Sicilian No Knead Bread and Foccacia with Pecans, Dried Cherries and Rosemary

     I missed a week of blogging, but not baking.  Last week I made Sicilian No Knead Bread (sourdough version) from a recipe on Breadtopia.  I loved the crunchy sesame seeds all over the loaf.  This was the first time I used my durum flour, and it gave the bread a beautiful golden yellow color.  The bread was moist and had a great chew to it.  I found the bread to be a little flat - it needed just a little bit more salt.  If I am saying it needs salt; it needs salt because I am not a big salt user.

     This week I baked a recipe that a former student posted on my Facebook page. (Thanks Christy!)  I baked http://thecafesucrefarine.blogspot.com/2012/04/focaccia-with-dried-cherries-rosemary.html.  The aroma of this bread was terrific; the scent of rosemary and pecans wafted through the house as it was baking.  The instructions for the recipe were not the best.  It made no mention of when to add the cherries.  I also would not sprinkle the pecans on the top again.  The olive oil did not adhere them to the bread.  We had roasted turkey paninis for lunch today.  I put a smidgen of Boscoli Olive Salad on the sandwich along with some very thinned sliced red onions and a slight dusting of freshly grated asiago.  The combination of the savory with the sweetness of the cherries in the bread was great.
     Olive salad is one of those regional products that I was thrilled to find in Pineville.  You can make your own, but if I can find a really good commercial one, such as Boscoli, I'd just as soon buy it.    Like most New Orleanians, I love muffulettas.  It's one of those things that everyone has their take on.  I think everyone would agree that two key ingredients are the olive salad and the bread. NO, salad olives are not even close to olive salad, and cannot be used in place of it.  And NO, a sub roll doesn't come close.  I'm not a big mortadella fan, so I don't put it on my muffuletta.  I do put lots of thin sliced ham, Genoa and hard salamis, sliced mozzarella and provolone on my muffuletta.  I also like to wrap it in foil and heat it in the oven to the point of the cheeses being all melty, gooey good.  If you're interested in the history of the muffuletta, check out the history of the muffuletta YouTube video.  If you're ever in New Orleans stop by the Central Grocery on Decatur, get a muffaletta, cross the levee to the Moon Walk, pull up a bench, and enjoy your sandwich as you watch the traffic on the river go by.  

Walnut, Raisin, and Blue Cheese Fougasse

     What to bake, what to bake?  I want something I can use my unfed starter on.  I want something breakfasty (wow I made a new word).  I want something different - not a loaf or baguette or boule. Something tasty, easy, and different. Hmmm - this fougasse looks interesting in my Bread Baker's Apprentice looks good.  Let's look on the web for variations.  Ah, this recipe walnut, raisin, and blue cheese fougasse at King Arthur looks interesting.  I thought, I'll just substitute pecans for the walnuts.  I could hardly believe that I was out of pecans.  I decided since I had to go buy them, I should but walnuts.  This was a really fun bread to make.  The recipe warned that kneading in the blue cheese would be sticky business, but I had no problems.  I'm sure the recipe  hint of freezing the crumbled blue cheese made the difference.  I also enjoyed shaping the fougasse in the "tree" shape.  I did learn I need to pull my openings a little further apart.  The slits nearly closed during baking.  When it came out the oven I had one of my infamous duh moments.  Half of my "branches" were going up and the other half were going down.  So me!  I've talked about aroma of bread before, but this was the most wonderfully aromatic bread I've baked to date.  Better that the orange cinnamon rolls, better than pumpkin pecan, just better than any other bread.  The combination of the crunchy toasted walnuts, the sweet golden raisins, and the tangy blue cheese enveloped in a moist and chewy bread is divine.
     This is a bread that I love as an adult and would have hated as a child.  Blue cheese - yuk - look at the blue veins in it,  no way am I eating that.  Golden raisins - raisins are supposed to be brownish.  Bread is supposed to be white and sick to the roof of your mouth.  I'm glad my taste buds developed as I got older.  Don't get me wrong, we grew up eating all kinds of food.  I loved hearts of palms and artichokes.  I could eat Mexican (real Mexican as well as Tex-Mex) all the time.  My mother always encouraged my brother and I to try different foods.  To this day, we are both willing to try almost anything.  There are certain foods that I don't like.  When I was a child, I would not eat my Mimi's okra gumbo.  I thought the okra seeds were crab eyes, and I was not eating crab eyes.  This coming from someone who thought she struck gold when she would pull up a soft shell crab in a net.  I love soft-shelled crabs.  I remember, as a toddler, cracking crab claws and peeling boiled shrimp and crawfish.  Catching a trout, flounder or red fish in Lake Pontchartrain meant we would have fresh fish that night.  I've been told my mama made the best red beans and rice.  I learned from her, and I've been told my beans and rice rival my mama's.  Here I must make a confession, "My name is Teresa, I'm a native New Orleanian, and I don't like red beans."  There, I've admitted it to the world.  I also am not an oyster fan.  I have a friend who like me, doesn't like oysters.  She used to say she doesn't eat anything that eats, sleeps, and sh**s in the same place.  That's not what keeps me from oysters, I just don't like them.  I hope that I continue to try new foods as I continue my journey through life.  I've learned that some times it is better to ask what it was after you try, rather than what is it before.  Oh, below is a pic of my broken branched tree.

Savory Monkey Bread

     It took me a while to get this up, but I did a lot of baking last week.  Chocolate chip cookies to make ice cream sandwiches.  Sour dough rye because I hate wasting starter.  Onion rolls for hamburgers.  Sourdough biscuits for to go with creamed eggs for Easter breakfast.  I love baking, but it kept me from blogging.  Anyway here it is, last week's bread blog. 
     I wanted to make an easy bread for Easter dinner.  I had already decided that I was going to make a chorizo stuffed pork loin for dinner.  I am not a big fan of the chorizo that I find in the local grocery store, so I found a recipe for chorizo on the internet.  What kind of bread - I didn't want tortillas.  I wanted bread.  Then I remember seeing a recipe on King Arthur for savory pull apart roll aka Savory Monkey Bread.  I made a few changes to the recipe. I used the same herbs and spices in the chorizo and a bit of asiago (I know it's not Mexican, but that's what I had on hand) in the bread.  It was the perfect accompaniment to the roasted pork.  I was a little worried about the bread being to spicy for my cousin, Pil.  She's always telling Wayne and me that we are pepper bellies.  Well, it was perfectly flavored.  The bread was moist and flavorful.  The little "rolls" were almost as good on Monday as they were on Easter.

     Of course, Easter always brings back tons of childhood memories.  Even though the EB no longer brings me a basket of candy, I still love dying Easter eggs.  Wayne had not dyed eggs since childhood until he marries me nearly 29 years ago.  While most normal people are trying to dye and decorate the prettiest egg possible, we go in the opposite direction.  We have the annual ugly egg dying contest.  When we used to have a household full of people, they would vote on the egg.  This year I turned to Facebook.  I have to say, these were the only election returns we have enjoyed this primary season.  Votes were coming in all evening Saturday and continued into Sunday.  Anita, our "matchmaker" (see hearts and knots blog entry), said her phone was binging all night. 
     We had lots of votes, opinions, and fun.  Some of my favorite comments: No.1 Looks like it has fungus growing on it.  I don't know, I kinda like 8...it reminds me of the moon...lol. I pick 7!  Can I vote again. I'm from St. Bernard.  4 is actually pretty.... i would say #7 b/c it looks like it's bleeding.  7! I don't want to see anything tht comes out of a chicken with a ring of red around it :x !  I was going to say 8, but it kind of looks like a dinosaur egg. So my vote is 3, it has a post Katrina water stain that's a little off putting.  Child Number 1 says Egg Number 3
     I was sure I would win with egg #7, alas Wayne won with egg #8.  You can see the picture below.  All I can say is, there's always next year.