The "year of the dough" is finally drawing to a close. After a ten day hiatus from routine bread making, allowing time, energy and calories to be devoted to Christmas baking on a small scale, I made one loaf last night. And what a sensory experience that was! Even in a short time, I had forgotten the pleasure of slashing a perfectly risen boule before depositing it in a cast iron cassarole for its thirty minute bake. And how satisfying it was to transfer the aromatic, crisp, honey-colored loaf to a cooling rack. The Panera purchased loaves we had relied on for a brief respite paled in contrast to their delicious, fragrant homemade counterpart. And just like that....I was back.
That is not to say that I had neglected baking over the Christmas holiday. Our kitchen oven produced small batches of pizza dough, baguettes, cookies, pasticiotti, hand pies and sweet breads over the last thirty days, just a month after an Italian Rum Cake graced our table for my 70th birthday. Balancing a desire to experiment with other forms and recipes together with maintaining carbohydrate restrictions throughout the holiday period, I was presented with a delicate juggling dilemma. Now a few days after Christmas we are left with a scattering of cookies and perhaps an extra pound or two on the hips. All in all, it's a pretty good record considering how I had drooled over photos posted by personal friends and my social media baking group. Extravagant displays of cookie trays and Italian seasonal specialties graced my daily facebook feed, conjuring memories of Christmases past where house calls included the obligatory box or tray of sugar coated cookies or pizzelles. Over the years, custom dictated a two-week long baking spree where huge tins bearing images of Santa Claus or Christmas angels were carefully loaded with layers of cookies: Linzers, spekulatius, decorated sugar cookies, mini pecan pies, almond crescents, and sugar covered pistacchio balls or hazelnut balls filled with nutella. In contrast this year yielded only one small tin; a sad end to our annus horribilus Covidus.
But enough moaning about what was missing. There were many high points over the past weeks, and some exceptional results merit detailed descriptions.
Panettone
I make a panettone every year, but my last two efforts have been disappointing. This being a true quest, I was determined to succeed. Early on I decided to retire my 7" straight sided souffle plan in favour of panettone papers ordered from Amazon. This was a very good idea as it turned out. My next task was to find the perfect recipe. Over the past year I scoured the internet, searching for a process that was both authentic and streamlined, encountering a variety of options both dizzying and confusing along the way. Then quite by accident I noticed that a member of my social media cooking group, Wooster Square Cooks, shared a recently published recipe featuring a two day process which eschewed a bigga in favor of a poolish and a overnight refrigerated first rise. The resulting dough was easy to handle and the process of incorporating the rum soaked fruit (golden raisins, dried cranberries and cherries) and silvered almonds was nearly effortless. While blending the ingredients into the dough on day one, I realized the recipe omitted the essential flavoring ingredient -- fiori di Sicilia--and I quickly grabbed it off my little extract trolley and added it to the mise en place together with orange zest and vanilla. The final product was a towering, airy, light and sweet bread lined with veins of rummy fruit and sliced almonds, bearing the unmistakable flavor of this unique Italian confection. The recipe was a triumph that will be repeated annually.
Mise en place - day 2
Baguettes
Early in December I treated myself to a bread making kit as an early Christmas present. Now equipped with a lame, a couche, a new dough cutter/scraper, a double baguette baking form and a Banneton bread proofing basket, it was time to venture away from safe boules and loaves and try baguettes. I selected a recipe from the King Arthur flour website, one that was specifically engineered for the home baker using baguette forms. On the very first try, I was rewarded with two lovely, light and crusty loaves. What a good deal that was!
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/baguette-pan-baguettes-recipe
Christmas Sweets
Before I turn to the final pièce de resistance, the rum cake, I would like to reference two other baking successes: a pair of apple cranberry hand pies and my mother’s pecan tassies. As this was the first Christmas without my mother, I found it necessary to make those little gems in her honor. The dough is quite like a rugulach mixture of butter and cream cheese, and I improved on the pecan pie filling by adding about two teaspoons of maple syrup to the mixture. They turned out beautifully…in honor of our Rosie!
Italian Rum Cake
The holiday season began with a post-Thanksgiving Italian Rum Cake for my birthday. My childhood neighbor was a very sweet Italian-born man, married to one of my mother’s girlfriends, who owned and operated The Italian Pastry Shop in Shelton, Connecticut. Frank Pucella's superb Italian rum cakes were standard fare at birthday celebrations throughout my youth and teenage years, but I haven’t had one since moving away from the family home at 21. Now arriving at the watershed age of 70 it was time to revisit the luscious sensation of rum soaked sponge, filled with layers of chocolate and vanilla pastry cream dotted with candied cherries and wrapped in a light layer of fresh whipped cream. Once again I searched the internet for the best recipe and for instructional videos on assembly. The final cake was a composite of one recipe for the sponge, another for the cream fillings, and a third process for whipping and stabilizing the whipped cream icing. I also referenced two instructional videos to guide me through the assembly and icing process. And finally, I was delighted to find a video produced by a bakery in Union, New Jersey, where amarena cherries were included in one of the filling layers. The little gem was small—I used a 6 inch springform pan for the fat free, egg rich sponge which baked so nice and high that I was able to slice it into three equal layers. Following the New Jersey baker’s video I pressed drained amarena cherries into the vanilla pastry cream and left the chocolate layer unadorned. My only difficulty was in piping and swirling the whipped cream icing. Because I preferred not to use gelatin as a stabilizer, it was very delicate and difficult to work with. I used some dry milk powder and a small amount of corn syrup to make it sturdy and glossy.
Jerry loved it. Eni loved it and requested it for her birthday even though it is definitely NOT a vegan recipe. I posted it on Wooster Square and received nearly 1000 likes and comments (although truth be told, many of them were just birthday wishes). It was worth a 50 year wait.
2020 is about to end, hopefully heralding an end to the pandemic, to isolation, joblessness, loss and fear. Let us then drink a glass to usher in 2021 in anticipation of better days ahead. In mid July, I bottled some Polish Wisniak, a cherry liquor, just as Florida was beginning to experience its first Covid surge. With luck by next December we may be able to share holiday goodies and more bottles of liquor with our families and friends in our homes. In the meantime we stay safe...and distant...and in lockdown.
