Almond snack cakes

This summery Saturday night here in Kansas City has been a busy one for me.  I've just finished cutting numerous sugar cookie rounds which are chilling overnight before a morning bake.  I also mixed and packaged several containers of savory egg salad.  I made streusel topping for allspice snack cakes which is also chilling overnight before the cakes are made in the morning.  And I made a batch of spiced candied pecans which I love to leave sitting out on the kitchen counter so that I can grab a few whenever I pass by.  It has been a busy night which is now coming to a close officially as I type up this blog post.  

A new item was added to the full menu a couple days ago:  almond snack cakes with blueberries and cream.  One of the ingredients in these little cakes is brown butter.  I love making things with brown butter.  What is brown butter?  It's butter that has been melted and cooked long enough to evaporate some of the water out and toast the milk solids.  This results in an intensified flavor which most people describe as "nutty".  Often the milk solids which separate out from the liquid are strained out, but not always.  Personally, I always strain out the solids, but some people like to leave them in.  While this is technically called "brown butter" I often find myself calling it "browned butter".  I'm OK either way.  In fact, I prefer to say "browned butter".  I don't know why.  It's just the way I am. 

These cakes have lots of egg whites, lots of powdered sugar, and almond flour as well as all-purpose flour.  They are scrumptious, especially when topped with the aforementioned blueberries and cream.  I tested these with both domestic (large) and wild (small) blueberries.  The domestic choice was the way to go.  So that's how they will always be served from my menu.  

I will put them on a weekly menu soon.  I hope you will give them a try when I do.

Boules added to the menu

Well, what a hot summer day we are having in Kansas City.  And if the forecasters are correct, the next two days will be even hotter.  After that, however, we are due for a cool-down.  All in all, we can't be too unhappy with the relatively mild summer we've had so far.

Hot or not, it's always a great time to eat bread.  My last post was about making boules.  Well, as of today, there are now two boules on the menu.  Both are the same kind, so it's really only one boule.  But one is large, about 9 inches, and the other is small, about 6 inches.

I love eating these.  They are soft on the outside and the inside is moist with a little chew and an herbal fragrance that is absolutely wonderful.  

I love the days on which I get to add new items to the menu.  I'm working on adjusting loaf sizes for a honey oatmeal bread right now.  And I'm doing final tweaks for an almond snack cake which I think I will pair with a blueberry sweet cream.  And I'm also doing final tweaks on waffle cones and waffle bowls for ice cream.  These will all be added to the menu very soon.

However, my favorite that will make it's first appearance on the menu soon is chocolate mousse.  It's easy to eat lots and lots of this smooth creamy chocolate concoction.  In order to choose one for the menu, I've been doing single-elimination cook-offs with several chocolate mousse varieties that I love to make.  The only problem is that when I make them, my fridge is filled with lots and lots of mousse.  After doing three rounds several days ago, I decided to push off the next rounds in order to take a break and hopefully withstand the temptation to eat all the chocolate mousse I was making.  I think I will start the final rounds next week.  And I think that as soon it's on the menu, I will add to a weekly food menu immediately so that everyone can give it a try.

Oh, I have so many more things I want to add.  All in time, I suppose.  In any event, keep watching the menu to see what new things show up.

Have a great week and enjoy our midsummer days.

Boule with herbs

Today I'm making boules.  What is a boule?  It is basically a round loaf of bread, often very crusty, and always very delicious.  They aren't hard to make, and so they are great to add on short notice to a day's meal plan.

For this boule, we're going to start with all-purpose flour, add a little instant yeast, some sugar, some salt, a little baking powder, and whisk it all together.  Then warm water is added, about 120 F.  Once all the dry ingredients are combined in the water, fresh chopped herbs are added.  In this case, I'm using parsley, thyme, and basil, and I'm adding a lot.  I want this loaf to be very fragrant.  All of this is kneaded for about 6 minutes in the mixer with a dough hook on medium high speed, or longer if doing it by hand.  You can see the finished dough above.  

Now the dough rises for about 45 minutes in the bowl.  And then it's removed, deflated a bit, and formed into a round ball and then pressed until it's about 7 inches in diameter.  Place it into a round cake pan which has been lubricated with butter, brush the dough with melted butter, and let it sit another 25 minutes or so.  When it's done rising, it should pretty much fill the pan and it will have risen a little above the top of the pan.

Then it's brushed with melted better again, and put into the oven at 375 F for about 20 minutes.  And here's how it comes out.

Beautiful, isn't it?  Let's cut it open and see what it looks like inside.

It looks delicious.  And as you can see, when you cut it open all those herbs are found sprinkled throughout the bread.  It is soft, fragrant, and flavorful.  I like to eat it plain but you can put anything on it you wish.  It's great to have with soups and stews to soak up the juices and broths and gravies.  It's great with a little melted grated cheese on it.  There are so many ways to eat this.  And it is really quite easy.  This particular loaf has a very soft crust, but many boules are very crusty.

Eating a slice now and ...... it's yummy!  Put this out as part of a family dinner, and it will quickly be gone.  This will soon be on the full menu at Bruce Bakery Bistro.  I hope everyone will like it.

Rye bread

It's Saturday in Kansas City.  It looks like it's going to be a mild day with temps in the 80s.  We are having a pleasantly warm and rainy summer so far, the complete opposite of what is happening in so many other parts of the country where it is hot and dry.  

In recent blog post, I mentioned that my oldest daughter sent me some really great flours to try.  Pictured above is one of those:  a beautifully ground whole grain rye flour.  Although I am quite experienced in many other breads, I have never made rye bread before so here was the catalyst for making my first attempt.

First we have to make a starter.  This is comprised of bread flour, rye flour, rapid-rise yeast, and warm water, about 110 F.  This is mixed together and left to sit overnight at room temperature.

Here's what it looks like at first.  But after sitting several hours, it smooths out, and increases in volume to become a spongy mass that fills about half this bowl.  I meant to get a picture of that, but it slipped my mind as I was excited to get going on making that actual bread once the starter had finished it's sitting period.

Now we take more bread flour, more rye flour, vegetable oil, honey, more rapid-rise yeast, more water and salt, and add the starter.  All of this comes out into a pretty large amount of bread dough that is then put aside to rise for a while after it is kneaded.  Here it is before rising.

And here it is after rising.  It is a monster rise!

Very satisfying, don't you think?

Now we remove the dough from the bowl and punch it down a little, flatten it, and form it into a rough rectangle.  We fold the top and the bottom into the center, pinch the seams together and compress the loaf a bit.  Then we flip it over and form it into a rough torpedo shape.

I put a dinner spoon by the dough for a size comparison.  You can see we have a pretty large mass of dough.  This sits for a while and grows even larger.

Well, this has become quite a mass of dough. It can be seen that it is tearing just a little as the rising happens.  The gluten should be developed a bit more from the kneading to allow it to stretch and hold together during the rising process.  Next time, more kneading.

After preheating the oven at 500 F for an hour with pizza stones in it, I scored the dough down the center with a knife, placed the dough on parchment on the pizza stones, and turned down the temperature to 425 F.  And you can see what comes out:  a nice crusty rye loaf.

And here's the loaf cut diagonally.  The bread is dense, a tiny bit crusty on the outside, soft on the inside,  and very tasty.  Warm or cooled, it is a wonderful eating experience.

So there we go.  A beautiful rye bread.  Thanks to "oldest daughter" for sending me the flours.  She sent me a total of three, so I imagine I'll do more posts soon on making breads from the flours.

Have a great weekend everyone and don't forget to take the time to enjoy good food.

A nice weekend

 

Happy Sunday evening, everyone.  What a nice weekend it has been: lots of cooking, some good movies, very mild temperatures, and wildlife visiting my yard.  The beautiful doe shown in the picture above has been around more than once to steal a bit of birdseed from the feeders in my yard.

Today has been a nice day of cooking.  I distributed foods from this week's menu offerings yesterday and today.  It was nice to get back to making food for everyone after being on hiatus for so long due to the pandemic.  I hope everyone who got some food from my kitchen this weekend enjoyed it.  I've already updated the next two weeks of menus.  I hope you will all give something a try.

Today I began preparing to add chocolate mousse to the menu.  I have multiple recipes that I like to use.  I'm going to choose one that will soon be available for everyone.  That means I will be making multiple batches this week and next in order to decide on which variety to add to the menu.  I guess I'll be eating a lot of mousse.  I'm not complaining one bit!

Here's one of the batches I made today.  They are in the fridge now, setting up in the chill air.  I won't touch them until tomorrow. 

I also began a rye bread today.

For the most recent Father's Day, my oldest daughter sent me three special flours.  One of these is the rye flour shown above.  So today I began experimenting with this.  To be honest, I've never used rye flour before.  For my first time using it I'm going to make a New York deli style rye bread.  Here's the starter dough shown below.

This starter will sit in this bowl sealed under plastic for many hours as it increases in volume.  I will let it sit overnight and make the bread in the morning.  

I will be experimenting with the other two flours sent by my daughter later this week or next week.  This month I have lots of time for cooking, a great way to spend the midsummer days.

Allspice snack cakes and mini bread loaves

 

This week, there are two new additions to the full menu.

First, I have added allspice snack cakes.  These are 4-inch diameter cakes that are perfect for when you have a craving for something mildly sweet.  Allspice is in the cake as well as in the sweet topping. 

Second, I have also added mini-loaves of the soft white bread that was already on the menu.  Each min-loaf is about 5 inches long.  It's something one person can easily devour in a single sitting.  Well, maybe not everyone would eat that much, but I would, and I did today as a matter of fact.  

It's always fun having small versions of foods available in the kitchen.  That being said, I always opt for large versions of some things, like ice cream sundaes, for example.  And if I have a plate of pasta, it's going to be a large serving on a large plate.  What about large hamburgers?  I have found that I prefer a smaller burger, a single rather than a double.  I find the balance of meat and bun to be much nicer when it's a single.  It took me years to learn that fact, and now I can't believe I ever ate double burgers.

OK, OK, I can ramble on and on about the size of food portions.  All that matters is that whatever the size is, there's enough for seconds if you want it.