Peter Reinhart is the man behind the book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. He does not know me and I’ve never met him, so why did I constantly think about him while on vacation last month?

Well, I’ve been eager to try his focaccia recipe and I couldn’t remember if I’d be back in time to participate in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge. Granted, I could make the bread whenever I want, but it’s more fun to bake with friends. Fortunately, I checked the schedule as soon as I returned and was relieved to find my timing perfect.

When I first moved to Vancouver I wrote about the Granville Island public market and a delicious grape focaccia from a bakery there. I’ve been determined to recreate the sweet bread ever since eating it. It’s really *that* good.

A slice of grape focaccia from Terra Breads, as found on Granville Island public market. It’s the bread that started my craving:

My version:

Peter’s recipe is easy to follow, although it takes several hours to make (and overnight refrigeration). It’s easy though because most of that time is spent rising or resting, so not much work for the actual bread baker ;-)

I won’t be publishing Peter’s recipe but instead will give a breakdown of the steps, noting the additions I made. You can recreate this grape and walnut version with your favorite focaccia recipe.

Focaccia Making Process
I mixed the dough in my Kitchenaid mixer and allowed it to knead (using the dough hook) for 5-7 minutes. During the final 2 minutes, I added 1/3 cup finely chopped walnuts and allowed the mixer to knead them into the dough.

The dough is then placed onto a floured counter and allowed to rest for 5 minutes. The dough is next stretched and folded into a rectangle, then allowed to rest for 30 minutes. The stretching and folding is repeated several times in 30 minute intervals.

The final step is to place the dough on a well greased baking sheet. Using your fingers the dough is pushed down to fill the sheet, then placed in the refrigerator for 1-3 days. The time allows the dough to develop and improves the texture. I let mine set for 24 hours.

Remove the dough from the fridge – using your fingertips once again, create dimples in the dough and push to the dough fill the baking sheet (12×18″). The dough should be about 1/2″ thick. I sprinkled with 1 1/2 cups red seedless grapes. I also sprinkled with 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts. Loosely cover with plastic wrap and allow to sit for 3 hours or until the dough has raised to a height of 1″. Before baking, sprinkle the top with 1/3 cup granulated sugar.

Place in a 500F (250C) preheated oven, then turn down the temperature to 450F (225C) and bake 10 minutes. Rotate pan 180 degrees, then bake an additional 5-10 minutes or until golden and center of dough tests done at 200F (100C).

Rising – add the grapes and chopped walnuts:

Fresh from the oven – look at how the dough rises up to surround the grapes:

Look at the beautiful edge of the focaccia:

Side view of the soft & chewy bread – look at that juicy grape:

The result is fricken’ delicious. The focaccia is thicker and softer than I expected. It tastes incredible on its own but I love the addition of grapes and walnuts. The grapes will explode and release a little juice which mixes with the sugar to form syrup and the walnuts are toasted to perfection. As the bread cools, the sugar forms a sweet glaze over the bread.

For an extra bit of wow, dust with powdered sugar before serving.

The focaccia was a success and satisfied my craving. The version from Terra Breads is thinner and more dense than mine, and as I remember it’s also multi-grain. I’m so pleased with my version though and find it hard to avoid eating. Fortunately, it made such a huge amount that I’ll be nibbling on it all week.

Focaccia Ideas
Concord Grape Focaccia – The Fresh Loaf
Rosemary & Grape Focaccia – King Arthur Flour
Herb Focaccia – Something Shiny
Blue Cheese, Pepper, Steak & Mushroom Focaccia – Joelen’s Culinary Adventures
Cherry Tomato & Herb – Nico’s Blog
Raisin Focaccia – Eating is the Hard Part

This marks my second indulgent week of deliciously sinful carbs. I enjoy bread baking, especially the lengthy proofing process, and find it therapeutic. However, the amount of bread I’m turning out (and consuming) is the downside to my so-called therapy. There’s only so much almond filled brioche a person should eat in one sitting.

I can feel the extra calories bunching up in my body, accelerating the growth of my love handles.

I’m enjoying The Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge and can only participate for another week or two. Why? Well, in July we will be heading out for a much needed vacation. We’ve booked a cruise through the Scandinavian/Baltic region followed by a few days catching up with friends in London. We will be gone for three weeks and I anticipate limited internet access during our travels. I’m planning to schedule a few posts to publish during my absence, so you shouldn’t even notice that I’m away.

In the meantime, I’m continuing to bake bread until we leave … or until my jeans become too tight, whichever comes first.

This week’s bread is the Casatiello (recipe from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice), a rich and savory bread typically filled with salami and cheese. Since the recipe makes two loaves, I opted to make two flavors. For one, I used a Hungarian salami and provolone cheese, for the other I used a mix of chopped olives and provolone.

The bread contains 6 ounces butter and two eggs, with both provide a delicious richness to the bread. The addition of meat, cheese and olives builds upon the richness by bringing a mix of savory flavors.

After mixing the dough, I divided into two equal portions. I kneaded 2 ounces of sauteed salami and 3 ounces grated provolone into the dough. To the second loaf, I kneaded 2 ounces chopped olives (which I had patted dry) along with 3 ounces grated provolone. I placed each one in separate oiled bowls to proof. The proofing only took 60 minutes (instead of 90 minutes).

I formed each loaf into a round ball and placed inside of the 6″ paper panettone pans. The second proofing also moved along faster than anticipated, another 60 minutes. I baked at 350F (170C) for nearly 45 minutes, until the internal temperature of the bread reached 195F.

The bread didn’t get as dark as I thought it might and I feared I had taken it out of the oven too soon. But, after allowing it to cool, I sliced into it and was amazed at the tender texture. The crumb is light and soft, yet still slightly chewy. Craters of melted provolone and flecks of meat or olives stud the bread. Every bite contains a savory bit or two.

We started snacking on it immediately and had a hard time stopping. It’s that good. I think that I enjoyed it more than the brioche from last week.

The bread can be used for sandwiches or making savory french toast (yes, this appeals to me), but I’ve found that it’s best on its own. It also makes for excellent toast, with just a little butter.

Sadly, the olive loaf disappeared last night and the salami loaf is nearing its end. I don’t know if it will make it through the night.

As for my jeans? Well, we won’t talk about how snug they are becoming.

More Casatiello bread baker’s:
Casatiello – A Stove With a House Around It
Casatiello – The Barefoot Kitchen
Casatiello – A Chef’s Daughter
Casatiello and a Nest – Big Black Dog

Sometimes, little boys who learn to braid hair on the playground grow up to be hairdressers, but not me. I quickly became a master of the traditional 3-braid ponytail and all the girls knew who to reach out to when their hair needed to be pulled back. I braided hair on the bus. I braided hair at lunch. However, recess remained my busiest time of the day.

My technique hasn’t changed much over the years but instead of applying my skills to hair, I opt to braid bread instead. When the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge recently started, I feared joining. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to commit to every bread, every week. It seemed daunting.

I reluctantly succumbed this week, brioche week, because I just can’t resist such a buttery bread. And, most importantly, I knew I could break out my braiding skills once again.

The baking challenge, founded by Nicole of Pinch My Salt, is a casual group of people baking their way through each recipe in Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. I purchased the book last year after making the most chewy and delicious bagels from a recipe a fellow blogger posted from the book.

Of course, I’ve only occasionally paged through the book and daydreamed about what I’d make someday. I hadn’t made a recipe from the book until now. While I wanted to try a traditional brioche, I also wanted to experiment and use the dough in a sweet bread. The recipe makes two loaves, so one I made as a traditional brioche and the other I added a sweetened almond filling.

The book provides 3 recipes, each one with varying amounts of butter. The ‘Rich Brioche’ having 2 cups butter, the ‘Middle Class Brioche’ (which I made) having 1 cup butter, and ‘Poor Man’s Brioche’ having only 1/2 cup. The middle class brioche recipe is easy to follow, the dough consistency like a thick and chewy frosting. I refrigerated it overnight then shaped and proofed the following day.

I decided to add an almond filling to the bread and used a filling recipe found at Joe Pastry. Unlike most recipes calling for almond paste, this filling utilizes ground almonds, sugar and egg white. The filling flavor is more subtle than one’s using almond paste, but it worked in a pinch as I didn’t have any almond paste available.

To shape the bread, I weighed out three pieces of dough each weighing 6 ounces. I then rolled each one into an evenly shaped log about 12″ in length. I used my fingers to push down firmly in the middle of each log, the entire length in order to make a trough for the filling. I then filled the trough with filling and used my fingers to pinch the edges together. The result is a log with the almond filling running throughout its length. I then braided the log as outlined in the book.

I followed the rest of the instructions as normal, proofing for 1 1/2 hours. After brushing with egg wash, I sprinkled with 1/4 cup sliced almonds. I baked at 350F (175C) for nearly 45 minutes. After cooling for about 15 minutes, I sprinkled with powdered sugar.

The end result? A buttery, sugary, almondy bread. Tender and rich. Although the almond swirl wasn’t exactly how I wanted it to turn out (it ended up closer to the edges and not in the center), it tastes delicious.

Joe returned from a bike ride to find the finished bread cooling on the counter. After eating a couple slices, he deemed it the best afternoon snack ever.

Others BBA brioche experiences:
Rich and Buttery Brioche – Pinch My Salt
A Tale of Two (Make that Three) Brioches – Of Cabbages & King Cakes
If I were a rich, um … Flour Girl – Flour Girl
Accidental Rich Man’s Brioche – Goth Panda
Brioche (middle class) – The Other Side of Fifty
Brioche (middle class) – I can do that!
Poor Man’s Brioche – Skinny Jenkins
Let them eat almond filled brioche! – Pete Eatemall
Poor Man’s Brioche with a Dose of Rich Danish – Two Black Dogs

Rhubarb endears itself to me a little more each year. A few weeks ago, I found myself suddenly in my childhood home just as Spring took over the landscape, transforming stagnant trees into leafy towers. I walked the perimeter of the property to take it all in and spotted my mother’s rhubarb patch. The rhubarb leaves, poisonous to the bite, looked like a lush green island amidst the yet to be planted garden surrounding it.

My great-grandmother referred to it as ‘pie-plant‘, a vegetable which made for wonderfully tart desserts and a perfect pairing with sweeter fruits. Myself, I am a purist when it comes to rhubarb though. Don’t hide its flavor or tartness by mixing it with anything. Let the rhubarb be pucker-your-mouth, wrinkle-your-nose, squint-your-eyes – delicious. Of course, I always add a little cinnamon – that’s ok. Cinnamon is a must with rhubarb.

I flipped through my mothers recipes looking for rhubarb bread. For some reason, it just stuck in my head as the perfect use for the rhubarb even though my mother rarely made it. I couldn’t find her recipe but magically the local newspaper published one and I clipped it out. The clipping made its way back to Vancouver where I tweaked and fussed with it yesterday. It’s delicious. A moist, cinnamon infused sweet bread with tart explosions in every bite.

Buttermilk Rhubarb Bread
inspired by a Gratiot County Herald recipe

3/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 cup flour
2/3 cup diced rhubarb
1/3 cup chopped pecans, toasted

Topping
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 tsp butter
1/4 tsp cinnamon

1. Mix all bread ingredients in a large mixing bowl
2. Generously grease a bread pan. You can also line the pan with parchment paper for even easier removal once baked.
3. Pour the batter into the pan
4. In a small bowl, combine the topping ingredients and blend with your fingers until combined. Sprinkle over the batter.
5. Bake at 325F (160C) for 55-65 minutes or until it tests done.
6. Allow to cool before tipping out of pan. Be careful when removing from the pan. I didn’t allow it to cool (impatience) and part of it broke apart when I tipped it out.

Recipe Notes:
This is my first time making this recipe. I might increase the flour by 1/4 cup next time to make the batter a bit thicker.

The bread smells amazing while it bakes and fills the house with a spicy scent. Joe remarked, “it smells like a really good candle in here.” Ahh, bless him … that’s his way of complimenting my hard work. He’s right though, it did smell like a really good candle. With the growing popularity of rhubarb, it’s only a matter of time until rhubarb candles reach a store near you!

More rhubarb recipe ideas:
Strawberry Rhubarb Pie – Simply Recipes
Rhubarb Fool – Real Epicurean
Rhubarb Margarita – Andrea’s Recipes
Rhubarb Cobbler – Smitten Kitchen
Rhubarb Tart – La Tartine Gourmande
Red Wine-Poached Rhubarb – David Lebovitz

I’ve been craving bread lately, nice thick slabs of chewy and crusty bread, good old European style bread. I’ve looked through my books and nothing sparked my interest. By dumb luck, I happened across a recipe last night for a quick to make version of ciabatta. I love the texture of this bread and knew it could be fit into my schedule for today.

The recipe comes from a bread forum that I haven’t read before, but the photos looked fantastic. The only confusing part of the recipe was the type of yeast involved, since the recipe didn’t specify. Other recipes on the site utilized mostly instant yeast and based on how the ingredients were combined (yeast mixed with flour, not proofed), it seemed as though the recipe was using instant yeast. I wasn’t able to locate instant yeast at my store so opted to use active dry yeast.

I checked several reliable references who stated instant yeast and active yeast could be interchanged measure for measure, however typically active yeast needed to be proofed first. I worried and pondered for awhile. When I finally looked at my yeast package it stated that it could be used without proofing as long as the water temperature was increased. Perfect! Oddly, the original recipe didn’t many anything about water temperature.

The recipe measurements were in grams, so I converted to ounces and weighed everything accordingly. I’ve included both the original measurements and my conversions:

Ciabatta bread
500g bread flour (17.6 ounces)
475g water (2 cups @ 120 degrees)
2 tsp. yeast (active dry)
15g salt (.5 ounces)

The ciabatta dough is noted as being extremely sticky and gooey due to its high water content. I followed the directions as stated, with the exception of using water warmed to 120 degrees. All of the ingredients are dumped into a mixing bowl and roughly combined, then allowed to rest for 10 minutes. After the resting period, turn on the mixer and beat for 10-30 minutes until the dough pulls away from the sides and bottom of the bowl. This took about 10 minutes using a medium speed on my mixer. Since the dough was so moist, I used the paddle attachment on my mixer instead of the dough hook. I don’t think a dough hook will work due to the softness of the dough.

Pour (yes, pour) the ciabatta dough into a greased bowl. The dough is the consistency of stringy pudding, pardon the expression but it’s kind of ’snot-like’ and unlike any other dough I’ve worked with. Don’t add more flour, just go along with it.

I preheated my oven to 200 degrees and then turned it off. This creates a warm environment for the dough to rise. Place the covered bowl in a warm place (i.e. my warm oven) to triple in size, about 2.5 hours. I covered the bowl with a greased piece of tin foil.

After tripling in size, use a spatula to scrape the dough from the bowl onto a heavily floured surface. Cut into 2 or 3 pieces, spray with grease and dust with flour, and allow to sit for 45 minutes. When I removed the dough from the bowl, I tried not to punch it down too much but just let it fall onto the work surface, then cut in half and separated the two pieces. I gently rubbed with a bit of olive oil before dusting with flour.

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees while the dough is resting. Place 1/2 cup or so of flour onto a half sheet pan so that it has a thick coating of flour. After the dough is done resting, pick up one piece of the dough and in a single motion turn it upside down on the sheet pan while also stretching it to about 10″ in length. Even though the dough rested on a heavily floured surface, it still stuck. I didn’t have a dough scraper, so used a big cleaver to scrape the dough off the work surface and turned it upside down on the baking sheet.

The dough will look as though you’ve damaged it — fear not. Just don’t fuss with it. Repeat with the other piece of dough. Turning the dough upside down will help to redistribute the bubbles inside the dough. You want to be gentle with the dough so you don’t knock all the bubbles out of it.

Place the baking sheet onto the center rack of your 500 degree oven and bake for 15-20 minutes or until the internal temperature of the bread reaches 205 degrees. I’ve never used a thermometer on bread before, but did so. Mine took the full 20 minutes.

I removed the bread and it looked amazing. This is where my patience falters and I become anxious to dive into what I’ve made. I let the ciabatta set for 15 minutes before slicing the first piece. The bread was crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. As you can see, it had the incredible bubbles throughout the dough. The texture is chewy, just the way it should be. I am in love.

The flavor is lightly yeasty and the texture is so chewy. I’ve read that due to the quick nature of this bread that it won’t be as flavorful as one requiring a sponge created overnight. I think it’s great, but will have to try a full-length version of this bread. I can hardly wait to make a panini out of it but will save that until tomorrow. I’ve already eaten too many slices and need to slow down for today. It wouldn’t be good to eat 2 loaves of bread in one day … or would it? :-)