Other People's Food 101: The Bread that Changed Everything

Remember how in my first few posts, I pretty much said I hate baking.


I still do. I just hate it a lot less, and it's fully because of this book:

Figure 17.B-2 If I had a summer reading list for you guys, this would be on it... that gives me an idea for a post!

I've been churning out loaf upon loaf of crusty, flavorful bread with a soft, tender crumb that would impress even the octogenarian Italian bakers back home. I'm happy to provide you guys with the formula and technique for this little food revolution, courtesy of the man who wrote the book:

Sullivan St. Bakery Bread Recipe - This is a little bit modified than the original technique in My Bread, but it's the same principle. Plus, I'm not breaking any copyright laws by posting this link.

A couple caveats: 1) although it may look cumbersome and drawn out (particuarly the 18 hour rising time), this recipe is stunningly easy. You mostly ignore the bowl of dough on the counter and go about your normal life while it does it's own thing, then chuck it in the oven for less than an hour. 2) I use a plain, seasoned cast iron pot like is shown on the cover of My Bread, primarily because I can't afford the Le Crueset he recommends. Plain cast iron, well cared for, works fine.

Tony's Food 101: Italian Wine Biscuits

So as a general rule, I don't bake. I have to hear about enough science at work, I prefer my food to be more of an art. Maybe "craft" is more of an appropriate word, actually. But as with medicine and with everything, there are exceptions to every rule. Every once in a while, the spirit moves me, I get out my measuring cups and make an Italian biscuit. There are three types of biscuits you'll find in the Italo-American bakeries of my native Southern New England: Pepper, Egg and Wine. These are the foods I was raised on, along side red gravy (what most of the rest of the U.S. calls "pasta sauce") and crusty Italian bread. Among my mother and her two sisters, each of them excels at one biscuit. My mom makes pepper biscuits, her sister Donna holds claim over wine biscuits, and every Easter my aunty Elaine churns out enough egg biscuits for the whole family. I guess this is generational; my brother makes pepper biscuits that would make any Nonna cry tears of shame that her's aren't as good. Egg biscuits are way to sweet for my tastes, so I decided to take on the partially sweet, partially savory wine biscuit*. This is a recipe that I ripped off from an OLD very Italian Catholic parish's fund raiser recipe book that my mom had lying around.

* I tried making a batch for a road trip I'm going on this weekend, and apparently I'm a little rusty. The pictures I took of the process are fine, the end result looks nothing like the biscuits I've been making since college. Rather than rising, they totally flattened out into cookie-esque shapes. Another reason I prefer to avoid baking: if you don't do everything exactly right, it doesn't work.


Italian Wine Biscuits

• 4 cups of flour


• 2 cups of granulated sugar


• 4 teaspoons baking powder


• 1 cup of really bold red wine. I like Chiantis. Pour your self a glass to drink, this will make the process more bearable if you're a bake-hater like me.


• 3/4 cups vegetable/corn/canola oil.


• (Optional) One egg yolk, seperated from the whites. Save the whites and make an omlette for yourself tomorrow for breakfast. Tomorrow you will be grateful.
  

Prehead the oven to Bake 375. Mix together all of your dry ingredients, then stir in your wet ingredients. You will end up with an un-appealing purple mass. Incidently, this is the exact color of the first batch of risotto I ever made, and hence why my roommates wouldn't touch it (Figure 6.a).

Figure 6.a - An aerial view of something you probably don't want to eat just yet.

Pick up clumps of the dough and roll them into pencil sized pieces, like a kindergartener making snakes out of Play Doh snakes. (Figure 6.b).

Figure 6.b - Pencil sized Play Doh snakes - okay, it's a fat pencil.

Fold these in half and twist them into ring-shaped knot forms. If you're interested in having your biscuits shine like justice, brush the tops with egg yolk or milk. I used egg yolk this time around. Place onto a greased cookie sheet, or even better parchment paper on a cookie sheet and bake for about a half an hour. Give them some room, as they will rise... and expand sideways. Try to roll thinner pieces than I did, so that your biscuits look more like knots and less like turds (Figure 6.c). After they're done baking, allow them to cool so that they harden and turn really crunchy. When they're done, the purple color will have gone away, and they'll be light brown (Figure 6.d).

Figure 6.c - More like knots (bottom right) and less like turds (top right).

Figure 6.D - The finished product... which looks nothing like I had hoped for.

Store these in an airtight container to maintain crunchiness. This recipe will make about 30 biscuits, depending on how tired you get of making snakes and therefore how much longer and fatter than a pencil your snakes turn out to be.

Sorry about the missed post last week, and the lateness of this week's post. Life's been kind of hectic lately, but stay on board. Things will pick back up as scheduled next week!