Boule and camembert (aka the best starter ever)

29 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by Zoli in bread, cheese, french, party bites, quick and awesome, snacks, Vegetarian

Tags

baked camembert, balthazar bakery, boule, camembert, caramelized onions, fancy appetizers, pain au levain, pain au siegle

fresh pain au siegle bread from the bakery

score the camembert and place inside the boule

top with caramelized onions

slice into the warm crusty bread, drenched in rich cheese and sweet onions

I’ve felt so guilty about not being on my blog here for a while and so relieved to be back. I have so much to share and can’t wait to get it all down. My absence wasn’t the Thanksgiving madness but my new passion for artisan bread. Oh yes, I have been bread baking like a… a bread fiend, I guess. But more on that later.

So it’s the day after a lovely Thanksgiving. Everything went miraculously well, minus a single smashed champagne glass. And, assessing the food and drink, my favorite dish of all was hands down this simple but oh-so-fabulous starter of wine, bread and cheese.

Camembert baked in a fresh boule with caramelized onions. Oh. My. God. We ate almost the whole thing and polished off a bottle of dry Riesling along with it. I may try this again at Christmas, perhaps with some other toppings such as figs, garlic and rosemary, sun dried tomatoes or chili jam. In the meantime, this is highly recommended.

Ingredients
1 smallish boule, such as pain au levain, from a good bakery
1 wheel camembert
2 onions, sliced thinly
1 tbs butter
1 tbs brown sugar
splash white wine
olive oil
salt and pepper

1. Heat up some olive oil and add the sliced onions, the brown sugar, salt and pepper and splash of white wine. Fry on a medium heat, stirring occasionally and turning down the heat if they start to burn. It will take about 20 minutes to cook them until soft, sweet and a nice caramelized brown. Taste as you go and add more salt and pepper if needed.

2. Carve out a lid from the boule and scoop out enough of the bread to fit a wheel of camembert inside. This leftover bread can be fried into croutons. I added it to a mushroom, leek and gruyere bread pudding.

3. Butter the inside of the bread and the bottom of the bread lid. Score the camembert all over so it doesn’t explode when it bakes. Tuck it inside the bread and spoon all the caramelized onions on top. Place the bread lid back on top.

4. Bake at 325 or 350 for about 30 minutes. You can pull it out and check inside whenever you like. It is done when the cheese is melted and gooey inside.

The bread will be hot and crispy on the outside, but light as air on the inside. Be careful cutting this as the cheese will seep out. Just dip the chunks of bread in it. We used a spoon to slather the cheese and onions over the pieces of warm bread. I find this superior to the brie or camembert baked in puff pastry. That is heavenly too, but on the greasy and heavy side. Camembert baked in the fresh rustic bread is lighter and more delicate. As for the cheese, choose camembert over brie for this. I picked up a pain au seigle from Balthazar Bakery in NYC, which was made with rye and whole wheat flour and needed a good strong tasting (and super gooey) cheese like camembert. If using brie, I would recommend a triple creme.

*inspired by the lovely farine blog

Homemade pizza

09 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by Zoli in bread, italian, kids, pizza sauce, quick and awesome, Sauces, the basics, tomato sauce, Vegetarian

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Tags

delia smith, easy pizza recipe, homemade pizza dough, ricotta, vegetarian dinner

If you’re daunted by homemade pizza, don’t be. It takes about 15 min to prepare the dough, an hour to rise while you do something else and another 15 min to cook. If you are home by 6, you can eat by 7:30. It’s cheap and you didn’t have to go anywhere.
Not having a pizza stone or a brick oven fireplace, this is my favorite pizza dough recipe (from Delia Smith’s ‘How to Cook Book One’):

Ingredients
makes 2 pizzas
350g plain or bread flour
8 fl oz of hot water (boil the kettle and mix with cold purified water to get the right temp)
2 tsp dried active yeast
1 tsp sugar
2 tbs olive oil
1 tsp salt

Quick garlicky tomato sauce
3-4 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
1 tin of plum tomatoes or 1/2 a large tin
olive oil
fresh or dried basil
salt and pepper
1 tsp sugar
dash rice vinegar (optional)

1) Mix dry ingredients together. Drizzle the olive oil and mix again.
2) Add the water and mix with a wooden spoon till roughly combined.
3) Dump on a clean work surface and knead for a few minutes until the dough becomes a soft squishy ball. It’s ok if at first it isn’t all sticking together. You shouldn’t need to add any extra flour to your work surface.
4) Place in an oiled bowl and cover tightly. If the covering is loose, the dough will develop a ‘skin’. Keep in a warm place for an hour until about doubled in size. An option is to warm the oven slightly, then turn off the heat and put the dough in there.
– While it is rising, make a quick sauce or use a homemade sauce you made earlier.
– Heat up olive oil in a sauce pot and gently fry the garlic for a few seconds.
– Add in the tomatoes and seasoning. Use a potato masher to break up the tomatoes.
– Cover with a lid and simmer on a medium heat for about 15-20 minutes.
– Blitz with a handheld blender.
– Taste and adjust seasoning.
5) Check on the dough after an hour. If it has risen nicely, Punch down, then gently knead again and cut in two.
6) Flour the work surface and then roll the dough out into the shape of your pan (circle or rectangle).
7) The best technique is to roll the pizza dough into a small circle shape and then a) pick up the small circle of dough, hanging on to the very edge so that the weight of the dough stretches itself. b) Move along all the outer edge with your fingers, letting the dough stretch out all sides. This is easier than flipping it up into the air! c) Place the dough back onto the work surface and roll out as big as you like. The dough should now be smooth and pliant. I recommend rolling out quite thin for a thin crispy pizza. Repeat with the other half of dough.
8) Sprinkle baking trays with corn meal to keep the pizza from sticking during baking. No need to use oil.
9) Bake on a high heat (400F) on the upper racks for about 10-15 minutes.