Brown Oatbread

“Maester Luwin sent Poxy Tym down to the kitchens, and they dined in the solar on cheese, capons, and brown oatbread. While tearing apart a bird with fat fingers, Lord Wyman made polite inquiry after Lady Hornwood, who was a cousin of his.” -A Game of Thrones

Brown Oatbread

Thoughts:

I tried several recipes before lighting upon this one in an old family cookbook, on a snippet of browned newspaper clipping. As is so often the case in my kitchen, the old recipe took the day. This is such an amazingly light, fluffy, soft bread, and almost impossibly easy. It requires no kneading, and is quick to rise, and fills the whole house with a rich, buttery aroma while it bakes. I can just imagine loaves of this bread luring the Stark children to the kitchens of Winterfell. Homey enough to be a comfort food, but delicious enough to serve to guests, it could well be a staple of Northern cuisine.

Because the bread is so soft, it has to be cut into fairly thick slices- what a shame! Light toasting makes for a sturdier slice that is ideal with jam, honey, or other spreads. And, as in the quote, it is excellent with some cheese and chicken.

Recipe for Brown Oatbread

Ingredients:

2 cups boiling water
1/2 cup molasses
2 Tbs. butter
1 cup rolled oats (not the instant variety)
1 Tbs. yeast
1/2 tsp. coarse salt
~2 cups flour (you may need more or less depending on how much liquid your oats soaked up)
1 Tbs. melted butter

Combine the boiling water with the molasses and butter, stirring to combine. Pour this over the rolled oats, and let sit for 30 minutes. When the mixture is warm to the touch, but not hot, stir in the yeast, and let sit for another 15 minutes. It should be very light and bubbly at this point. Add the salt, followed gradually by the flour, until the dough no longer sticks to the sides of the bowl.

Transfer the dough to a clean, greased bowl, and brush the top with melted butter to keep from drying out. After the dough has doubled in bulk, transfer it to a bread pan, brush the top with butter, and let it rise again until doubled.

Bake at 350 for ~40 minutes, when the bread should be a nice golden brown. Allow to cool for at least 30 minutes before taking it out of the pan and slicing. Enjoy!

Almond Crusted Rolls – Gentlemen Bastards series

“‘Barrel-boy!’ the Sanza brothers hollered in unison; a moment later a small almond-crusted bread-roll arced from between their seats, hit Bug right between the eyes, and plopped down onto his empty plate. Bug tore it in half and responded in kind, aiming well despite his wobbliness.”

–The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch

Thoughts:

When I first read this passage with an eye towards food, I had a vision of a brioche-like roll, topped with sliced almonds. I don’t know why that roll in particular, but it’s what I thought of, and in the end, it’s what I made.

In addition to being topped with almonds, there is a dash of almond flour in these little brioches as well. The result is a melting, buttery, slightly nutty roll that will be gone before you realize you’ve eaten it. Seriously. I ate three, back to back. The almonds on top give a crunchy counterpoint to the soft dough, and compliment the flavor of the almond flour. They’re wonderful for breakfast, or any other time of day, but be sure they get their fair share of attention. They deserve it.

Recipe for Almond-Crusted Brioches

Makes 8 rolls

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup almond flour
3 Tbs. sugar
2 tsp. instant yeast
1 tsp. coarse salt, plus a pinch for tops
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 large eggs, 1 additional egg for wash
1/4 cup milk, room temperature

Combine the flours and other dry ingredients. Rub in the butter. Beat the eggs into the milk, then gradually add the mixture to the dry ingredients, stirring to combine. Knead the dough for several minutes until it gains an elastic consistency. Cover loosely with plastic wrap, put in a warm place, and allow to rise for a couple of hours, or until it has doubled in size.

Deflate the dough, and divide into 8 equal pieces. Smooth out each ball of dough by stretching the dough down and pinching it at the bottom. Place the dough in brioche tins, or in a standard muffin tin. Allow to rise again, this time for around 45 minutes. Brush with beaten egg wash, and sprinkle some slivered almonds on top.

Bake for 15 minutes at 350F, until the tops are a beautiful golden brown.

Like this recipe? Check out other recipes from the Gentlemen Bastards series.

Pop Biscuits – The Faraway Tree

Pop Biscuits, filled with honey-butter

Thoughts:

This whimsical snack, at first blush, seemed wonderfully simple to put together. I blithely made a batch of biscuits, filled them with honey, and baked. They were not a success.

In addition to my wandering away from the oven for a bit too long, leaving the biscuits to brown, the honey soaked into the dough, leaving sweetened little hollows on the inside of the biscuits. Not cool. So a few days later, I tried another approach. This time, I baked the biscuits, and filled them after they were cooled.

This produced the winningest of successes. The biscuits are filled with these wonderful blobs of honey-butter, and when you bite into them, it does, in fact, almost pop. Each bite is sweet, but not overpowering, wonderfully portable, stealable, and all around scoffable.

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Flower Rolls – The Hunger Games

“Cinna invites me to sit on one of the couches and takes his place across from me. He presses a button on the side of the table. The top splits and from below rises a second tabletop that holds our lunch. Chicken and chunks of oranges cooked in a creamy sauce laid on a bed of pearly white grain, tiny green peas and onions, rolls shaped like flowers, and for dessert, a pudding the color of honey.”

–The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

These are a fun and decorative way to add to a dinner spread. The rolls are beautiful and unique, and can be filled with whatever you like. I enjoyed the filling I’ve included here, which includes goat cheese, garlic, and a bit of parsley or basil. The inside of the rolls stays warm and melty, and peeling back the “petals” to get to the filling is a fun way to play with your food. They are especially delicious next to a nice savory soup.

Flower Rolls Recipe

Roll Ingredients:

4 cups all purpose/plain flour, added gradually
1 tsp. instant yeast
1 tsp. salt
4 tbsp. oil
1 egg, divided
2 Tbs. honey
warm water (enough to make the dough a firm but workable consistency- exact measurement to come!)

Filling Ingredients:

6 oz. goat cheese
1 egg, divided
pinch of salt
1 clove garlic
1 Tbs. parsley or basil, diced

In a large bowl, mix together the ingredients for your dough, using just the egg yolk. Add flour gradually until the dough is a nice cohesive consistency. Knead to a medium soft dough that bounces back when poked, and leave to rise for 1 hour.

While the dough is rising, combine all the ingredients for the filling. Set aside.

Divide the dough into 15-16 sections and shape them into neat balls; now you can start shaping the flowers. Roll out each ball to about 5″ diameter. Brush a bit of butter on the circle of dough. Make 4 diagonal slits, leaving the center intact. Add about 1 Tbs. filling in the center.

Brush the outside of each filled dough circle with beaten egg white. Take the first section and wrap it around the blob of filling, pinching the sides of that “petal” together to hold it in place. Take the opposite side’s “petal” and cover the other side of the filling with it. Repeat with the two last sections, pinching or pressing the dough on the side to seal it. Repeat with each round of dough until all the rolls are made up. The rolls should look roughly like roses, with swirls of doughy petals.

Place the prepared rolls on a greased tray. Pre-heat your oven to 350F. Brush each roll gently with the remainder of the egg white. Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until tops are golden.

Serve soon after baking.

Grisel’s Finger Foods

“Grisel reappeared before he could say more, balancing a large platter. She set it down between them. There were apples and pears and pomegranates, some sad-looking grapes, a huge blood orange. The old woman had brought a round of bread as well, and a crock of butter. Petyr cut a pomegranate in two with his dagger, offering half to Sansa.” -A Storm of Swords

Grisel’s Finger Foods

Our Thoughts:

I wasn’t sure at first if this meal warranted a post. Although the array of fruit sounds good, simple bread, butter, and fruit don’t generally stand out as memorable. But then I started to wonder what sort of bread one might find on the Fingers. The unnamed keep that serves as the paltry holdfast for House Baelish overlooks the Narrow Sea, so I though, Why not try a seaweed bread? Along with some homemade butter, of course.

I had my doubts initially, but was surprised by the bread! It has a nice texture, crumbly yet relatively dense. The seaweed is hardly noticeable, and if I didn’t know it was there, wouldn’t guess. In fact, next time, I might even add more. There is a very subtle salty sea flavor that compliments the more rustic flours. With a little homemade butter and a sprinkling of sea salt, it’s downright delicious. It’s also a good way to get a little more green veg in one’s daily diet, even when living in a meager hovel on The Fingers.

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Seedcake – The Hobbit

I ate two slices before I could slow down and focus on adjectives, rather than just scarfing down the tasty, tasty morsels.

The brandy and spices are there, but not in a boozy, overwhelming way. In fact, I’d say it has only the good taste of brandy, without the kick. The cake itself is soft and dense, with only the slightest hint of crunch on the outside crust, and imparted by the seeds. Although it would be good with honey or jam, I found that the seedcake itself was good enough to enjoy plain, or with a smidge of butter alongside some afternoon tea.

Recipe for Seedcake

Like most of my recipes, I based this on a traditional recipe from an old cookbook. In this case, it’s #1776, taken from Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, 1861.

Ingredients

1/2 lb. of butter (2 sticks)
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground mace
1 Tbs seeds (caraway is traditional, but I like poppy seeds)
3 eggs
1/4 cup brandy
2 cups flour

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the spices and seeds, followed by the eggs and brandy, beating to combine. Gradually add the flour, stirring until everything is mixed together completely. Pour this thick batter into a tin lined with buttered paper, and bake it at 350F for 1 hour.

Bread with Spent Grains

Spent Grain Bread

Thoughts:

I played around a bit and came up with this great, simple recipe for bread with spent grain. As with most recipes, it’s a starting point. Feel free to innovate and add other seeds, grains, flours, oats, sugars, etc. to make it your own. Just be sure to share your results! I certainly plan to keep trying new variations on it.

The resulting bread from this recipe is hearty in the extreme. The spent grains give each bite a little crunch, which is wonderful. It makes for a great toast, and even small sandwiches. I was partial to the very un-Westerosi PB&J, myself. :)

For the recipe, head on over to the brew blog, Game of Brews!

Bread-Pretzel – Gentlemen Bastards series

“Locke put up his hands and tried to stand up; one of Jean’s fists grew in his field of vision until it seemed to blot out half the world. The blow folded him over like a bread-pretzel. When he recovered something resembling his senses he was hugging a table leg; the room was dancing a minuet around him.”

–The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch

Thoughts:

This recipe is slightly more of a stretch than I usually indulge in, but I really like pretzels, and they’re so easy to make at home. The addition of some darker flours, such as rye and pumpernickel, tweak the pretzels into something just slightly different than we are used to.

Serve the pretzels still warm from the oven. Not being a big mustard fan (sacrilege!), I love eating my pretzels with honey. :)

Recipe for Bread-Pretzels

Cook’s Notes: Although this recipe calls for several types of flour, you can also use plain, unbleached flour as a substitute for the quirkier varieties. This will result in a more American style plain pretzel, which is also delicious with a dusting of salt and some mustard, but lacks that slight otherworldly element of the recipe below.

Ingredients:

2 cups room-temperature water
1 Tbs. instant yeast
2-3 cups bread flour, plus more for kneading
1 cup pumpernickel flour
1 cup rye flour
2 Tbs. brown sugar
2 1/2 tsp. salt

Water bath:

6 cups water
2 Tbs. baking soda
toppings: try kosher salt, herb salt, caraway seeds, sesame seeds, parmesan, or a combination thereof

Mix together the water, yeast, sugar, and a cup of the flour. Add the salt, and continue to add flour until the dough has come together into a nice workable, mostly unsticky consistency. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead for several minutes, until the dough bounces back when poked. Place in a greased bowl, cover with a dish towel, and let rise until doubled in size, around 2 hours.

Divide the dough into around 16 pieces. Roll each of these into a long, thin rope about 1/2″ thick, and about a foot long. Twist into pretzel shapes, or into whatever shape you like, and set aside to rest. Repeat with all the dough. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and preheat the oven to 450F. Bring the water and baking soda to a simmer in a medium saucepan. Gently lower several pretzels into this water bath. They should sink to the bottom, but then gradually float up. Allow to simmer for about 30 seconds on each side, flipping half way through. Lift out and allow to drain on a cooling rack. Sprinkle with toppings while the dipped pretzels are still wet, and arrange on the prepared baking sheet.

Bake for around 12 minutes, or until the pretzels are a beautiful rich brown color.

Like this recipe? Check out the other recipes from the Gentlemen Bastards series!

Jammy Rolls

Thoughts:

Continuing my seasonal trend of all things Concord Grapes, I had the sudden idea to make these awesome jammy rolls with some leftover jam. Which, of course, means I’ll have to make more jam. They’re basically made the same way as cinnamon rolls, but are filled with concord grape jam instead of cinnamon sugar. Topped with a little drizzle of lemon icing, and they’re pretty much amazeballs.

Soft, dense dough holds in the gooey grape filling. The lemon icing, which couldn’t be easier to make, perfectly accentuates the flavors of the Concord Grapes, adding a little zing! to their sweetness. Granted, they could be made with any jam you happen to have on hand, but I think the flavor of the grape is robust enough to hold its own against that amount of dough.

So go get yourselves some of the last grapes of the season, and make this recipe for a wonderful weekend breakfast treat!

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Pan-fried Garlic Bread – Vlad Taltos series

“We went back into his little kitchen, and I sat on a stool at the tiny counter while he made the one thing I’ve never been able to get to come out right: It is an Eastern bread, only slightly raised, and pan-fried in a very light olive oil. I think the trick is getting the oil at exactly the right temperature, and judging when to turn the bread, which is just before it shows any obvious signs of needing to turn; the dough was pretty straightforward, unless Noish-pa was hiding something, which would be unlike him. In any case, I’ve never been able to get it right, which I regretted anew as soon as the first one hit the oil and released its aroma.”

–Dragon, by Steven Brust

Noish-Pa’s pan-fried Garlic Bread

Thoughts:

The bread is described as “a large, raised square of light brown dough”, and Vlad enjoys eating it, alternating bites of bread with bites of garlic. Since biting into a raw clove of garlic doesn’t appeal to most of us, I opted for the joy that is roasted garlic. And, just to give it a bit of that Eastern pizzazz, I sprinkled a bit of zaatar (a middle eastern spice) over the top of it.

Pure culinary bliss. Even if you aren’t enjoying your last home-cooked food before marching off with an army, this bread is wonderful. Roasted garlic, if you’ve never had the fortune of encountering it, has all those wonderful garlic flavors and aroma combined with a sweetness from the roasting process.

I sometimes eat it with a fork, straight from the bulb.

Spread out on a piece of this flatbread, with some spice and salt sprinkled over top, the roasted garlic is delicious. The bread is so soft, fluffy, beautifully seasoned, I’d happily have this for/with lunch several times a week.

Recipe for Pan-fried Garlic Bread

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups warm water
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1/2 tablespoon kosher salt
3 1/2 cups bread flour
2 Tbs. honey
several tablespoons olive oil
Flour for dusting dough
Roasted Garlic (see below)
zaatar spice, or other of your choice- seasoned salt works well

Make the dough first: combine the water, yeast, flour, honey, and salt. You may need to add a little water or flour to get the dough just right. The consistency should be very gooey and sticky. Transfer the dough to a large clean bowl, greased with a little olive oil, and allow to rise for several hours, or overnight.

Heat about a teaspoon of olive oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat.

Tear off a piece of the risen dough, and toss it with flour to diminish the stickiness. At this point, you can either roll out the piece of dough, or flatten it with your fingers, like a tiny pizza. Either way, the dough should be no more than 1/4″ thick, and not larger than the bottom of the pan.

Carefully place the dough in the frying pan, and shake the pan back and forth to make sure the dough is covered with oil, and not sticking. Let this fry for around 30 seconds, or until it only gives slightly when you squeeze the sides with a pair of tongs, and before it starts to bubble up. Flip over; the dough should be a light brown color.

Let the second side cook for around the same amount of time: This part of the recipe is more art than science, but both sides should be a light brown, and the inside should be cooked through, but still soft. Remove to a plate covered with paper towels to drain off excess oil.

Spread a clove of roasted garlic on each piece of cooked flatbread, and sprinkle with spices and/or salt to taste. Serve while still warm.

Roasted Garlic Recipe

Ingredients:

1 bulb of garlic
a bit of olive oil
tin foil

Chop off the papery skin on top of the garlic bulb, so that you can see the individual cloves (see great photos here). Drizzle some olive oil in the top, and wrap the whole bulb in tin foil. Roast in a 400 degree oven for around 30-40 minutes, or until the cloves feel soft. Allow the garlic to cool enough that you don’t burn yourself before handling.

You can peel the leftover roasted cloves, place them in a jar, and cover with olive oil. Stored in the fridge, they last several months (or more), and are ready at your beck and call. What’s more, the olive oil gradually becomes infused with the garlic flavor. Win!

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