Wizard Recipes

Bread is such a fundamental food that the word “bread” itself is often equivalent to “food” or “money” in many parts of the world. Although it is a simple food, bread requires the conversion of grain into flour, leavening ingredients, and a means of baking.

Bread also plays a role in many customary rituals, such as the breaking and blessing of bread in religious rites. Although there are hundreds of different types of bread, the main types are leavened (meaning raised) and unleavened breads.

There are also quick breads, in which baking powder or baking soda is used as a leavening agent.

The main ingredients in most breads are the following:

Flour-The powdery material from ground grain, flour is the main ingredient in bread. Because of its high gluten content, wheat flour lends itself best to bread making. The gluten, when mixed with water, gives the bread dough elasticity.

This allows the dough to expand when the yeast ferments, yet it is strong enough to contain it. The result is light and airy bread. Any grain can be used to make bread. In countries where wheat is less readily available, grains that are used include millet, barley, rye, and oats.

Liquid-Water is the most common liquid in bread making, but beer, milk, and fruit juice also can be used. Liquid is needed in raised bread to allow the gluten in flour to do its work. The type of liquid used can result in the bread having different properties. Water, for example, will result in a thick crust.

Yeast-Yeast is a one-celled organism that is used to leaven bread. Unleavened breads and quick breads do not contain yeast. When yeast ferments the substances naturally present in flour, it produces a gas called carbon dioxide.

Bread rises as the gluten in the dough traps this gas. Yeast is also responsible for bread’s delicious aroma and gives it its flavor.

Salt-Bread can be made without this staple, but salt does several things when it is added to dough. It adds flavor, helps strengthen the gluten, and helps regulate yeast production.

Optional ingredients-Two ingredients that do not have to be added to bread but often are include sugar and fat. Sugar provides a ready food source for the multiplying yeast, adds flavor to bread, and helps it stay moist.

Fat is often used in commercial bread making. It adds flavor and tenderness. In addition, it gives the dough more elastic qualities, allowing it to expand more.

The most common type of bread eaten in the United States is made from refined white flour. Although enriched during processing and baking, not all of the nutrients lost when the flour is refined are returned to it.

A more nutritious choice is whole-wheat bread. Whole-wheat bread is made from flour ground from whole-wheat grains-meaning the bran and the germ also are used. Make sure the label indicates that only whole-wheat flour was used.

Otherwise, whole wheat or cracked wheat may have been added to white flour.

If  you ever find yourself traipsing around Nice or any little  town within a short drive of the French Riviera, you’ll see large square pissaladières in the windows of pastry shops. Sadly, most of them are rather drab looking-like pizzas that didn’t quite make it.

But the comparison to pizza is unfair because a well-made pissaladière has a savory identity all its own. Even the origin of the words is different. In La Cuisine Niçoise, Jacques Médecin states that the word pissaladière comes from pissala, a kind of anchovy paste that, at least in traditional versions, is spread over the dough before baking.

So the decision to make pissaladière versus pizza or focaccia rests on your liking for onions, olives, and anchovies, the ingredients that give a pissaladière its own special identity. I happen to be addicted to all of the above, and while I love pizza and focaccia, neither one satisfies these particular cravings like a slice or two of pissaladière, whose saltiness also makes it the perfect accompaniment to apéritifs or cocktails. (I serve it in little wedges or rectangles.)

Pissaladière doesn’t need to be hard to make, but since I’m always trying to improve things, often by reverting to laborious methods from earlier times, I make a version that does take a lot of time. Making pissaladière the hard way or the easy way depends on what you use for the dough.

You can take the easy route and make a simple bread dough with yeast, flour, and water or a regular unsweetened pie dough, or you can complicate your life but come up with something better than any pissaladière you’d encounter in Nice and make your dough with a natural sourdough starter instead of just packaged yeast.

The topping of onions, olives, anchovies, and herbs stays the same, regardless of the dough. I use red onions instead of the traditional yellow onions (anyone from Nice would sneer) because I like their sweetness, a welcome counterpoint to the saltiness of the other ingredients.

SALTED ANCHOVIES

Because for years cooking-obsessed friends had been telling me that salted anchovies were far better than those that come packed in oil in little jars or cans, I went to my favorite fancy food shop several times to buy anchovies packed in salt.

But the anchovies were always too strong and fishy. Finally I made the essential discovery that if you want anchovies packed in salt you must buy a whole unopened can, desalt them, and repack them in extra-virgin olive oil.

If you’re desalting anchovies for the first time, you’ll probably want to buy the smallest amount you can, which is 600 grams, about 1 1/4 pounds. Cut the top off the pretty blue can and soak the whole can in a big bowl of cold water for about 10 minutes to loosen the salt.

Rinse under cold running water to dissolve more salt and then turn the can over and shake it to get the anchovies to come out in one big clump. Soak the clump in a bowl of fresh water for about 10 minutes, then gently pull away the anchovies-don’t force them or they’ll tear-one by one. Soak the anchovies in another bowl of fresh water for about 20 minutes.

Snap the head off each anchovy by pushing it back, and separate the fillets from the backbone by running a finger along the backbone, gently pulling away the two fillets. Pat the fillets dry on a clean kitchen towel and pack them in small jars with tight-fitting lids.

I use French canning jars with clamp-on lids and rubber seals. Pour in enough extra-virgin olive oil to cover, and use as needed.

The anchovies will keep for at least 5 or 6 weeks in the refrigerator.

Why don’t you try this wonderful this recipe.

NICE - STYLE ONION , OLIVE , AND ANCHOVY TART

FOR REGULAR BREAD DOUGH:

1 packet (about 2 teaspoons) active dry yeast

16 cups [400 ml] barely warm water

4 to 45cups [500 to 560 g] all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

4 cup [60 ml] extra-virgin olive oil, plus 1 tablespoon for the bowl olive oil for the sheet pan

FOR THE TOPPING :

4 cup [60 ml] extra-virgin olive oil

4 pounds [1.8 kg] red onions (or, to be traditional, yellow onions), sliced about 1?8 inch [3 mm] thick

(traditionally, the onions would be sliced thicker)

2 teaspoons total of fresh herbs, such as whole thyme leaves, winter or summer savory leaves, or marjoram leaves, or chopped oregano leaves, or 1 teaspoon total of the same herbs dried, and/or 5teaspoon fresh or dried rosemary leaves

20 salted anchovy fillets or anchovy fillets packed in olive oil in jars

salt

pepper

5 cup [65 g] black olives, preferably small Niçoise olives, pitte

TO MAKE THE DOUGH

COMBINE the yeast with 1/4 cup of the barely warm water (hot water will kill the yeast). Let sit for 5 minutes.

Toss 4 cups [500 g] of flour with the salt in a mixing bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer that has a hook and paddle attachments. This will prevent a large amount of salt from touching the yeast and killing it. Stir in the yeast mixture, the remaining 1 ¼ cups [375 ml] of water, and 1/4 cup [60 ml] of extravirgin olive oil and work the mixture slightly with a wooden spoon or your fingers until it comes together in a shaggy mass. (If you’re using an electric mixer, start mixing with the paddle blade and as the dough thickens and the motor begins to strain, switch to the dough hook.)

Let the mixture rest for 10 minutes. If you’re working by hand, dump the dough out onto a work surface and knead it for 3 minutes. (In the mixer, work it for 3 minutes with the dough hook.) The dough should seem wetter and stickier than most bread dough. But if it’s impossible to work with, work in another 1/4 to 1/2 cup [30 to 60 g] of flour.

Put 1 tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil in a mixing bowl, put the dough in the bowl, turn the dough around to coat it all over with oil, and cover it with plastic wrap or a damp towel. Let the dough rise at room temperature until doubled, 1 to 3 hours depending on the temperature.

RUB a 12-by-18-inch [30.5 by 45.5 cm] sheet pan (what professionals call a half sheet pan) with olive oil.

Push down on the dough in the bowl with your fist and turn it out onto the sheet pan. The dough will be too loose to roll. Press it into the sheet pan with the tips of your fingers until it completely covers the sheet pan. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let it rise again until doubled, about 1 hour.

TO MAKE THE TOPPING

W H I L E the dough is rising, heat the olive oil over medium heat in a wide, heavy-bottomed pot or pan large enough to hold the sliced onions. Put in the onions and stir them with a wooden spoon. Cook them gently, stirring every few minutes, until they release liquid.

At this point, usually after about 10 minutes, you can turn the heat up to high to evaporate the liquid, but be careful not to let the onions burn. When all the liquid has evaporated and the onions are completely soft, after about 25 minutes more, remove from the heat. Stir in the herbs. Chop 8 of the anchovies into a paste, stir the paste into the onions, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

TO ASSEMBLE AND BAKE THE TART

P R E H E AT the oven to 425°F [220°C/gas mark 7]. If you have a pizza stone, slide it onto the lowest shelf in the oven.

S C AT T E R the onion mixture evenly over the dough, leaving about 1/4 inch [1.5 cm] of dough exposed along the edges. Arrange the anchovies on top of the onion mixture in a formal crisscross pattern or strew them nonchalantly.

Arrange or sprinkle the olives on top and slide the sheet pan onto the pizza stone or directly onto the bottom shelf of the oven. Bake until the crust is golden brown around the edges, 25 to 30 minutes.

1. Straight dough method-mix the dry ingredients, add the warm water with dissolved yeast, and the dough is ready to be kneaded.

2.Sponge method-mix half of the flour with all dry ingredients and yeast but omit salt. Add part of liquid ingredients to form a sticky, almost runny dough. Set this sponge, covered, in a warm place for several hours or overnight. The yeast feed on the sugar to produce a fermenting, bubbling mass. They multiply rapidly during this period of fermentation.

When you are ready to bake, work the rest of the flour and salt into the sponge, knead and let rise. The sponge method replaces the first proofing of the dough so you may shape the bread after kneading. But an extra proofing time helps to create a better-flavored bread.

The sponge method, centuries old and used as standard in many commercial bakeries, produces the same dough as the straight dough method. The resulting bread, however, is moister and richer-tasting because acid-producing bacteria in the sponge have had a chance to add their byproducts with their pleasing, slightly tart flavors. It does take longer than the straight dough method, so it is no longer suitable for large-scale bread production where time is money.

Choose whichever method you prefer and have time for. Recipes often specify one or the other, but there is no reason why you cannot change the recipe to suit your preference or time constraint.

You have three choices for mixing dough, provided you own a food processor and a mixer. If you don’t own either, your only choice is by hand.

Kneading a stiff bread dough is about the most demanding job you can ask of a home appliance, or yourself for that matter. The machine needs to be quite powerful to be able to do the job without overheating or stalling. A small or even a medium-sized food processor or mixer won’t do. However, kneading by hand is not difficult. It just takes a little longer and can relieve a lot of anger or frustration if you really get into roughing up the dough like you should.

Here are two of the most popular dough mixing methods when using your hands.

1. Add the dry ingredients to a bowl. Mix liquid ingredients in a container, including the dissolved yeast, slightly beaten eggs and milk if the recipe calls for these. Slowly add the liquid ingredients to the bowl while stirring with a heavy spoon. As the dough starts forming, it gets harder and harder to stir.

When it gets to this stage, dump the dough on a large cutting board or counter top, and switch to hand mixing. As soon as the dough is formed, start kneading. If it feels too sticky, sprinkle a little more flour on and work it in. If too stiff, sprinkle the dough with water and work it in.

2. The second method is faster and more professional, using a dough cutter, also called the bench scraper, a very useful kitchen tool. A dough cutter is square 4×6-inch (10 to 15 cm) steel wit a handle on one long edge.

The straight edge of the dough cutter is its blade, not sharp as a knife but thin enough to easily cut dough. It also makes cleanup work easy when you use it as an efficient scraper to clean the dough off your work surface.

To mix dough with a dough cutter, pile the dry ingredients in a small mound in the middle of your work surface. Your liquid ingredients are ready in a bowl. Reshape the flour mound to form a large well in the middle, and pour all liquid into this well.

Using the blade of your dough cutter start mixing the flour into the liquid little by little, scraping small additions at a time into the liquid until well mixed, then adding some more. Keep an outside dike of dry ingredients around the liquid so none escapes from the well. By the time you get to the last ring of flour, the ingredients should form a dough. Now a few more turns by hand and the dough is ready for kneading.

A variation on this second method is to use your hands instead of the dough cutter to draw the flour into the liquid. It is also fast, but you end up with sticky, gooey fingers, a sure signal for the telephone to ring. A good bread dough is neither sticky nor stiff but just comfortable to shape or manipulate.

However, it is always better to be slightly on the too-moist side than too stiff. If your dough is too stiff, it resists the force of the enlarging bubbles and you don’t get the fullest rising possible. A very stiff dough barely rises on proofing or in the oven. A slightly sticky dough rises much better, plus it also has plenty of extra moisture to turn into vapor in the oven, vapor that further helps to enlarge gas bubbles in the dough giving you a coarse, airy, light texture. But beware of too sticky dough or it spreads on the baking sheet before it solidifies.

Most bread recipes call for a fixed amount of liquid and instruct you to adjust the dough by adding more or less flour. However, starting with fixed amount of flour is a better approach, because you end up with a specific-sized bread. Start with the flour and add warm water gradually until the dough has the perfect consistency.

When you add sharp-edged ingredients to your dough, such as coarse cracked grains, it is a good idea to add them only after kneading and mix them in by hand. The sharp edges may damage the gluten strands and sheets, particularly with powerful machine kneading. Damaged gluten can limit the dough from rising to its fullest.

Baking seems simple to us: put the well-risen, proofed dough in the hot oven and take it out when it is fully baked. If all went well (and there is no reason why it shouldn’t), we place a still steaming, irresistibly-perfumed, brown-crusted, mouth-wateringly beautiful loaf of bread on a wire rack, and we are ready to cut into it after a short cooling period.

But the baking process is anything but simple. There is a series of very complex chemical reactions and physical processes that happen during bread baking, so complex that even food scientists who have studied the baking process for decades are far from fully understanding it.

For our purposes as home chefs we don’t need to know more about these complex reactions than the very basics which are simple. In a nutshell, here is what happens in the oven. There are three stages of baking.

1. The first stage covers the first quarter of baking time, until the temperature of the dough reaches 140°F (60°C). That is the temperature when the yeast cells die. Up to that point the rising heat keeps the yeast more and more active to produce a great amount of carbon dioxide gas.

All the gas trapped in the dough now expands rapidly as we still remember from our physics class-heat expands gases. Another thing happens, too. The by-product alcohol the yeast produce after gobbling up the sugar evaporates and turns into gas in the hot oven.

The result? Even more gases in the dough. As a consequence, the dough expands rapidly. Bread bakers call this process oven spring- the bread dough springs up. Anticipating oven spring is the reason why you don’t let the dough fully double in the last rise.

If you allowed the dough to rise too much, the expanding gases during oven spring may rupture the barely solidified gluten structure, and the loaf may partially deflate. Also, if you let the dough rise too much, its structure becomes too unstable, and even such last-minute action as slashing and glazing may partially deflate it.

Should that happen to you, don’t trash the bread-it is still edible but a little dense and too firm. It may still be fine for toast. At the end of this first stage the gluten begins to coagulate and the starch to gelatinize.

Both processes are changes from soft, flaccid phase to firm and solid, and both occur at close to the same temperature, about 145°F (63°C). Once both gluten and starch are solid, the oven spring ends, the structure cannot expand any more-but by then the yeast cells are dead and they cannot produce more gas anyway.

2. During the second phase of baking, that makes up about one-half of the total baking time, the structure becomes more solid, progressing from the solidified crust toward the center. This phase is over when the center finally also turns solid. In the same time, near the end of the phase, the top crust begins to brown.

3. In the third phase, the final quarter of baking, the top surface dries out and turns brown.

These two processes form that splendid crisp crust of a fresh-baked bread. Even though browning only takes place on the thin outer surface, it affects the flavor of the entire loaf because the flavors (produced by the browning reaction) disseminate inward.

To prove the importance of this stage, try baking one light-colored and one dark-colored loaf from the same dough. The darker one will have noticeably more flavor. When knowledgeable housewives bought their breads in European village bakeries, they always asked for the darker loaves.

There are two basic methods of making a pie dough-with hand or in a machine. In my kitchen tests I compared the results made with hand, in a food processor and with a food mixer. The food processor did a respectable job but the food mixer did not. Even with the food processor, you need to finish mixing by hand or you are likely to end up with an unfortunate overworked dough.

To make the dough with the processor, follow your manual’s instructions only until the ingredients begin to coalesce. Then dump the partly-formed dough on a pastry board and complete the last steps by hand.

Whether by machine or hand, the idea is to cut the hard, solid fat into the flour so it remains in discernible pieces. By hand you can do this with two knives working them parallel but in the opposite direction, or a pastry blender that meant for this purpose. Or simply quickly rub the fat into the flour with cold fingers.

A food mixer doesn’t mix the dough very well, leaving fairly large chunks of unworked fat in the dough. Longer mixing eventually gives a more homogenous mass but at the cost of overworking and warming the dough that bakes into dense, tough crust.

While we are on mixing, let’s distinguish the two types of American pie crusts-the flaky type in which you mix solid fat into the flour until still fairly coarse, around pea size, and the mealy crust in which you mix the fat thoroughly into the flour until very fine. Southerners prefer mealy crust while the rest of the pie-lovers like the flaky type.

For mealy crusts you can use food processors to form the crust a little longer-it is still good to finish the last few second by hand. Some cooks like to use a pastry cloth for rolling out pie dough. There is even a tube-shaped pastry cloth that fits over the rolling pin. A pastry cloth minimizes sticking and the need for additional flour.

For experienced bakers it is just an additional gadget to store and clean. Quick

work and correct dough consistency at the right temperature assures problem-free rolling without any help.

Cookbooks tell you to shape the finished dough into a ball before chilling. However, shape yours into a flat disk. First, a disk is thinner, cools faster in the refrigerator. Second, it warm up faster when you are ready to roll it out. And third, a disk is easier to roll into a circle than a ball- with a disk you are already half-way there.

Cover the disk with plastic wrap or place it in a plastic bag and put it in the refrigerator for at least one hour to chill and relax. After the dough had a nice long rest, bring it to about 50°F (10°C) for easy rolling. The secret of a good rolling technique is to work the dough from the center out with deliberate but not vigorous movements. Coax the dough to roll out thin-don’t force it.

The dough may refuse to obey you if there is not enough flour on the board and it sticks instead of thins out. If that happens, gently lift the dough and sprinkle a fine dusting of flour under it as well as on the rolling pin. This should give you the upper hand. Never gather the dough again and roll it out twice-it toughens the crust.

Once you start, you are committed. For the same reason, don’t work too much of the trimmings from the first pie crust into a second crust or a top crust. Make “orts” out of them, instead, by sprinkling each leftover piece with cinnamon and sugar, or cocoa and sugar, and spread them on a baking sheet. Put them in the oven with the pie, but remove in 10 minutes or less, depending on their thickness. Orts are great sweet tidbits to nibble on.

To transfer the finished dough circle from the work surface to the pie plate, roll it up on the rolling pin, hold it over the plate and unroll it over the pie plate. Avoid stretching it any more because it causes more shrinkage on baking. If you need to move it to center the dough on the plate, lift and move, don’t stretch. The gluten remembers its original shape. If you stretch it, it will spring back in the oven like a rubber band. Another method of transferring the rolled-out dough is to fold it in half and then again into quarter. Lift it onto the pie plate and unfold.

I also recommend to try this delicious pie recipes :

1. Apple Pie

2. Pumpkin Pie

3. Apple cranberry streusel

4. Banana cream pie

5. Buttermilk Pie

Pies are the third most popular American desserts following ice creams and cookies.

Considering the amount of work you put in, you get more mileage out of pies than from any other dessert, considering both taste and eye appeal. Attain the experience to make a good pie dough quickly, and you have the basis for making a very good dessert for any occasion.

Most fillings, whether simple or elaborate, are reasonably easy to make, even with meringue, whipped cream or any other topping. You can even prepare the dough (or baked crust) days in advance and finish it in no time on the day you plan to serve it fresh from the oven.

If you use a good recipe and good ingredients, preparing a delicious pie or tart has only one secret: you must make your own crust. Commercial food processors learned how to make quite acceptable cake mixes, frozen cakes and a number of other frozen pastries, but they haven’t managed to produce a good fresh or frozen pie dough or crust.

If pie crust is not yet on your list of skills, take a few hours and learn how to do it. The ingredients are inexpensive, even if you have to throw a dozen doughs or crusts out before your thirteenth attempt is a winner. Once you master the technique, making your own crust is a snap.

A simple way to learn is to watch someone who is good with pie dough. Or learn it by yourself from books or videos. It helps to understand what happens in the dough so don’t skip this article.

What goes into it?

Pie dough has only four ingredients: flour, salt, fat and water. Tart pastry has the same four ingredients plus sugar and maybe egg.

Commercial bakers use pastry flour specifically made for pies. Like cake flour, they mill it from low-protein and high-starch soft wheat to promote tenderness. Pastry flour is not as finely milled as cake flour. Don’t try to use cake flour for pie dough. It is too fine-grained, and tends to paste up when you add liquid.

Specialized pastry flour is not available to most home cooks, but you can mix cake flour with bread flour in a 7:3 ratio and come close to commercial pastry flour. But that is hardly necessary-all-purpose flour is quite suitable, too, and you always have it on your shelf.

Salt is an essential ingredient and does not vary in amount, without salt the crust tastes flat. Use ¼ teaspoon salt for every cup of flour.

The amount of water you need, however, varies with the humidity, your climate and the amount of moisture in your flour and fat. Recipes give an approximate amount, but start with smaller than called for, and add more little at a time to arrive at the correct, easily workable dough consistency.

Fat is also a variable. What fat you choose and how much you use makes a huge difference in the consistency, texture, flakiness and flavor of your pie crust.

The role of fat in the dough

The fat’s ability to interfere with the formation of gluten is called its shortening power. What happens is that the fat coats the protein grains in the flour and keep them from absorbing moisture.

Without moisture the proteins cannot convert into gluten, that elastic sheet-like substance so essential for good breads but a killer in pie dough. Lard, vegetable shortening and oil have high shortening power. Butter and margarine have less because they are not all fat-they contain about 16 percent water (while other fats have none).

Lard not only has high shortening power but also just the right physical properties (called plasticity and dispersability by food scientists) to produce the most flaky pastries. But you cannot use just any kind of lard.

Which part of the pig it comes from, or even from which part of a single

layer it is taken, determines the type. The ideal lard for pies is leaf lard, a layered fat located around the pig’s kidneys. It has a crystalline structure that readily forms tiny layers in the pastry, resulting in flakiness that a top pastry chef can be proud of.

When bakers, both commercial and at home used lard extensively for biscuits and pastries in the past, leaf lard was readily available. Concerns about fats and cholesterol in modern times has changed all that, and these days you would be hard put to get leaf lard even from a good butcher.

Slaughterhouses no longer separate fats from various parts of the pig; there is not enough demand for leaf lard. The lard that is available in retail markets is a rendered fat that may be from any part of the animal. It is a refined, emulsified, hydrogenated all-purpose product meant mostly for frying.

Though not ideal, this lard still makes good flaky pastry.