Cookbook #244: From Julia Child’s Kitchen, Julia Child, Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 1975. Second printing, 1982. Hardcover edition.

“I smile warmly at Julia Child’s complete love of cooking”. These words were mine when I explored Mastering the Art of French Cooking. And I again smile as I open From Julia Child’s Kitchen.

Fourteen years passed between the (initial) publication of these two books. In 1975, Julia Child has a successful television series and is world renown. And she hasn’t lost her love of cooking. That love bursts from the pages of From Julia Child’s Kitchen. And the photographs! Her husband’s stunning photographs and drawings grace the book.

Let me share the first paragraph from the introduction. It’s a perfect illustration of what the book is about and Julia’s style of writing.

From the above excerpt, we learn that Mastering the Art of French Cooking was written as a textbook, a complete guide, and was written as a collaboration. I used to be a bit intimidated by that first tome. (Now I totally enjoy it!) From Julia Child’s Kitchen is less serious and more fun. Sure, it includes all the important methods of preparing soups, poultry, meats, egg dishes, quiches, homemade sausages, fresh vegetables, French breads, pastries and desserts. But it focuses on the American home cook, with recipes that can be made in a reasonable amount of time and with any level of cooking skill. From Julia Child’s Kitchen also has a chapter on “earthy alternatives”, such as lentils, beans and rice. I find most of the recipes a bit less calorie-laden than in her previous book. And, there are cartoons throughout.

Every chapter and many recipes begin with memoirs of her experiences and travels. Also intertwined are references to her television shows in the 1970s and 1980s. Often a recipe expands on a recipe from a half-hour show that didn’t have time to give all the alternatives.

“Salads, aspics, and summer fare” begins with “Musings upon Caesar and his salad”:

“One of my early remembrances of restaurant life was going to Tijuana in 1925 or 1926 with my parents, who were wildly excited that they should finally lunch at Caesar’s restaurant. Tijuana, just south of the Mexican border from San Diego, was flourishing then, in the prohibition era. People came down from the Los Angeles area in droves to eat in the restaurants; they drank forbidden beer and cocktails as they toured the bars of the town; they strolled in the flowered patio of Agua Caliente listening to the marimba band, they gambled wickedly at the casino. Word spread about Tijuana and the good life, and about Caesar Cardini’s restaurant, and about Caesar’s salad.”

Caesar’s salad! I used to think it originated in Italy. In fact, one of my cookbooks, International Recipes, classified Caesar’s salad as Italian. I have noted recipes for Caesar’s salad in at least four of my cookbooks, and made it for this blog using the recipe in Joy of Cooking. I called that version “a classic Caesar’s, no mushrooms or other vegetables, with the perfect dressing, made on the salad rather than in a bottle.” The Joy of Cooking calls it a famous recipe from California. But no, it is actually from Mexico. At the restaurant with her parents in the 1920s, Caesar himself made the salad for them. She remembers “the only thing I see again clearly is the eggs. I can see him break 2 (coddled) eggs over that romaine and roll them in, the greens going all creamy as the eggs flowed over them.” The salad was a sensation partly because “it was only in the early twenties that refrigerated transcontinental transportation came into being. Before then, when produce was out of season in the rest of the country, there was no greenery to be had. Before then, too, salads were considered rather exotic, definitely foreign, probably Bolshevist, and, anyway, good only for sissies.”

See how I get caught up in this book? Julia goes on to write that she contacted the daughter of Caesar Cardini to get the original recipe for the TV show and for From Julia Child’s Kitchen. Accordingly to Julia, anchovies were not in the original recipe; instead, Worcestershire sauce was used (Worcestershire has a “speck” of anchovy in it). The Joy of Cooking recipe only differs from the recipe in From Julia Child’s Kitchen in the anchovies and the inclusion of a little wine vinegar along with the lemon juice.

Garlicky Sautéed Potatoes is a good example of presentation style of recipes in From Julia Child’s Kitchen. Actually, the full title is “Garlicky sautéed potatoes and a pressure-cooked quickie”. “Pressure-cooked quickie?” Intrigued, I read on. I find the title covers three ways to prepare garlicky potatoes, and the third is the pressure-cooked version:

• Pommes de terre sautées à la catalane, or Potatoes sautéed with onions, peppers, and herbs
• Pommes de terre sautées à l’ail, or Potatoes sautéed with garlic and herbs
• Pommes de terre sautées à la minute, or Fast potatoes with onions and herbs, pressure-cooked

Potatoes sautéed in a stove top pan is a staple at dinners at our house. I never use a recipe, just throw them together. It might be good for me to take some time studying Julia Child’s methods, because sometimes mine turn out good, and sometimes disappointing. And I can compare her recipe for the pressure-cooked version with one I tried previously for this blog entry: Country Style Potatoes.

“Egg Dishes” catches my eye. Remember when I discussed how to boil an egg in Kitchen Science? Well, Julia Child uses the same method. Her discussion of hard boiled – or HB – eggs covers 8 pages! I use a push-pin to poke a whole in the egg, but she actually had an egg-pricker. (They even sell complicated egg prickers online these days.) Continuing with eggs, we come to poached eggs. I use silicone cups to hold eggs to “poach” them in boiling water, but true poached eggs are made by sliding a cracked egg directly into boiling water. She calls poached eggs the “purest and loveliest of ways to cook eggs. I have tried the method of poaching eggs directly in boiling water, but was never successful. But this morning, I carefully studied Julia Child’s method and on my first try, successfully made 4 poached eggs! They were almost perfect! And definitely yummier than the silicone cup method.

At first, I kind of want to make Julia’s Garlicky Sautéed Potatoes for this blog. But then I came across her recipe for Rye Bread. I have a lot of rye flour in my pantry that I should use up, and rye flour is a whole grain flour and thus “good for us”. So I decide to try the rye bread first, and then the potatoes some other time. Below are the first two pages of Julia Child’s recipe for rye bread. The entire recipe goes on for another five pages!

And in the very back of From Julia Child’s Kitchen I find this – what I call very funny – passage in one of the appendices:

What tickles me about this? The “or your own holy mixture” clause. Ahem, that’s me! I am always substituting flours like gluten or bread flour or high fiber flour in recipes. And note I have already made three types of rye bread for this blog:

• No-knead Rye Bread
• Rye Beer Bread
• Sourdough Rye

I’ll call my version of Julia Child’s Basic Rye Bread “My Own Holy Mixture Rye Bread”. I will halve the recipe, use my tried-and-true dry active yeast, and a mixture of rye, unbleached white, and gluten flours (see my entry on flours and yeast). I like to add diastatic malt powder (to improve the rise) and caramel color. Finally, I added caraway seeds, because I like them in rye bread. Here is a photo of my malt and caramel:

My Own Holy Mixture Rye Bread
makes one large 9×5-inch loaf

Yeast starter:

• 5/8 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 2 1/2 tablespoons water
• 1 cup unbleached all purpose flour
• 3/4 cup water

Stir the yeast into the 2 1/2 tablespoons water until it is dissolved, then stir in the flour and the 3/4 cup flour. Cover the mixture and let it stand at room temperature for at least 2 1/2 hours and up to overnight. Here is how my yeast starter looks the next day:

It is just lovely and bubbly and has a wonderful yeasty sour smell.

Final rye dough mixture:

• the yeast starter mixture, all of it (above)
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• 5/8 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 2 cups rye flour, or 8 1/2 ounces (I used dark rye flour)
• 1 cup of a mixture of unbleached AP flour (75%) and gluten flour (25%), or 5 ounces total
• 1 teaspoon diastatic malt powder
• 1/2 teaspoon caramel color
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 tablespoon caraway seeds (add at the “beep” of the bread machine)

Put all of the ingredients except the caraway seeds into the bowl of a bread machine. Set to a dough cycle that includes a rising step. Start the machine, and monitor the dough a bit to make sure it is forming a big ball of dough. My dough was pretty sticky, but I didn’t add any more flour. From experience with my bread machine and my yeast, I know that a heavy dough like this will give a better rise and texture if left sort of sticky to the touch.

Add the caraway seeds when the machine beeps that it is time for such ingredients, or fold it into the dough when it is finished kneading and rising.

When the dough cycle is complete, remove the dough to a lightly floured board. Fold and press the dough for a minute or so, then form it into a loaf and place it in a lightly greased 9/5-inch loaf pan.

Bake at 375˚ for 25 minutes, then turn the oven to 350˚ and bake another 7-10 minutes, until the top is nicely browned. When done, it should sound hollow when tapped.

Here is my loaf. In my opinion, the amount of dough was a bit too much for the pan, but I would not change this in the future. If you like, experiment with free form loaves as in Julia Child’s original recipe.

The texture was a tiny bit moister than my usual whole wheat bread. But, it was entirely delicious! It stayed together as a slice, but was soft and yummy tasting, especially with corned beef or pastrami on it.

Success!

Cookbook #243: The Vegetarian Cookbook, Nicola Graimes, Hermes House, Anness Publishing Ltd, London, 2003.

The Vegetarian Cookbook is pleasantly laid out and illustrated, and Nicola Graimes is a personable author. I probably bought this book at a time when my daughter was vegetarian. I don’t think I’ve cooked many – if any – of the recipes in it! Why not? I really can’t tell you.

Nicola Graimes writes in the introduction:

“Vegetarianism is not purely about achieving and maintaining good health. A meat-free diet is enjoyable, delicious and varied. The choice of fresh vegetables, fruit, herbs, noodles, pasta, grains and cheeses is now more extensive than ever before, enabling cooks to experiment with different flavours, textures and colours, and vegetarian food has become a popular cuisine in its own right.”

And, dear spell checker, “flavours” and “colours” is correct in this Britain-published cookbook!

More from Graimes:

“Today, much of our food is processed and bears little resemblance to the original ingredients, so the recipes in this book specify fresh, unrefined foods whenever possible.”

If you have read any of this blog of mine, you will know that I am entirely in agreement with the above statement. So why haven’t I used this cookbook? Time to settle in and give The Vegetarian Cookbook a good reading. The first fifth of The Vegetarian Cookbook is an extensive guide to ingredients, from vegetables to spices and oils and pastas. Useful, but these days I usually rely on the internet instead.

The rest of the book is recipes, most with an international flair. “Soups” is the first recipe chapter, beginning with chilled soups. (I am not a fan of chilled soups.) I do like several of Graimes’ recipes for hot soups. I’d like to try North African Spiced Soup (potatoes, celery, tomatoes, chickpeas, and lots of spices) and Spiced Lentil Soup. Cream of Courgette Soup? A courgette is a zucchini, so it’s cream of zucchini soup. Garlic and Coriander Soup is an interesting concoction of cilantro (coriander), garlic, vegetable stock, bread, and poached eggs. Roasted Vegetable Soup sounds good too. First you roast butternut squash, carrots, parsnip, rutabaga, and leeks, then combine them with vegetable stock, cook, puree, and serve.

So. There are some interesting recipes in this book. Perhaps in 2003 I wasn’t quite as adventurous in my cooking? Not sure. I turn to the appetizers chapter. I like Asparagus in Egg and Lemon Sauce because the sauce would be lighter than traditional hollandaise sauce. To make Twice Baked Gruyere and Potato Souffles you smash cooked potatoes with egg yolks and gruyere cheese, fold in beaten egg whites mixed with gruyere cheese, and bake in ramekins. Corgette Fritters with Chili Jam are fried in a small amount of oil, and the chili jam is home made.

The Vegetarian Cookbook continues with chapters entitled Lunches and Suppers, Fresh and Healthy Dishes, Entertaining in Style, Side Dishes, Salads, and Breads and Savoury Bakes. I noted several recipes I’d like to try: Jamaican Black Bean Pot, Penne Rigate with Mixed Vegetable Sauce, Baked Cheese Polenta with Tomato Sauce (this recipe calls for the polenta “logs” sold in local stores), Pumpkin Gnocchi, Summer Herb Ricotta Flan (crust-less, high protein, low fat), Polenta Crepes, Avocado, Red Onion and Spinach Salad with Polenta Croutons, and Cheese and Courgette Cluster Bread. Champagne Risotto calls for over a cup of champagne! Graimes writes: “This may sound rather extravagant, but makes a beautifully flavoured risotto, perfect for that special celebratory dinner.”

I had fun looking up ingredients I didn’t know. “Puy” lentils are small green lentils with blue marbling. “Borlotti” beans” are oval with red streaks and can be substituted with red kidney beans. “Quorn” is a British meat substitute. “Con chiglie” is a type of pasta, sort of like small shell pasta. “Gem” squash looks like a plump zucchini. “Garganelli” is a penne-shaped pasta. “Kohlrabi” is a vegetable related to cabbage and I’m not sure I’ve seen it in local stores. “Rocket” salad is arugula salad. Some ingredients might be hard for me to find. For instance, one recipe calls for a mixture of both fresh and mature Pecorino cheese – only a store with an extensive cheese collection is likely to carry both. Pickled walnuts? I’ve never noticed these in any local stores. I don’t have a good source of wild or field mushrooms called for in a lot of recipes.

It’s largely Nicola Graimes‘ excitement about her recipes that makes the book enjoyable. A former editor of Vegetarian Living magazine, she has over 20 books to her credit, and is still writing. I might buy her book Superfood Energy Balls & Bites, since I often eat little bites of protein bars throughout a day of work-outs and other activities.

For this blog, I decide to make Walnut Bread, a whole wheat bread with lots of walnuts.

(This book is hard to open out flat enough to follow a recipe while cooking!)

I will make this bread in my breadmaker. For the “strong wholemeal (whole-wheat) bread flour”, I decide to use half whole wheat and half white whole wheat flours, both from King Arthur Flour. For the “unbleached strong white bread flour”, I will use King Arthur unbleached white bread flour, with a touch of vital wheat gluten too. I used turbinado sugar for the “light brown (molasses) sugar”. I made the dough in a single loaf pan rather than two small round loaves. My version of Graimes’ recipe is below.

Whole Wheat Bread with Walnuts
makes one 9×5-inch loaf

• 1 cup milk (may need a little more, see below)
• 1/4 cup butter, cut into small pieces
• 12 ounces whole wheat flour (I used a mixture of whole wheat and white whole wheat)
• 4 ounces white bread flour (I put a couple tablespoons vital wheat gluten and then added white bread flour to 4 ounces total)
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar or turbinado sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 2 1/4 teaspoons yeast (1/4 ounce)
• 1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts

Put all the ingredients except the walnuts in a breadmaker. Set to a dough cycle with a rising step. Watch as the kneading begins – my dough wasn’t forming a firm ball so I added a bit more milk.

When the breadmaker signals that it is done, take the dough out and roll it out. Sprinkle with the walnuts and press them firmly into the dough. Knead the dough several times to distribute walnuts. Then, form into a loaf and place in a 9×5-inch loaf pan.

Let rise until the bread tops the sides of the loaf pan. Bake at 425˚ for 35 minutes.

This bread is excellent! I think I found the perfect combination of whole wheat flours to give it excellent flavor and still have good texture – sometimes whole wheat loaves turn out sort of like heavy rocks. The walnuts made me keep wanting to have another bite! Note that this is a good bread for people on a low-carb diet, because it is whole-grain and also has nuts.

I will definitely keep The Vegetarian Cookbook!

Cookbook #208: International Recipes.

No author, no publisher, no publication date! This is the only cookbook in my collection with none of that information. It is a community-style cookbook, typed and copied, with black and white hand-drawn illustrations. The paper and cover are 3-hole punched, and it is held together with brad-style paper fasteners.

Community cookbooks were often sold as fundraisers. Usually the recipes are attributed to different contributors, but not in International Recipes. Or at least, the organization behind the cookbook is given. Maybe someone will see my photos and recognize this cookbook! Here is the first page:

I read through this entire book, and am impressed with the author’s work. She (I assume it was a woman, at least) set up each section with an entire menu of recipes for the particular international cuisine. She referenced a sauce from one section (a raspberry sauce) that might go with a recipe from another section (a pecan torte). Because of the consistent writing style and the cross-references, I think this book was all written by one person, although she may have collected ideas from friends of different cultures. The recipes call for canned or processed items, like bean sprouts, canned shrimp and crab, and cake mixes; canned coconut milk was not available; there are several gelatin salad recipes; and microwaves and food processors are not mentioned. All of these facts lead me to believe it was produced in the sixties or seventies. Plus, it was prepared on a typewriter, not a computer.

I decide to put in the time and go through each international recipe section and take notes. Here goes!

India: Curried Chicken Balls, Curried Shrimp, Indian Puria (a deep fried dough), Chutney (onions, apples, raisins, prunes, plums, cloves, nuts, sugar, vinegar and spices), Curried Fruit Bake (canned peaches and pears baked with butter, sugar, and curry powder), and condiments (like peanuts, cooked eggs, coconut). The Curried Shrimp serves 12, and takes 2 1/2 quarts of cooked shrimp! It also calls for 9 cups of coconut milk, with instructions for how to make this from milk and canned shredded coconut.

Poland: Barszcz (a soup made from beet juice drained from canned beets), Potrawa Kurczecia z Ryzem (stewed chicken), Zucchini w sosie (zucchini with paprika and cream), Salata (lettuce salad), Tort Marcepanowy (raspberries, sugar, yellow cake mix, almond paste).

Japan: Chicken noodle soup, Cucumber and Crab Meat Salad, Japanese Rice, a Sukiyaki similar to the recipe I got from my Japanese roommate, Mandarin-Orange Dessert (gelatin, cream cheese, whipping cream, apricot juice, mandarin oranges).

Germany: Rinds Rouladin (thin steak rolled around bacon, dill pickle, onion), Green Bean Salad, Flan Tart (German Fruit Pie), Melba Sauce (raspberries, recommended to use in another section, Vienna, with the Pecan Torte).

France: Rock Cornish Hens with French Chestnut Stuffing (calls for canned French chestnuts), Tomato Stuffed with Mushrooms (ripe tomatoes, mushrooms, sour cream, Roquefort cheese, fines herbes, sherry, almonds), Coffee Cream (milk, gelatin, sugar, instant coffee, egg yolks, shipping cream, Curacao, chocolate).

Greece: Abrak (grape leaves stuffed with lamb and rice), Braised Lamb (meatballs with onions, tomatoes and lemon juice), Stuffed Tomatoes and Eggplants (Gemistes Domates me Melzana, kefaloteri cheese), Vegetable Salad (cabbage, string beans, capers, olives, beets), Baklava (the dough is made from scratch!).

China: Sweet and Sour Meat Balls (battered and deep fried), Bean Sprout and Snow Pea Salad (canned bean sprouts and garden lettuce), Buns Stuffed with Shrimp (from-scratch yeast dough, steamed), Almond Cookies.

In the Latin Countries: Mexico, a mixed garden salad and Kahlua with ice cream; Brazil, a rib eye roast marinaded in vinegar, burgundy wine, gin, onion juice, bay leaves, garlic, tarragon, tabasco; Nicaragua, spiced cooked bananas; Spain, potatoes whipped with cream cheese, green pepper, butter, green onions, pimento, saffron, cheddar and parmesan cheeses, and then baked; Portugal, cinnamon bread (a yeast bread).

Swedish Smorgasbord: I have good coverage of Smorgasbord in my book the Encyclopedia of Cooking Volume 10. Below is the section on Swedish Smorgasbord in International Recipes.

Hungary: Hungarian Gulyas (like a goulash), Wilted Cucumbers, Cole Slaw, Cream Apples.

Indonesia: Marinated Lamb (lamb cut in small cubes rolled in a ground-to-a-paste mixture of onions, garlic, salt, chili peppers, coriander, cumin, saffron, and ginger, then browned and simmered; Green Beans in Coconut Milk (again, a recipe for making coconut milk), Date and Fig Sauce (for ice cream or cake).

Italian: Antipasto, Chicken Tetrazini (different from my recipe), Parmesan Pinwheels (pastry mix with Parmesan cheese and olives), Caesar Salad, Biscuit Tortoni (a frozen dessert made with macaroon crumbs, whipping cream, sugar, beaten egg whites).

English Menu: Cornish Pasties, Yorkshire Salad (lettuce, green onions, molasses, vinegar), Devonshire Cream over Fruit (cream cheese, sour cream, whipping cream).

Russian: Pirozhki (meat filled pastries), Yablonnick (cooked apples), Beef ala Stroganoff, Health Salad a la Kiev (cucumbers, raw carrots, apples, tomatoes, lettuce, sour cream, lemon juice), Torte (a rich dessert with raspberry preserves and coconut).

I decide to keep this cookbook. I find it interesting! Plus I’d like to try the Chinese buns stuffed with shrimp, the Japanese salad with wilted cucumbers and crab meat, the Indonesian marinated lamb, and Abrak (grape leaves stuffed with lamb and rice).

For this blog, I choose to make Herb Rolls, a Viennese recipe. The entire section for the cooking of Vienna is below, to show you how the recipes are laid out and illustrated. I’d also like to make the Pecan Torte someday, and maybe put one of the raspberry sauces on it.

I’ll make the Herb Rolls in my breadmaker and see how it goes. I don’t need 3 dozen rolls, so I’ll halve the recipe. Still a lot for two people, but I think these will freeze well. I like the honey in the recipe, and the all-bran cereal will add some fiber. I chose poppy seeds (instead of caraway), and added the seeds and the chopped parsley when my breadmaker “beeped” to signal it was time to add seeds to a loaf (thus they do not get grinded into the dough). I’ll use bread flour (especially since I’m flush off writing my last post on French Bread).

It’s important to make this bread on a preheat dough cycle, because the bran cereal needs some time to soak and become mushy.

Herb Rolls (breadmaker instructions)
makes 16

Add the following ingredients to a bread machine in the order given:

• 1 cup water
• 3/4 cup all-bran cereal (I used the “buds” form; either would work)
• 4 tablespoons butter, cut into chunks
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 3/8 cup unbleached bread flour

Set the machine to a preheat dough cycle that has a rising step and push the start button. Have ready to add at the “beep” that signals time to add seeds, raisins, nuts or the like:

• 1 1/2 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
• 1 generous teaspoon poppy seeds

While the dough kneads and rises, set out at room temperature 2-3 tablespoons butter (preferrably unsalted) so that it softens. Add to this butter minced garlic, 1-2 medium cloves.

When the dough is ready, take it out onto a breadboard and knead it a few time to spread the yeast around. Then, cut the dough into two equal pieces. Roll each piece into a circle about 10-12 inches in diameter. Put half of the softened butter-garlic mixture on top of each circle, then cut each into 8 pie shaped pieces. Roll each pie shape, starting from the pointy end:

I put the rolls on 2 parchment-lined half sheet pans and let them rise about 20 minutes (my kitchen was warm). I learned from experience that the rolls bake up best if you tuck the pointy ends under the rolls.

Bake for 25 minutes at 400˚.

A “yum” for this recipe! These are soft and tasty, and fun to make. The bread machine method worked great. I put some of the rolls in the freezer for later use. Yes, I’d make these again!

Cookbook #207: Foods of the World Supplement Number One, Time-Life Books, NY, 1968, revised 1974.

I own 5 of the 27 Foods of the World volumes produced by Time-Life Books, and have covered 4 of them so far: Cooking of Provinvial France, Cooking of China, Cooking of Vienna’s Empire, and Cooking of Japan. I subscribed to the series for a time – they came in the mail. The Foods of the World Supplement Number One was a “bonus”, according to the “memo to the subscriber” in the preface. I find today that the Foods of the World cookbook series is important enough to have its own Wikipedia entry. And a few online sellers offer the entire set for about $200. Although there are 27 volumes in the entire series, there are only 2 supplements: the one I have and one on deep frying.

Foods of the World Supplement Number One is 25 pages long, and “bound” with two big staples. (The Foods of the World series each came as one traditionally bound book and a spiral bound recipe booklet.) Each page of this supplement is marked with cutting lines, so that “the recipe pages may be clipped for insertion in your Recipe Booklets”.

Here is the list of contents:

• A Primer on Rice
• Menu Suggestions
• An American Approach to French Bread
• Tomato-Cheese Pie
• Casserole-Roasted Chicken with Vegetables
• Cheese Pie (Crostata di Ricotta)
• Rabbit Stewed in White Wine Sauce
• A Shopper’s Guide to Foods and Utensils

The “Primer on Rice” discusses rice around the world, rice in the US, a diagram of a kernel of rice and how it is milled into different products, and ways of cooking rice. Since I almost always cook rice in my electric steamer, I really don’t need this information. But, I think I’ll clip out these pages and put them in the extensive rice section in my Encyclopedia of Cookery Volume 10.

“Menu Suggestions” is a two-page list of menus combined from 4 volumes of the Foods of the World series. Since I don’t own all of those 4 volumes, it isn’t very useful to me.

“An American Approach to French Bread” discusses the difficulties of making good French bread in home kitchens:

Note in the above discussion that in France, most people buy their bread fresh daily in the bakeries, or boulangerie. (We saw the truth of this when we visited Paris.) So why even try baking French bread in America? I think because good French bread might have been hard to find here, even in bakeries. Or, unbleached bread flour was hard to find in the U.S. Or, Julia Child and others saw a challenge and rose to it! The recipe for French on the page following the above excerpt was adapted in the Foods of the World Kitchens from a combination of a number of recipes other than Julia Child’s.

I’ll get to that recipe later, since I too wanted to make good French bread at home. I studied the recipe in Foods of the World Supplement Number One a lot! The pages around this discussion and recipe are obviously well-used. Over a period of years, I made my own changes and baked a lot of these French loaves. I will make French bread for this blog and share my discoveries.

“Tomato-Cheese Pie” (Tarte à la Tomate) is a main dish pie using pâte brisée, or pie crust. Their crust recipe calls for flour, chilled butter, chilled shortening, and water, but not any of my beloved vodka, so if I decide to make this pie I would use my own recipe. The pie filling is Gruyère chese slices topped with drained tomato slices, salt and pepper, fresh basil, a little Parmesan cheese, and melted butter. Sounds like a very rich meatless pizza! Yes, I’m sure Tarte à la Tomate would be good, but dang rich.

“Casserole-Roasted Chicken with Vegetables” (Poulet en Cocotte Bonne Femme) is a lovely roasted chicken, prepared in a stove top to oven casserole, such as a LeCreuset. The chicken is first seasoned with garlic, thyme, salt pork, and browned, and then baked with small white onions, carrots, potatoes cut in 2-inch olive shapes, and a Bouquet garnie. The sauce is finished on stove top. Like Tomato-Cheese Pie, this recipe sounds very good.

“Cheese Pie” (Crostata di Ricotta) begins with a pasta frolla, a pastry crust made with flour, butter or lard, egg yolks, sugar, Marsala, lemon peel and salt. This crust is put in a spring form pan, then topped with a filling of ricotta cheese, sugar, flour, salt, vanilla, orange peel, egg yolks, white raisins, candied orange peel, candied citron, and slivered almonds or pine nuts. This is a “dessert” pie, and I doubt I’ll ever make it.

“Rabbit Stewed in White Wine Sauce” (Sauté de Lapin au Vin Blanc) is a dish I’ll never make! I am too used to watching bunny babies and bunny adults scampering around my yard. They are cute to look at, and they are not for dinner, in my opinion.

“A Shopper’s Guide to Foods and Utensils” lists, by state, about 80-100 firms that accept mail orders. Addresses are given, but not phone numbers. And of course no web sites, since this is a 1974 publication. There are several listed in Denver, Colorado:

• American Tea, Coffee and Spice Co. on Champa Street is no longer in business.
• Cassidy’s Delicatessen on East Third Avenue is no longer in business.
• May D&F Gourmet shop on 16th and Tremont Place. May D&F has changed to Macy’s bu there is a May D&F museum in Denver.
• Denver Dry Goods Co. on 16th and California. Denver Dry goods has a Wikipedia entry only as a “historical” store.

So “A Shopper’s Guide to Foods and Utensils” is not very helpful to me any more!

Okay, I am to the end of this booklet. At first, I think to cut out and save the bread recipe and notes, and the tomato cheese pie and the roasted chicken recipe. But then, well heck, might as well keep the whole booklet!!

I will make French bread for this blog:

Seeing this recipe again, I realize how familiar it is to me. Ages ago, before I even had a breadmaker or access to unbleached bread flour, when I was supplementing all-purpose flour with gluten flour, I worked again and again to make a great loaf of French bread. Since that period of time my breadmaking has gone through a couple of evolutions, first using a KitchenAid mixer to knead the dough, then a breadmaker to knead and rise the dough, then to no-knead breads as well as breadmaker breads. I haven’t returned to this old recipe in years. This should be fun!

To start, I will incorporate my own suggestions when I make it in my kitchen today in 2017. Note that I two-thirds the recipe and made two baguettes instead of three. This is because I had purchased this two-loaf baguette pan:

I also added 1 egg white to the dough. I forget where I got that idea, but I found it essential for making a good loaf. I also added 1 tablespoon shortening – I forget why. I discovered early on the advantage of adding vital wheat gluten flour to my loaves, so the changes I made to the recipe include using 1/2 cup gluten flour in the total 4 cups of flour, (the rest was all-purpose flour).

Today, I am able to buy unbleached bread flour, a flour that Julia Child said was not available in America in the 1970s. This type of flour has a high gluten content, so I will not add additional gluten flour. Since th 1990s, I have used a breadmachine to knead and rise my kneaded breads, so I will do so with this recipe too. I like butter better than shortening, so will make that substition. I know my Red Star Active Dry Yeast very well, since I buy it in bulk and store it in my freezer. I never pre-proof this yeast, I just toss it in the breadmaker and I know my breadmaker and that it rises bread at a consistent temperature. I will eliminate the second rise. After I form the loaves, I will let it rise only 20-30 minutes before baking – as I said, I know my yeast, and this shorter time should work.

French Bread
makes 2 baguettes

• 3/4 cup water
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (this is equivalent to one small package)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 tablespoon butter (preferrably unsalted)
• 4 cups unbleached bread flour (King Arthur flour brand)
• some cornmeal or semolina for the baking pan
• a mixture of 1/2 teaspoon salt in 1/2 cup water for brushing the bread.

Put the water, milk, yeast, sugar, salt, butter, and unbleached bread flour in a bread machine. Set the cycle to a dough cycle that includes a pre-warm step, a kneading step, and a rising step. At the end of the cycle, take the dough out of the machine and set in on a bread board.

Form the dough into two long loaves, about 15 inches long (I used a tape measure!) and about 2 inches in diameter. I set the loaves in my two-baguette pan that I had lightly greased and shaken with cornmeal. You can also use a half-sheet pan lined with parchment paper and sprinkled with cornmeal or semolinal.

Preheat the oven to 400˚.

Let the dough rise 20-30 minutes, or until it has just crested the top of the pan. Next, you need to slash the tops of the loaves. (I had to take them out of the pan to do this.) With a very sharp knife, make diagonal slashes on the tops of the loaves, about 1/2 inch deep at 2-inch intervals.

(Put the slashed bread back in the pan if necessary.)

Brush the tops of the loaves with the salt water mixture.

Bake the loaves in a 400˚ oven for 15 minutes. Open the oven and again brush the tops of the loaves with the salt water mixture. Lower the oven temperature to 350˚ and bake for 10 minutes. Again brush with salt water, then bake another 20 minutes at 350˚.

I am very pleased with the results. Granted, I made some of the slashes too deep so it may not look perfect, but the crust is golden brown and good and crunchy. The inside has a good “crumb”, sort of halfway between kneaded breads and no-knead breads. (No-knead breads are more like the artisan loaves we buy locally.) I like the flavor, too. Some chefs argue that true French bread has no milk or butter in it, but I like it this way.

Success! I am glad I re-found and updated this French bread recipe. I will definitely make it again.

Note: I have the cookbook From Julia Child’s Kitchen and will cover it sometime in the near future. I’ve been putting it off since I know it will be a project! But I will look to see if she includes a French bread recipe and if so, what that recipe is.

Cookbook #190: Our Favorite Recipes, compiled by the Student Letter Exchange, Walter’s Publishing Company, RFD 4, Waseca, Minnesota, circa early 1970s.

I am clueless as to how this book entered my collection – maybe it was my mother-in-law’s, maybe it was at Walnetto in Boulder where we lived for a year or so.

Our Favorite Recipes is a community cookbook; Google Books lists one similar to mine. I have 8 such cookbooks, as discussed in my post on Menu Melodies. My copy of Our Favorite Recipes does not have any handwritten notes in it, or even food stains. I guessed the publication date from the page below, which lists (among other curious facts) “23 years of dates on which Easter Sunday falls”:

This timetable for roasting turkeys might be more helpful if they gave the temperature setting for the oven:

Just in case you need to know the name of that piece of silverware in the drawer:

And there is more! I giggle over most of the page below, but the amounts in cans is actually quite useful. Some older recipes call for a “No. 1 can” of an ingredient, a nomenclature only rarely used these days.

Another canned foods conversion table:

Our Favorite Recipes chapters include appetizers, bread and rolls, cake and cookies, desserts, jellies and jams, main dishes, soups and salads, vegetables, and miscellaneous. What can I say about the recipes? They reflect the cooking of America in the 1960s. Lots of canned soups and fruits, lots of sugar and shortening. I have a hard time finding a recipe I’d even like to try for this blog. I kind of wanted to try the recipe for Pfefferneusse Cookies, as I was reminded of this old favorite of mine when I covered volume 9 of the Encyclopedia of Cooking. But, the recipe calls for 4 pounds of sorghum. Hmmm.

Bumsteads! A bumstead is tuna salad and cheese mixture that is placed in hot dog or hoagie rolls, wrapped in foil, and baked. I used to love these! But I had forgotten what they were called and could not search for a recipe.

I decide to make “Monkey Bread”. I’ve made monkey bread before, but this recipe includes mashed potatoes, so I’d like to try it. Monkey bread is a yeast dough that is rolled out and cut into diamonds, dipped in butter, and put in a baking pan. It can be sweet with the addition of cinnamon and sugar, or savory with the addition of garlic and herbs and cheese.

I think there is a bit too much sugar in this recipe, I prefer butter to shortening (and less), I will use active dry yeast yeast, I want to make only half a recipe, and I want to use my breadmaker. My version of this recipe is below.

Monkey Bread
makes one loaf

• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup cooked potatoes (I boiled a potato and mashed it; you could use leftover mashed potatoes)
• scant 1 tablespoon yeast
• 2 1/2 cups flour (may need a little more)
• additional melted butter for dipping dough pieces before baking

Put all ingredients in the bowl of a breadmaker. Set to a dough cycle with a rising step. As the dough kneads, you might have to add a bit more flour. (I added a couple tablespoons of flour to make a smooth dough.)

When the rising cycle is completed, roll the dough out to about 1/2-inch thickness. Melt about 1/4 cup butter. Cut the dough into diamond shapes about 2-inches long. Dip the dough pieces into the melted butter, and put them in a pan (I recommend a bundt pan rather than a large loaf pan – see my photo below). Let rise in pan about 30 minutes (although I am not sure this step is necessary).

Bake at 375˚ for 25-30 minutes, or until well browned.

As you can see, my bread rose crazily! That’s why I suggest a bundt pan next time. Usually a 9×5-inch loaf pan is big enough for 2 1/2 cups flour – but this time it obviously wasn’t!

This monkey bread was delicious. Soft and buttery. Yes, I’d make this recipe again, but I’d cook it in a bundt pan.

Shall I keep this cookbook? Not sure. I’ve scanned in the pages I want, so I may recycle it.

Cookbook #187: KitchenAid, KitchenAid Portable Appliances, MI, circa 1991.

My KitchenAid mixer was a gift from my husband, and wow, have I ever used (and loved) this mixer! I call it “Big Bertha” everytime I lift it out of the lower cabinet below my work surface. I have considered replacing it with a new model, but dang, I have no complaints with how this one works. It’s about 25 years old (I wrote “Model KSM90, 12/91” on the inside cover of my KitchenAid booklet). The only part I’ve replaced is one of the beaters (our water ate through the inside metal). Sometime last year, my handy husband took the mixer apart and fixed a broken cross shank in the drive shaft (he made the replacement part himself).

This KitchenAid replaced my Sunbeam Mixer, which I wrote about in this post. Before I got a bread machine, I used the KitchenAid with the dough hook attachment to knead yeast dough. Currently, I use this mixer for cookies, cakes, muffins, quick breads, and other general mixing tasks.

The KitchenAid booklet has maybe 100 recipes in recipes 5 chapters. I start with the first, “Appetizers, Entrees, and Vegetables”, but none of the recipes entice me or offer anything not already in my repertoire. In the “Cakes, Frostings, and Candies” chapter, I might like the Double Chocolate Pound Cake if I ever want a very chocolatey cake baked in my (new) bundt pan. I have used the Angel Food Cake recipe quite a bit – often when I have egg whites leftover from making custard ice cream. I know I’d like the Divinity, a candy my mother used to make. The fudge recipe is interesting because it is made from a cooked sugar mixture that is beat for 8 minutes, like a true candy.

For me, the “Cookies and Quick Breads” chapter repeats recipes I already have. One note: I’d like the Vanilla Custard Filling that is included with the cream puffs recipe. In “Pies and Pastries”, I find a recipe I’d like to try: Country Pear Pie.

Now we come to the “Yeast Bread” chapter. The mixer-kneading techniques dilineated helped me develop my current breadmaking skills, as discussed in My Daily Bread. I have notes throughout this chapter! I do remember the French Bread recipe – I tried to duplicate store bought baguettes with only so-so results for many years, until I discovered the no-knead method (see also Artisan Bread). The recipe for Basic Sweet Dough is a good one to have in my repertoire; I have used it to make Cinnamon Swirl Rounds in muffin tins. I have made (and should make again!) the Honey Oatmeal Bread. I’d like to try the Dutch Apple Bread because it uses fresh apple in a dough that is rolled around a cinnamon sugar filling. Orange Breakfast Bread is rich, but interesting to me because it is filled with an orange marmalade-ricotta cheese mixture and baked in a bundt pan.

I decide to make Sixty-Minute Rolls for this blog. These are basic yeast dinner rolls that are ready in 60 minutes, with only 2 15-minute rises and then a 12 minute bake. Might be nice to have such a quick recipe in my repertoire.

How long will it really take me to make these? I’ll check the clock when I start!

Sixty-Minute Rolls
makes 1 dozen

• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2-2 1/2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 scant tablespoon yeast

Combine the milk, water, and butter in a small sauce pan (or microwave) and heat until warm (the butter does not need to melt).

Stir together 1 3/4 cups of the flour with the sugar, salt, and yeast in the big bowl of a mixer. Using a dough hook (if possible) or the regular beater, add the milk mixture to the flour mixture and beat on low speed about a minute.

Continue beating on low speed while adding enough of the remaining flour (1/4 – 3/4 cup flour) so that the dough clings to the beater and cleans the sides of the bowl, about 5 minutes. Then, mix on low speed about 3-5 minutes.

Cover the bowl and let rise in a warm place for 15 minutes. Grease or Pam-spray a muffin pan.

Turn the dough onto a floured board and fold over several times. Divide the dough into 12 equal sized pieces (I used the scale to help). Roll each into a smooth ball and place in the muffin tin. Slice an “X” across the top of each bun. (Or, make cloverleaf or curlicue shapes as in the original recipe in the above scan.)

Let rise in a warm place for 15 minutes. (Cover if possible.) Bake at 425˚ for 12 minutes.

Here is my KitchenAid, mixing the dough:

Here are the rolls, ready for the oven after the first rise. They rose to just above the top of the muffin tin.

And here are the golden brown rolls, baked:

Comments

How long did these take from start to finish? 65 minutes. But about 5 minutes of that time was me looking for my dough hook. Never found it! It’s gotta be somewhere. I used the regular beater instead and it worked fine.

The dough mixed about 8 minutes in the KitchenAid. It was noisy! I am so used to my breadmachine doing a quiet kneading.

I did not cover the rolls during the rising step. In my experience, both plastic wrap and towels stick to rising dough. Even though the dough dried out a bit, they turned out fine.

I am not satisfied with the KitchenAid method for the second 15 minute rise in a “slightly warm 90˚ oven”. My oven does have a very low setting, 100˚, but I only have one oven and needed to be heating it to 425˚ for the baking step. I set them in the 100˚ oven for 15 minutes, then took them out and heated the oven to 425˚ and popped the rolls into the oven as soon as it reached temperature, about 5 minutes. I re-wrote the instructions to just have the second rise “in a warm place”. Like, on top of the oven that is heating to 425˚. I am sure it will work.

Taste? These rolls are good, especially hot out of the oven. With butter melting into them. I will keep this recipe in my repertoire for those times I have not planned ahead and need dinner rolls in 60 minutes!

Note: I put the extra rolls in the freezer. A week later, I need bread for a dinner, so I popped three in the microwave on high for 60 seconds. Perfect! Now these are “60 second 60 minute rolls”.

Cookbook #184: The Bakery, New and Improved Recipes, Zojirushi America Corporation, Bell, California (circa 1980s).

This is the recipe/instruction booklet that came with my first bread machine, a Zojirushi, sometime in the 1980s. I enjoyed kneading breads by hand, but it took too much time for a working mom – with the machine I made yeast breads a lot more. In fact, for a time I had two bread machines and used them simultaneously, often to make a “My Daily Bread” loaf and a breakfast bread loaf or a pizza dough. I also felt I needed two machines because if one broke, I would have a backup.

My first Zojirushi machine (I still have it) made upright loaves (note the photo of the cover, above). This older Zojirushi model is particularly great at kneading and baking 100% whole wheat bread. I also have another Zojirushi (Home Bakery Supreme). It bakes loaves shaped like traditional loaves baked in an oven. I rarely bake my breads in the machine, but if I do, I prefer the traditional shape. (I usually use the machine to knead and rise the bread dough, then bake the loaf in an oven.)

My copy of The Bakery is very well used. It is wrinkled and full of writing and stains and post-it notes. The center pages are falling out. After all these decades, I still keep it in my kitchen with other oft-used references. The Zojirushi recipe for “Buttermilk Wheat Loaf” is the basis for “My Daily Bread“, a white whole wheat bread. Other favorites are 100% Whole Wheat Bread, Raisin Bread, and Apple Oat Bread. I used to make the Pizza Dough a lot. This recipe uses beer for the liquid, and includes oilive oil. I usually made it with part whole wheat flour and baked the pizza on a hot stone. (These days, I make thin crust pizza using a no-knead recipe.)

I know that any recipe I try from The Bakery will turn out. For this blog, I choose to make “Honey Wheat Berry Bread”. It’s one of the recipes in the scan below – I wanted to illustrate the condition of this booklet so I scanned the entire page:

Although the title is “Honey Wheat Berry Bread”, the ingredient list calls for “cracked wheat”. What is cracked wheat? It is milled whole wheat grains or “wheat berries”. Over the years I have purchased several different forms of cracked wheat, sometimes labeled “bulghur”or “bulgur”. Different milling produces small particles or large particles. Long-cooking cracked wheat is large particles, and is good as a hot cereal, or can be used as a side dish or salad. Quick-cooking bulgur is made from wheat that has been pre-cooked. This type is often used for salads, like Tabouli (see my post on the book Diet for a Small Planet.)  I once found a wheat product called burghul or cracked wheat, similar to something we had in Turkey. That burghul took a long time to cook and was big and chewy.

I search my pantry, and find that this is what I have on hand:

The wheat berries are sproutable, and I have used them to make Sprouted Wheat Bread. The Bob’s Red Mill whole grain red bulgur consists of fairly large grain particles; the cooking instructions say to soak in boiling water for 1 hour before use in recipes.

I decide to use the Bob’s Red Mill bulgur for my bread. I’d prefer a quicker-cooking cracked wheat, since this type will probably be a bit chewy, but the store is a long ways away! To soften it a bit, I decide to add it directly to the milk and let it sit 30 minutes before the kneading process.

I goofed and used butter instead of oil, but it turned out to be a good “mistake” so I kept it in my recipe below. Below is how I made Honey Cracked Wheat Bread, based on The Bakery recipe.

Honey Cracked Wheat Bread
makes one large loaf (9×5-inch)

• 1 1/4 cups milk
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons honey (1.5 ounces)
• 1/2 cup cracked wheat
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 3 1/3 cups bread flour (17.5 ounces, I used King Arthur Flour unbleached bread flour)
• 2 teaspoons yeast

Combine the milk, butter, honey, cracked wheat, and salt. Let stand 30 minutes. (My Zojirushi has a pre-warm dough cycle, so I just put everything in the breadmaker and started the “pre-warm dough cycle”.

Add the flour and yeast and set the bread machine to a kneaded dough cycle with a rising step.

When the cycle is complete, take the dough out, form a loaf, and place it in a 9×5-inch loaf pan. Let rise until it crests the top of the pan, about 20-30 minutes.

Bake at 385˚ for 22-25 minutes, until golden brown.

This bread has an excellent flavor and a pleasant crunchy-chewiness. Not too chewy as I feared. Great for sandwiches, toast, and with stews and spaghetti. A success!

Cookbook #156: All-Time Favorite Recipes, Better Homes and Gardens, Gerald Knox (editor), Meredith Corporation, Des Moines, Iowa, 1979.

I like this book a lot! I don’t think I have ever looked at it before. It’s from my mother’s collection. This is on the inside cover:

That’s my mothers’s writing, and I’m pretty sure it says “from me March, 1981”. That made me smile. She bought it for herself and wrote a little inscription to mark that fact.

This cookbook has the type of recipes I grew up with, so I’m not surprised she chose this book for herself. She never worked outside the home, and thus her personal spending money was pretty special to her. So this is a special book to me.

All-Time Favorite Recipes is bound, rather than loose leaf like her Better Homes and Garden New Cook Book. It’s a big book: 480 pages! The introduction reads:

“Through the years, the editors of Better Homes and Gardens, like all good cooks, have collected a huge recipe file. In All-Time Faovrite Recipes, we have compiled for you the favorites of all the recipes we’ve published. Whether you are planning a meal for family or guests, you’ll find dishes for the entire meal in these pages. Choose a main dish from the meat, fish, poultry, or casserole pages. Or, for warm weather entrées, turn to the barbecue recipes. Complete your menu with dishes from the vegetable, salad, bread, and dessert sections. From one good cook to another, we give you our favorites.”

After this short intro the editor gets right into the recipes. On page 9, I find a recipe for Sauerbraten. Mother says it is “Delicious” and the “gravy is yummy!” You take a beef round rump roast, marinate in red wine vinegar, spices, and onions for 3 days, simmer a couple hours, and then add crushed gingersnaps. I bought gingersnaps for the first time in years just last weekend, with sauerbraten on my mind. I’ll try this recipe soon. She also liked the Pot Roast Dip Sandwiches on the same page. Other main dishes she favored are the Sicilian Meat Roll and Manicotti. The Tetrazzini Crepes on page 121 is the same recipe as in All-Time Favorite Casseroles, another Better Homes and Gardens book that I covered in this blog.

I think the recipe she used the most from this book is 24-Hour Vegetable Salad on page 248. The book opens easily to this page, like it’s been opened there a lot, she marked it “Delicious”, and I see a couple food stains on the page. This is a great large-potluck dish. The day before, you layer romaine, Swiss cheese, hard boiled eggs, cooked bacon, leaf lettuce, thawed frozen peas, mayonnaise, and green onions. The next day, toss and serve! (I found a similar recipe in the Carousel of Cultures Cookbook, so if I ever want such a salad, I’ll compare and contrast the two.) Mother liked a few of the other salad recipes, but not the “Cheesy Coleslaw Mold”. For that she says simply: “Do not make again”. Ha! I’d never try it in the first place!

The recipe I use for “Biscuits Supreme” is on page 390 with her notes, and she liked the whole wheat rolls. She marked the Banana Nut Bread “Delicious” – and I found that someone reviewing this cookbook on Amazon really liked this banana nut bread too. I’ll have to try this recipe sometime, it’s a bit different from the one I currently use.

That’s about all she marked in this cookbook. I made a list of about ten recipes I’d like to try. Good ideas in this old cookbook!

I decide to make Cinnamon Swirl Loaf for this blog.

In this recipe, a sweet and rich yeast bread dough is rolled around cinnamon and sugar before baking. I’ve tried swirled breads before, but after baking they always had big gaps in the swirls. Why? Because I always brushed butter onto the dough before the cinnamon and sugar. The butter sent the layers flying apart when the loaf was cooked. This recipe uses water (duh! says this chemist) to keep the dough layers together. I want to see if it works.

I plan to make a few changes: I want to use a breadmaker, I prefer butter over shortening, and I want raisins in the dough. Plus I’ll skip the glaze. And make just one loaf. Below is my adaptation of this recipe.

Cinnamon-Raisin Swirl Loaf
makes 1 9×5-inch loaf

for the bread

• 1 cup milk
• 1/4 cup butter, cut in small pieces
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 17 ounces bread flour or all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 teaspoons yeast
• 1/3 cup raisins

for the swirl

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Put the bread ingredients EXCEPT the raisins in the order given into a breadmaker and set to a dough cycle with a rising step. Watch the dough as it kneads and add a little flour or water if necessary. Add the raisins near the end of the kneading cycle – most breadmakers have a “beep” or such for adding raisins or nuts.

When the dough is ready, roll it into a 15×7-inch rectangle. Brush with water. Combine the 1/4 cup sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon and sprinkle it over the dough. Starting from the short side, roll up jelly-roll style. Pinch the long edges and ends together to seal them (a little extra water helps seal the dough edges). Place seam side down in a greased 9×5-inch loaf pan.

Let rise just until the dough crowns above the edges of the pan, about a half hour. Bake at 350˚ for 45-50 minutes. (I used an instant read thermometer and baked until it tested close to 200˚).

Here is the dough rolled out. Note it is glistening a bit since I had just brushed it with water.

The cinnamon-sugar sprinkled on top:

Now the next photo isn’t terribly pretty. This bread about overflowed the pan on baking and leaned to one side. But it tasted great! Next time I make it, I will probably start with less milk and less flour or maybe less yeast (this is not written into the above recipe). I baked it at 375˚, and the crust was browner than I like; next time, I will bake it at 350˚. Otherwise, I will definitely make this again! The swirled layers stayed together, just like I wanted.