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Blueberry Biscuits

17 May

I am going to tell you a story about what it’s like to live in Portland, OR.

Last week, an absolutely lovely family moved in down the street from us, taking the place of the absolutely lovely family who lived there before them.  When I stand at my kitchen sink, I have a direct sight line down the street to the house that was being inhabited by the new family.  After I had spent the better part of a day going back and forth to the kitchen sink (you may wonder why I visit my sink so much, and my only answer to you is this: I have a preschool-aged child), watching the new family’s moving fan becoming emptier and emptier, I made the decision to bring the new family a little breakfast treat to greet them the next morning, their first morning in their new house.

Not being a huge fan of eating anything tooth-achingly sweet first thing in the morning, I opted to hunt down a recipe for a nice savory biscuit.  Thinking of the children in the house, it seemed as though something would be needed to make the biscuit a bit more enticing.  I settled on adding blueberries to the biscuits, and began to assemble my ingredients.

I measured, I mixed, and I cut.  As the biscuits were just about to go into the oven, I made the mistake of asking my husband whether or not he thought blueberry biscuits were an acceptable welcome-to-your-new-house gift for a young family.

“Sure,” he said.  “Who doesn’t like blueberries?”

I was about to nod along in agreement when it occurred to me that, you know, someone in that house might not like blueberries.  I hesitated slightly before putting the biscuits in the oven.

“Do you think they might not like blueberries?” I asked him.

Sensing that he may have mistakenly set the terrible wheels of my mind into high gear, my husband backpedaled.  “No.  Everyone likes blueberries.  Everyone.  They’re good.  Always good.”

But then, the path horribly, unrelentingly forged, I began to wonder about other possible problems with the biscuits.  What if someone in the family was gluten intolerant?  Or allergic to dairy?  Or what if the family was vegan?  I could definitely start over and make a vegan biscuit (I’ve lived in Portland for 15 years, so it’s almost a given that I’ve learned how to make delicious vegan biscuits by now), but what if they were non-gluten-eating vegans?  Or what if they only ate organic food?  I had organic blueberries, but I didn’t know if I would be able to find organic non-gluten flour.  This was getting complicated.  I should head to the store and check out the gluten-free flour selection.  I would also need to buy soy milk.  But what if they were allergic to soy?  Okay, I’d buy almond milk.  But what if they were allergic to nuts?  Rice milk?  Hemp milk?

It was right about then that the oven timer went off, effectively causing the hamster wheel that is my brain to come to an abrupt stop.  I took the biscuits out of the oven, admiring the lovely golden-hued tops that were studded with plump indigo berries.

The biscuits were as delicious as they looked, a fact that our new neighbors, unfortunately, never had the chance to learn.  I have a feeling it will take a few more weeks before I am comfortable bringing them any surprise baked goods.  Weeks that I will no doubt spend trying to work subtle food-related questions into everyday conversation without sounding like an absolute loon.

“Yes, the weather is lovely today.  It’s a good day for ice cream.  Ice cream made with milk and cream and probably even eggs.  Real ice cream.  Wouldn’t you agree it’s a good day for real ice cream?”

Blueberry Biscuits

Adapted from Beth Hensperger’s The Bread Bible

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons sugar

6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 large egg, lightly beaten

3/4 cup cold buttermilk, or cold soured milk

finely grated zest of 1 lemon

3/4 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen (unthawed)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, or grease a baking sheet and sprinkle it lightly with 1 tablespoon of cornmeal (to prevent biscuits from sticking).

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar.  Whisk to combine.  Alternately, you can combine the dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and pulse a few times to aerate.

Using a pastry cutter, two knives, or in the bowl of the food processor, cut the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs and there are no large butter pieces remaining.  This will take a minute or two if using a pastry cutter, but only a handful of pulses if using the food processor.

Add the buttermilk or soured milk, the egg, and the lemon zest to the flour mixture.  Stir just enough to moisten everything, until the batter just begins to stiffen.  Gently fold in blueberries.  If using the food processor, add the milk, egg, and lemon zest through the feed tube, and pulse just until the dough comes together and it begins to form into one mass.  Knead in the blueberries once the dough has been removed from the food processor.  It should go without saying that you should not pulse the blueberries in the food processor.

Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface.  Gently knead a few times until the dough just begins to come together.  The dough will still be slightly sticky, but do not handle the dough too much or add too much additional flour, lest you make the dough tough.  Pat the dough into a rectangle roughly 3/4 of an inch thick.

Cut the dough into 2 1/2 inch rounds, using a floured biscuit cutter.  Gently pat scraps of dough together to continue cutting, eventually yielding 12 biscuits.  My cutting sequence produced 7 biscuits from the first rectangle, 3 from the first batch of scraps, then 2 final (slightly misshapen) biscuits from the last of the reformed scraps.

Place biscuits on the prepared baking sheet about 1/2 inch apart.  Bake in the center of a preheated oven for 15 to 18 minutes, until tops have turned golden brown.  Eat hot or slightly cooled.

Makes 12 biscuits.

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Cinnamon Raisin Swirl Bread

19 Apr

One of the greatest sandwiches I’ve ever eaten came from a small café and bakery in Cannon Beach, Oregon.  It was a turkey sandwich, replete with fresh vegetables and fortified with huge slices of avocado.  I loved the texture, I loved the flavor, but most of all, I loved the bread.  The bread that enveloped this sandwich was a soft, thick cut white bread with a large swirl of cinnamon spiraling through it.  When I initially saw the description of the sandwich and its bread I was dubious (cinnamon bread with a turkey and avocado sandwich?), but as soon as I took my first bite of the sandwich, all my suspicions went out the window.  The bread was sturdy enough to hold together a generous pile of fillings, but soft enough to make each and every bite of that sandwich an absolute treasure.  The cinnamon flavor in the bread was very subtle, and the swirl in which the cinnamon was contained had the same texture as the rest of the bread. The bread had a pillowy crust, a delicate chew, and it was the perfect savory pairing for a sandwich.

This is not that bread.

Whereas the bread from that bakery was gentle in texture and flavor, this bread is loud and commands your attention from the get go.  The first thing you notice about this bread is the shatteringly crisp cinnamon sugar crust that crackles loudly as you slice into it.  The second thing to catch your eye is the gooey cinnamon swirl that puddles into thick caramelized drops as it slowly creeps out of each slice.

The next aspect is the toothsome chew of the bread, not bubbly and chewy like a crisp ciabatta, but certainly not yielding and soft.  Biting into this bread is like biting into something a bit less sandwich-y, a bit more dessert-ish.  It’s not entirely in the realm of a dessert, but it is certainly the sort of thing that, sliced, toasted, and spread with cream cheese or (why not?) Nutella, would easily satisfy anyone’s craving for a sweet roll or sticky bun.

This is, come to think of it, yet another defining characteristic of this bread.  It’s a perfectly sweet baked good that can be enjoyed as a snack, as an accompaniment at breakfast, or as a companion to a cup of tea, but the whole time you are enjoying it, you are overcome with the mild notion that you might just be getting away with something slightly mischievous.  It’s not a dessert!  It’s a snack!  It’s not a cinnamon roll!  It’s cinnamon bread.  And now that I’ve given you every excuse to eat this bread, I think that pretty much means you no longer have any excuse not to get up and make it right now.

Cinnamon Raisin Swirl Bread

Barely adapted from The America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book

I am of the opinion that if you are going to make bread with raisins in it, make bread with raisins in it. I found the original recipe’s raisin requirement to be far too scant, so I’ve taken the liberty of doubling the amount in the version below.  Conversely, if you don’t care for raisins, they can be left out to no ill effect.

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar

4 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 1/4 cups warm milk (not skim, but 1% to whole is fine), heated to around 110 degrees

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled, plus extra for brushing

2 large egg yolks

3 1/2 to 4 cups all-purpose flour

1 envelope (2 1/4 teaspoons) instant or rapid-rise yeast

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 cup raisins

Mix the sugars and cinnamon together in a small bowl.  Measure out 2 tablespoons and reserve for the topping.  Whisk the milk, melted butter, and yolks together in a large liquid measuring cup or medium bowl.

Combine 3 1/2 cups of the flour, yeast, salt, and 1/4 cup of the cinnamon sugar in a standing mixer fitted with the dough hook, or in a large bowl.  With the mixture on low speed, or if not using a standing mixer, with a rubber spatula, add the milk mixture and mix until the dough comes together, about 2 minutes.

Increase the mixer speed to medium-low and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes.  If after 4 minutes more flour is needed, add the remaining 1/2 flour, 2 tablespoons at a time, until the dough clears the sides of the bowl but sticks to the bottom.  If kneading by hand, turn the dough out onto a clean, lightly floured counter and knead by hand for 12-18 minutes, adding the remaining 1/2 cup flour as needed to prevent the dough from sticking to the counter.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured counter and knead in raisins by hand until evenly distributed. Continue to knead the dough, forming it into a smooth, round ball.  Place the dough in a large, lightly oiled bowl and cover with greased plastic wrap.  Let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Grease a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan.  Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured counter and press into a 20 x 8 inch rectangle with the short side facing you.  Spray the dough lightly with water, then sprinkle evenly with the remaining cinnamon sugar, leaving a 1/2 inch border at the far edge.  Lightly spray the cinnamon sugar with water until it is damp but not wet.

Loosen the dough from the counter with a bench scraper or metal spatula, then roll the dough into a tight cylinder and pinch the seam closed.  Place the loaf seam side down in the prepared pan.  Mist the loaf with vegetable oil spray, cover loosely with plastic wrap, and let rise in a warm place until nearly doubled in size and the dough barely springs back when poked with a knuckle, 45 to 75 minutes.

Adjust an oven rack to the lower-middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees.  Brush the loaf lightly with melted butter, sprinkle with the reserved  2 tablespoons cinnamon sugar, then spray lightly with water. Bake until golden, 40 to 60 minutes, rotating the loaf halfway through baking.  Cool the loaf in the pan for 15 minutes, then flip out onto a wire rack and let cool to room temperature, about 2 hours, before serving.

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Carrot Muffins

10 Apr

Sometimes I forget that just because someone likes something, it does not necessarily mean that that person wants to eat that thing.  Allow me to explain.  If one was to walk into our house, what one would discover almost immediately is that a certain member of the household is very, very interested in bunny rabbits.  There are bunny rabbit books, bunny rabbit toys, bunny rabbit decorations, and occasionally, bunny rabbits in custom made articles of clothing.

It was in the culinary interest of this bunny rabbit interest that I made the decision to purchase a 24 cavity silicone bunny rabbit baking mold.  Call it a moment of temporary insanity, or perhaps just an instance of intensely debated coercion, but the fact remains that I am now the proud owner of a baking mold in the shape of a small child’s most favorite animal.

Which is where my initial point comes into play.  After bringing home the bunny mold and wondering our loud what I might be able to do with it, it was brought to my attention (by the same party who lobbied so very heavily for the item’s purchase) that, no, it would not be all right to eat something shaped like a bunny, because, hello? That would mean that you were eating a bunny.   It was a thought that, though riddled with illogical assumptions, actually made a tiny bit of sense to me (when thought about from the perspective of a preschooler, that is, which means that most of your thinking will end up being sort of nonlinear and riddled with images from Richard Scarry books and The Country Bunny).

My only course of action at this point, if I wanted to get any use out of that pan, was to change the direction of the train of thought that equated bunny-shaped foods with bunny-cide.  In a moment of near genius (in the low-bar world of bargaining with a small child), I proposed that perhaps if a food made of something that bunnies like to eat themselves was prepared in the bunny pan, maybe that would, in effect, bring one closer to eating like a bunny rather than eating an actual bunny.

My some miracle, my tactic worked.  Thirty minutes later, my son and I were sitting down to feast upon some of the most sweet and savory muffins we’d ever had the pleasure of meeting.  My rescue was courtesy of Rose Levy Beranbaum, who not only makes the brilliant suggestion of using turbinado sugar in the recipe in lieu of regular sugar (which has the effect of taking the sweetness of the muffin to a place that is more caramelized, and less distractingly sweet), but also recommends that the baked item (which she bakes as a 9” x 5” loaf of bread) sit for 24 hours in order for the moisture to properly distribute throughout the entirety of the loaf.

 

Not one to argue with Ms. Beranbaum, but definitely interested in eating the carrot muffins before the dawn of a new day, I exercised my newly flexed muscles of rationalization and came to the conclusion that, baked as tiny little muffins, these carrot delights would be, at most, a mere 1 inch thick and 1.5 inches tall.  Using math skills only previously displayed by recipients of the Fields Medal, I thus determined that the muffins would only have to sit for a maximum of five minutes before they could be fully enjoyed at the height of their deliciousness.  A logical judgment in mathematics?  Probably not.  But an exercise in deliciousness?  Definitely.

Carrot Muffins

Adapted from The Bread Bible, by Rose Levy Beranbaum

As previously mentioned, Beranbaum developed this recipe to be baked as a single loaf of bread. I modified the recipe to fill 24 bunny-shaped cups (with a small amount of batter leftover to make 6 mini muffins), which resulted in cutting the recipe in half.  This left me with the unfortunate task of having to somehow halve 3 eggs, but I soon realized that by using 1 extra-large egg instead of using 1.5 large ones, a similar effect could be achieved. This is a long way of explaining why some of the measurements listed here seem a little peculiar.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Place an oven shelf on the lower-middle level.

If using a bunny-shaped mold, very lightly grease the insides of the bunny cavities (silicone isn’t supposed to stick, but the nature of the bunny ear shapes makes for some serious sticking with these very moist muffins).  There will be enough batter left over to make six mini muffins (lightly grease the mini muffin cups) or one smallish regular-sized muffin (use one paper muffin or cupcake liner). Alternately, you could just make 6 regular-sized muffins and call it good.

3/4 cup plus 2 teaspoons unbleached all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 extra-large egg

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup sugar, preferably turbinado

1 3/4 cups finely grated carrots

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.

In a large bowl or a mixer bowl, using a wooden spoon or a hand-held or stand mixer (fitted with the paddle attachment) on low speed, mix together the egg, oil, and sugar for one minute or until blended. Add the flour mixture and continue stirring or beating on low speed just until incorporated, about 20 seconds.  Add the carrots and continue stirring or beating for another 10 seconds or so.

If baking bunny-shaped muffins, using a small spoon (I used a 1/2 teaspoon measuring spoon), drop enough batter in each cavity to fill it 2/3 to 3/4 full.  Utilize remaining batter as previously mentioned. If making 6 regular-sized muffins, evenly fill all 6 muffin cups.

Bake the muffins for 12-15 minutes if you are making mini and bunny shaped muffins.  Bake regular-sized muffins for 20-25 minutes

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