French Country Bread

Our Daring Bakers Host for December 2011 was Jessica of My Recipe Project and she showed us how fun it is to create sourdough bread in our own kitchens! She provided us with sourdough recipes from Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley as well as delicious recipes to use our sourdough bread in from Tonia George’s Things on Toast and Canteen’s Great British Food!

Daring Bakers is part of food bloggers/food photographers online obsession.  This particular component includes a monthly baking challenge.  Each month a different host presents the bakers with a recipe and some specific instructions – like “you must hand churn the butter” or “you cannot substitute the flour/nuts unless there is an allergy or it is unavailable in your area.”  They are challenges though, because sometimes it is hard to find the ingredients or they include a baking technique you’ve never tried before…or like this month, they take hour and hours to complete. What I really love about the challenges is a.) some great baker has perfected their recipe and put hundreds of hours of research and testing into it, b.) they share a lifetime of knowledge and explain to you all of the nerdy tips you need to make it perfect, and c.) you always learn something that impresses.

 My sourdough sponge was super easy to start and now that I see how easy and great (and impressive) the bread was, I wonder why I haven’t been doing this for years!  In fact, my third loaf is rising in the kitchen as we speak.  I can’t wait to get home and pop that beautiful bundle of flour, salt and water into the oven.

It is such a perplexing combination of simple and complex.  The ingredients couldn’t be simpler:  flour, water and salt.  And time.  Lots of time.  Easy to see how it became a staple in our diets.  But it is soo complex!  I’ll admit I don’t fully understand how I went from a bowl of wet flour to the beautiful and delicious bread on my table.  You put together these simple ingredients and wait…and wait…and when you come back you have a yeast smelling spongy concoction!  It grows so beautiful and full and really becomes a blob you can be proud of. 

My favorite moment in making this…well there were a few…like kneading the wet sticky dough without flouring the surface.  It was just messy fun.  But my favorite moment was when I made the first slice into the warm bread.  I cut through the crunchy top and found the center nice and soft.  As the heel came free and fell to the side, steam rose up inside the bread and the inside revealed nice big pockets from air bubbles (like in Swiss cheese).  The top of the bread was perfectly cracked and powdered and looked like something from a European bakery.  It was so delicious and so impressive – I can’t wait to get home to put that third loaf in!

The dough was so sticky the spatula stuck to my hand!

Pfeffernusse

Every Christmas my grandma would send us a box full of pfeffernusse (pepper nuts) a small hard German Christmas cookie.  I'm always hesitant to tell people they are anise cookies because the general public seems to think they hate anise because of the bad rep of black licorice.  I have news for you people:  the flavor you hate in black licorice is the same flavor you love in Italian sausage!

Back to grandma's pfeffernusse.  When she died we all wanted to make sure we had this recipe which was by far her most famous.  Though I've had the recipe for 2 years, this is the first that I've attempted the cookies and the recipe was a bit of a challenge, to say the least.

Lets start out with the lard.  Obviously this is an old recipe.  Guessing by my grandma's age and the dates on the other cookbooks I have from her, I'd say the version I have is from the 1930s.  I don't have access to lard, and even if I did I'm not sure I would want to cook with it, so I used butter.  Actually, someday it would be great to try these with lard just for the heck of it.

Brown sugar or 1/2 and 1/2 white sugar...I think I know what you mean.  1 cup syrup or 1/2 cup molasses...umm...I know these are different, but wouldn't the different quantities and viscosity dramatically effect the baking times and final product?  This seems like a lot of guessing for a first attempt.

And then was the kicker..."Enough flour to roll."  Well thanks, Grandma.  I seem to have misplaced my "enough" measuring cup.  Is that closer to 1 cup or 4 cups?  And exactly how many cookies am I making?  (The answer is closer to 4 cups.)

There was also no guidance on HOW to make the cookies.  It was more of an ingredient list than a recipe. Which I get, that is how I write my favorite recipes too.  But it isn't so helpful for the first time.  So I guessed...wrong.  I started over.  I tried a first batch (which are more like cookies than pfeffernuss).  And then I think I got it down.  Tricky little devils though - they look like they aren't done, but they are hard as a rock.  And according to the internet (and I think confirmed by my memory of grandma's version) they actually soften over time.  Lets hope so!

Recipe Details
From the above recipe, use butter in place of lard and use all brown sugar.  I halved the recipe and used about 3-4 cups of flour (you should probably have a whole bag on hand).  "Enough to roll" means that you stir in enough flour to make the dough thick enough to roll out like gnocci (or play dough).  Oh, and I took sour milk to mean buttermilk.

First, beat the butter and sugar until it is soft and all of the sugar is incorporated (I just love doing this).  In a small bowl combine the buttermilk and syrup.  Add syrup/milk mixture to the butter in two or three batches, making sure it is fully combined.  In another bowl mix together the spices and the baking soda with about 3 cups of flour.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet in two or three parts.  Once the dry ingredients are fully mixed in continue to add flour 1/4 cup at a time until the dough is thick (like play dough).

On a floured surface (I love this part too!) roll out a piece of dough into a rope that is about as thick as your thumb.  Using a butter knife cut the rope into pieces about 1/2 to one inch wide.  Place the pieces on a cookie sheet and bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes.