I bought something called Fiori di Sicilia from a King Arthur Flour catalog my sister randomly received. It's a flavoring, some mix of citrus and vanilla. I've never heard of it, but I was curious enough to try it. Does anyone have any suggestions of how I should use it?
Never used it but sounds delicious, and yes that's what you might put in a Panettone, Pandoro, or Colomba pasquale. Speaking of which we made the Colomba pasquale (colomba di Pasqua) bread this year at the bakery, but to bring out the flavors we wanted I cut open and scraped out 28 whole vanilla beans, soaked raisins in Combier (80 proof triple-sec), and added about a pound each of lemon zest and orange zest to 370-odd lbs of dough.
When letting our customers know about the Easter bread, I was working on finding the history of the bread; Wiki is just a stub. Here's the most interesting claim I could find, and I thought Livius might have some feedback on this, being a maven of history and things Italian.
From Novacart USA, a paper company that produces baking paper including the dove molds:
Quote:
The orgin of this bread is a bit nebulous. According to Marsha de Angelis' web site. "The Artisan" ( ** The Artisan ), the Colomba has two Italian birthplaces: Pavia and Milan. Each of these cities has its own legend about the orgin of this sweet bread, but the Milanese version is more accepted. Colomba di Pasqua bread represents the role played by two doves in the battle of Legnano in 1176, which was fought between Federico Barbarossa and the Lombard League, which included the Milanese and their allies. According to the Milanese legend, two white doves flew onto the altar that stood on the Milanese carrocio, or war chariot. Becoming a symbol of Milan's freedom, the doves stayed on the altar until the Milanese were victorious.
The Milanese created this dove-shaped bread to celebrate the victory and their freedom. The tradition continues today, and Colomba di Pasqua can be found year round throughout Italy.
There's a modified version of this story where the doves represent The Holy Ghost? in the Denver Post link here, where they also talk about traditional Greek breads and some other historical (maybe) facts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lisarea
Oh, bleargh.
My foolproof NYT no knead bread is not rising. I don't think it's the yeast this time. I think it wasn't wet enough or something, like somehow I messed that up because I started making bread in the middle of the damn night when I was half asleep. It did look drier than usual.
Anyways, can this marriage be saved? Can I, like, proof some yeast and add it or whatever and then, like knead the no knead bread and make bread like a refugee, or should I just cancel all our plans and go live in the park or something?
Don't tell me to start over! I know how to do that already! I don't want to!
I don't know a lot about no-knead. If a dough hasn't been sitting and fermenting too long (say less than 15-30 minutes ideally) you can take yeast, add enough water to it to dissolve it and turn it into a slurry or paste, then mix that into the bread. It will move slower than if you had added it into the initial mix, unless of course you add more yeast to compensate.
With no-knead it would probably be fine but this is where baking can be fun (as long as it isn't the feeling of arrgh I am screwing up the loaf I was supposed to have prepared for X)- experimentation! Try it both ways and see how they come out!
Also no-knead I think tends to be a wetter dough; stiff doughs will rise more slowly for sure. If it was accidentally stiff and you were using a standard mix time, will mix faster and more intensively, which means you risk overmixing which will shut down your crumb and make it more dense and uniform.
I heard the Battle of Legnano story from the mom of a friend of mine. She was from the hamlet of Busto Arsizio which is where the battle was actually fought rather than at Legnano so that origin story was big with her. (PS, she also made the most delicious vitello tonnato of all time. OF ALL TIME.) According to pretty much everyone else I knew when we lived in Milan, however, the colomba was a paschal holy spirit reference.
Damn, that's a shitload of zesting and vanilla scraping you did there, chunks. Was the end result worth all the trouble?
The vanilla scraping was probably worth it; luckily I can buy half-kilos of frozen packaged lemon or orange zest so I didn't have to do all that zesting by hand.
haha, I am bumping this thread because I want to make key lime pie for Easter and I knew that somewhere there was a record of which recipe I used...uh, 5 years ago?
The more I think about this, the more twilight zone I feel. How did that happen? 5 years?
So now I know what I was talking about when I said my pie crust looked ugly. Since it's been (approx) 5 years since I've made a pie crust, I still am doing something wrong where the crust sides slouch down during the baking part and ugly is exactly what it looks like. Whatever.
I have had such a great time making this pie today that I think I will work on some other baking things on the weekends. Like some of those ridiculous brownie recipes people were making five whole years ago.
Also, I think Janet should post that hazelnut hazelnut hazelnut thing I vaguely recall her talking about in here!
Oh, that's just your basic tollhouse/chocolate chip cookie recipe. Only you replace one cup of the flour with a cup of hazelnut flour. You add one tablespoon of hazelnut liqueur at the same time as the vanilla. Then you add a cup of chopped hazelnuts - we liked it better with a coarse chop - and use milk chocolate chips. Everything else goes by the recipe on the bag.
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
I made some substitutions in my fave dinner roll recipe figuring I am only out a couple bucks worth of ingredients. I used coconut milk for water, no sugar, and coconut oil for butter. Not successful in my opinion. Edible but not all that tasty. Pretty sure the fat change is the bummer, not the liquid.
I made my mom a BDay cake. I used a "light" buttermilk recipe for the cake, and the vanilla layer was like pancake batter and really super thin. I used 1/3 cup too much buttermilk but didn't figure it out for like an hour. For the second layer I added cocoa and powdered sugar and used the correct amount of buttermilk..it turned out nice. I thought I would get fancy and cut up the layers and laid them in a checkerboard...but lazily. It looked bad so I poured ganache over the whole thing.
I have a checkerboard cake pan set somewhere. Apparently, in my twenties it was something I felt I desperately needed to own. Pretty sure I've used it exactly once.
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
Cornbread? Anyone have a favorite cornbread recipe?
I'm not a huge cornbread fan, but this recipe pleases even me. I used a whole jalapeno instead of futzing around with teaspoons and at various times I've added grated cheddar and/or a half cup of fresh corn (already cooked, of course) with excellent results.
I'm having a Manchester themed tea this weekend. I need to make two pies, one sweet and one savory, as well as scones. I decided to skip the Eccles Cakes, even though they were my first thought, because I'm not sure my family would like them anyway. Manchester Tart is much more likely to be a hit.
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
It was good. Not great, but good. The crust wasn't as even as I would have liked (too thin in the middle) and the cake is very creamy. I was going for that dense texture of a classic New York cheesecake and missed the mark, which bums me out because I don't have a stand mixer so I had to use a hand beater on the lowest setting to beat that cream cheese sooooo slowly to keep it from getting airy and fluffy. I probably beat that damn thing for close to an hour all told. Tedious doesn't begin to describe it. After all that, I still didn't get the textural result I wanted.
It's only been like five months since the last time I posted in here, so that's good. Anywho, my babies are finally old enough to bake with me without me going insane. We found this out by making cookies recently--they were from a recipe in the back of a children's book that they love--and we all had a really great time. I think we're going to start doing more of that and I will post here. Because it is fun.
If you don't have fb (or for some reason aren't friends with me on there), here is a picture Grammy took.
Re: Stupid Baking
Linear Mode
