Blue Cheese Bacon Bread

     I know that my plan was to bake just one bread a week, and I've already made the rye bread, but I found a recipe for a quick bread that I just had to try. Think of it as a lagniappe loaf.   Both Wayne and I love blue cheese, and who doesn't love bacon.  This recipe for a blue cheese bacon bread is a super rich and savory bread.  It is delicious!
     I ordered some back issues of The Baking Sheet from King Arthur.  The recipe is in the Autumn 2009 issue.  The recipe has bacon, blue cheese, Parmesan, yogurt, green onions, and Dijon mustard.  I used thick sliced peppered bacon, creole mustard, and Greek yogurt.  We rarely eat bacon, and I abhor frying it.  Even when I use a screen, it just seems to go all over the place, and I always end up with at least one burn from the bacon grease.  So I did some research.  I thought about cooking it on my electric griddle, but thought that would be just as messy.  I read numerous reviews of cooking it in the oven.  I've got to say, I'm a believer.  I will never "fry" bacon any other way.  350 degree oven, foil lined pan, lay bacon flat, turn over after 10 minutes, cook 10 minutes more - perfect, flat, crisp bacon.  And the best part - super easy clean-up and no grease splatters all over the place.
     Of course, cooking bacon brought back what is sure to be a shared memory by just about everyone.  Breakfast for dinner!  Breakfast is good in the morning, but it just tastes better at dinner.  My mother was a working, single parent and there were times when due to being in a hurry, being dead tired or running low on money, breakfast was what we ate in the evening.  I can still hear the pop of the biscuit can, as well as the sound and aroma of the bacon sizzling in the cast iron frying pan.  I can see the Correlle plates bordered with little gold flowers.  Scrambled eggs, creamy buttered grits, crispy bacon, and perfectly browned biscuits filled the plate, and nourished our bodies and souls.  I still enjoy breakfast at dinner time, and I hope I always will.

Swirled Rye Bread

     Living in Central Louisiana is like being a participant in a culinary scavenger hunt.  I could not find rye flour or caraway seeds in Pineville.  You kinda need them if you want to make rye bread.  I was  able to find them over the river in Alexandria.  This made me think about the husband on the game show.  He was asked by the host, "What is your wife's favorite flower?"  The husband quite pleased with himself because he knew the answer said, "Gold Medal."  Sorry - sometimes I just can't help myself.
     Before I started my rye bread today, Wayne and I went in search of the ever elusive and exotic pastrami and corned beef.  We knew not to even try in Pineville, so across the river we went.  When we arrived at a large chain store we will call store "A" we were confident they would have at least one these delicious deli meats for my rye bread.  Alas, poor Teresa and Wayne, they left dejected and were off to large chain store "K."  We were delighted that they did indeed have both.  MMMM - we could envision sandwiches with warm from the oven rye bread, hot pastrami, hot corned beef, melted Swiss cheese, and creole mustard (none of that high brow Poupon for us).
     Once I started making my dough, I heeded the warning in the notes about not over kneading rye bread.  The doughs came out just as they should;  they were nice and elastic and not at all gummy.  (The recipe was in The Bread Baker's Apprentice.) Making the swirled dough was fun and truly easy.  I could hardly wait for the bread to come out the oven to see the swirls.  If you check out the picture you will see that the swirls are just as they should be.
     For our first Easter in Pineville I barbecued for family, and I wanted to make a nice dessert.  I don't remember what kind of cake it was, but I do know that I needed blackberry brandy.  I went to the grocery closest to our home and couldn't find the liquor aisle.  I asked the store manager where was the liquor, and he looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language.  It was then that I found out Pineville is dry, and I would have to go to "Alec" if I needed any kind of alcohol.   Since then I've learned I need to go to Alec or go on-line and find a place to "send it to me" for many things.
     Enough whining.  We live outside of the Pineville city limits, and there are many wonderful things about where we live.  We can see thousands of stars and the milky way.  It is a great place to view meteor showers.  Wayne and I can go for our walk in the pre-dawn when the earth is still and all is quiet.  We can see the sun rise above the trees.  We can see the fog linger and soften all it surrounds.  We have seen deer in the road on the way to the store.  We have had bunnies in the backyard.  Our patio is a dangerous place.  If we go on the patio with our coffee, we enter a time warp.  We sit and listen to the birds and the stillness.  By the time we go back in the house 3 or 4 hours will have passed.  How can that be, we are sure we were only outside for a half hour or so.  The peacefulness of Pineville makes having to do the culinary hunt very worth while.

New Orleans French Bread

     My name is Teresa, and I am a cookbook-aholic.  I have never met a cookbook I didn't like.  This week's bread recipe came from The Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine by John Folse.  I've already mentioned that it is impossible to find New Orleans French bread in Pineville, LA.  It is insane that you can get it in Bossier City, LA, Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida, and a myriad other places, but you cannot get it in central Louisiana.
     There are several cookbooks that are a must for me.  My two favorite cookbooks that I like to give as gifts are Talk About Good from Lafayette's Junior League, and the late Leon Soniat's La Bouche Creole.  My latest favorite is Cooking Up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from the Times-Picayune of New Orleans (the best Mexican lasagna recipe in the world).  When I was a teenager I discovered the Thursday Times-Picayune's food section.  It was filled with lots mouth-watering recipes, but to me the best part was Leon Soniat's weekly column.  Even as an adult, I loved the Thursday paper.  My mother-in-law was not much of a cook.  Like many, she felt cooking was a chore and not one of life's joys.  My sister-in-law, whom I call Ms. Carol (I don't why I call her that, I just do), learned to cook from the Thursday Times-Picayune.  Today, Ms Carol is a wonderful cook.  She makes one hellava good chicken andouille gumbo.  After Katrina, I just had to get her the Cooking Up a Storm cookbook (as I inscribed, "Just in case you ever forget how to cook.")  There's a recipe in there for McKenzie's turtles and sugar cookies.  I haven't tried them yet.  To be honest, I'm afraid to - if they really do taste like McKenzie's I'd be making them all the time.  That would not be good.
     As I was making French bread, I thought about my great-grandmother, Grandma.  Not long after Pawpaw died, Mimi fell and broke her leg; she did a good job of it, she had pins and screws in it and had to use a wheel chair.  Since Mimi normally took care of Grandma, but she couldn't  because of her broken leg, they came to stay with us for a while.  Grandma was in her nineties and very set in her ways.  There was only one kind of coffee and only one way to prepare it; it had to be coffee and chicory, and it had to be French dripped.   Grandma loved toasted stale French bread cut in wedges and buttered for breakfast.  Grandma had to be given her coffee in a cup with a saucer, and the coffee better be steaming hot.  I can still see Grandma sitting at the kitchen table with her French bread wedges, sipping coffee out of the saucer.  She always had some coffee in the saucer while the cup cooled to a drinkable temperature.
     Today was a definitely a learning experience.  The recipe did not have the clearest instructions, and the recipe did not say to oil the dough.  The plastic wrap stuck to the bread (and it was looking really good) and deflated the bread.  I did let it rise again, but it didn't get where it needed to be (it was not as high as it should be).  The recipe also called for a little cane syrup.  This gave the inside of the bread a tan color, not white like real New Orleans French bread.  The bread did have a good flavor and made a really good roast beef po-boy.  Wayne and I put on our bibs, loaded the sandwiches with roast beef and drowned them with gravy.  We wore our po-boys with pride.

Potato Rosemary Bread

     Almost all bread delights your sense of smell when it is baking.  I say almost all because Subway's breads not so much, they make a good sandwich though.  I can still remember when Bunny Bread opened in New Orleans east.  The wonderful aroma from the bakery wafted through the air for miles, and if Luzianne was roasting coffee at the same time it was olfactory heaven.
     Sunday's bread was Rosemary Potato Bread.   When fresh rosemary and roasted garlic are added to bread it makes you want to speed up time so it will be done so you can eat it (nothing like a good run-on sentence).  You keep checking the timer to see when the bread will be done.  You try leaving the kitchen, but the fragrance keeps calling you back.  It smelled so good, it made me write about myself in the second person.  Good Lord, it smelled fantastic, and better than the aroma was the flavor.  The recipe made two boules.  One for us and one for our neighbors across the street (a really sweet couple who have been married over 60 years).  This was my first time shaping a boule, and I think I need to make it a little tighter next time to get a better height.
     When it came time to take the photo I wanted to do it quick so we could eat the bread.  I looked around to see what I had to take the photo with, aha I spotted the tea set my brother brought back for our mother from Hong Kong.  The tea set is blue and white rice porcelain with red designs, a dragon motif, and gold trim.  To see the real beauty of it, it needs to be held up to the light .   The light shines through where the "rice" is cut out.  It's funny, but my mother never used it.  She displayed it in her china cabinet, but never used it.  Come to think of it, I've never really used it either, but this Thanksgiving it will be used.  My mother always felt it was too pretty to use; I'm thinking it's too pretty not to use.

Herb Rolls

     I was in the grocery and like most people I can't pass up a bargain.  In a cart there were bread mixes for a dollar.  For only one single dollar I could buy a mix that would fill my home with the wonderful aroma of bread baking. How could I possibly resist.  But is the really baking bread?  Is it cheating?  I still need yeast.  It still has to rise.  it still must be shaped.  Yes, it is indeed it is real bread.
     The mix was a herb bread mix that had directions for both bread machine and traditional methods.  There was one big change that I made in the recipe.  I did not use the yeast that came with the mix.  I have become a huge fan of Saf-Yeast Instant Yeast.  I can't find it locally, but King Arthur sells it on the web.  Not having to bloom the yeast is a real benefit.  It is great to be able to just add the yeast to the flour and not have to worry about blooming the yeast - instant yeast just makes bread easier.
     There were no directions for rolls, but in my past life I would use my bread machine to make dough for rolls.  I remember making clover leaf rolls.  Instead of putting the dough in a loaf pan, I rolled three little balls of equal weight (a total of two ounces per roll) and placed them in a cup cake tin.  Twenty minutes later we were eating wonderfully herb scented rolls, hot from the oven.
     Each week when I bake, I take a photo of the finished product.  (When I say I take a picture I actually mean Wayne takes a picture.)  When I made the herb rolls, I decided to use my mimi's china.  I don't know how old her china is, but my mother remembered eating from it when she was a young adult in the 1940's.  After Katrina when we went to out home in Meraux, it was utter devastation, a story well-known by thousands.  One of the things we were able to find and recover was my grandmother's china.  We were able to salvage our china as well (which is now our everyday dishes), but there is something about our heritage china that speaks directly to the southern woman's soul.  The dishes brought back childhood memories of Sunday dinner at Mimi's house.  I can still see Grandma (my great-grandmother), Aunt Louiska, Mimi and my mother at the table.  All of these women are now gone, but they have all shaped me into the woman I am today.  At times I see so much of my mother in me it's almost scary.   I can see my brother arguing with Grandma over who would get the chicken wings off the tender baked chicken warm from the oven.  My brother really was not a wing fan, he just wanted to give Grandma a little competition.  There would be Dubon Petite Pois Peas, my Aunt Louiska's macaroni and cheese (made with long macaroni, of course), and sliced white bread.  Not long after dinner would come the enchanting chimes from, "THE ICE CREAM  MAN."  Grandma would call my brother and I to her.  She would pull out her coin purse and give us each a quarter.  With that quarter we could get a giant ice cream sandwich or an enormous ice cream drum stick.  After Ed Sullivan, Mama would load us into the car and take us home.
     China is one of those things that somehow always seems to reassure you that everything will be okay.  Finding that china after Katrina was like hearing Mimi say, "This china survived Betsy and Katrina.  You will get through this too.  Everything will be okay.  This is just one of life's little challenges.  You are strong, be a woman and deal with it."  China is a magical thing.

Baguettes

     My plan is not to post every day, but weekly when I bake a new bread.  Since I started this blog several weeks after I started baking bread, I am playing catch-up in the order of the breads I have baked.
     Being a good New Orleanian and living in a place where you can only get super market "French bread" I had to try my hand at baguettes.  I pulled out my bread book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart, and found a recipe.  The recipe was fairly easy, but there was a lot of references to other pages in the book for procedures.  At one point I came to a term that confused me.  I didn't know what it meant.  So here is where I digress.
     I did say I was a good New Orleanian.  One thing about us native New Orleanians - we are passionate about our love for our city.  Although I am no longer living there, it will always be home - a place of history, of wonder, of amazing places to visit and things to do, a place of childhood memories, a place where I found love, a place where my family is buried, and a place my heart will always yearn for.  Whenever I go "home" it is so good to hear people who sound like me.  I didn't realize that my "yat" accent is as bad as it is.  Anyway - New Orleans has always been a place of art.  One of the many famous artists that live there for a while was Edgar Degas (pronounced duh-Gah).  I spelled the word d-e-g-a-s, and I asked my husband to pronounce it.  I asked several friends for New Orleans to pronounce it as well.  They all pronounced it duh-Gah.
      So as I was reading the recipe for the baguettes, I came across the term "degas," and thought, "What the hell does that mean."  When I turned to the page it referenced I realized it was not duh-Gah but de-gas.  As in rhymes with ass, which is exactly what I called myself.
     Of course, being me, I started laughing at myself.  When I told Wayne, he got a good chuckle as well.  One of the abilities I have always had is the ability to laugh at myself and find humor in just about all situations life throws at you.  I think too many people today have lost that ability.  People get upset when they think others are laughing at them, but if they would stand back and look at the situation they just might make themselves smile as well.
     The baguettes turned out really good, not great, but really good.  Wayne and I enjoyed the crusty baguettes for days.  We had warm baguette in the morning with a earthy cup of coffee and chicory. They certainly tasted like they should, but they were not the New Orleans style French bread of po-boy dreams.  I have found a recipe for New Orleans French bread in a John Folse cookbook.  That will be this weeks bread adventure.  I sure hope it turns out good because visions of sloppy roast beef po-boys are dancing in my head.

Pumpkin Pecan Bread

     Fall is without a doubt my favorite season.  I love the cool weather and the warm colors.  I could stay outside all day.  And I love pumpkins.  Every autumn I think about my buddy Keri and pumpkin spice coffee.  Keri is a pumpkin spice coffee fan, fiend, and freak!  Several years ago we went to the Texas Renaissance Festival (really fun festival if you can ever get there), and that's when I learned about Keri's pumpkin spice coffee addiction.  When we stopped to fill up the rental car before returning it, Keri had to go in to see if they had pumpkin spice coffee.  While she was in the service station's snatch and grabbit store, we decided to move the car and hide it on her.  (Okay - it was my idea but everyone went along with it, including her hubby.)  Every time Keri would come out of one door, we would move the car to the other side.  The people in the store thought she was psycho running back and forth through the store from one door to the other.  Some how we all found this a lot funnier than she did.
      But this is supposed to be about bread.  I refer to my life before Hurricane Katrina as my past life.  In my past life I had a bread machine and several bread machine cookbooks.  One of the books had a recipe for Pumpkin Pecan Bread.  The recipe is for a hearty loaf with minimum spice and sugar.  The flavor really comes from the pumpkin and the pecans.  Here I go again - off on a tangent.  I grew up in New Orleans East when it was called Little Woods.  I lived on Hayne Blvd before there was a levee or a four lane paved road.  Lake Pontchatrain was across the street where I spent many a summer time swimming, fishing, and crabbing.  We had two pecan trees in the back yard that were planted by my pawpaw when I was very young.  It was not until I was teenager that we actually started getting pecans.  We would gather up the pecans, and my mother would sell what we would not use.  One year she had a Schwegmann's bag full of pecans on the carport.  A couple of days later the bag was half full.  I am sure the squirrels thought they had found nirvana.  They had been stealing her pecans.  Back to bread. My husband scanned the Pumpkin Pecan Bread recipe for me, so it survived Katrina, but the bread machine did not. I did not replace my bread machine after the hurricane and will not.  My quandary was how do I convert the recipe from bread machine to traditional oven baked.  All I can say is the internet is a wonderful thing.  I searched around and found what I needed.  The bread was just as I remembered it - flavorful, moist, fragrant, and delicious.  We enjoyed it fresh from the oven and toasted for breakfast, however, sliced about an inch thick it made killer French toast.  I had my  French toast with powdered sugar, but Wayne assured me it was equally good with warm maple syrup.  Even if you don't bake your own bread, buy a loaf of store bought seasonal bread, slice it up nice and thick, and turn it into your own special weekend French toast.

Why bread?

I retired in June after 30 years in public education in Louisiana.  My husband thought I would be bored after a couple of months.  Surprise, I'm not bored yet.  I've always liked to bake and cook.  My baking had been limited to sweets, but I have always wanted to learn to bake bread. I love everything about baking bread.  I love the feel of the dough. I love the aroma of baking bread.  I love warm bread out the oven.   I started by searching for a good bread cookbook, and I found one, The Bread Baker's Apprentice.  The book is more than just here's a recipe, good luck.  The book addresses the principles and processes behind bread making.  My goal is to make a different bread each week.  I started 4 weeks ago with focaccia.  It was a two day process, but the end result was definitely worth it.  I made a focaccia with black olives, feta, caramelized onions, and dried oregano.  The bread was light and airy.  We ate it plain, but we also used it for sandwiches on our panini press.  Adventures in bread baking had begun.