Benne-Buttermilk Rolls

“I believe that both professional chefs and home cooks can move their cuisine forward by understanding the past and knowing where their food comes from. I hope that my experiences will move more people to research their heritage and find inspiration from the food and traditions they grew up with.” In a nutshell, that’s what Sean Brock’s new book Heritage is about, and I received a review copy. He finds inspiration in the foods from southwest Virginia where he was born as well as those from the South Carolina Lowcountry where he has lived and worked more recently. He writes: “Cook as if every day you were cooking for your grandmother. If your grandmother is still alive, cook with her as much as possible, and write everything down.” The book includes dishes from his restaurants, Husk and McCrady’s, as well as family favorites like some of his grandmother’s recipes. It offers an interesting spectrum from simple, comforting options like Chicken Simply Roasted in a Skillet to Grouper with Pan-Roasted and Pickled Butternut Squash, Nasturtium Jus, and Hazelnuts. But, regardless of the level of difficulty, each dish is part of a story about a local producer or a discovery in the garden or a traditional technique. I want to try the Grilled Chicken Wings with Burnt-Scallion Barbeque Sauce and the Husk BBQ Sauce that’s used to make it and the Cornmeal-Dusted Snapper with Bread-and-Butter Courgettes and Red Pepper Butter Sauce. There are also great-looking vegetable dishes like the Beet and Strawberry Salad with Sorrel and Rhubarb Vinaigrette as well as recipes for pickles, jams, and sauces. In the desserts chapter, the Buttermilk Pie with Cornmeal Crust keeps catching my eye. But, I couldn’t get through the chapter about grains without trying the Benne-Buttermilk Rolls. 

After reading Dan Barber’s The Third Plate, I was informed about what Glenn Roberts and his company Anson Mills are doing to preserve or rediscover heirloom grains. In Heritage, he’s mentioned regarding his work with the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation and his preservation of other antebellum crops. I previously knew that benne is another name for sesame seeds. What I didn’t know was that older varieties of West African benne have a slightly different flavor than our contemporary sesame seeds. I ordered some of these traditional benne seeds and two varieties of bread flour from Anson Mills for these rolls. The rolls are made with bread flour and all-purpose flour, and the Ble Marquis flour from Anson Mills is suggested for the all-purpose. That one is currently only available for wholesale purchases, so I ordered two different varieties of bread flour instead. I used a little of the red fife whole wheat bread flour in addition to white bread flour which is an “organic new crop 18th-century style heirloom wheat French Mediterranean, hand bolted” flour. To start, a paste was made with sugar, local honey, and salt. The bread flour and some all-purpose flour were added to the paste. Fresh yeast was called for in the recipe, but it isn’t easy to find here so I used active dried yeast instead. Two teaspoons of dried yeast was substituted for the quarter cup of fresh yeast. The yeast was mixed with buttermilk and added to the flour mixture. The dough was stirred together and then kneaded before being left to rise for an hour. It was punched down and folded and left to rise for an additional 45 minutes. Then, the rolls were formed and placed in a cast-iron skillet. I used a larger skillet than the nine-inch size suggest, so mine fit more than half the rolls. I baked the remaining rolls in a smaller baking dish. The rolls were left to rise for a couple of hours, and then were brushed with an egg wash and sprinkled with fleur de sel and benne seeds before baking. 

These little rolls were tender and nutty tasting, and they’re fun to pull apart from the skillet. The benne seeds taste like amped up sesame seeds. The flavor is more pronounced with a little bitterness that makes them get noticed. The flours added more subtle flavor of toasty wheat, and I look forward to baking more things with them. This book has been an inspiration to preserve, to keep traditions alive, and to maybe make a few jars of pickles before the fall vegetables disappear for the winter.

Benne-Buttermilk Rolls 
Excerpted with publisher's permission from Heritage by Sean Brock (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2014. 
Makes 44 rolls 

I could eat my weight in these tasty little rolls. We serve them every day at Husk. They are the first things that hit the table when guests arrive, so they have to be special. Bread should make everyone feel comfortable before a meal starts, whether it’s in a restaurant or at home. I like the food at Husk to tell a story, so we make these using Blé Marquis flour, which is a specialty wheat flour from Anson Mills. I want our guests to taste how older varieties of wheat pack so much more flavor. You can substitute all-purpose flour, if you must. A sprinkling of crunchy salt and benne seeds at the end makes the rolls irresistible. 

1/4 cup sugar 
1/4 cup local honey 
1 teaspoon kosher salt 
3 cups all-purpose bread flour 
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, preferably Ble Marquis flour 
1/4 cup crumbled fresh yeast 
2 cups whole-milk buttermilk 
1 large egg 
1 tablespoon water 
2 tablespoons Anson Mills Antebellum Benne Seeds 
Fleur de sel 

1. Make a paste with the sugar, honey, and salt in a large bowl. Add both the flours and stir them in with a wooden spoon. In a small bowl, mix the yeast with the buttermilk, then add this to the flour mixture all at once and stir in. 

2. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead it until smooth, 5 to 6 minutes. 

3. Lightly spray a large bowl with a nonstick spray and place the dough in the bowl. Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and put it in a warm place. Let the dough rise until it has doubled in size, about 1 hour. 

4. Remove the towel and gently punch the dough down. Cover the bowl again with the kitchen towel and let the dough rise again until doubled in size, about 45 minutes. 

5. Spray two round 9-inch cast-iron skillets with nonstick spray. Portion the dough into 1-ounce rolls: divide the dough in half and then in half again, and divide each portion into 11 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball and carefully place 22 rolls in each pan; they should fit snugly. Cover the pans lightly with kitchen towels, put them in a warm place, and let the rolls rise until they have doubled in size, about 2 hours. 

6. About 20 minutes before the rolls have finished rising, preheat the oven to 400°F. 

7. Whisk together the egg and water to make an egg wash. Using a pastry brush, lightly brush the tops of the rolls with the wash. Sprinkle the rolls with the benne seeds and lightly with fleur de sel. Bake the rolls for about 25 minutes, rotating the pans once halfway through. Test the rolls using a thermometer: the internal temperature should read 195°F. Cool the rolls in the pans on a rack. 

8. The rolls are best served as soon as they have cooled, but they can be kept covered in the pans for up to 1 day and reheated in a 350°F oven for 10 minutes. 

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Three-Cheese Rye Biscuits

The new book Huckleberry, from the Bakery and Cafe in Santa Monica of the same name, by Zoe Nathan is easy for me to like. As I read my review copy, page after page held something I wanted to try baking, flavors I wanted to taste, and breakfasts I knew would be delicious. I’m easily entertained by the thought of baking lots of different types of breakfast treats, but seriously, I wanted to grab the mixing bowls and bake every single muffin recipe in the first chapter. It starts with Cooca Nib Muffins with Dark Chocolate Glaze and goes on to include Lemon Cornmeal Muffins with Lemon Glaze, Gluten-Free Vegan Banana Chocolate Muffins, Fig-Brown Sugar Muffins, and more. It’s not just the baked goods and breakfast dishes in the book that appealed to me either. There’s also a nice mix of various flours and whole grains that appear in several recipes. But, those wholesome, whole grains aren’t there just to be healthy ingredients. They’re added for flavor and texture, and there’s no lack of decadence in these recipes. There are Brown Rice Quinoa Pancakes, Multigrain Pancakes, and Ricotta Griddlecakes. Then, there are chapters for Sandwiches, Hearty plates with an Egg on Top, and Coffee and Other Beverages. In deciding where to start, I put my sweet tooth on hold for just a moment while I mixed up the Three-Cheese Rye Biscuits. Despite the rye flour and whole wheat flour, these are anything but a health-food kind of biscuit. They’re buttery and tender with cream cheese and grated cheddar and parmesan. 

Step one was to combine the dry ingredients which include rye flour, all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder, salt, black pepper, and cayenne. Next, cold pieces of butter were worked into the flours followed by cream cheese that was worked in in the same way. Then, the grated cheddar and parmesan were added with buttermilk. The dough was transferred to a work surface and briefly kneaded to bring it together. To form the biscuits, an ice cream scoop was used. After scooping each biscuit onto a baking sheet, I flattened them a little to prevent domed tops. The sheets pans with biscuits were placed in the freezer for a couple of hours before baking. I only baked half of them at first since, once frozen, the raw biscuits can remain in the freezer for up to a month. They went straight from the freezer to the oven with a quick stop for an application of an egg wash and a sprinkling of fleur de sel. 

If someone offered me a whole grain rye biscuit, this is not what I would expect to receive. These biscuits were as indulgent as any I’ve tasted previously. The cheeses and crunchy salt sprinkled on top add savory flavor. They were perfect with a vegetable scramble for brunch. Some breakfast or brunch dishes in our not-too-distant future will probably include Roasted Spaghetti Squash with Parmesan and Eggs, Vegetarian Croque, Lentils with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes and Sunny-Side-Up Eggs, and lots of muffins. I think I need to get back to the kitchen now. 

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Black Pain d'Epi

Sometimes recipe ideas get stuck in my head. I see something that I know I want to try, and I carry the idea around in my thoughts for weeks or months until it happens. So it was with this bread. This idea came from the very first recipe in the book The Elements of Dessert that I read last year. It’s a book about desserts, but there’s also a section about bread baking at the beginning. Here, mini loaves were shaped into pain d’epi resembling stalks of wheat. And, not only were they made into pretty epi shapes, they were also made a lovely black color. This was a unique type of bread that I wasn’t going to forget anytime soon. The bread dough was tinted with squid ink which doesn’t impart any noticeable squid flavor, but it does lend a deep, dark color. My plan was to steal the ideas for the loaf shape and the squid ink for color and use them with my favorite recipe for sourdough baguette dough from Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Bakery. This is where part II of the story begins. I’ve been reading a review copy of Dan Barber’s new book The Third Plate. There are so many things I want to share from this book that this blog post could end up scrolling indefinitely. I’ll try to limit my thoughts on it, but I highly recommend reading the whole book. Barber begins the book with a discussion about farmers who “grow nature” by maintaining a complete system rather than growing one thing. This speaks to an understanding of how everything in nature is connected, and that theme is repeated throughout the book in stories about very different parts of the food system. In particular, I want to share some of the story about wheat. Wheat doesn’t receive much attention in the realm of the sustainable food movement in comparison to fruits and vegetables, but it’s a significant crop. In the book, farmer Klaas Martens is quoted: “I see people go to all the trouble to visit the farmers’ market and really take the time to pick out the best peach, or stand in line for a grass-fed steak that’s treated the way a cow ought to be treated. And, then on the way home they buy packaged bread in the store.” We no longer seem to consider the flavor of grains or how they’re grown and processed. For instance, the process for making packaged whole wheat flour from the grocery store is a lot like that of making brown sugar. Brown sugar is refined white sugar to which some molasses has been added. Due to high-volume processing, it’s easier to make it that way than to change the process for a less-refined, true brown sugar. Likewise, whole wheat flour is refined white flour to which a little wheat germ has been added. I’m now inspired to seek out real, whole wheat flour made from the entire wheat kernel, and luckily, it’s available in Austin from Richardson Farms. 

That’s the whole wheat flour I used in this bread. I converted my sourdough starter to whole wheat by feeding it the whole wheat flour a few times before using it for this dough. The starter was combined with more of that whole wheat flour, some white bread flour, some added wheat germ, and water. After the initial mixing and autolyse, a little less salt than usual was added. Since I was adding squid ink which has a saline taste, I cut back a little on the salt. I started with three little packets of squid ink which tinted the dough dark grey. I really wanted a good, black color, so I added a fourth squid ink packet. While kneading, the color will rub off on your hands, but it washes off easily. The dough was left to ferment for about four hours. Then, I divided the dough into six smallish pieces and formed boules that were left to rest for 15 minutes. Each little boule was then formed into a small baguette, and they were left, covered in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, I cut each baguette into the pain d’epi shape before baking. It seems counterintuitive, but the cuts in the long, slender loaves should all be on the same side, spaced a few inches apart. That way, you can lift every other section between cuts and twist it to the opposite side to form the stalk of wheat shape. The loaves were baked in the usual manner with steam for the first 12 minutes and came out of the oven crispy on the surface and tender inside. 

I often eat with my eyes, and I was delighted with the look of this bread. But, the flavor was really the best part. I promise it doesn’t taste like squid bread. The squid ink really only lends some salinity. And, the whole wheat flavor was front and center. I’ll probably be mentioning more from the book The Third Plate because I can’t seem to stop talking about it lately. It offers great insight into areas of our food system that usually get overlooked or are often discussed in oversimplified terms. 

I’m submitting this to Yeastspotting where you’ll find some seriously well-made bread.

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Whole Wheat and Oat Bread with Golden Raisins

I think that no matter how much bread I bake, I’ll always get a little nervous about it. You never know how much it will rise or how long it will take to rise or how it will look when you cut into the finished loaf. It makes bread baking exciting. Yes, waiting for hours for dough to rise is exciting! I said it. This is another loaf from Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes. It’s made with sourdough starter that’s mixed into a liquid levain the night before the dough is made. The dough is somewhat dense with whole wheat flour, oats, and golden raisins, so a scant bit of commercial yeast is used as well. The process was fairly quick with just under two hours for bulk fermentation before the loaves were shaped. With added fruit or nuts in bread, I fret the whole time it’s baking about whether or not the add-ins will be well-distributed in the end. I didn’t want to cut into a loaf and find most of the raisins clustered on one side. That added suspense as the baked loaves cooled and crackled when they came out of the oven. I told you bread baking is exciting. 

I always take my starter out of the refrigerator and give it a double feeding before I plan to use it. I tend to give it a small feeding once it comes to room temperature, and then a regular-size feeding about 12 hours or so before I’ll be using it. For this bread, a small amount of starter was mixed with bread flour and water to form a liquid levain 12 to 16 hours before the dough was mixed. To start the dough, oats were soaked in water for a few minutes before bread flour, whole wheat flour, water, commercial yeast, and the liquid levain were added to the bowl of the stand mixer and mixed with the dough hook. After the mixture came together, I left it to sit, covered with a towel, for about 15 minutes. Then, I added salt and a little more water and mixed for a few minutes before adding the golden raisins. I turned the dough out of the bowl, kneaded it for a few minutes and then placed it in a wide, oiled bowl which I covered with plastic. After one hour, I gave the dough a fold and turn in the bowl, and left it to ferment for about another hour. The dough was then divided into two pieces and shaped into round loaves. The loaves were covered with a towel and left to rise for an hour. I was able to fit both loaves on my baking stone, so they baked together for 45 minutes total with steam for first ten minutes. 

In this book, Jeffrey Hamelman writes “well-made breads never possess their finest aroma or flavor until they have cooled completely.” So, I waited. And, wondered. Finally, when I cut into a loaf I found those big, golden raisins speckled all about the bread just as they should be, and the crunchy crust gave way to a tender crumb with subtle nuttiness from the whole wheat and oats. The anxiety had ended for another delicious bread adventure. 

I’m submitting this to Yeastspotting where you’ll find some seriously well-made bread.

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Flax and Sunflower Seed Whole Wheat Bread

Of the bread baking books I’ve read, they all tend to stick to techniques and recipes for fermenting, proofing, shaping, and baking bread dough of various types. Each one offers a slightly varied approach or unique tips for these processes. I just recently read my review copy of Chad Robertson’s Tartine Bread, and there was something different and kind of ingenious about this bread book. After all the the interesting tips and information about making a wild yeast starter and crafting dough and the different types of breads and how to bake them, there’s a section full of suggestions for using day old bread. Seeing several dishes made with bread made the thought of having a house full of home-baked loaves even more delightful. The various, seasonal kinds of bruschetta, sandwiches, uses of breadcrumbs and croutons, and the delicious photos of all those things give you one reason after the next to bake more bread. So, I just had to decide which bread to make first. The beginning of the book is devoted to describing how to make a basic country loaf, and then all of the other breads are some sort of variation on it. I was distracted at first by the brioche dough and the beignets made from it, but I chose to begin with a whole wheat bread packed with flax and sunflower seeds. If you don’t have a sourdough starter in your possession, Robertson suggests a simple enough way of making one, and he recommends feeding it with half white and half whole wheat bread flours. My starter is always fed with white bread flour, so I began by separating some starter and feeding it with the recommended mix of flours for a day before beginning this bread dough.

There were two key elements to the bread making process in this book. One of those was the baking method which I’ll explain more below, and the other was the goal of achieving a not so sour taste in the bread by only using a scant tablespoon of the mature starter when making the leaven. The night before the dough was to be made, one tablespoon of starter was mixed with warm water and white and whole wheat flours and left at room temperature until the next morning. For whole wheat dough, the leaven was then added to more warm water, all-purpose flour, and whole wheat flour, and it was mixed and left to rest for about an hour. Robertson explains that a whole wheat dough requires a longer rest after mixing that a white flour dough. After resting, salt was added, the dough was transferred to a clean bowl for the three hour bulk fermentation, and it was left until the turning began. Every 30 minutes, the dough was folded or “turned.” For the flax and sunflower seed bread variation, one cup of sunflower seeds was toasted, and one cup of flax seeds was soaked in boiling water. I would have expected the seeds to be added with the salt before the bulk fermentation began, but instead they were added after the second turn or one hour into it. Now, soaking the flax seeds causes them to become a little sticky and mixing all those little seeds into the dough takes a bit of squeezing and folding and mixing by hand. That seemed like a lot of working of the dough at that point of the bulk fermentation, so I may try adding them earlier next time. The next steps involved dividing the dough in two and giving both pieces a bench rest, and then each piece was shaped into a boule, rolled in one cup of raw sunflower seeds, and placed in bowls lined with towels that had been coated with all-purpose and rice flour for the final rise. I placed mine in the refrigerator for about twelve hours before baking. And, the baking involved that other interesting technique I mentioned. Rather than introducing steam in the oven with a spray bottle of water or by pouring water into a pan placed on the oven floor, a cast iron pan with a lid was used. The pan was heated in the oven with its lid, the dough was placed in the hot pan and carefully slashed, the lid was placed on top, and the bread began baking at 450 degrees F. After 20 minutes, the lid was removed, and the bread finished baking.

Because this was a rather wet dough, the lidded cast iron pan captured all the steam escaping from the dough as the bread baked and resulted in a crackly, crisp crust. My only disappointment was the lack of the open, holey crumb that I saw in other breads in the book. I suspect that was due to the bread being dense with seeds and the working of the dough in getting those seeds into it. Still, it was a nutty, flavorful bread that worked perfectly for sandwiches or simply toasted and slathered with butter. Now, I have more bread to bake so I can turn back to that last chapter of the book with all those ways of using it.

I’m submitting this to Yeastspotting where you’ll find some seriously well-made bread.

Mushroom Paté with Einkorn Pasta

One of the first types of wheat to be grown as a crop during the Neolithic era was einkorn. 12,000 years later, this ancient grain is being cultivated again and in this case made into pasta. Nutritionally, it’s very similar to the whole wheat pasta I usually buy, but einkorn is touted to have twice the antioxidant capacity of durum wheat. I received samples of einkorn pasta from Jovial and was curious about the flavor and texture. Mushrooms always work well with the nuttiness of whole wheat pastas, so I had a meal plan in mind. I had just brought home some mushroom paté made by Kocurek Family Charcuterie which sells at our farmers’ markets. I stirred the paté into the pasta and topped it with some sauteed, sliced creminis. I’m easy to please with a plate of any sort of pasta with mushrooms, but this was a particularly good combination.

The Kocureks make their paté with mushrooms, almonds, onions, butter, thyme, sherry, and salt and pepper. It’s a smooth and fragrant blend with a nice nutty, woodsiness about it. Another suggested use for the paté would be in stuffed chicken breasts. I added texture to the dish by topping it with sliced creminis that I sauteed in olive oil with minced shallots. Once on the plate, I added just a little freshly grated parmigiano reggiano and chopped parsley.

With some whole wheat pasta, I don’t notice much difference in flavor from regular white pasta. Other times, there is a more noticeable wheaty flavor that I’ve come to appreciate. This einkorn pasta did deliver in wheatiness and was fitting with the mushroom paté. While I might want a simpler pasta flavor for more delicate dishes like something with shellfish, I think this would pair very well with all of fall’s vegetables.

Whole Wheat Lemon Almond Biscotti

I can’t believe there are zero posts about biscotti on my site. Well, now there is finally one, but more than two years went by without any biscotti posts. I should explain that biscotti are kind of like scones to me. I’ve admitted that I try almost every scone recipe I ever see, four of which I’ve posted on this site, and I have the same issue with biscotti recipes although I’ve neglected to mention them. The difference is that I seem to encounter more failures with biscotti. I’ve tried recipes that resulted in cookies that were too large and unwieldy, or the add-ins were too difficult to slice through and the cookies were ugly, or the cookies didn’t bake evenly and were too dark on one side. I’ve learned that the initially baked dough logs shouldn’t be too large. Two to three inches wide seems to work best. Then, once the individual cookies are cut, they should be flipped at the half-way point in their baking time. That way, the cookies don’t brown too much on one side and not enough on the other. I’ve also read that some people have success with baking the cookies on their edges rather than flat on a cut side, but I haven’t tried that. Regarding the slicing issue, I now let the dough cool a little longer after the first baking and before slicing, and I always use a serrated knife. With these lessons in mind, I tried a biscotti recipe I’d seen in the December 2009 issue of Living, and these turned out great.

Whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, and baking powder were sifted together and set aside. Butter was mixed with sugar, honey, lemon zest, and salt, and three eggs were added one at a time. Nice, big measures, one whole tablespoon each, of vanilla and almond extract were added, and that’s why these biscotti smelled so amazing as they baked. Then, the flour mixture was added followed by almonds. I used a mix of whole almonds and sliced almonds because I was in pantry-clearing mode. The dough was wrapped in plastic and chilled for an hour. It was then divided in half, formed into two logs, of appropriate size of course, the logs were placed on a silpat-lined baking sheet, and they were chilled for 30 minutes. The first baking was at 325 degrees F for 35 minutes. Then, the dough logs were allowed to cool enough to handle before they were cut on the bias into cookies. I placed the cut cookies on two baking sheets, and they were baked this time at 300 degrees F for 35 minutes. After about 18 minutes, I flipped each cookie for even browning.

The extracts, lemon zest, almonds, and honey worked together to make these biscotti incredibly fragrant and delicious. They were packed into an airtight container, and each time I opened it, I was struck by how great these cookies smelled. Of course, they were enjoyed dipped in coffee or cappuccino, and I liked them with tea as well. They were crunchy as can be and a definite success in my hit-or-miss history of biscotti making.