Now for the cornbread. This is one challenge where I suspected Mr. Reinhart and I might butt heads. I grew up eating my Southern mother’s and grandmothers’ cornbread, which is definitely not sweet. For me, eating sweet cornbread is akin to eating dessert, at least some of the versions I’ve tasted. Reinhart’s recipe has granulated sugar, brown sugar, and honey, a triple punch of sweet, but I made it exactly as directed so I could get the full essence of what he intended.

I must report that though many of my fellow bakers greatly enjoyed the cornbread, it just didn’t strike my fancy. It is sweet, close in flavor to tomalito (sweet corn pudding or spoon bread), which is something I really like, thought the bacon adds enough savory to almost offset the sweet. But the combination of sweet, savory, and the texture didn’t thrill me, probably because we use cornbread as a base for beans or alongside chili. However I’m a grown up and I like to try new things and challenge my notions of how food should taste, and I can learn to appreciate foods that taste different than how I am accustomed to them, it just might take me a little while. Give me some time, Mr. Reinhart, and I may come around.

Thanks as always to Nicole of Pinch My Salt for organizing the BBA Challenge and Peter Reinhart for supporting our efforts. For more bread inspiration, check out the BBA Challenge photos in the BBA Challenge Flickr photo group.

Other Breads from the BBA Challenge

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For the Daring Cooks September challenge, we made vegan dosas adapted from the reFresh cookbook by Ruth Tal. Fresh is a popular chain of vegetarian/vegan restaurants in Toronto, Canada with three published cookbooks teaching how to cook Fresh food at home. Our host Debyi of Healthy Vegan Kitchen chose this fun challenge for us, and I for one am grateful because this is the first time I’ve ever made Indian food and witnessed our two older boys actually eat it. Builder Guy (6) has recently developed a taste for spicy foods—good thing because we like our spices—and Top Gun (5) is finally coming around and trying new things. Monkey Boy is still a picky three-year-old, but he did eat one of the plain dosas. We thought the dosas were delicious and would eat that coconut curry sauce on just about anything.

The challenge had three components: the dosa pancakes, the garbanzo filling, and the coconut curry sauce. The primary rule was that everything had to be animal-free, but we were given freedom to come up with our own vegan fillings. Also, the challenge was to be 99% oil free, so we could use light amounts of cooking spray when sautéing, but that was it. The dosa recipe departs from the traditional fermented rice and black lentil base, calling for spelt or a gluten-free all-purpose flour. I forgot to acquire one of the recommended flours and had to use what I had on hand. The flour soaked up the liquids so much that the batter was too thick, so I thinned it with more almond milk a few tablespoons at a time until the consistency was thin enough to spread easily. Because I adore cilantro with curry, I added some chopped leaves to the garbanzo filling and used it as a garnish as well.

We were excited to use more of our homegrown tomatoes, garlic, and peppers for the dish. The tomatoes were a mix of what was ripe at the time, including a Cherokee Purple and some Early Girls, and the peppers were Tequila Hybrids and a Big Jim chile.

Thanks to Debyi of Healthy Vegan Kitchen for hosting this month. To see all of the dosas, visit The Daring Kitchen Blogroll and the Daring Bakers Gallery at Foodgawker.

VEGAN DOSAS

Adapted from reFresh by Ruth Tal.

Equipment

large bowl
whisk
griddle or skillet (or crepe pan)
ladle (or large spoon)
spatula
vegetable peeler &/or knife
large saucepan
food processor or bean masher

Ingredients – Dosa Pancakes

DOSA PANCAKES (Makes 8 to 12 dosas.)
1 cup (120 g) spelt flour or all-purpose, gluten free flour (I used 1 cup chapati flour.)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2  teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/2 cup (120 ml) almond milk (or soy, or rice, etc.)
3/4 cup (180 ml) water
cooking spray

DOSA TOPPINGS
1 batch Coconut Curry Sauce (see below), heated
grated coconut
cucumber pieces, sliced with a vegetable peeler
cilantro leaves

Preparation

1. Combine the flour, salt, baking powder, and curry powder in a medium bowl. Slowly add the almond milk and water, whisking until smooth.

2. Heat a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Spray your pan with a thin layer of cooking spray, if needed.

3. Ladle 2 tablespoons of batter into the center of your pan in a circular motion until it is a thin, round pancake. When bubbles appear on the surface and it no longer looks wet, flip it over and cook for a few seconds. Remove from heat and repeat with remaining batter. Makes 8 pancakes. (I made the pancakes a little smaller, yielding 12.)

Ingredients – Curried Garbanzo Filling

5 cloves garlic
1 onion, peeled and finely diced
1 carrot, peeled and finely diced
1 green pepper, finely diced (I used Tequila Hybrid.)
2 medium hot banana chilies, minced (I used a Big Jim chile.)
2 tablespoons cumin, ground
1 tablespoons oregano
1 tablespoons coarse sea salt
1 tablespoons turmeric
4 cups (960 g) cooked or canned garbanzo beans
1/2 cup (125 g) tomato paste (I used an entire 6 ounce/170 g can.)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro (optional, my addition)

Preparation

1. Heat a large saucepan over medium to low heat. Spritz on a little cooking spray, then add the garlic, veggies, and spices, cooking until soft, stirring occasionally.

2. Mash the garbanzo beans by hand or in a food processor. Add the garbanzos and tomato paste to the saucepan, stirring until heated through.

Ingredients – Coconut Curry Sauce

1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon cumin, ground
3/4 teaspoon sea salt (coarse)
3 tablespoons (30 g) curry powder
3 tablespoons (30 g) spelt flour or all-purpose gluten-free flour
3 cups (720 ml) vegetable broth
2 cups (480 ml) coconut milk
3 large tomatoes, diced

Preparation

1. Heat a saucepan over medium heat. Spritz on a little cooking spray, then add the onion and garlic. Cook for 5 minutes or until soft.

2. Add the cumin, seal salt, and curry powder, cooking for 1 minutes more. Add the flour and cook for 1 additional minute.

3. Gradually whisk in the vegetable broth to prevent lumps. Once the flour has been incorporated, add the coconut milk and tomatoes, stirring occasionally.

4. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for about 30 minutes.

Previous Daring Challenges

You can see all of my previous Daring Challenges in the the Daring Challenges tag list.

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Thanks as always to Nicole of Pinch My Salt for organizing the BBA Challenge. This week our baking group is buzzing with excitement over the Washington Post article “Too Many Cooks? No Such Thing” which features the BBA Challenge (as well as the Daring Bakers) and quotes Nicole! And if you click on the slideshow in the article you’ll find some of our bread photos, including one of mine.

For more bread inspiration, check out the BBA Challenge photos in the BBA Challenge Flickr photo group.

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I’m slowly catching up with the rest of the BBA Challenge crew, though summer keeps trying to derail my plans. Baking in the summer is always a challenge for me, whether it’s the heat making the kitchen unbearably hot or the distractions of three boys, each with his own agenda. The boys were my distraction during the ciabatta, when means I forgot to snap a photo of the poolish, and the final rise was about double what it should have been. My loaves didn’t stretch quite so well before going into the oven and were much higher than expected even though I dimpled the loaves. One even had a big gaping hole right under the crust.

Other than my challenge with over-rising, the ciabatta is not difficult to make and doesn’t require any special skills for shaping. If you can pick up a piece of dough and stretch it, you can make this bread. I chose to use the poolish starter method and left it to sit in the refrigerator for three days before mixing the dough. It bubbled up nicely as it came to room temperature and had a tangy, slightly sour scent. The bread baked up with a hint of sourdough aroma and flavor, a plus in my opinion. The crust was crispy and the crumb chewy, though I would like to have had more classic ciabatta holes, but supposedly you get more of that when using the biga starter.

Thanks as always to Nicole of Pinch My Salt for organizing the BBA Challenge! For more bread inspiration and to see what we have been working on, check out the BBA Challenge photos in the BBA Challenge Flickr photo group.

Nicole found a video of Peter Reinhart speaking philosophically about bread on the TED website. My favorite quote from his talk, “Beer is basically liquid bread, or bread is solid beer.” I found the talk very informative and recommend it if you enjoy making bread.

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I enjoyed making this loaf, though I had a few distractions along the way that caused the dough to over rise twice. Then I seemed to overwork the dough because the rolls were never quite smooth and my challah looks stretched, like it’s splitting open in the middle. One of those things I have to work on.

Thanks as always to Nicole of Pinch My Salt for organizing the BBA Challenge! For more bread inspiration, check out the BBA Challenge photos in the BBA Challenge Flickr photo group.

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The next brioche in the BBA Challenge was an Italian variation, a casatiello, which is usually made with some type of cured meat and cheese. Reinhart suggests a good melting cheese such as Swiss, Gouda, Cheddar or any of their variations. For meats he suggests salami, pepperoni, bacon, pancetta, chorizo, or sausage. I chose some applewood smoked ham and provolone, two flavors I like together.

The bread starts with a quick sponge, followed by mixing and two risings. Casatiello is traditionally baked in paper bags or panettone molds, though I used a tall round 8-inch cake pan, which worked well. The bread was popular with my family, so much so that Monkey Boy took a huge hunk out of it while it sat cooling on the wire rack. We liked the slightly salty flavor of the ham and the Provolone melted just right. Even after a day the flavor was still present.

Thanks as always to Nicole of Pinch My Salt for organizing the BBA Challenge! For more bread inspiration, check out the BBA Challenge photos in the BBA Challenge Flickr photo group.

[Update: The Washington Post ran a story about online cooking clubs "Too Many Cooks? No Such Thing" featuring the BBA Challenge and included one of my photos of the casatiello.]

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The next bread for me to tackle in the challenge was the brioche, a decadent bread with plenty of eggs and butter and a rich flavor. Of the three options—Rich Man’s, Middle-Class, or Poor Man’s brioche—I chose the Middle-Class version, which has less butter than the ultra buttery Rich Man’s version. Because I don’t have a brioche pan I made dinner rolls in a muffin tin, though they looked more like muffins. Making cloverleaf rolls with the dough would also work well in a muffin pan.

Thanks as always to Nicole of Pinch My Salt for organizing the BBA Challenge! For more bread inspiration, check out the BBA Challenge photos in the BBA Challenge Flickr photo group.

Thanks for reading Andrea’s Recipes through a feed! Copyright © 2005-2009 Andrea’s Recipes.

For more bagel inspiration, check out the BBA Challenge photos in the BBA Challenge Flickr photo group.

Thanks for reading Andrea’s Recipes through a feed! Copyright © 2005-2009 Andrea’s Recipes.

For more bread inspiration, check out the BBA Challenge photos in the BBA Challenge Flickr photo group.

Thanks for reading Andrea’s Recipes through a feed! Copyright © 2005-2009 Andrea’s Recipes.

Well, there’s a bunch of us doing what we now call the BBA Challenge, about 200 to be exact. Yes, the challenge went viral, but we decided to be relaxed about it and just have fun. We’re working loosely on a schedule of one formula per week going through the book in order from beginning to end. The first challenge is the Anadama bread.

Each week I will post a photo journal of the loaf or loaves I made that week. After today, my posts on the challenges will be mostly wordless posts, merely an opportunity to show what we’ve been working on. For more bread inspiration, check out the BBA Challenge photos in the BBA Challenge Flickr photo group.

Anadama toast with butter, cinnamon, and sugar. Brings back delicious memories of my childhood.

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