Homemade Bagels

I see so many people posting online about getting into baking and I love it!  The circumstances are unfortunate, but there's no better time to bake. I've always found baking so relaxing and satisfying. It gives you a sense of accomplishment, and delicious smells and tastes to enjoy. 

I've been extremely busy with work lately, so Matt has been doing all the cooking.  We've had some wonderful meals and I'm able to focus on work without worrying about planning and shopping. 

I finally had a real day off and decided to make these bagels. It's actually a 2-day process.  Make and shape the dough the first day, let it rise in the fridge for 24 hours, then boil and bake the second day.  

Warm fresh bagels just out of the oven are well worth the wait!  

We had them with plain cream cheese, but next time I'll add fresh chives or minced red onion.  

To make bagels you need a few special ingredients and items that may not be in everyone's kitchen.  They use bread flour (hard flour) not All-Purpose flour.  They also need instant yeast, not active dry or rapid rise yeast.  The recipe also calls for barley malt syrup.  I found one jar on Amazon.  It was expensive but I was going to go for it.  Unfortunately it was sold out by the time I tried to check out.  I used brown sugar instead and had a dark, crunchy crust on my bagels.

The recipe I used is from Serious Eats, by Stella Parks at BraveTart.  The method uses a Yukone, flour and water cooked on the stove to make the bagels brown and crisp. It's then added to flour, salt, sugar and yeast in a food processor with water to make a very stiff dough.  My food processor struggled a little because the dough was so stiff, but it came together in the end. 

The most challenging part for me was rolling out the dough balls. I had a hard time getting them smooth without seams. But the final bagels turned out ok.  

Poking the hole in the dough to make the bagel shape was the fun part.  The bagels then sit overnight in the fridge. 

Boiling and baking is quick and easy.  My bagels were dark golden brown after only 23 minutes in the oven. I also added Everything Bagel Seasoning to two of the bagels, and left the rest plain. 

The recipe makes just 8 small-ish bagels, which was perfect for us. The bagels turned out nicely.  I would like to try again with the barley malt syrup to see if it makes a difference.  

I recommend reading the whole story on Serious Eats before making the bagels. There's also a video.  But this was a very simple, satisfying baking project!

Ham & Cheese Scones

I like scones, but I haven't made them in the past because they don't keep very well and it's hard for just the two of us to get through a batch before they're stale. 

These scones are essentially a meal.  They are large, and filled with ham and cheese, making them filling, savoury and delicious!

Making the scones isn't difficult.  The hardest part is working the butter into the flour, but it's not that tricky.  Just rub it together with your fingers until it's all incorporated.  

If you have leftover roast ham, it would be great in this!  Country ham would be fantastic.  I didn't so I just bought a ham steak from the grocery store and diced it up. You'll want a thick piece of ham for a nice dice.  

The dough has plenty of cream in it and is quite wet.  Pat it down on parchment into a round.

The dough gets cut into triangles and topped with lots of cheese before baking.

The finished scones are great warm or at room temperature.  If you can't finish them the day they're made, pop them in the freezer and thaw before eating, or warm them in a 350 degree oven for about 10-15 minutes. 

Here's the recipe, enjoy!

Ingredients:

2 cups flour plus more for dusting
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt4 tablespoons cold butter cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 cup cold cooked ham, diced
2 green onions, chopped
3/4 cup sharp cheddar cheese, shredded1/4 cup milk3/4 cup 18% table cream

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Mix together flour, baking powder, sugar and salt in a large bowl.  Add the butter and rub each cube between your fingers into the flour until it dissolves and the flour resembles coarse meal. 

Add the ham, onions and 1/4 cup of the cheese to the flour mixture and toss to combine.  Add the milk and cream and mix with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula until combined into a shaggy dough. 

On a floured work surface, pat the dough into a 7-inch circle, about 1 inch thick.  Cut into 6 wedges and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet.  Sprinkle each wedge with the remaining shredded cheese.  

Bake 25 minutes until golden and eat these for breakfast, lunch or snacks.  Great with soup too! 

Blueberry Peach Buckle

I can't believe I've never shared this recipe. It is so simple and delicious! You can have it for breakfast, a snack, or dessert.  It keeps well and freezes wonderfully. You can use fresh or frozen fruit and the rest of the ingredients are pantry staples. 

A buckle is essentially a cake filled with fruit and (optionally) topped with a crumble topping. Buckles, along with similar evocatively-named desserts like grunts, slumps and cobblers, are a great way to use an abundance of fresh fruit before it goers bad. 

At this time of year we still have a lot of fresh berries and stone fruits in the local markets. This recipe uses peaches and blueberries, but you could use any berries you like, or even plums. 

This recipe comes from The Joy of Cooking, and I've been making it for years.  I like to add oats to the crumble topping, but you can leave them out or skip the topping altogether (but I recommend it!)

Recipe (slightly adapted from The Joy of Cooking)

Buckle
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/2 cup milk
2 medium peaches, pitted and diced
1 1/2 cups blueberries

Crumble Topping
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons flour
1/4 cup rolled oats
2 tablespoons butter

For the buckle, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl mix together the butter, sugar and egg until fluffy.  Add the milk slowly and mix until combined. Stir in the dry ingredients until just mixed. The batter will be quite thick. Carefully fold in the peaches and blueberries. 

Spread the batter evenly in a greased 9-inch square baking pan.  

Mix the crumble topping ingredients together until combined and sprinkle over the buckle batter. 

Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes until a wooden skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.  Cool 20 minutes before serving. 

Fougasse - Herbed Bread

I've been enjoying The Great British Baking Show for a few years now.  It is such a lovely, calming competition show - basically the opposite of shows where contestants back-stab and sabotage each other. 

I have a decent baking vocabulary, but I'd never heard of Fougasse until I saw it on this season's botanical baking episode.  

Fougasse is a french flatbread, filled and topped with herbs, and shaped to look like a leaf.  

I really love baking bread and wish I did it more often. It can be a little warm to bake bread in the summertime, but this bread is so quick and easy, it's not going to make you sweat. There's no kneading, it can all be done in a mixer with a bread hook.

I used the recipe directly from the PBS Great British Baking Show website. 

I divided the dough in two and baked only one loaf to start.  

I tried to stretch and shape the dough by hand, like a pizza, but it ended up too thin in the middle and too thick on the outside, so it burned a bit in the oven.  The unburnt parts still tasted amazing though!

Since the dough is similar to pizza dough, I figured it would hold the same way in the fridge, so I refrigerated the second half of the dough for a few days until I was ready to try again.  

This time I used a rolling pin to roll out the dough evenly, and it worked perfectly.

We ate our fougasse with a simple soup and salad dinner, but it is amazing dipped in oil and balsamic vinegar as an appetizer.  It would also be a lovely gift to bring to a dinner party, to serve or for the hosts to enjoy on their own. 

Here's the recipe from the PBS website, with slight adaptations: 

Ingredients
500 g all purpose flour, plus extra for dusting
10 g table salt
7 g package instant yeast
2 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for greasing and drizzling
350 ml warm water
2 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
2 tsp chopped fresh thyme
2 tsp chopped fresh sage
½ tsp dried oregano
flaky sea salt

Directions

Place the flour, salt and yeast into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook. 

Add the olive oil and three-quarters of the water. 

Begin mixing on low speed. As the dough starts to come together, add the remaining water very slowly. Mix for another 8 minutes on a medium speed. 

Add the rosemary, sage and thyme and mix for a minute until the herbs are evenly distributed in the dough. 

Place the dough in a large bowl that has been coated lightly with olive oil.  Cover with plastic wrap and leave to rise in a warm place until at least doubled in size – about an hour. 

Dust the work surface with flour. Pour the dough onto the floured surface and divide the dough in half.  You can shape and bake both loaves now, or refrigerate half the dough in a zip-top bag for up to five days. 

On parchment paper, roll each dough half into a flat oval. Using a pizza cutter make two cuts in a line down the middle of the ovals with a gap between them. Make 12 diagonal cuts in the dough, 6 either side of the central cuts, forming a leaf design, then stretch the dough out slightly to emphasize the holes.

Lift the dough on the parchment and place onto a baking sheet. Place the baking sheet inside a large plastic bag and leave to rise in a warm place for 20 minutes. 

Preheat the oven to 430F.

Spray or drizzle a little olive oil over the top of the loaf.  Sprinkle with oregano and bake for 15–20 minutes, or until the fougasse sounds hollow when tapped on the base. 

Remove from the oven and while still hot, brush with more olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt.

Sour Cherry & Saskatoon Berry Tart

Summer fruits are here and I love it!  At the farmers market the other day I saw two things I can't find too often around here: Saskatoon berries and sour cherries.

Saskatoon berries look a lot like blueberries, but they taste completely different. When they're raw they are a little bitter, but baked in this tart they taste nutty and delicious, and go great with the sour cherries.  They also keep their shape really well when cooked.

Sour cherries are amazing. I love sweet cherries but I've never used sour cherries before.  They are bright red on the outside but their juice is clear, not dark like sweet cherries.  They need to be sweetened but they have such a great cherry flavour.  I can't wait to bake more with them!

This is a super easy puff-pastry galette, but you can use the filling for a regular pie if you prefer.

I have a cherry pitter to pit the cherries, but you can use a knife if you don't have a pitter, and it's a lot less messy with sour cherries than sweet. 

Ingredients:
1.5 cups Saskatoon berries
1.5 cups sour cherries, pitted
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 sheet frozen all-butter puff pastry, thawed
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon turbinado sugar (raw sugar) or granulated sugar

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Mix the berries, cherries, sugars, lemon juice and corn starch in a large bowl until well combined. 

Roll out the puff pastry on a sheet of parchment on a baking tray and poke it with a fork all over.

Mound the berry mixture in the middle of the pastry and fold the edges roughly up over the filling.

Brush the outside of the pastry with the beaten egg and sprinkle with raw sugar.

Bake for 25 minutes until golden brown and crisp.  If juices leak from the tart, that's ok! 

Serve warm or at room temperature with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. 

Strawberry & Brie Puff Pastry Tart

Here's another Tart of the Month! 

I've been slacking on my tart prep in 2016. Things have been hectic and I've had very little time for baking, but this tart is so quick and easy, it barely counts as baking at all!

I had leftover cheese and fruit from a dinner party we had, so I decided to put it all together in some puff pastry for a tasty snack.  

You can use virtually any combination of cheese and fruit - blueberries and cream cheese, peaches and goat's cheese, apples and cheddar, pears and blue cheese... the possibilities are endless. 

Simply slice up the fruit and place it on a sheet of thawed puff pastry.

Then top with the cheese of your choice either sliced, spread, or crumbled over the fruit

I attempted to get fancy and create a braid pattern by slicing the puff pastry in diagonal strips on either side of the filling.  I should have started braiding at the bottom though.

My braid pattern didn't turn out as nicely as I'd hoped, but it's still kind of neat!

Mix an egg with a little water and brush over the pastry and sprinkle with raw sugar.

Bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes until browned and crisp.  The cheese will melt out the sides a bit but that's ok!

Slice and serve warm or at room temperature. This makes a great snack or appetizer for a party.  Or even a not-too-sweet dessert, perhaps with a little whipped cream or ice cream. 

Enjoy this easy tart with all the fruits coming into season soon!  

Chewy Chocolate Brownies

This winter has been kicking my ass. I've been super busy with work and other stuff and haven't had as much time as I'd like to cook in my new kitchen (or to write blog posts).

For weeks I was craving brownies but didn't have the energy for baking. I tried to assuage the craving with a mug cake and even a Jos. Louis but it had to be brownies. 

The thing is, brownies are very easy to make. As long as you have the ingredients on hand you can whip them up in a few minutes and have brownies within the hour.

Luckily I had high-quality unsweetened chocolate in the pantry and the rest of the ingredients are staples so I was all set.

I've tried many brownie recipes over the years and read the debates about the merits of cake-y and fudgey brownies, but my preference is for a chewy brownie.  This recipe makes the perfect brownie for me.

Here's what you need:

3/4 cup butter (170 grams or one and a half sticks)
57 grams (2 ounces) unsweetened chocolate 
1/3 cup (43 grams) cocoa powder
2 cups (400 grams) granulated sugar
3 eggs
1 cup (128 grams) flour
1 tablespoon vanilla
Maldon salt (or other large-flaked salt) (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Line an 8-inch square (preferably metal) baking pan with parchment paper or foil so the paper hangs over the sides making the brownies easy to remove once they're baked and cooled.

Melt the butter in a medium pot over medium heat and add the chocolate, stirring until melted.  Let it cool for a few minutes, then add the sugar and cocoa powder, stirring to combine.  Add the eggs, flour and vanilla and mix them in.  The batter will be extremely thick, dark and glossy.

Pour it into the prepared baking pan and spread the batter evenly. Sprinkle salt flakes over the top of the batter.  This is optional but I think it takes these brownies over the top!  You need to use Maldon salt or another large-flaked salt, not kosher salt or table salt.  Use about 1/2 a tablespoon to get a nice light sprinkling.

Bake the brownies for 35 minutes.  It will be tempting to taste them while they're warm but they will be so much better once you let them cool.  And even better if you chill them! For some reason these really shine straight out of the fridge!

Chill for an hour, then cut the brownies into small squares and serve. They have a deep chocolate flavour and a great chewy bite and the crunch of the salt on top makes them perfection.  So easy, you've got to make these!

Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Coffee Cake

I've enjoyed reading Deb Perelman's Smitten Kitchen blog for a while now.  All the recipes are beautiful, doable and always turn out delicious. So when I had a container of sour cream leftover from Christmas and guests popping by our new house for coffee, I knew just where to look for a coffee cake recipe. 

This Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Coffee Cake would use up all the sour cream, and I knew I had all the other ingredients on hand. Plus it uses cinnamon which is my favourite flavour in coffee cake. 

This cake is incredibly easy and delicious. The eggs are separated and whipped whites are folded into the batter, making the cake puff up beautifully as it bakes. 

Chocolate chips and cinnamon sugar are layered within the batter and strewn on top of the cake.

We were impatient and ate the cake warm from the oven, but it's even better once it's had a chance to cool and the chocolate chips form back into firm nuggets of chocolate.  The flavour was even better the next day.

You can find the recipe here:  Smitten Kitchen Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Coffee Cake

Make it and enjoy!