Anadama – what a weird name for a type of bread.  I think I was first interested in making this bread because of the name.  After sampling some of it for the first time at The Friendly Toast in Portsmouth, NH years ago – it’s been a great go to bread for me ever since.  It’s also super easy to make, a good introductory bread recipe for anyone who doesn’t have a lot of experience baking breads.

The origin of the name itself is a funny story – this told from Wikipedia:

There are several popular myths about the origin of the name, which mostly take this form:

“A fisherman, angry with his wife, Anna, for serving him nothing but cornmeal and molasses, one day adds flour and yeast to his porridge and eats the resultant bread, while cursing, “Anna, damn her.” The neighbors baked it because it was so delicious and coined it Anadama or Anadamy.

With that fine intro, onto the recipe!  This recipe comes out of the Moosewood Cookbook from the awesome Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, NY.  Keep in mind that this will make a bunch of dough – enough for 2 big loaves or 3 medium sized loaves.  Also keep in mind that this bread does freeze well, so bake it all and then save it for later!

• 2 cups cool water
• 2 cups whole (or 2%) milk (or soy milk)
• 2 cups yellow cornmeal
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup warm water
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 2 packs of active dry yeast (the standard kind you find in the baking aisle)
• Around 10 cups of unbleached bread flour – more as needed for dusting, etc…
• 1/2 cup canola or vegetable oil
• 2 Tbsp. kosher salt
• Butter for glazing (optional)

Combine the 2 cups cool water and milk in a pot and bring to a boil.  STIR in the cornmeal, then the brown sugar to make a thick mush-like goo – this will be really thick and hard to stir.  Once combined, set aside off the heat.

In a separate bowl, add the warm water and and molasses and whisk lightly to combine.  Add the yeast and dissolve it in the water/molasses mixture.

The temperature of the cornmeal mush should be around 110F – once it’s there, add the mixture to a mixer along with 2 cups of the flour and beat for around 100 strokes with the paddle attachment (or my hand of course).  Cover with a damp cloth and set aside in a warm place (around 80-90 degrees if possible) and let this mixture sit for 45 minutes.  I use my oven to let the dough rest and rise – sometimes even turning the broiler on for a minute to give it some warmth – this trick works well if your house is cool to begin with like mine.  The mix should bubble and rise slightly – this is called a “sponge”.

Stir the oil, salt and gradually cup after cup of flour to the sponge after it’s been bubbling for a while.  I did this with the dough hook of my mixer, but you can also do it by hand.  You may not need to add all of the flour – but you want to end up with a slightly sticky yet fluid dough that you can knead.  Turn it out onto your board and knead it for around 10 minutes by hand, adding flour as necessary.

Oil your large bowl and return the dough to your bowl, cover with the damp cloth and place again in the oven to rise for 45 minutes or until the dough doubles in size.  Punch down the dough and shape it to your liking – I made standrad shaped loaves, as well as round boules – both were delicious.

Lightly oil your baking dishes, then add the dough, cover with the damp cloth again and let rise in the baking vessels for another 30-40 minutes.  Preheat the oven to 350 F, brush the tops of your loaves with a little melted butter and bake for 40 minutes or until the dough is golden brown.  Cool on a wire rack and enjoy!

The first time I ever heard of Zucchini bread, I thought is was rather gross sounding, but that was before I tasted it.  You see I’ve never been a huge fan of zucchini, besides in certain French applications like ratatouille.  This recipe was adapted from an old friend who swore by it (and by this, I mean typically made it like once a week).  So I’ve finally decided to try it for myself.  I couldn’t find Christina’s recipe, so I took the recipe from Smitten Kitchen and adapted it a bit to our tastes.

What I found through the process of making zucchini bread, is that it’s a lot like banana bread or other sweet breads like this blueberry bread recipe.  In all honestly, I messed up in making this a bit and actually added a little bit too much sugar, which made the bread a bit sweeter that I was looking for, but I’ve adjusted that in the recipe, so that should be good to go.

This is also one of those recipes that you can use with some of the larger zucchinis too, you know, the ones that are supposedly bad to eat.  Use this recipe for them.  Also, my zucchini bread always comes out a little darker – a direct result of using brown sugar instead of white.  The molasses gives it a good taste and texture.

Wet Stuff

• 2 medium zucchinis – around 1 1/4 cups – grated on the medium holes of a box grater
• 1 egg + 1 egg yolk
• 1 1/2  cups brown sugar
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 1 1/4 tsp. vanilla extract

Dry Stuff

• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/8 tsp. freshly ground nutmeg
• 1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. baking powder
• 2 pinches of salt
• Heaping 3/4 cup raisins (more or less depending on your taste)

This recipe is actually really easy.  Preheat your oven to 350 F.  Grab your trusty (non-stick if you have it) loaf pan (see the pick for what I’m talking about…) and lightly oil it with some vegetable or canola oil.

In a mixer with a whisk attachment or simply with a whisk and a mixing bowl, beat the eggs with the oil and sugar until there are some streaks left by your whisk.  Add the zucchini and vanilla and continue mixing until the mixture is well combined.

Separately, add the raisins to a large mixing bowl and then sift in the rest of the dry ingredients listed above on top of the raisins – make sure there are no lumps left.  While stirring the wet stuff, add the dry ingredients in three parts, waiting until the last part is combined well before adding the next part.  Once all of the dry ingredients have been mixed in, pour the mixture into your loaf pan and cut a small line down the center of your batter to create a nice ‘crack’ in the finished cake.

Bake in the oven for about an hour, but check after 50 minutes – you want a small skewer stuck in the middle of the cake to come out just clean, with potentially a few crumbs still sticking to it.  Let your cake cool, cut and serve!  It’s delicious with some peanut butter btw…Enjoy!

Irish soda bread is a staple in my household – not because we’re Irish, but because it is so easy and a total crowd-pleaser. As far as I understand, it is not really an Irish food but an American invention reminiscent of wheaten bread, I gleaned from my real Irish neighbor as he nibbled on the batch I made this afternoon. This recipe freezes well and thus makes a great all-around snack, for hikes and afternoon coffee breaks at work.  After cooling, wrap individual pieces in aluminum foil. No need to reheat in the oven, just let thaw for a few hours before eating.

The key to cooking the perfect chewy, crunchy, crisp Irish Soda Bread is the pan. While any size or shape glass dish or brownie-type pan will do, a stoneware baking dish is the best because it cooks evenly and perfectly. This recipe is an adaptation from Mary Burke’s Irish Soda Bread recipe published in the Boston Globe Taste section in 2006 and the King Arthur Flour’s 200th Anniversary edition cookbook recipe.  It yields one large loaf (9×5) or about 8 small loaves.

Ingredients:

• 2 Tablespoons butter @ room temperature
• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup sugar + little more for sprinkling
• ¾ teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 t. salt
• 1 egg
• 1 ½ cups plain yogurt
• ¼ cup water
• 1 c. dried fruit (a mix of raisins and cranberries is my favorite)

Instructions:

Set oven to 350 F.
Butter or spray the baking dish(es) with canola oil

In large mixer or bowl: mix the flours, 1/4 cup sugar, baking soda and salt. Mix well. Cut the butter into small pieces and mix into the dry mixture with fingertips.
In another bowl: stir together water, yogurt and egg.
Mix the wet and dry mixtures together well, stir in the dried fruit
Transfer to pans, dividing evenly, sprinkle tops with a little sugar.
Bake 40 min or until tops are golden, and a knife or toothpick comes out clean

‘Mise en place’…French for “everything in its place”. For cooks and bakers, the understanding and practice of this simple term are the foundations for all successful dishes. In many ways, ‘mise en place’ is a way of life; it provides structure and organization both within and outside the kitchen; assembling your ingredients, pre-measuring, cleaning as you go, preparing the oven, thinking two or three steps forward, not being distracted – ‘mise en place’.

I had prepared my “mother sponge” and kept feeding it, hoping that it would not die or get “infected” before I got to use it. My friend Katie had lost her “mother” while developing it into a rye based sponge, it developed a mold and she had to toss it. A week after starting me own, it was thriving and giving off a very strong smell, lots of bubbles, and had been in and out of the fridge a couple times.

So I had the sponge, now what? I needed some good advice, sound recipes, a couple of tools, and some time away from the ski hill to immerse myself in the craft – ‘Mise en place’. I did not want to just jump into a batch of bread and find out I didn’t have what I needed.

I set out one day to Barnes and Nobles and picked up Peter Reinhart’s “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice”. My step-bro Paul told me I wouldn’t need any other book on the subject and from my early readings in it, he’s right.

If you are considering baking bread or just want to see a great cook book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice is it.

I also picked up a nice glass jar and lid from the store and transferred my sponge into its new home. I spent the next couple nights and mornings reading through the early chapters on bread history, ‘mise en place’, flour and yeast types, the baker’s formulas, and generally getting a better understanding of those processes I was about to engage in. After another 40″ week of snow, we got some clear weather and my legs needed a break. The time had come.

I decided to make some ciabatta for the first go round. I knew it would be a good use of the sponge, fairly straight forward, and has always been one of my favorites. The recipe called for the use of a ‘poolish’, which is just another type of pre-fermented dough starter, very similar to my ‘sponge’. Basically, you begin one dough to ferment for several hours to a day or more, and add that to the rest of the recipe. Whether its a ‘biga’, ‘pate fermentee’, or ‘poolish’, the idea is the same; you pre-ferment a small batch of dough to aid in the fermentation of your larger batch. The advantages are enhanced flavors from the prolonged development of the sugars and manipulation of the starches. I will be using other types of ‘sponges’ for other breads and will fill you in on those as they come up in later ‘chapters’.

Instead of making a new sponge, or ‘poolish’, I used my prized mother in the glass jar. I removed more then half the starter the night before and threw it out, then ‘fed’ (equal parts flour and water) more then double what I took out. I let this sit out all night and it was ready in the morning, bubbling away and looking “alive”. By letting it feed throughout the night, as opposed to just for a few hours, you get a more rich, stonger flavor from the starter. As the weeks, months, and years go by, you starter will get more complex if you feed it regularly.

Here’s a quick recipe for ciabatta:

• 3 1/4 cups ‘poolish’
• 3 cups unbleached bread flour
• 1 3/4 tsp. salt

• 1 1/2 tsp. instant yeast
• 6 Tbsp to 3/4 cup lukewarm water (90-100 degrees F)

You combine the flour, yeast, and salt together, then add the wet ‘poolish’ and water. Mix with a wooden spoon until everything is distributed equally. I then wet my hands started to work the dough in the bowl for about five minutes, using my hand like a dough hook and stretching the dough as you mix it. You have to repeatedly dip your hand in water (to keep it clean) and add flour as needed to maintain the silky texture your aiming to have by the end of the mixing. This is where a mixer would really help the home baker.

I concluded that I did not work the dough long enough in the end. It did not develop the large pockets of air (gas) that is typical of ciabatta, the length of mixing (stretching and manipulation of starches) was part of that. I also ‘degassed’ the dough a bit too much after its initial ‘rest’ of 30 minutes. Basically, I worked it too much while stretching it and some of the “lightness” of the dough was lost. I think as my starter develops more and more, it was also aid in that texture I’m shooting for.

After mixing the dough, flour your countertop and carefully put the dough on the floured surface. Then you’ll want to lightly pull the dough into a rectangle and fold like a letter (two seams). Do this twice (I did it like 5 times…oops), lightly mist with spray oil, dust with flour, and let the dough rest for 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

Once the dough has risen again (almost doubled in size, will depend on temp in room), pull and fold the dough again. I cut my dough ball into three, then pulled and folded. I then set up a ‘couche’ which is basically a flour sack towel used to separate the dough and let proof.

By setting the dough balls next to one another and separated by the fabric, each ball of dough “holds” the other up and provides some support during the final resting period.

After letting the dough rest on the ‘couche’ for another hour, it was time to bake. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees (550 if your oven will allow it) and set up a deep pan on the bottom rack (for creating steam). Once the oven is ready, put in trays of bread (on parchment paper w/ semolina flour) and pour about a cup of water into your steam pan. The steam helps keep the crust from over drying when baking and also aids in the caramelization of the sugars on the crust.

The final product tasted awesome, less then an hour after baking we devoured one loaf (the other two were gifts for a party!) and went out to see a show. Like I said before, there is going to be some tweaking of the process for me on this particular bread, but my first bread baking adventure was a huge success.

More to come on my Pan a l’ancienne…”bread of the ancients”

I mean, who doesn’t like fresh bread right? If you are into food – eating it, cooking it, growing it, or reading about it, you cannot deny the power of a warm slice of fresh bread. Its an elemental pleasure for us humans, undoubtedly tied to thousands of years of learned appreciation.

I’ve always wanted to learn to make my own breads. Like my run at home brewed beer (might have to get back into that as well!) or stabs at gardening, making bread seems fairly straight forward with a huge upside. After the planning, assemblage of ingredients, and carving out the room in your day to get after it, the process unfolds over the hours and becomes as enjoyable as the desired product.

As with making beer or gardening, making bread is pretty simple. Well, at least in the ingredients department. A closer look or second thought on the subject will very quickly lead you to a whole world of possibilities, from simple to extremely complicated. Its fun comparing gardening and home brewing to making bread; you could also do it with cheese making, collecting honey, pressing cider, etc… The processes are simple, but the possibilities are endless.

After living in California this past fall and eating foods mostly from the valley I lived in, as well as cooking with some incredibly talented cooks, the desire to learn to make bread came to a head. Maybe it was the fresh multigrain batarde (slightly wider baguette) we would pick up almost daily to make french toast or the grilled cheese (with a smear of locally made serrano chili goat cheese!) we would snack on every afternoon. Regardless, the thought occurred: “how tough can it be to make something THAT good?”

So, here in the middle of another stormy Utah winter…the process begins for Andy. A good friend from Cali recently sent me a sourdough starter in the mail knowing that I was hankering. The small paper packet contained a print out on how to start and care for your “mother sponge”, as well as a very simple recipe for making sourdough. Of course, there was also a small packet with sourdough culture and unbleached, hard white flour – the “starter”.

After a few conversations with my step-bro Paul (who is an incredible baker) I learned that if well cared for (not exposed to too much wild yeast or left unfed for weeks), your sourdough starter can last for years, forever potentially. Some bakeries in San Fran can trace their starters to before Cali’s statehood, even well before the ’49 gold rush. You can also freeze a certain amount of it and pull it out months later to “restart” your starter. Having recently moved down canyon and having my own kitchen, the time had come to crack it open.

Visit this link to see the product I am using: www.mccornbread.com. Its a San Francisco style sourdough, which by all accounts is the mother land of sourdough bread. Read more here on that subject.

One evening before going out I ripped it open, got my bread flour out, warmed up three cups of water and combined everything. Wrapped it up, put it in the oven with the light on (slightly warmer then room temp), and let it sit for a day. Came home after work the next night and I had a bubbling, “sour” smelling concoction. Now more then a week later, the “mother” has been fed several times and sent to the fridge for some hibernation.

Ingredients for starter:

• Sourdough starter culture
• 3 cups warm water (85-95 degrees)
• 3 cups bread flour

Mix em up in a plastic or wood bowl (metal apparently gives “off” flavors), let sit in a warm environment (light on inside the oven) for 24 hours. Once the starter has begun to “ferment” you’ll easily be able to see if you were successful…it’ll be bubbling and looking quite alive.

As for feeding it, you simply remove a cup of the starter and throw it away. You replace that with a half cup of bread flour mixed with a half cup of warm water. You have to bring the starter to room temp before doing this, so if refrigerating the “mother” be sure to pull it out for a time and then feed it.

This is all new to me and I have not yet made any bread, but I am taking good care my “mother” and planning a day in the kitchen very soon. More importantly, the process has begun on what should be another fruitful endeavor into my culinary curiosities. I look forward to giving friends a loaf of bread that I made, I look forward to making my own English muffins in the morning. I am now in a small way even more engaged with the foods I am eating, its exciting. I find myself now digging around the internet looking for bread ideas, feeding my knowledge of the possibilities.

If it would only stop snowing in Utah!!! More to come…But for now – some other cool bread ideas and sites:

• The Knead for Bread – English Muffins
• Best Bread Recipes – Red and Black Scones
• Tammy’s Recipes – Homeade Bagels

This recipe makes a rather large loaf, so make sure you’ve got enough people to feed – this stuff is also really good toasted and topped with some vanilla ice cream.  I think if I were to make this over again, I’d add a little more vanilla and some more cinnamon, so I’ll adjust the recipe accordingly.  Overall, I was very pleased with this recipe, though the next time I have that many blueberries sitting around, I think I’ll be bold and try making jam.  Enjoy!

Recipe:

• 3 cups Flour (I used all-purpose whole wheat flour)
• 1 Tsp. Salt
• 2 Tbsp. Baking Powder (use less if you want a more doughy bread)
• 1/2 cup Brown Sugar
• 1/2 Granulated Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 3 Tbsp. Canola Oil
• 2 Tsp. Cinnamon
• 1 Tsp. Nutmeg
• 2 cups Blueberries (1 mashed, 1 whole)
• 1 cup low fat (1%) Milk
• 1 Tbsp. Vanilla Extract
• 2-3 Tbsp. Real Maple Syrup (OPTIONAL – will add more sweetness)

Preheat oven to 350F.  Grease a 5″x12″ baking dish (non-stick preferable).

In a medium bowl, whip eggs with the 2 sugars (and maple syrup if using) – make sure there are no lumps in the brown sugar.  Add milk and oil and mix together.  Add the cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla to the mixture and combine.

In a separate bowl, sift together flour, salt and baking powder.  Slowly add the flour mixture 1/3 at a time to the wet ingredients, combining after each addition (mix the two together until they come together and that’s it, no need to over mix here).  Once the batter is together (it should be fairly thick) fold in the blueberries and combine.  You could conceivably add other fruit here too (chopped fresh strawberries would be good but it’s up to you).

Bake at 350 for approximately 60 minutes until an inserted knife comes out clean.  Let cool for 10 minutes, slice and serve however you like!

Makes about 10 servings