Wild Yeast

Notes from my kitchen, in which I bake bread and raise a few other matters

Colomba di Pasqua, Semi-Successful

Be honest, do you see a dove here?

Me neither. How about now?

Okay, I admit it’s a stretch. But unable to find the paper dove-shaped molds that I should have used to bake Colomba di Pasqua, the traditional Italian Easter bread, I resorted to trying to make my own. Two 3-inch deep, 10-inch diameter paper pans with a few strategically placed staples were going to have to do.

Next time I will cut about an inch off the top of the pan so the dove can rise and soar above it instead of being trapped in a paper cage. Actually, there won’t be a next time for these makeshift molds, as I’m going now to order my genuine Italian Colomba pans for next year.

I adapted the recipe from the English translation of Cresci: The Art of Leavened Dough by Iginio Massari and Achille Zoia. I have had this opulent (and unfortunately out-of-print) book for a while, and regularly open it when I’m in the mood for a good drool, but had never baked from it before.

The formula is remarkably similar to the one I use for Panettone, but a little sweeter and richer. I built the sweet starter according to the same method I use for that other classic Italian holiday bread. Instead of using my tried-and-true mixing method for sweet enriched breads, where the sugar is added gradually and the dough is mixed to full gluten development before adding the butter, I followed the method given in Cresci, adding sugar initially in the first dough, and butter and sugar at once in the final dough.

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Pain d’Épices

The challenge for this month’s BreadBakingDay #18, hosted by Mansi (Fun & Food Blog) and Zorra (1x umrühren bitte), was Quick Breads. When I think of “quick bread” I usually think of a giant loaf-shaped muffin, not really a bread at all. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I wanted a bread. Or as close as you can get to bread without involving some sort of yeast.

I thought of soda bread, but with Saint Patrick’s Day well over by the time I got to doing this, it just didn’t seem right. I scanned my books and settled on Pain d’Épices from Nick Malgieri’s A Baker’s Tour. The recipe contains no fat whatsoever (no eggs, no butter, no oil, no milk) so I knew it would not bear much resemblance to a muffin. What I wasn’t quite prepared for was how much I would love this.

There’s no question that this a very homely looking loaf, but the plain-Jane appearance belies its seductive nature. The flavor derives mainly from anise, complimented by mustard powder and cinnamon, and from honey. I’m going to be living and breathing that anise-mustard-cinnamon-honey combination for quite some time to come. I’m going to be sleeping with it and injecting it into my veins. If I run out, I’m going to be trading my first-born child for it. Really.

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Lively Up Your Day

If you like to start your morning with a little kick, may I suggest these English muffins? Made with both sourdough starter and yogurt, their tang can be toned down with a little raspberry jam, or turned up with a gloss of unsalted butter.

Either way, maybe they will rock your morning like they rocked mine — as I was finishing my muffin, I felt that rumbling and shaking that in this neck of the woods can only mean one thing: earthquake. It was a little one, as most of them are, but an earthquake nonetheless.

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My Spaghetti Lasagna Western

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Lasagna

A Daring Bakers Film
Produced and Directed by Susan
Screenplay by Mary (Beans and Caviar), Melinda (Melbourne Larder),
and Enza (Io Da Grande)
Based on “Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna”
from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper
The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

The Good:

  • It tasted great. The family loved it. There was not a single sliver left over.
  • The Béchamel sauce was lump-free.
  • I tried, I really tried, to roll by hand. I rolled a quarter of the dough by hand. Therefore, I think I was a good, or at least semi-dutiful, Daring Baker.

The Bad:

    • My hand-rolling was a complete and total failure. I just could not get that thing to roll without ripping. I think my dough was too wet, because the directions said it should feel sticky. When I make pasta to roll by machine, it doesn’t feel sticky (or maybe my definition of sticky is different), but I thought maybe something about hand-rolling needed the dough to be stickier. In retrospect, I don’t think so.

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When Hope Is All You’ve Got

Those of us who work in family planning have an aphorism: Hope is not a method. That is excellent advice when it comes to birth control, and it applies pretty well to baking too. Think things through, have a plan, protect yourself from unintended consequences.

For example, one thing you might think about, if you have some yeast that’s sat in the refrigerator for a while, is to check the expiration date before blithely throwing it into some brioche dough that you plan to use for a rhubarb tart. This could go a long way towards protecting yourself from the unintended consequence of unrisen dough.

Sometimes, though, things just happen. You get caught up in the heat of the moment, in the passion and excitement and anticipation of that perfect … brioche, and your careful plan is suddenly miles from your consciousness, and before you know it … well now, wasn’t that a big “Oops!”

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Some Thoughts About Posting Recipes

If you’ve looked around Wild Yeast, you know that I frequently adapt and post recipes from some of my favorite baking books. This is common practice among food bloggers, and OK from a legal standpoint, as recipes are not subject to copyright protection.

Legality and prevalence notwithstanding, doing right is important, and it has always been my belief and intention that when I post my take on another person’s recipes, I respectfully communicate my admiration for that person and their work, while sharing my own thoughts and processes. However, my recent posting of an adaptation of Flaxseed Rye, from Jeffrey Hamelman’s wonderful book Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes, prompted a reader to challenge me a little. Wasn’t it impolite and disrespectful to reference another person’s work in this way without his permission?

Taking a deep breath, I decided to ask Chef Hamelman what his thoughts were. He has given me permission to share his eloquent and gracious response:

“I’ve given some thought to your emails. To me, bread is rich and deeply historical, and is one of those very fundamental things that has lineage. And part of respecting the lineage is in doing just what you have been doing—giving attribution of recipe sources and inspirations. This is how we keep the links intact. It’s a value thing, an ethic … If you read the introduction in the book BREAD to Horst Bandel’s Black Pumpernickel and Miche Pointe-à-Callière you will get a sense of what my personal values are. So I’m saying yes, continue with what you are doing.”

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