"Good bread needs more than just flour and water, milk, or eggs. It requires nurturing and care." – Edward Espe Brown, The Tassajara Bread Book

I sometimes think I could draw a timeline of my life based on phases I’ve gone through. Several of my earliest years, for example, could be captioned with titles like ‘the Sesame Street sandals phase’, ‘the My Little Pony phase’, and ‘the reading Sweet Valley High under the covers by flashlight phase’.  These would be replaced further down the line by ‘the tomboy, dreams-of-being-a-professional-baseball-player-phase’, ‘the inspired-by-Ghost pottery class phase’, and later, ‘the tie-dyed everything, radical vegetarian phase’. Filling in the gaps there were many, many others, some worth remembering and many not, though admittedly most are good for a cringe or two now. One of my longest-running phases, however, not only quietly co-existed for several years with whatever else happened to be occupying my affections, but was remarkably un-cringeworthy: it was, in fact, bread baking.

I baked my first loaf of bread when I was nine years old, with the help of my mother. We baked a set of whole wheat loaves from one of the few cookbooks in the house, the Tassajara Bread Book, the now-classic exposition on natural breadmaking written by the head cook at the Tassajara Zen Center in San Francisco. The book itself is delightful, peppered with charming sketches illustrating every step from sponge to loaf, and brimming with Edward Espe Brown’s gentle, confident reassurances that good bread was as easy as following a few simple steps. As for me, even at such a young age I found the strange and cryptic procedures of bread making appealing: the hours spent tending the dough, the intense physical workout of kneading it again and again until it sprang up from the table like a rubber ball, the way the yeast miraculously brought flour and water to life. Though making a few loaves was always a full day’s job, it never seemed arduous – on the contrary, when the loaves emerged piping hot from the oven, it almost seemed criminal that for so little effort we could have something so remarkably delicious. "Bread is the one food that tastes of the love that was put into making it," my mother told me, and I believed her.

Some people have used bread making as therapy, and I can fully understand why – nothing is as soothing as nursing a loaf from inception to completion. Things like the rhythmic exertion of kneading, the awareness of details like the temperature of water on your wrist, and the gentle coaxing required to get a perfect performance from the yeast are, to me, something akin to meditation. In fact, I came to enjoy this process so much that over several years I worked my way through not only the Tassajara book but any others I could get my hands on. I kneaded, punched and stretched my way to a knowledge of many types of bread: dense whole grain loaves, sweet braided challahs, puffy pita, chewy bagels; there was even a sourdough starter I managed to keep alive for the better part of a year. Like all good phases, though, this one had a life span, and for whatever reason – dwindling enthusiasm, lack of new recipes to try, or something completely unrelated – I stopped making bread for well over a decade.

All of a sudden, however, I can’t seem to get thoughts of breadmaking out of my head. The fact that I have recently discovered the books of master baker Peter Reinhart is probably no coincidence. Like the effect Edward Espe Brown had on me years ago, Reinhart’s words about bread baking fill me not only with an intense desire to get my hands stuck into a bowl of dough, but with the unshakeable confidence that what comes out of the process will be magnificent. He writes with the clarity of a scientist and the simplicity of a teacher, yet manages to convey an enthusiasm about the magic of bread as if he had just discovered it himself. I’ve been particularly enamored with his small volume American Pie*, an enlightening and entertaining chronicle of his search for the best pizza in the world. I’d already tried his Neo-Neopolitan pizza, which was hands-down one of the most flavorful crusts I’ve ever eaten (though the whole experience was slightly dampened by my ineptitude at sliding the pizza onto my new baking stone face up… but well, that’s another story), so when I spotted his recipe for focaccia I knew it was next on my list.

Reinhart’s focaccia is not like any bread I’ve made before. It’s slow, requiring at least a day of advance planning to leave time for its trademark overnight fermentation, though the time spent in actual bread-making mode is quite short. It’s also so wet and sticky that you can’t knead the dough outside of the bowl (a fact I found mildly distressing as squishing a viscous, stubborn sludge inside a bowl is not nearly as much fun as slapping it around on the countertop). Any possible misgivings I might have had while making it, however, were more than made up for the instant it was out of the oven and had cooled enough for me to sink my teeth into. This was hands-down the best focaccia I have ever had. I don’t even know how to describe it properly – it was both light and substantial, chewy and soft, wonderfully irregular in shape and texture. And the taste… It was like the very essence of bread, full of fermented yeast and nutty flour and hot oven, permeated but not overwhelmed by a delicate parade of herbs, garlic, oil, and a tongue-tickling sprinkle of spicy chili.

Now, I know better than to try to identify a phase before it has even really started, but I have a sneaking suspicion that looking back at this particular point in time I’ll have no trouble identifying the ‘couldn’t stop eating focaccia phase’. And I must say, at least it has a better ring to it than My Little Pony, Sweet Valley High or tie-dyed t-shirts.

 
*I was delighted to see that our dear friend David gets a mention in this book. Apparently he was a dining companion of Peter’s at Chez Panisse one afternoon when, hot on the pizza trail, Peter attended a pizza party catered by Alice Waters herself. I wonder what David thought of the pizza?

 
Peter Reinhart’s Foccacia

Source: slightly adapted from Peter Reinhart’s American Pie

For the dough:
5 3/4 cups (26oz or 740g) unbleached bread (strong) flour
2 te
aspoons salt
2 1/2 teaspoons instant (fast-acting) yeast
2 1/2 cups (600ml) ice-cold water (you can substitute white wine, or even milk, for up to half of the water)
1/4 cup (60ml) olive oil
            
For the herb oil:
1/4 cup (60ml) olive oil
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary leaves
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon granulated garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon chili flakes (optional)
pinch salt
            
For the focaccia:
focaccia dough (above)
herb oil (above) 
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt (I used Maldon sea salt)        

Make the dough:
With a large metal spoon, stir together the flour, salt, yeast, and water in a 4-quart bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer until combined. If mixing with an electric mixer, fit it with the paddle attachment and mix on low speed for about 2 minutes, or until all the ingredients are hydrated and begin to form a wet ball of dough. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes. Switch to the dough hook, add the olive oil, and resume mixing on medium-low speed for 3 to 4 minutes, or until all of the oil is incorporated and the dough is sticky, supple, and smooth; it should clear the sides of the bowl and stick just a little to the bottom. If the dough seems like a batter and does not have sufficient structure to hold itself together, mix in more flour by the tablespoonful. Even though it is sticky, the dough should still pass the windowpane test. If mixing by hand, repeatedly dip one of your hands or the spoon into cold water and use it much like a dough hook, working the dough vigorously as you rotate the bowl with your other hand. As all the flour is incorporated and the dough becomes a wet ball, about 3 minutes, stop mixing and let the dough rest for 5 minutes.

Add the olive oil, dip your hand or spoon again in water, and continue to work the dough for another 3 to 4 minutes. The dough should be very sticky, but it should also have some texture and structure. If the dough seems like a batter and does not have sufficient structure to hold itself together, mix in more flour by the tablespoonful. Even though it is sticky, the dough should till pass the windowpane test.

Form the dough into a ball and place it in a bowl brushed with olive oil. Turn the dough to coat it with the oil, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and immediately refrigerate it overnight. The next day the dough should have nearly doubled in size. Allow it to sit at room temperature for about 2 hours before making the focaccia.

Make the herb oil:
In a bowl, whisk together all the ingredients. Let sit at room temperature for 2 hours before using.

Shape the focaccia:
Line a 12 x 17 sheet pan with baking parchment or with a silicone pan liner. Drizzle the 2 tablespoons oil onto the parchment and spread it over the surface. Working gently, scrape the dough into the prepared pan. Try to degas it as little as possible. Drizzle the herb oil over the surface of the dough, creating dimples and pockets all over the surface for the oil to fill. Do not press the dough outward toward the edges of the pan; instead, simply press downward at only a slight angle toward the edges. The dough will probably fill the pan a little more than half full before it begins to become elastic and spring back toward the center. When this occurs, stop pressing, and let the dough relax for 15 minutes. Repeat the dimpling process, beginning at the center and gradually working out toward the edges of the pan. Try to keep the dough somewhat even across the top. Let it rest again for 15 minutes. Repeat the dimpling; this time the dough should have stretched to fill the pan (don’t worry if it doesn’t quite reach the corners, as it will continue to expand as it rises). Let the dough rise at room temperature for 2-3 hours, or until doubled.

Bake the focaccia:
Preheat the oven to 500°F (260°C). Just before baking, sprinkle the salt evenly over the top of the dough. Place the sheet pan on the middle shelf of the oven, then immediately lower the temperature to 450°F (200°C). Bake for 20 minutes, then rotate the pan 180 degrees. Continue to bake for 10 to 20 minutes longer or until both the top and underside are golden brown and slightly crisp. Remove the finished focaccia from the oven and immediately transfer it to a cooling rack, removing the paper as soon as it is cool enough to handle. Cool for at least 20 minutes before cutting and serving.

 

Ask anyone from the Eastern Mediterranean who makes the best baklava, and chances are they will answer "we do" (that is, if they don’t answer "my grandmother"). Apart from bread, there is probably no single foodstuff in the world that engenders as much loyalty to regional versions across so many countries as this iconic pastry. The specifics may vary, of course – some use walnuts, others pistachios; the flavoring can run through the gamut of the spice rack and beyond; the form can be triangular, cylindrical, diamond or square, but the principle is the same: tissue-thin layers of dough, brushed with butter and stacked with nuts, baked until crisp and golden, and then drenched with fragrant syrup which seeps through the cracks, penetrating the layers until every bite is a wildly alluring interplay of crunchy and soft, spicy and sweet, rich and, well, richer. Though wars may be waged over the finer points of its construction, in my opinion the differences are academic, since no matter what form it takes, baklava is one of the most unbelievably delicious things ever to grace a dessert plate.

Baklava is also one of the most well-documented and ancient desserts ever to grace a plate, with a timeline traceable back nearly three millennia. The story of baklava begins around the 8th century BC in northern Mesopotamia, when the Assyrians are reported to have layered crude pieces of bread dough with nuts and honey before baking them in wood-burning ovens. We can thank the Greeks, however, for inventing a method of rolling the pastry dough into paper thin sheets appropriately called filo, meaning “leaf”. By the 3rd century BC, there are records of baklava being served in wealthy Greek households for all kinds of special occasions, as well as being prescribed as an aphrodisiac, for the walnuts and honey they filled it with were believed to incite more than just gastronomic passions. The sweet also spread into the wealthy households of the ancient Persians and Romans, and then journeyed to what is now Turkey when the Roman Empire moved east to Constantinople. Many believe, however, that it was during the four hundred years that the Ottomans controlled Constantinople that baklava reached its apogee, as the kitchens of the Imperial Palace became the ultimate culinary hub of the empire, and Armenian, Greek, Persian, Egyptian, Hungarian and French chefs were brought in to add their particular touches to the refinement of the sultans’ favorite dessert.

These days you could easily draw a map of countries from Sofia to Tehran based on recipes for baklava. In the Balkans the recipe usually calls for walnuts, and particularly in Greece they like honey, cinnamon and cloves spicing up the mix, whereas in the Levant pistachios and a touch of lemon or orange blossom water are more to people’s taste. Turkey, straddling Europe and the Middle East, is home to many different variations including a famous hazelnut version that many are partial to; likewise the pastry chefs in the southern city of Gaziantep are particularly renowned for their version incorporating a thick paste made from milk and semolina. Moving deeper into the Arab world and Iran, the recipes call for heavy doses of rosewater and cardamom, and almonds are often the nut of choice; here the shapes and sizes are also much more variable. In all these places the baklava can be preferred ‘wet’ or ‘dry’, thick or thin – the only thing people seem to agree on is what it shouldn’t be: soggy, greasy or overpoweringly sweet (though this last one is, naturally, often subject to creative interpretation).

Baklava is surprisingly easy to make, and even more surprisingly easy to eat. It is, for example, one of the few foods that cause my tastebuds to short circuit my other cognitive functions – at least, that’s the only explanation I can give as to why my fullness receptors and calorie concern seem mysteriously out of order whenever it’s placed in front of me. In my version of this irresistible sweet, which doesn’t adhere to any particular tradition but my own tastes, simplicity is the key to perfection. Without heavy spicing or additional fillers, the rich voices of the butter and nuts sing clearly, supported only by a subtle and well-trained chorus of fragrant cardamom and the barest hint of honey. You’re welcome, however, to treat this recipe as a blueprint for your own favorite flavors. For example, you could easily substitute another nut for the pistachios if you prefer; likewise, the syrup can be customized to your taste, perhaps with more or less honey, with other spices or with flower essences. And who’s to say you can’t go completely untraditional and put some dried fruit, vanilla or liqueur inside? The only thing I would not recommend is skimping on the butter or the sugar – even if you have to diet for a week before and after eating it, the taste will be worth it.

I will, however, give you one piece of dietary advice: do as I do and insure you have plenty of people around when you pull this out of the oven. Not that the thought of others witnessing my lack of self-restraint actually deters me where baklava is concerned – on the contrary, I just count on baklava having an equally compelling effect on everyone else so that it disappears before my own gluttony can cause too many heads to turn.

 
Baklava with Cardamom, Honey and Pistachios

Yield: Makes about 24 pieces, depending on how you cut them.
Source: inspired by recipes in Claudia Roden’s New Book of Middle Eastern Food and, to a lesser extent, Paula Wolfert’s Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean
Note: Although baklava is best made in a heavy metal pan, you can use glass or ceramic as well – however reduce the oven temperatures by 25 degrees if you do. 

1 lb (450g) filo pastry (about 24 fine sheets), defrosted if frozen
1 1/4 cups (2.5 sticks or 300g) unsalted butter, clarified (instructions follow)
12 oz (300g) shelled, unsalted pistachios
2 tablespoons sugar

1 1/2 cups (325g) sugar
1 cup (250ml) water
4 tablespoons flavorful honey
1 tablespoon cardamom pods, lightly crushed with the back of a knife
2 teaspoons lemon juice

Prepare the syrup first. Put the sugar, water, honey and cardamom in a pan and boil gently for 5-10 minutes until the syrup thickens just enough to coat a spoon. Stir in the lemon juice and simmer for a few seconds more. Allow to cool, then chill in the refrigerator. Look at the syrup when it has cooled – it should be thick but still flow easily. If it is too viscous and sticky, add a little water, warming it if necessary, and letting it cool again. Fish (or strain) out the cardamom pods.

To clarify the butter, melt it in a small saucepan over medium heat and bring it to a gentle boil. Boil without stirring until a layer of foam has risen to the surface and the white solids have sunk to the bottom (don’t let the solids brown). Skim off the foam as best you can, then decant the golden liquid into another container, leaving the solids behind (I normally strain it through a cheesecloth while doing this). Discard the solids. Keep the clarified butter warm.

Pulse the pistachios and sugar together in a food processor until finely chopped but not pasty. Set aside 1/3 cup of the nuts for garnish, if desired.

While you’re working with the filo, keep the stack covered with a damp towel so it doesn’t dry out. Brush a large square or circular baking pan, a little smaller than the sheets of filo, with butter. If the sheets are much bigger than the pan, trim them to fit (a little too big is better than too small – just let them come up the sides of the pan). Lay twelve sheets, one at a time, one on top of the other, in the tin, brushing each generously with clarified butter, pressing the filo into the corners of the pan.

Spread the nuts evenly over the sheets. Fold over any pastry that extends over the top of the nuts. Then cover with the remaining sheets, brushing each, including the top one, with melted butter. With a sharp-pointed knife, trim the top layers so they fit perfectly in the pan. Cut parallel lines about an inch and a half apart, then cut other parallel lines diagonally so as to have diamond-shaped pastries. Cut right through to the bottom.

Preheat the oven to 400F/200C (see note above). Bake the baklava for 10-12 minutes, or until it begins to brown slightly. Remove the baklava from the oven and pour over any remaining butter (reheat it if it’s not still liquid). Reduce the oven temperature to 325F/150C and bake for about 1 hour more, or until it is puffed up and golden all the way through. Remove from the oven and immediately pour the cold syrup all over the top of the hot pastry, concentrating on the gaps. Return the pan to the turned off oven and let sit, with the door closed, until most of the syrup has been absorbed, about half an hour. Sprinkle on the reserved pistachios, if desired.

Cool completely to room temperature before serving. It actually tastes best if you leave it out to ‘ripen’ overnight, covered with foil.

Due to the use of clarified butter, this will keep well for at least a week at room temperature. It has never lasted that long around me, however.

 

Lemon Almond Torta 

 
From my perspective, the biggest problem with food blogging – I mean apart from the grocery bills and grease smears on the camera and damage to my vision from staring into a computer screen until I see cross-eyed – is the shelf space required. And I’m not talking about the kitchen.

Many of you already know about my shopping problem. It’s not shoes or makeup or handbags, or even little jars of fancy salts, sauces or vinegars – it’s cookbooks. Truckloads of them. In fact, I seem to have a cookbook habit that is stealthily taking over my life, not to mention every inch of available space in my apartment. According to reputable medical websites I’ve been reading, it seems I am displaying many of the classic symptoms of addiction when it comes to these books, including uncontrolled cravings, obsessive thought, overspending and paranoia. It’s getting to the point where I walk in the door at night prepared to find my friends assembled for an intervention (at which I’m perfectly prepared to admit my problem, so what’s the use of staging one?).

Like everyone who finds themselves much further down the slippery slope of addiction than they ever thought they’d be, I used to assume the problem would work itself out, and for many years it pretty much did. Sure, I’ve always coveted more books than is healthy and any foray to the bookstore inevitably found me buried in the food and drink section, but practical constraints limited my purchasing power: I moved around too much, I didn’t have the money for glossy new books, and anyway I didn’t always trust myself to be able to pick out a good one from a few short minutes of browsing. But then blogging happened. Not only did I suddenly need a well-stocked library to provide fresh and exciting blog-fodder every week, but reading other blogs put on my radar an endless list of highly-praised books that I absolutely had to have. In the blink of an eye, I could justify enormous payments to amazon.com as ‘professional expenditure’, while “the blog needs it, not me” quickly became my catch-all mantra. It’s probably not coincidental that my accelerated accumulation also coincided with settling down for a few years in Scotland and for the first time finding myself with a regular income, but I know better than to blame shift. My dear blog, because of you in the past year I have begun purchasing new cookbooks at the frightening rate of nearly one per week, I have started to avert my eyes in shame every time I’m called to pick up a delivery from the secretary’s office at work, and I have learned to hide my bag behind the coat rack when I come home so Manuel doesn’t see the books sticking out. I have become unreasonable, obsessive and downright dishonest about my problem, going so far as to convince my poor husband that he’s delusional when he thinks he spies the new titles on the bookshelf. I break into a cold sweat at the thought of having to choose which books to grab on my way out in case of a fire.

Yet as bad as all this may seem, it’s not the real problem. No, the real problem is that for all the time, energy and money spent feeding this addiction of mine, I hardly ever use my books for what they’re intended. In fact, a quick count of the bookshelves has just revealed that even after a year of blogging, a full three-quarters of my cookbooks have never been cracked open in the kitchen. And even when I intend to use one I somehow manage to get waylaid. Last weekend, for example, I locked myself in the kitchen with several new books, determined to tick off at least one new recipe. When I emerged two hours later, however, what emerged with me was not a stunning new creation courtesy of Pierre, Patricia or Julia, but instead a dessert I’ve been making faithfully for more than a decade. Never mind that it’s one of the most delicious cakes I’ve ever eaten, sporting a thick layer of dense, buttery sponge, fragrant with ground almonds and almond extract and cradling a smear of bracingly tart lemon curd; never mind about the scattering of crunchy almond slivers providing just the perfect amount of textural contrast to the creamy topping and tight crumb. And forget about the fact that it’s a welcome taste of sun-drenched citrusy freshness in the middle of a long, dark winter. The important (and certainly unforgivable) thing is that making it didn’t require me to so much as brush the cobwebs from one cookbook.

The most embarrassing part of all, however, is what I did the instant that cake was out of the oven. I cut myself a big slice and went to the computer to look up the price of new bookshelves.

 
Lemon Almond Torta

Source: adapted from a recipe in Chocolatier magazine back in 1993
Serves: 8 
Notes: I have a note that the original recipe (which I can no longer find, unfortunately) suggests that you serve this in a puddle of fresh raspberry coulis for a more formal presentation. I’ve never tried it that way but I imagine it would be both delicious and visually striking.

For the lemon curd:
3/4 (150g) cup sugar
3 large eggs
juice (~1/2 cup/125ml) and grated zest from 2 large lemons
4 tablespoons (60g) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

For the torta:
2/3 cup (60g) sliced almonds
1/2 cup (75g) blanched almonds, lightly toasted
1 cup (140g) all-purpose flour, sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (120g) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 cup (200g) sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
3 large eggs, at room temperature
icing/confectioner’s sugar, for dusting cake

To make the lemon curd: In a non-corrosive heavy saucepan, combine sugar, eggs, lemon juice and zest. Whisk until thoroughly blended. Add the butter. Cook over medium heat, whisking constantly for 3 to 5 minutes, or until the mixture thickens. Don’t let it boil! Transfer the curd to a bowl, cover the surface with plastic wrap and chill for at least 4 hours or overnight.

To make the torta: Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Generously butter the bottom and sides of a 9-inch (27cm) round springform pan. Line the bottom of the pan with a circle of baking parchment. Gently press about half of the sliced almonds against the side of the pan, adhering them about 2/3 of the way up from the bottom.

In a food processor combine the whole toasted almonds, flour, baking powder and salt. Process for 10-20 seconds, until finely chopped. In a small bowl, beat the eggs lightly with a fork until frothy.

In a large bowl using a hand-held mixer at low speed, beat the butter for 30 seconds, until creamy. Gradually add sugar and continue beating for 2-3 minutes, until light in texture and almost white in color. Beat in vanilla and almond extracts.

Using a rubber spatula, fold the almond/flour mixture into the butter mixture until blended (the batter will be stiff). Stir in the beaten eggs just until smooth. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and spread it into an even layer with the back of a spoon. Spoon 8 tablespoons of the lemon curd in an evenly-spaced ring around the top of the cake batter, about a 1/2-inch in from the side of the pan. Spoon 3 tablespoons evenly spaced into the center of the ring (it will all melt together into an even layer in the oven, but if you don’t want to bother counting just dollop the curd evenly all over the top). Sprinkle the remaining sliced almonds over the top of the batter. Lightly dust with confectioners’ sugar.

Bake the torta for 25-35 minutes, until a cake tester or toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a few moist crumbs clinging to it. Cool the torta completely in the pan set on a wire rack. Run a thin-bladed knife around the edge of the torta to loosen it from the side of the pan before removing. Peel off the baking paper and dust the torta with more confectioners’ sugar before serving. Eat at room temperature.