The Refrigerator Rise Trick on a Busy Thanksgiving Morning: Fresh Rolls (Kürbiskernbrot) from the German Alps

Kürbiskernbrot Pumpkin Seed Bread | Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

Before we even start with this, you should know that this reprised Thanksgiving post is one of many– click here for all our Thanksgiving posts over the years.

Some people shy away from yeast breads and rolls at busy holidays because they think the proofing step (the rest after the loaves or rolls are shaped) is too time-consuming, even with our stored dough. Here’s a great way to get around that–form rolls or loaves the night before, refrigerate overnight and they’re ready for the oven in the morning. Read More

Soft Puerto Rican Sweet Buns (Mallorca)

mallorca

For spring break my family visited Puerto Rico. It took me less than 24 hours to find myself an amazing local bakery with all kinds of tasty pastries and breads to try. My favorites, which I managed to sample several times during our stay, were the Quesitos and Mallorca buns. The buns are a sweet enriched dough that is wound up into a snail shell shape and dusted with a thick coating of powdered sugar. We ate them plain with coffee or split open, stuffed with eggs and bacon, as a breakfast sandwich. When I got back home, I used our brioche dough to recreate the sweet buns and they are delicious and easy to make.  Read More

pullman loaf

Pullman Loaf – perfectly shaped sandwich bread

The beauty of a pullman loaf is the perfectly shaped slices. If you don’t want to take a chance on a loaf that has a slightly irregular shape, then this is the pan for you. It makes for a perfectly square sandwich loaf or movie-worthy toast. Any of our bread doughs will work in this pan, but some rise more than others, so you will have to adjust the amounts. In this post I used a 100% whole grain oat bread from The New Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which will rise less than our recipes using only white flour from The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. You may need to experiment a little, but I will walk you through the process below. Read More

(Thinking about trying to re-create) gorgeous pastries from France, plus, an even better way to do Dutch oven bread on the grill

The pastry above is layered with chocolate pastry cream, flan, and on top, a very whimsical patisserie (pastry shop) in the Marais district in Paris has placed jelly beans, candy blackberries, and a little pile of minced pistachio.  For some reason, I seem to find the need to put a baguette in every picture.

My family and I’ve been home from France for a month but I’m still not exactly “home.”

More photos if you click below; plus new tips on getting a perfect Dutch oven bread on the outdoor gas grill (I’m going to keep refining this).  I’d planned on trying to re-create this pastry—-baking up brioche (on page 300 of the book) , slicing it thinly, and layering it with pastry cream (recipe for the cream on page 348 of the book. But as I said, I always seem to end up with bread… Read More

A Sneak Peek at the Red Star Yeast Test Kitchen!

This is Roberto, one of the luckiest people I have ever met. He and Mark, who run the test kitchen at Red Star Yeast, have what I consider a dream job. They work in this amazing kitchen to come up with all kinds of yeasty treats. The equipment is top notch, the ingredients limitless and the space is massive. I have kitchen envy in a big way. No wonder they are such fantastically nice guys. They were kind enough to invite Jeff and me into their kitchen to play with them. We baked all kinds of breads from our books and did presentations to the rest of the Red Star team. Read More

Wood Fired Oven in Italy, a Love Affair!

Istanbul, Greece, Naples, Rome and all the stops between were beyond my wildest expectations, but this pizza oven is where I fell in love. I rented a particular house in Tuscany, not for its stunning views, or proximity to wine, cheese, olive oil, gelato, pasta, pastries, all of which were minutes away, but for this oven. For the first three weeks of our journey we ate hundreds of pizzas and flatbreads, as research for our upcoming book on the subject, and now, in Tuscany I finally got back in the kitchen to do a little creating of my own. With a bit of help from David, our trusted culinary guide and keeper of the oven, I set out to bake pizza in Italy, an admittedly ballsy move. Read More

Baking in Tuscany, without any of my equipment!

Jeff and I are always wanting to convey how simple and forgiving these recipes are, not to mention delicious. During my stay in Tuscany this summer I rented an apartment just outside of San Gimignano. The foundation of the house was built around 500AD, but thankfully the kitchen had been updated in this century. It seemed a must for me to bake bread during my week there. I went to the store and bought flour, salt and yeast. Got back to the apartment and realized I had none of the equipment I usually count on in my kitchen. There were no measuring cups or spoons, no pizza stone, no peel and the oven was in celsius, not fahrenheit. No matter, I still dumped everything in a bowl, mixed it up, hoped for the best and ended up with a gorgeous dough. Over the next few days I baked rolls in the house and pizzas in a wood fired oven outside my door.

Jeff and I are teaching in Edina, MN this weekend and we’d love to have you in class! See end of post for details…

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