It's a loaf! It's a Challah! No! It's SUPERBREAD!

This is one of two baked goods that I make without looking at a recipe. 

Mostly due to the fact that I've made it so many times I don't need it anymore, but partially because it really does require a lot of adapting to the specific dough at hand.  It is the best eggless challah recipe, and when I want a good bread in the middle of the week (like I did with this one) I just put it in a loaf pan and voila!  It magically becomes the perfect loaf for a sandwich or french toast.

I have given this recipe out more than any other one I own, and I received it from a rebbetzin (a Rabbi's wife) in Pittsburgh.  I've since adapted it to my own liking, but I always think of her when making bread because mine rarely achieve the same state of perfection that her eggless challah never failed to meet.

The basic thing to remember for this recipe are:
Don't worry about adding more water and flour, the consistency of the dough is what's important
Kneading more is better than kneading less
Double rising is awesome

And with that forewarning, away we go!

Ingredients:
4 cups + 2 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 packet yeast
1/4 cup oil (I use olive but vegetable works just fine too)
1 Tb salt
1-3 cups water
1 Tb vanilla (optional)
cinnamon
2/3 cup walnuts chopped
1/2 cup raisins

Directions:
First you're going to want to go get some patience.  I'm serious.  Don't do this quickly or it will fail.  And failed challah is so horribly depressing.  Sometimes I get in the mood to make bread, but have to talk myself out of it because I'm too hungry and I know I'll mess it up.

Now that you've go that on hand you can focus on the actual baking.  Start by putting the whole packet of yeast in a glass and sprinkle a pinch to a tablespoon of sugar on top of it. 

Now fill the glass halfway with lukewarm water.  Too hot and you'll kill the yeast, too cold and it won't necessarily activate it.  Basically, if it's burning your hand when you put your finger under the faucet, it's too hot.  If it's cool enough that you'd still drink it, it's probably too cold.  Now set the glass down (no need to stir it) and get out your flour.

Mix the flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl.  I always like to add in a few teaspoons of cinnamon at this point, though this all depends on how much you like cinnamon.  If you add more than a two teaspoons it starts to color the dough a bit and sometimes by the time it comes out of the oven it looks like you've used whole wheat flour.  Not a problem at all, but just be aware that the more cinnamon you add the darker the dough will look.

Now you can add in the yeast which should look like this:

Along with the water/yeast mixture you can add the oil and vanilla and start to mix it all together.
Refill the empty yeast glass with warm water and slowly pour it in as you continue to mix the dough.  Once the flour is fairly mixed into the dough you can stop adding water and start kneading. 

I like to put a little flour on the counter top and continue to slowly knead in more flour to the dough as I go along.  Kneading for at least 10 minutes is ideal.  You're literally pushing air into the dough so that it can rise, so the more air that you get in there, the fluffier the dough will be.  I guess if you're going for a very dense loaf you could choose to knead it for less, but even though 5-8 minutes is the minimum you'd want to do.

Now coat the mixing bowl with oil (you can use pam too) and drop your rounded dough into the bowl. Turn it over once or twice so the whole dough is covered in a nice layer of oil.  This prevents it from sticking to the bowl or towel and from drying out.  Cover the dough with a towel and let it sit for at least 8 hours.  I like to make the dough at night and then leave it out while I'm sleeping.  It helps because otherwise I'd spend the 8 hours thinking about how much I want to make my bread RIGHT NOW. 

In the morning I punch the dough down

and roll it out into a large rectangle (this is pretty similar to the apple bread recipe I posted earlier).

Sprinkle with a nice layer of cinnamon, walnuts, and raisins. 

Now roll it up like a cinnamon bun and squish it into a loaf pan. 

If you're making challah I recommend making a much long and thinner rectangle, rolling it once so the nuts are inside, and then snaking it in like a snail shell or the challahs around Rosh HaShanah.  Once you have your shaped loaf, cover it and let it sit for another 2 hours.  I went out to the Library of Congress to distract myself because two hours is a very long time and watching bread rise is less fun than watching water boil.

Once the loaf has properly risen, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  I like to add a coat of oil, butter, egg yolk, or pam to the top of the loaf so it colors nicely but this step is not necessary.  Bake for 20-30 minutes or until the loaf is golden on top.  When you slice it open it's all so nice and pretty.

See, now wasn't it worth all that effort?  I challenge you to buy a loaf that looks this good at any old Safeway. Really.  Go ahead and try.

Bubble Biscuits? Yes Please!

Several weeks ago my sister asked me about an old Toll House Recipe I used to make called Bubble Biscuits.  I had no idea what she was talking about, but my other sister came the rescue and we found the recipe in my trusty Toll House cookbook.  It's the perfect dessert for your friends with ridiculous allergies because it doesn't use eggs and has just a bit of milk so you can easily make it non-dairy using soy milk or any other milk substitute.  Also, it's delicious.  So that's always a positive.

 To start with you'll need your basic baking supplies.

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar, divided
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup butter or margarine
1 cup chocolate chips
2/3 cup milk or soy milk
1 tsp cinnamon

Obviously start by preheating the oven to 375 degrees.

You'll want your butter to be as cold as possible.  Like making a good crust, cold butter leads to a flakier dough, which we like.  So cut up 1/3 cup of the butter and place it in the freezer for 15 minutes or so (assuming you have that added patience and time).  Meanwhile mix the flour, 1/4 cup sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl.  Cut the frozen butter into the flour mixture:

When you're done it should have a crumbly consistency and look like this:

I got really excited by the next few steps and forgot to take pictures so you'll just have to take a guess of what it looks like.  I'm sure you'll be fine.  Anyway, stir in the chocolate chips and then add milk stirring until the dough holds shape.  Add more flour or milk if necessary to get the right consistency, but at the end it should look like this:

Now take the dough and roll it into 16-18 equal size balls and leave them in the bowl.  Next, you're going to melt the rest of the butter (remaining 1/3 cup) over the stove.

In another bowl (I know, I know, this is yet another recipe with endless bowls) mix the remaining 1/2 cup sugar and cinnamon.  Pour half the melted butter in the bottom of a 9x9 inch square baking pan and sprinkle half the cinnamon/sugar mixture over the butter in the pan.  Now place the balls of dough in 4x4 rows in the butter in the pan and pour the remaining butter over the balls.  Finally sprinkle the rest of the sugar on the very top.  The balls won't be touching in the pan, but they spread out a lot while baking so don't worry.

Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown on top and then let cool for a few minutes before eating.  I say let cool because all recipes recommend that so you won't burn your tongue.  But I actually kind of love eating things right out of the oven.  So, on second thought, don't let it cool.  Just don't blame me if it hurts your mouth.

And look, it's just like the picture!

Now go eat and be happy.

An Acceptable Amount of Pumpkin Bread

There are many reasons for this post.  Firstly, a friend gave me some home cooked pumpkin puree, so I had fresh ingredients waiting in my fridge with a real expiration date.  Secondly, this week marks the beginning of the end of the Harry Potter Saga, and I promised my date for the movie that we would have appropriate snack food on hand.  Pumpkin felt witch and wizard food.  Thirdly, I am having a Friday night dessert at my house and needed to make something for it.  Currently I am the only confirmed guest, but I have some cute neighbors so if no one else shows up I'll just bring my bread over and use it to earn a place for me on their couch.  Lastly and most importantly, all pumpkin bread recipes make an obscene amount of bread.  Who needs three loaves of pumpkin bread?  OK, let me rephrase that.  Who has the metabolism that allows for the caloric intake that would inevitably follow the baking of three pumpkin breads?  Not me, that's for sure.

So with all that in mind I went on a hunt for a recipe, made some alterations, and got baking.

Now let me preface this by explaining that a lot of my best equipment is back at home in the kitchen where I learned to cook.  I am rather poor right now what with working for a non-profit and all, so I haven't invested in a flour sifter yet.  Also, being at the lower end of the income scale has quickly made it apparent how expensive unnecessary baking can be.  Organic eggs (the only kind I'm willing to buy, I'm a hippie at heart and I'm not afraid to admit it), pounds of sugar, butter, and chocolate are all expensive.  So I really haven't been baking nearly as much as I have in the past.  Which is just my way of excusing my stupid mistakes which we'll see in just a moment.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 cup canned or fresh pumpkin puree
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1/3 cup water
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
handful of chopped pecans
1 cup chocolate chips

Directions:
Start by setting the oven to 350 degrees.  Now the basic easy directions are this: mix together wet ingredients plus sugar.  Add in sifted flour and baking soda, then pecans and chocolate chips, put it in a pan and bake it for about an hour and a half.

This seems simple enough.  But if you know me, and I'm pretty sure I don't have any followers who don't know me personally, you know I have a habit of making mistakes rather easily.  So I started by mixing the sugar and wet ingredients together.  They looked kind of soupy, but that's to be expected.

Then I added in all the rest of the ingredients at once.

This is where it gets complicated.  The reason recipes tell you to mix the dry ingredients together first, and then add in the nuts and chocolate chips, is perhaps because it's much harder to break up clumps of flour when there is a (comparatively) giant pecan bit in the way.  This wouldn't have been an issue at all had I sifted the flour first with a handy (and fun) sifter.  They're really only a few dollars and using it makes you feel professional not to mention it's just fun.  You just turn a crank on the side of a sifter that looks like this:

and it pushes the de-clumped flour right through.  It's awesome.  I did not buy one, did not use one, and ended up with some major clumping.  This means someone will bite into my bread, look at a white spot, and ask if I put white chocolate in the recipe.  Then they'll realize it's flour and leave the rest of the uneaten bread on their plate.  Another reason I hate pre-sifting the flour and baking soda is that it just gives me another bowl to rinse, which I hate.  So this might have failed.  But regardless, this is how it looked after I took it out of the oven:

It did make the whole apartment smell delicious though.  So there's always that positive side of things.
But back to the negative, if you really want to make the bread work right you should dust the chocolate chips in 1 Tb of flour before adding them to the batter or they'll just sink right to the bottom of the mixture and you'll have a layer of chocolate chips on the bottom of the pan.  This is what happened with my bread because I was lazy and threw it all in at once.  And the moral of the story is: don't bake when you're feeling lazy or it won't come out the way you'd like it to. On the bright side, the bread does taste pretty wonderful.

If I get enough people to come Friday night, I'll also make an apple/pecan cake or a chocolate pie, but I'm not counting on it so those recipes may have to wait.

Until then, sift out, eat up, and pumpkin over to a rather tasty bread.