Irish soda bread

  This is an authentically Irish version of soda bread.  There are a few twists here, but they’re more for conforming American ingredients than for altering taste or texture. Soda bread’s texture and loft depends on the interaction of buttermilk and baking soda and on the strength (percentage of glutens) of the flour.  Irish buttermilk [...]

Challah to Die for

You’ll love this soft, sweet bread that already has so much butter in it. It’s practically cake.    Challah recipes may be classified as either regular or sweet.  This one just shades into the sweet side. If, instead of forming challahs, you make sandwich loaves, the bread makes best-ever pain perdu (aka French toast), and bread [...]

Forming Batards

How to form one of the most common “artisanal” loaf types. Formation is verrrrrrrrrrrry important, and the post contains good general information about it as well.

CARROT CAKE with MAPLE FROSTING

Does carrot cake need an introduction?  Not much.  Maybe just that it’s hippy cooking; and yes we were actually so far from reality we thought it was healthy.  At least so I’m told.  I don’t actually have a clear memory of the late sixties and early seventies. This particular version is moist (a product of [...]

Crostata Ricotta

I am now, and have always been a lover of cheesecakes. Crostata Ricotta, is one of my favorites and one of the first I learned to bake. It was near the top of my list when I catered, and I pushed it like hell partly because it looks good “rustic.”  One might as well make [...]

Olive Bread

This olive bread could be called olive-cheese-garlic-herb bread but the mouthful should be saved for the bread and not the title.  It’s comparatively tender for a bread of this type, suitable for sandwiches, toasting and as a bread-basket bread.   The riccota (or requesón) helps to achieve the tenderness, and in combination with the Parmesan (or [...]

Plum Tart with Pecan Cream

A very sophisticated, very French pastry. The sort of thing, one might make for a lover. It shouldn’t be your first baking project, but if you can bake a fruit pie, you can easily handle this.

Cheesecake of the New York Persuasion

Cheesecake of the New York Persusasion. Straight ahead lemon vanilla with a nut crust.

BISCUITS

Most American biscuit recipes fit within a fairly narrow range of proportions and ingredients, and the differences between recipes tend to be smaller than the differences imposed by technique. There are exceptions to this, of course. For instance, a dietary conscious friend makes biscuits with a little bit of vegetable oil, compared to the fairly [...]