bread of the month | anadama bread

November is the eleventh month. And this is only my fifth Bread of the Month post. Bread of the Month is going to have to become Bread of the Week if I want to have baked 12 loaves by the end of the year. So much for that goal!

This month I baked Anadama Bread. I first heard it mentioned in a book I was reading a few months ago. One of the great things about reading e-books on my iPad is that I can do a quick google search if I read about something unfamiliar. I'd never heard of Anadama Bread and I was curious. It turned out to be a bread made from cornmeal and molasses. I particularly liked the myth that explained the origin of the name - that the bread's name came from a fisherman cursing his wife by exclaiming, "Anna, damn her!" I was intrigued by this tale and the cornmeal-molasses combination.

A New York Times recipe for Anadama Bread popped up during my search and I bookmarked it so I could try making this bread myself. I am a big fan of anything with cornmeal in it, though the molasses component had me a little nervous. Molasses kind of grosses me out. It smells like prune juice. The color of the bread dough once the molasses was added was...rather unappetizing.

But the bread turned out great. Slightly sweet - it tastes a lot like Honey-Wheat Bread. And after making buns, rolls, and flat breads, it was nice to bake an actual loaf this month. Five down, seven more to go! (And only six weeks left in the year!)

Oh, and here's a behind-the-scenes shot of what really goes on during a food photo shoot in my house. My subject matter is always being threatened:

bread of the month | grilled naan

So, this whole Bread of the Month thing isn't exactly happening every month. So much for resolutions.

When I resolved to bake a loaf a month, I was imagining that I'd be baking actual loaves - the type of bread that could be sliced for sandwiches or just eaten with dinner. Oddly enough, what I've actually made is buns, rolls, and flatbreads. This month was no different.

July's bread was naan - which, if you've ever eaten it in an Indian restaurant, is delicious. I was making a recipe for Tandoori Chicken Sandwiches (which was also delicious, especially the mint mayonnaise - and this is coming from someone who hates mayonnaise and also hates mint in savory foods. At least I thought I did. This combo slathered on the sandwiches was fantastic.) and reviewers suggested serving the sandwiches on naan instead of the sourdough called for in the recipe.

So I made a recipe for Grilled Naan that I found on Food & Wine. Despite the fact that my naan were quite oddly shaped ("shape them into a teardrop"? I don't think so!), they were good and they worked well for the sandwiches. And they work well for scooping up hummus, tapenade, or any other dip you have lying around. But were they as good as Indian restaurant naan? Sorry, but no. I think making naan is better left to the professionals!

bread of the month | hot cross buns

My sole contribution to celebrating Easter this year was baking hot cross buns. No dyed eggs, no chocolate, and actually no Easter dinner - Larry heated up some soup and made us grilled cheese sandwiches which we ate while watching TV since I wasn't feeling well.

Hot cross buns are my dad's favorite. I'm generally not a fan because they contain raisins/currants/whatever type of dried-up grape you prefer - they're all nasty. So I thought I'd substitute blueberries instead. Blueberries = good. Raisins = bad.

My other concern with hot cross buns is this: not enough frosting! Seriously, why is there only that little puny cross of frosting?! I guess if they were slathered with frosting, they wouldn't be hot cross buns, but they'd sure as heck taste a lot better.

So I made the buns, let them rise twice and all that, and ta-da - they looked beautiful!

Unfortunately, they looked a lot better than they tasted. They were too dry. The dried fruit (I ended up using dried mixed berries) did nothing for me. There wasn't enough cinnamon. And as I feared, there wasn't enough frosting.


The recipe made two batches of buns - one I cooked in a round pan as instructed by the recipe. Then I realized that was stupid and I cooked the other batch in a square pan which worked much better. I frosted half of them with vanilla frosting and the other half with the orange frosting from the recipe (I was not a fan). I ended up frosting the buns in the round pan in a spider web pattern using my trusty squeeze bottle (which is also what I use to decorate sugar cookies) in an attempt to get more frosting on each bun - it ended up looking like a coffee cake. Pretty, but still too dry. (AND STILL NOT ENOUGH FROSTING!)


Conclusion: Hot cross buns would be better if they were moister, more cinnamony, lacked dried-up fruit, and had more frosting. Actually, hot cross buns would be better if they were cinnamon rolls.

Next time make cinnamon rolls!

bread of the month | light brioche burger buns

People, I made hamburger buns. From scratch. And they were awesome.

I started this endeavor at 9 pm on a Friday night. They require two rises and that definitely takes some time, but it was one of those recipes that came out looking exactly like the picture. And even though it was nearly 1 am by the time they came out of the oven, I couldn't resist slathering one with butter and gobbling it up. In fact, that is how I liked these buns best - fresh from the oven and dripping with butter. I actually think they are too good to use for burgers.

I believe that a bad bun can definitely detract from a good burger experience. We never buy those supermarket buns that have the consistency of a wad of kleenex. Our favorite packaged hamburger bun is actually a good ol' Thomas' English Muffin (a trick we learned a few years ago on an episode of Barefoot Contessa). However, I'm not sure the difference between a good bun and a great bun is detectable when eating a burger...the patty plus fixins always overwhelms the bread. The same happened when I filled the buns with egg salad.

Homemade buns certainly didn't hurt though, and the burgers were delicious! Grilled turkey burgers with smoky paprika aoili, cheddar, and grilled red peppers and onions...oh yeah. I mean, look at this:

I would definitely make these buns again - just maybe not for burgers. The recipe made eight buns and they were huge - I would definitely divide the dough into ten buns the next time. However, what I'd really like to do is make them into slider sized buns and serve mini crabcake sandwiches on them!

Light Brioche Burger Buns recipe on Smitten Kitchen.

international meal | morocco + bread of the month | kesra

We kicked off our international meal resolution in January with a Moroccan feast! I had also resolved to bake one loaf of bread per month and as I was sorting through Moroccan recipes, I found a recipe for Kesra (Moroccan bread, though some sources list it as Algerian - either way it's a North African bread).

When I had first mentioned my goal of cooking an international meal each month to Larry, I asked him which country we should choose first and he immediately responded "Morocco!" I was surprised by his choice and intrigued - since I really know nothing about African cuisine, other than having eaten in a handful of Ethiopian restaurants in DC. Here's what I learned through cooking our meal: Moroccan food is freaking delicious!

On the menu:

• Chicken Tagine with Apricots and Almonds (served over couscous)
• Moroccan Eggplant Salad
• Kesra (Moroccan Bread)

I had hoped to pair the meal with a Moroccan wine, but I didn't have time to go to the wine store and shockingly, Safeway doesn't carry wine from Morocco. So we drank beers instead...also not Moroccan. And I had planned to make M'hanncha (Snake Cake - awesome!) for dessert, but I ran out of time. First lesson learned - we need to have our international feasts on weekends, as it was an ambitious meal for a weeknight and by the time we ate it was almost 9 pm.


But - it was totally worth the wait. Only a month into the year, and I can already guarantee that the Chicken Tagine will be one of the best recipes we make in 2011. It was phenomenal. In fact, it was probably one of the best things we've ever made. I have a beef with chicken and that is this: it has no flavor.  But this was one of the most flavorful dishes to ever touch my tongue. As Larry summed it up after we'd licked our plates clean without uttering a word to each other throughout the meal, "I could eat this chicken all night!"

The bread was fantastic, too - and the easiest yeast bread recipe I've ever tried. I thought the round loaves might be dense and chewy - but they were soft and light - my first bite from the oven left me exclaiming "it tastes like a biscuit!" I made it because I thought bread would be good to sop up sauces, but I really loved eating it American-style - that is slathered with butter. It would also be good dipped in olive oil or spread with jam for breakfast.

Next up: Portugal!