Second of three parts.

First of three parts.

Happy Sunday Bread Heads!

This week we’re going to make French Style Sourdough Bread. The idea for this bread comes from a great bakery deli just tucked away off the main campus of the University of Michigan (Go Blue!), Zingerman’s Deli. They make a Chocolate Sourdough bread that is out of this world. It also cost $10 bucks plus shipping so I decided to see if I could replicate the recipe and share it with you.

This bread is all about technique. None of them are hard in and of themselves, but you have to do them all in order to get the fine crumb, the hard crust and the proper proportion of sour and sweet flavors that make this bread such a joy to eat. Being that this is a sourdough it also lets us kick off a few weeks of sourdough recipes since once you have the starter there is no reason not to bake sourdough bread.

Last week I gave you a starter recipe. I am going to give it again since it is an integral part of the bread. Without further adieu, let’s bake!

Happy Sunday Bread Heads! This week we are going to fulfill another request, sort of. One of the Bread Heads asked for a chocolate bread recipe like the one that they found at an on campus store. This bread is a quick bread, meaning that is made from a batter and is not raised. I have recipes for those type of breads, but I got to thinking about actually yeast chocolate breads. So, this week we are going to do chocolate bread that is more like bread and less like cake.

This bread is not sweet at all, it uses unsweetened Dutched Cocoa and just four tablespoons of sugar. It also has orange zest which gives a lovely aroma to the bread. While it is not sweet, it is also not exactly the kind of bread you would make a sandwich on. This a bread that is best served at brunch or tea with lots of butter and just a bit of sage honey.

Chocolate Bread:

Ingredients:

½ cup hot water (120 to 130 degrees)
1 package (2 ½ teaspoons) dry yeast
2 ¾ cups flour
¼ unsweetened Dutched Cocoa
4 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
Zest from one orange
½ teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons butter (at room temperature)
1/3 cup milk
1 egg

Happy Sunday Bread Heads! This week we are going do a recipe that is a little more advanced than some of the others. That said, there are no baking techniques that will trip you up, what is challenging here is the organization. This bread is made by making three completely separate dough’s, then rolling them together. Since all of them have to rise before they can be worked together you will be making dough after dough after dough and then doing the rest.

It is not hard but if you don’t have your bowls ready and don’t stay focused it can be pretty frustrating. So, as always, read the recipe a couple of times. Think about what you need in terms of cook ware and ingredients and plan it out before you start. If you do that you too will be able to make the fabulous Marbled Vegetable Bread!

Happy Sunday Bread Heads! This week we’ll be fulfilling a request for Challa. Now, we have done braided breads before and almost always someone says “Hey Challa!”. The thing is, while all Challa have some type of braid, not all braided breads are Challa. Part of what makes Challa…er..um.. Challa, is saffron.

Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world. Below is a picture of what $20 worth of saffron looks like. You can get much better prices buying it in bulk, but who needs that much saffron? Here is the dirty little secret; you can make perfectly fine Challa without the saffron. It makes the bread just a little yellower and it gives only a slight overtone in the overall flavor of the bread. So, if you find that buying saffron is a bridge too far, then just leave it out, no one will ever know.

On to the bread!

Happy Sunday Bread Heads! Let’s talk pizza dough, shall we? Last week I got a request for pizza dough so who am I to say no? There are really two types of pizza dough, deep dish (which is cooked in a pan) and thin crust which is cooked on directly on a pizza stone. Here is the thing, a stone is not actually necessary. Sure it is a great little item for the home baker to have, it allows you to bake all kinds of rustic breads more closely to the way they were originally cooked, but it is not a requirement.

What you will get with a pizza stone is a better “crust bounce” but since none of us has the kind of wood-burning or industrial ovens pizza shops have we shouldn’t worry about it too much. If you follow the instructions in this post you will be able to produce a great home pizza any time.

Happy Sunday Bread Heads! This week I was going to do a post about the gear that you need to make excellent breads. However, when I was shopping yesterday there were the most perfect blueberry’s at the store and so I changed my mind. Instead of cooking gear, we will be doing Blueberry-Lemon Muffins.

This recipe is from the Iroquois Hotel on Mackinac Island Michigan. If you have never been to Mackinac Island, you really should put it on your list of places to go. It can only be reached by ferry and no cars or trucks are allowed on the streets of the island. This makes it a quite and leisurely place to spend a week or so in the beautiful weather of a Michigan summer. I was lucky enough to talk my way into the kitchen there on vacation by application of some outrageous flattery and total gall. The recipe was originally Melanie Sullivan’s and the good folks at the Iroquois were kind enough to let me jot it down.

These muffins are spectacular; they have just the right heft to them to keep them from being the overly processed and cakey muffins you find in most stores. The tart combination of the lemon and blueberry is sweetened to perfection by the final step of dipping the tops in melted butter, then sugar.

Iroquois Hotel Blueberry Lemon Muffins

Ingredients:

2 2/3 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking soda (reduce by half if you are baking over 5000 feet)
1 ½ teaspoons salt
½ cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup whole milk (do not use skim, but if you must cut down the fat 2% is acceptable)
2/3 cup cooking oil
1 ½ cups blueberry’s (fresh is preferred but frozen work very nearly as well)
½ tablespoon lemon zest

Glaze:
4 tablespoons of butter
½ cup sugar

Happy Sunday Bread Heads! This week we are making a recipe which was requested. One of the folks reading this series asked for a lemon braid bread. She had seen it in a magazine some time ago. Having never made it she couldn’t tell me much about the bread, except that it was intended to be served at breakfast or tea with butter and strawberry jam.

I looked around and really did not come up with anything that was risen braided bread, which wasn’t already sweetened (take a look at this King Arthur Flour recipe for basically a lemon cheese Danish. I am sooo making this some time in the fall!) by lemon curd or some such. So, I figured I could put together a new recipe that would be bread that you can butter and still have that fresh lemon flavor.

I decided that I would use brioche dough as the base for this bread. It is has lots of eggs and butter in it so it makes a lovely piece of bread to slather butter on. It has a fine, firm crumb. The crust is just prefect for a egg wash with milk, which gives the whole loaf a dark golden sheen.

For the lemon I went with two tablespoons of lemon juice for the first batch. This did not provide the bright flavor I wanted. When I made the next batch I decided to kick it up a bit and added four tablespoons of lemon zest which had been mixed with an equal amount of sugar. This really brought out the lemon, but in the smell (you will be dying to get to these loaves as they bake) and in the flavor in the finished bread. The combination of the lemon and the sugar give a lemon finish to the bread that is not sweet at all. When slathered with strawberry jam it provides just the right amount of tartness.

I think I will be making a lot of this bread as gifts. It is easy to make and is different from most of the breads that people make at home or even in large store bakeries. So, without further delay here is the recipe.

Happy Sunday Bread Heads! This weeks post we will be finishing the recipes what went into massive “new baby” basket for our friends. While I have written about scones before there are two more kinds that were a special request form the new mommy (though this being her third child she is hardly new at it, but that is how she talks).

Many scones has fruit but our friend K. is from Florida and really likes tropical fruit. So I doctored up an old cornmeal scone recipe and found another in the Zuni Café Cookbook by the proprietor of that fabulous restaurant Judy Rodgers. So this week you get both – Cornmeal Cherry Scones and Orange Cranberry Scones.