Does everyone get as excited as I do about the first rhubarb of the season? Apples are mealy shadows of their fall glory at this time of year and the appearance of rhubarb – stewed, roasted, or baked in pies or crisps – is a delicious relief. The season seems to last a little here, so there are weeks of it to look forward to, leading right into berry season.

These cakes have earned a place on that list – they’ll be making an appearance every year and may even show up at my parents’ annual Christmas dinner with their friends, as I chopped up a bunch to put in the freezer for them.

The rhubarb we used was from the garden of friends of my parents and it was the lushest looking rhubarb I’ve ever seen. The caramel for this cake, with its rich Canadian whiskey base (no bourbon to be had at my parents’ place), had just the right sweetness to balance the tartness of the rhubarb. It also soaked nicely into the butter cake, which was tender and substantial at the same time. We substituted Greek yogurt for the crème fraîche and it worked very well.

We made these in 4″ aluminum tins, as we couldn’t find the right size of cake molds, and the cakes unmolded nicely. I’d like a little more surface area for the caramel and rhubarb, so I think I’ll be investing in straight-sided 4″ cake molds when I find them.

I’d like to make these again before rhubarb season is over, perhaps in a gluten-free version, but I’ll also be roasting it and making a pie or crisp or two. I also think I’ll play around with this recipe a little. Pears would go nicely with the caramel and cake, for a start. I’m looking forward to seeing what variations the other bakers in the group come up with this round.

This week’s host is: Erin. You can find everyone’s links here: Fresh Rhubarb Upside Down Baby Cakes

Ah baking, how I have missed it so!

With school and homework, I haven’t gotten the chance to bake recently, but with my two weeks off for spring break, I took full advantage of the free time to do whatever I want and that included making Madeleines.

Probably the fluffiest batter I’ve ever made, the Madeleines took maybe 20 minutes to make. Watching the eggs go from a liquid to a light fluffy cloud was really cool. After mixing the dry ingredients in another bowl, I folded them into the eggs and other wet ingredients to make a thicker and darker batter, but it was still very fluffy.

I quite enjoyed the end product and hope that I will get to make them again someday!

J

This week’s hosts are: Katie and Amy Thisdell. You can find everyone’s links here: Madeleines

Floury russet potatoes were a staple of my childhood. Baked, mashed, or boiled, they were on the table several times a week, until they were supplanted by Yukon golds. These days, they’re mostly forgotten in our houses, with so many varieties of potatoes grown locally. Sieglinde is my favourite variety lately and I’m looking forward to seeing them in the market again this summer.

When it comes to potato bread, though, russets win. This week’s recipe used mashed dry potatoes in place of half the flour to make a very spongy, light bread with a tender-crisp crust. We left the skins on the potatoes and they gave the bread a lovely flecked look, which my photos unfortunately don’t show. They also added some much-needed fibre. Next time, I think I’ll switch out some of the white flour for something with a little more substance.

I’ll also experiment with flavourings, even though this bread is quite tasty plain. I can imagine a garlic-rosemary version, another with a little oat flour, or even one with a swirl of shredded cheese running through it.

J did most of the prep work for this recipe, boiling, drying, and mashing the potatoes, then measuring out the ingredients and mixing them up in the stand mixer. I took over after this, as we were doing both of this month’s recipes at once. She carried on with the Madeleines and I stood watch over the stand mixer as it kneaded the dough. We didn’t raise the mixer speed over 2 (as recommended in the Kitchen Aid manual) and the dough didn’t suffer at all.

We made two shapes, one longer and thinner than the other, but neither achieved the torpedo shape called for in the recipe. We also substituted inverted baking sheets for the bread stone and had to hand-sprinkle the water into the oven. Next time, I think we’ll just throw a few ice cubes onto the oven floor, as someone suggested in the P&Q section. I also think it’s time to invest in a baking stone and peel. We’re enjoying bread-baking too much to keep improvising.

It’s been a while since we’ve joined in on Tuesdays with Dorie – we’re glad to be back and I’m looking forward to reading everyone’s posts.

This week’s host is: Dawn. You can find everyone’s links here: Rustic Potato Loaves

I’m on my own for this week’s recipe – Kat is away and J is in the midst of exams, while Jeannine is recombobulating her household after the big move from the farm. (And yes, recombobulating is a word…at least it is one, now).

I did share this lovely bread, though. I took it to a meeting last night, where we did committee work between glasses of wine and plates of cheese, deli meats, and fruit. It made a nice end to the meal and looked amazing on the table. That’s the essence of a holiday loaf. I liked that the bread was soft and fragrant with cardamom, but not too sweet. I’ve already sated myself on holiday cookies and candies, so it’s nice to have a contrast to all the richness.

I hope everyone has had a lovely holiday season so far and our best wishes for a wonderful New Year. We’re looking forward to cooking and baking with you through 2013.

This week’s host is: Erin. You can find everyone’s links here: Finnish Pulla

Funny thing about trying to bake when you’re in the process of packing up a house: sometimes you realize some things were packed up perhaps a bit too soon, which in turn provides opportunity for a little improvisation. Such was the case this time around with the Buttermilk Crumb Muffins. After a bit of a rough morning, I decided the best pick me up was a trip into the kitchen to whip up these lovelies. Definitely one of the easier and less time-intensive recipes, I was able to complete the method pretty much all by myself. The hands-on (literally) nature of mixing the dry ingredients together was a lot of fun for me, allowing me to get my hands dirty in the name of delicious awesomeness. The few changes I did make to the recipe still made for a fabulous result: in lieu of nutmeg, I replaced it with the equal amount of cardamom, replaced vegetable shortening with butter, and changed out a quarter cup of white flour in favour of whole wheat. The satisfaction of putting them together, and the ensuing flood of the scent of cinnamon in the kitchen made all the stress from earlier in the day melt away. The end result was a fluffy, buttery, melt in your mouth muffin that I’m going to have a lot of trouble being able to share with anyone….buut seeing how they only keep for a day or two, I’ll have to anyway. Until next time fellow bakers! I look forward to seeing how this recipe turned out for everybody!!

-Kat

This week’s host is: Alisa. You can find everyone’s links here: Buttermilk Crumb Muffins

Our catch up post today is from the beginning of October.

Well, today’s baking adventure went by a little faster than usual because my aunt had already made the dough the night before. When we got to my grandma’s house my aunt had taken the dough out of the fridge. The task that my sister and I completed was to make the dough into 5″ by 7″ rectangles. After that we folded them into threes and pinched the ends so that it would make a nice oval shape. We then placed the dough into the pans to be put in the oven!

The dough smelled so amazing I could hardly wait until it was done!

After cooking them for 35 minutes we took them out!

Then, after letting them cool my sister and I took one of the loaves home to share with our family and it was sooo delicious!

Teresa here:

This loaf had mixed reviews – most of us loved it, but a few (my brother in particular) likened it to fruit cake and wouldn’t eat more than a bite. I thought it was a great breakfast treat, slathered with butter. We used a mixture of frozen cranberries and dried blueberries, along with the walnuts called for in the recipe – lovely combination.

There’s no host this week, as this is a catch up Tuesday. You can find everyone’s links here: Rewind! We’re looking forward to seeing what others caught up on and be reminded of what the group’s accomplished so far.

This week’s Baking with Julia recipe is a bagel that’s described in the book thusly: “boiled, then baked – with a cakey, open sponge, they are not heavy, stretchy, or chewy.” Not chewy? Isn’t chewiness the essence of all bagels? (I exclude most supermarket bagels, which a bagel-loving friend of mine describes as “bagel-shaped bread.”) Colour me skeptical.

I think it’s time for a bagel throwdown. The bagel recipe that’s gotten the most buzz in recent years belongs to Peter Reinhart, so we decided to put Julia’s recipe up against his and see which one came out on top.

We’re taking some inspiration from the most famous of bagel head-to-heads: New York versus Montreal. It’s probably no surprise that we’re on Adam Gopnik’s team for this one. Here’s what he had to say in Martin Connelly’s article, Bagels, Toasted, from The Morning News:

I have few fixed convictions in life, but one of them is that Montreal bagels are not just better than New York bagels or any other bagels, they’re so much better that I’m on kind of permanent house arrest about eating any other kind of bagel—I just can’t eat a New York bagel. If you toast it and there’s enough cream cheese and nova on it, it’s tolerable, but it just isn’t a bagel.

It doesn’t stop there, either. Once the question of Montreal’s supremacy is settled (what do you mean it’s not settled?), there’s the age-old Fairmount versus St-Viateur question to be tackled.

When we went to Montreal a while back, we bought a bag each from Fairmount and St-Viateur (for scientific purposes only, of course). St-Viateur won, hands down. It’s an experience not to be missed if you’re there. If you go around the back, you might even be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of them loading bagels into that famous wood-fired oven.

But, let’s get back to our own little home-baked contest. There are small differences in the rising and shaping method for our contestants, but the primary difference lies in the ingredients. The bagels in Baking with Julia (from Contributing Baker Lauren Groveman) have shortening and sugar, while Reinhart uses malt syrup (or honey, in our case). Each poaching liquid uses the same sweetener as the bagels. We substituted the instant yeast called for in Reinhart’s recipe with dry active yeast, so they were equal on that front.

I prepared the dough for each of the bagel recipes the night before, as my nieces had only a limited amount of time for baking this month and we were tackling a lot together the next day. Groveman’s recipe produced a dough that was springy and incredibly active. Reinhart’s dough rose well, but seemed sluggish in comparison, even though the yeast was from the same batch.

Both were easy to work with, though everyone preferred Reinhart’s method for shaping the bagels over Groveman’s. We had two pots of poaching liquid on the stove, but apart from that, the method for boiling and baking each batch of bagels wasn’t that different. Once baked, Groveman’s bagels were larger and and a little rough around the edges, while Reinhart’s bagels were compact, tall, and smooth.

All this is preamble, of course, because what matters most is taste. Reinhart’s bagels had a nice crust with a little sweetness from the honey, while inside they were dense, soft, and chewy all at once. Groveman’s bagels were missing that sweetness in the crust, but had the taste and texture you expect from a bagel. We all liked both recipes, but Groveman’s won for overall taste, just slightly. Next time I make bagels, I’ll use Reinhart’s poaching liquid and Groveman’s recipe. I think the honey helps make the crust perfect.

Will these homemade bagels take the place of Montreal bagels in my heart? No, but good bagels can take a little effort to obtain in this region, so it’s good to know that it’s easy enough to make some delicious and satisfactorily bagel-y bagels at home.

This week’s host is: Heather. You can find everyone’s links here: Bagels

We’re hosting this week’s Tuesdays With Dorie recipe from Baking With Julia along with Michele of veggie num nums. Thanks to Laurie and Jules for the opportunity. Hosting means we’re allowed to share the recipe, which you will find at the end of this post. May it inspire you to buy the book, if you haven’t already.

For many people, the Platonic Form of bread, the one that you’d draw or describe if you were asked, is a white loaf. My mother was never a fan of white bread and we grew up eating brown bread most of the time. So, this week’s loaf matches my conception of bread’s Platonic ideal perfectly.

Though I’m eager to learn all the variations on bread that this group has to offer, there’s something uniquely satisfying about a thick slice of homemade sandwich bread. It’s just as satisfying to make as it is to eat and the sense of accomplishment that comes from seeing perfect loaves cooling on their racks feels as though it resonates all the way back to the earliest bakers.

My nieces did most of the hands-on work for this recipe, each turning out one of the loaves. We gave the loaves an egg wash before putting them into the oven, which gave them a nice sheen once baked. We also substituted molasses for the malt extract, as we couldn’t track any down in time for our baking session. (Scheduling is a big part of our monthly Tuesdays With Dorie process, as you might imagine.) I think the molasses worked well to bring out the bread’s flavour and it certainly helped to create the lovely aroma of the bread. That aroma made it hard not to cut into a loaf right away.

We actually waited until morning, toasting the bread and slathering it with butter and marmalade. It was worth the wait. The bread has a delicate, chewy crumb, but it’s also strong enough to stand up to a lot of slathering.

There will be artisanal breads, flatbreads, and rolls showing up in our posts over the next few years, but I suspect that this bread will be one of the ones revisited most often in our kitchens. I’m also sure that the making of these simple loaves by the girls will be one of the experiences we look back on most fondly, long after we’ve finished working our way through the book. It’s those foundational experiences that enable us to make more difficult creative leaps, after all.

Whole Wheat Loaves
from Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan

There’s just enough honey and malt in this recipe to bring out the natural sweetness of the loaf’s whole wheat flour. A tall crowned loaf with some chew and stretch in the crumb, this bread has the flavour and heft to stand up to strong cheeses and spicy cold cuts, making it first-class sandwich fare. Like the White Loaves (page 81), these are good loaves for bread-baking tyros: The techniques are basic, the rewards many.

Makes two 1-3/4 pound loaves
2-1/4 cups warm water (105°F to 115°F)
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1/4 cup honey
3-1/2 to 3-2/3 cups bread flour or unbleached all-purpose flour
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 tablespoon malt extract
1 tablespoon salt

Mixing and Kneading Pour 1/2 cup of the water into the bowl of a heavy-duty mixer fitted with a dough hook and add the yeast and honey. Whisk to blend and allow the mixture to rest until the yeast is creamy, about 5 minutes.

Combine 3-1/2 cups of the bread flour and the whole wheat flour and keep it close at hand.

Working in the mixer with the dough hook in place, add the remaining 1-3/4 cups water, the oil, malt extract, and about half of the flour mixture to the yeast. Turn the mixer on and off a few times just to get the dough going without having the flour fly all over the counter and then, mixing on low speed, add the rest of the combined flours. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat, stopping to scrape down the bowl and hook as needed, until the dough comes together. (If the dough does not come together, add up to 2 tablespoons more white flour.) Add the salt and continue to beat and knead at medium speed for about 10 minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic. If you prefer, you can mix the dough in the machine for half the time and knead it by hand on a lightly floured surface for 8 to 10 minutes. As with many whole wheat doughs, this one will be a tad sticky even after proper and sufficient kneading.

First Rise Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and shape it into a ball. Place it in a large buttered or oiled bowl (one big enough to hold double the amount of dough). Turn the dough around to cover its entire surface with butter or oil, cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap, and let the dough rest at room temperature until it doubles in bulk, about 1-1/2 hours.

Shaping the Dough Butter two 8-1/2 by 4-1/2 inch loaf pans and set them aside.

Deflate the dough and turn it out onto a lightly floured work surface. Divide the dough in half and, using the palms of your hands and fingertips, or a rolling pin, pat each half into a large rectangle about 9 inches wide and 12 inches long, with a short side facing you. Starting at the top, fold the dough about two thirds of the way down the rectangle, then fold again so that the top edge meets the bottom edge; seal the seam by pinching it. Turn each roll so that the seam is in the centre of the roll, facing up, and turn the ends of each roll in just enough so that the rolls fit in the loaf pans. Pinch these seams to seal, turn the loaves over so that the seams are on the bottom, and plump the loaves with your palms to get an even shape.

Second Rise Drop the loaves into the buttered pans, seam side down, cover with oiled plastic wrap, and allow them to rise at room temperature until they double in size again, growing over the tops of the pans, about 1 hour.

While the breads rise, centre a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375°F.

Baking the Bread When the breads are fully risen (poke your finger into a bread; the impression should remain), bake for about 35 minutes, or until they are golden and an instant-read thermometer plunged into the centre of the bread (turn a loaf out and plunge the thermometer through the bottom of the bread) measures 200°F. (If you like, 10 minutes or so before you think the loaves should come out, you can turn the loaves out of their pans and let them bake on the oven racks so they brown on the sides.) Remove the loaves from their pans as soon as they come from the oven and cool the breads on racks. These should not be cut until they are almost completely cool.

Storing Once completely cool, the breads can be kept in a brown paper bag for a day or two. Once a loaf is sliced, turn it cut side down on the counter or a cutting board and cover with a kitchen towel. For longer storage, wrap the breads airtight and freeze for up to a month. Thaw, still wrapped, at room temperature.

Contributing Baker Craig Kominiak

Our co-host this week is Michele. You can find everyone’s links here: Whole Wheat Loaves

Cake! One of the many joys in life – it is fun to eat but even more fun to bake. This cake was very different from other cakes I have made previously. A couple of differences it had were that it had lemon juice and a lot of egg whites. Another thing that is different is the fact that there is no butter in the cake! Only in the topping and streusel can you find butter! Folding in egg whites that are very fragile was a new adventure I got to take today, too.

Searching for ingredients is usually pretty easy in my Grandma’s kitchen, but today for some reason we had a tough time with ginger and lemon juice. My aunt thought she had left an extra lemon at my Grandma’s house the last time she was over, but to our surprise we could not find it! So we used the three-quarters of the lemon we had. My aunt and I spent a couple of minutes squeezing the life out of the lemon to get almost the amount of juice we needed and topped it off with some of the stuff you buy at the store in a bottle.

Although that problem was solved, soon after we came across the ginger problem. For the life of us, my aunt and I could not seem to find my Grandma’s ginger powder. we looked everywhere and even asked my Grandma where she kept it and still nothing. After a few more minutes of looking, we decided to use candied ginger instead, which we ground in a mini food processor. At that point, my grandma joined us in the kitchen and started looking for her ginger powder. She succeeded in finding the bottle, but when she picked it up we finally saw why we could not find it. The bottle was empty.

The adventures we get to enjoy in the kitchen as a family will make a lifetime of fond memories which I am very much looking forward to.

And now we wait for the cake to be done baking and for that amazing moment when we get to bite into our wonderful creation!

Until next time,

J

This week’s hosts are: Marlise and Susan. You can find everyone’s links here: Nectarine Upside-Down Chiffon Cake

Back when the group did Irish Soda Bread, my nieces and I watched a clip of the episode of Baking with Julia that featured Marion Cunningham baking soda bread and popovers. The girls immediately said that they wanted to try the popovers next, but we ran out of time that round and moved on to other projects.

So, I’m not surprised to see these popovers come up in the rotation so soon. I think a lot of us watched that video clip and wanted to try our own favourite spreads on those pillowy-looking popovers.

J was set to write this week’s post, but she didn’t have the opportunity before she went off on a family vacation. I want to share what she said about the recipe, though:

“I have wanted to make these since I started Baking with Julia. it was probably the easiest recipe so far, because all you have to do is put the ingredients in a blender. Amazing and fluffy when they came out of the oven, I quickly put some raspberry jam on mine and ate it.”

It happened that quickly for all of us. As soon as the popovers came out of the oven, we started pulling out butter, jams, and marmalades. Everyone chose their favourite spread and tore into a popover. Just like that, almost the entire batch was gone. (There were several of us there. Really.) The two that were set aside for the photo were eaten later in the day – a few seconds in the microwave brought back all of their goodness. Thanks, TwD – it was an excellent idea to choose an easy and delicious project to motivate bakers in the heat of summer.

There is, however, another reason that this recipe was chosen relatively soon after the Irish Soda Bread. Marion Cunningham passed away last month and the Baking with Julia group wanted to pay her tribute.

The popover may be a simple recipe, but it’s significant in relation to Cunningham because it’s so emblematic of what she tried to promote throughout her cooking career – learning the skills to cook and enjoy food at home doesn’t have to be difficult. She’s famous, of course, for revising the Fanny Farmer Cookbook in the early seventies and her work helped lay the groundwork for a renaissance of scratch cooking and baking.

This quotation cited in the Washington Post’s obituary for Cunningham sums up her motivation:

“We are living motel lives,” she once told the Chronicle. “The idea of sitting down to dinner is being lost in the rush. No one is cooking at home anymore, so we are losing all the wonderful lessons we learn at the dinner table. And the memories of the past tell us who we are and where we’re from. It carries us into the future.”

It’s also a good expression of why we joined this baking group. Cooking and eating together, sharing skills and learning new ones, is the antithesis of motel living. Our culture may have finally caught up with Cunningham, but should never forget the debt it owes her, and Julia Child, too.

This week’s hosts are: Paula and Amy. You can find everyone’s links here: Popovers