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#BBA Bread No. 9: Cinnamon and Raisins and Walnuts, oh my!

The ninth bread in the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge is Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread.  This might be my favorite bread we have baked so far.  Sure it's hard to argue with that cheesy, salami-studded star, Casatiello, but this loaf is simple and comforting and delicious and lacking in any pretense or fancy flair.  This bread is exactly what I want for breakfast - toasted with a healthy smear of good butter.  One loaf lasted about 24 hours in my house and I think I single-handedly ate the entire thing.  Every hour or so, I would stroll by the bread board, saw off a little slice, and gnaw on it absently while chasing around the kid.

Next time, and there will be many next times, I will try this with butter instead of shortening, since I tend to be squeamish about the good ol' Crisco.  The dough seemed a bit heavy while kneading, but it produced a wonderfully light and fluffy loaf.  For me, the cinnamon swirl is de rigueur for just the right amount of indulgence.  I skipped the cinnamon sugar on top, which seemed, well, over the top.  

#BBA Bread No. 8: Cinnamon Frankenbuns

I am woefully behind the pack in the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge.  I think most people are on the L's or the M's.  I am still puttering along in the C's.  For a while, I blamed the cross-country move.  Then I blamed house renovations.  And there's always the baby.  But clearly I just need to suck it up and get back to baking.  

The eighth BBA bread is that lovely, decadent waist-spreader - the Cinnamon Bun.  Now, I already had a go-to cinnamon bun recipe by my favorite food geek, Alton Brown.  His recipe makes a delicious, quintessential batch of cinnamon buns with oozy goozy filly and irresistible cream cheese icing.  If you substitute a tablespoon of espresso or strong coffee in the icing, you have a perfect lazy Sunday morning.  I trot these buns out to impress visitors and satisfy sweet tooths.  I even modified it a bit for a very pumpkiny Thanksgiving morning treat.

#BBA Bread No. 6: Holla for Challah!

The bread in the BBA Challenge lineup is challah (Holla!).  In my previous bread experiences, I have never met a challah that was particularly memorable.  I have never been a fan of their egginess and their fancy shapes and their strange brown crusts.  I was not excited about this one.  But, my sense of order and rightness wouldn't allow me to skip ahead just because I didn't think I would like this one. 

#BBA Bread No. 5: Casatiello - salami and cheese and butter, oh my!

Brioche, the previous BBA Challenge bread, was just not my thing.  I ate two slices and the rest languished away on the countertop until I put it out of its misery.  So naturally, I was more than reluctant to begin this bread.  Casatiello is simply a brioche with goodies - usually salami and cheese.  Now, I am often seduced by the inclusion of pork product and/or cheese in a recipe, but I was not convinced that even this dynamic duo could rescue such an undesirable bread.

#BBA Bread No. 4: Brioche - butter butter butterrrrr

The next few breads in the BBA Challenge are eggy breads - brioche, challah, and whatnot.  Despite their obvious decadence, I don't like eggy breads.  They are missing all the qualities that I like in a bread.  They are not crusty.  They are not chewy.  And they have a strangely flavored outer brown layer that has offended me since childhood.  Despite my overwhelming prejudices against the poor brioche, I made it anyway.  My sense of order and rightness didn't allow me to skip a bread just because I didn't like it.  So here it is.  Brioche.

#BBA Bread No. 3: Bagels - Boil 'em, Bake 'em, and Love 'em

I love bagels.  I do.  But I never ever aspired to make them from scratch.  It's just so simple and convenient to pop down to the local bagel mart, where await a staggering variety of delicious little specimens.  Why make them?  And how on earth would you even go about making a bagel?  Well, thanks to the BBA Challenge, I now know exactly how on earth and exactly why.  The how involves a yeast starter with high gluten flour (for the dense chewiness, of course), a good half an hour of kneading, some proofing, an overnight rest in the refrigerator, a quick little bath in boiling water, and trip into a very, very hot oven.

#BBA Bread No. 2: Artos - It's a Celebration!

The second recipe in our Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge is Artos, or Greek Celebration bread.  This bread is one huge, poofy ball of fragrant deliciousness.  The irresistible aroma is due to a nice mix of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, and citrus.  I made the Christmas or "Christopsomos" variation of the bread, which includes golden raisins, cranberries, and walnuts.  Traditionally, this variation has a cross pattern with swirly, decorative edges (as seen in this yummy photo from our Flickr group).  I skipped this fanciness because I thought, at the time, that the curlicues were a bit much and I was, admittedly, a bit intimidated at the thought of getting all decorative with my dough.  Fancy notwithstanding, this bread was large and lovely!

#BBA Bread No. 1: Anadama - a dama good bread

 

The first recipe in the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge is Anadama Bread (yes, we will be bread-baking our way through the alphabet).  Honestly, I didn't have high hopes for this one.  As my first loaf bread in years, it had the potential for disaster.  And what on earth is Anadama Bread?  Some sort of spare, stodgy New England creation consisting of cornmeal mush and molasses, its name a corruption of one husband's exasperated curse, "Anna, damn her!"  Pilgrim resourcefulness with a hint of misogyny.  Yum.

a gluten for punishment

 

This is Peter Reinhart's chunky, beautiful bread-baking tome, The Bread Baker's Apprentice.  How cute is the girl on the cover?  I love that she is hugging a massive round of crusty bread.  I want to do that every time I smell freshly baked bread.  Everyone knows that I am a chocoholic, that I have an insatiable sweet tooth.  But what you may not know is that, at the end of the day, I would choose bread every time.  If I was stranded on a deserted island and had my choice of one type of food to eat for the rest of my life (what? that doesn't happen?), it would be a good crusty sourdough and a nice sharp cheese.  I adore bread.  I crave it.  I devour it.

A Very Pumpkiny Thanksgiving Morning

The very best indulgent holiday morning treat is a big batch of homemade cinnamon rolls - soft and pillowy, sweet and cinnamony.  And Alton Brown has the absolute best recipe for cinnamon rolls.  Yes, the dough needs to be made the night before.  Trust me, it is worth it.  And if you substitute 1 of the tablespoons of milk in the icing for very strong coffee, these cinnamon rolls are pure pefection.  However, for this Thanksgiving morning, I wanted something more seasonally themed, so I tried out some Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls.  They were lovely and pretty and festive and entirely appropriate for a day dedicated to eating and giving thanks.  This recipe is a combination of Alton Brown's instructions and this recipe from Dishing up Delights.