pans and professional gadgets makes my heart go pit-a-pat. And then there are the online recipes. More than 500 breads plus tons of cakes, cookies and pastries—everything from serious sourdoughs to fake Twinkies. King Arthur used this recipe for many years as a kind of gateway drug to bread baking. Milk-enriched, it has the soft, pillowy texture you’ll find in the trendy Japanese milk bread, but without all the fuss. Two balls of dough for each…
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Marble Wheat, Spiral Wheat, or Double Take Bread? Just call it “Aviation Bread.”
Airplanes, automobiles and Seinfeld created American crazes—and brought two-toned bread along for the ride. “Marble” or “marbled” bread usually refers to rye bread with a yin-yang swirl of light and dark. Two breads in one—what a luxury. It makes Reubens more Reubenesque. It draws us in with that hypnotic spiral. Seinfeld elevated a braided version of this deli specialty to an object of adulation and obsession in “The Rye” episode. But a two-toned bread made of wheat generally just gets called “spiral.” Although it looks like marble rye and could probably substitute for it, hardly anyone calls it “marble wheat.” Double Take Bread Years ago, someone made a valiant attempt to give spiral whole…
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Better-Than-Brioche Burger Buns
In the baking aisle at Stop and Shop many years ago I passed by a young mother with two small children. She was intently surveying the shelves when her little girl reached for a tub of ready-made fudge frosting and begged, “Mommy, can we get this?” “Honey,” she snapped in a reprimanding tone, “if I’m going to go through all the trouble of baking a cake, I’m not going to put that shit all over it.” While her choice of words led me to question her parenting style, the wisdom of them has stuck with me. Yes, it’s all too easy to skimp on finishing touches. Consider the venerable hamburger. Carefully crafted and perfectly…
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Neo-Neapolitan Pizza Dough
There is no greater glory for flour and yeast than to metamorphose into pizza dough. Yet, hard as we try, it’s difficult to capture the flavor and chew of pizzeria crust at home. What’s the secret? If you ask Christopher Kimball, he’d say the secret ingredient in great pizza dough isn’t an ingredient at all: it’s temperature. Just before baking, bring the dough to 75°F, and it will puff up and give you a lovely crust.* In Naples, though, they would offer another, more powerful secret ingredient that’s also not an ingredient: a wood fire. A wood-fired oven radiates the heat of Hades for a quick, dramatic rise. The crust gets crisp on the…
- Appetizers, Breads, Cheese dishes, Crackers, Pastries, Side Dishes, Snacks, Techniques & Ingredients
Puffy Cheese Sticks
As we dip our toes back into the sea of socializing, we need PPEs—Prepared Party Edibles—snacks that are ready to serve the moment the stars align. These flaky, cheddar-laced sticks make the perfect nibble—they are simple to prep and freeze, and then quickly bake into puffy little wands of cheesy goodness. Before snack scientists created vacuum-packed rods of mozzarella so parents could dole out string cheese to kids, “cheese sticks” referred to these savory pastry hors d’oeuvres. Also known as cheese straws, they go back to the kitchens of the 1860s, with notable recipes in UK’s famed Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861) and in Godey’s Magazine (October 1865) in the US. The…
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Whose Passover Popovers Win You Over?
Before Passover is over, treat yourself to some popovers. Judy Geller, a dream client and the mastermind behind many industry-leading conferences and events, introduced me to these years ago. We would meet at a cafe where I could spread out advertising concepts and layouts for her to review. Then we’d linger and talk about family, holidays, and her family’s Passover Popover recipe. These popovers are so delicious, so un-Passover-ish, we might as well just call them “bread” and be done with the pretense. The other day when I called to ask if I could post the recipe, Judy asked, “Which one?” To my surprise, she has not one, but two family recipes for Passover…
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Italian Star Bread Secrets Revealed! Make Bakery-Quality Loaves.
For decades I’ve sought this holy grail of bread recipes. Star bread, the American cousin of what I consider the finest bread in Italy, is the stuff of legends. Italian bakers introduced it to Springfield, Massachusetts, and a few other places in the state about a hundred years ago. Specialty Italian bakeries hooked customers on the twisty-shaped loaves, also called “horn bread” or “bolognese bread.” Those bakeries have dwindled to a handful, and star bread always sells out—often before it reaches the shelves. What makes it so special? The hard, golden brown, impossibly smooth crust has the crunch of a dry breadstick. In contrast, the soft crumb inside is fine, compact, and as bright…
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Brilliant Baking with the Bread Bucket
Now I know how I’ll make my millions. I’ll dust the cobwebs off my MBA and manufacture a shiny new version of the bread bucket, a once-popular tool for cranking out bakery-quality loaves. I betcha even King Arthur Flour will feature this brilliant energy saver in their baking porn catalog. Of course, I’ll have to cut Bruce Belden in on the deal. Bruce, the illustrious president of my high school class, has become an ardent home bread baker and he tipped me off about the bread bucket phenomenon. Here’s Bruce’s story. Once you’ve read it, you’ll want in on the bread bucket business, too. ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ Cranking Out Loaves with the Bread Bucket by Bruce…
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Raegan’s No-Knead Focaccia
My daughter-in-law Raegan Sales, creative vegetarian home cook and baker, generously offers yet more proof that some great breads just about make themselves. She started with something called “Ridiculously Easy Focaccia Bread” and—yes—made it even easier. And ridiculously delicious. With Raegan’s Focaccia, a bubbly wet dough bakes into a delightfully chewy golden-crusted flatbread. It owes its tender crumb and lovely flavor to hours of fermentation in the fridge and oodles of olive oil. About all we do is stir and stare, except when we get to poke our fingers into the squishy, oily dough. The payoff: warm, aromatic, hole-studded focaccia eager to get dunked into more olive oil or devoured on the spot. It…
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Muriel Brody’s Wheat Germ Banana Bread
My mom died in August, just a month shy of turning 102. She was a success at more than just longevity. She became an art teacher rather than a journalist because her father thought it was a safer profession for women in the 1930s. And even though she’d never picked up a paintbrush until she entered Moore College of Art, her watercolors were as masterful as if she’d been born with the divine gift. She gave up teaching to serve as a Naval officer’s wife at a time when “entertaining” was serious business. Throwing dinner parties and organizing wives’ club luncheons were part of the job, and she had the poise and smarts to…
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Emergency Corn Biscuits
Emergency Corn Biscuits lured me in with the wacky name, but they could just as well have been called Cornbread-Lovers’ Biscuits. This recipe is out of the 1922 Good Housekeeping cookbook, from an era when American housewives apparently faced corn biscuit emergencies. I tried to imagine such predicaments: “Honey, the Johnsons just brought over baked beans.” Or: “The wrestling coach wants you to put on how many pounds, Jimmy?” Or: “How long has this sack of cornmeal been in the pantry?” But the emergency—and a serious one at that—was not in the American kitchen but abroad. This recipe came from World War I, when American households voluntarily conserved foods to help feed troops and save victims…
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No-Knead Portuguese Sweet Bread (Mazza Savada)
Portuguese Sweet Bread shows up at Easter with dyed eggs poking out the top. Frankly, I think it looks better without them. The mahogany crust and soft, eggy interior make a luxurious slice, turning toast or sandwiches into a special occasion. With this easy no-knead recipephany, you can make this splendid bread on a whim. Just stir ingredients into a shaggy dough and let it sit overnight. Next day, form it into a ball, let it rise in the pan, and bake. That makes the hardest part remembering to start the night before. While my mom didn’t bake bread, she set aside this recipe for me back in the 90s. She found it in…
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Pain de Mie, or Pullman Loaf
Oh, those French bakers. They take great pains (no pun intended) to make slender baguettes with thick, shatteringly crisp crusts. And yet, as if to thumb their noses at the whole artisan baking thing, they also crank out rectangular sandwich loaves with virtually no crusts at all. Pain de mie (“bread of crumb”) is the anti-baguette. A baguette takes days to make and goes stale after three hours. Pain de mie takes about three hours to make and stays fresh for days. (Julia Child said it tastes even better after a day or two.) Enriched with milk, pain de mie delights with a fine, light crumb and holds its shape even when sliced thin…
