Bread + Rolls + Muffins

Double Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

August 3, 2012 By Steve Dunn Leave a Comment

Over the years we've posted three different banana bread recipes here on Oui, Chef. First was this, our favorite straight up version. Then came a cocoa variant from my friend Sally Sampson at Chop Chop Magazine, and finally a Nutella version I whipped up to put an end to a large tub of Nutella that Arthas and I bought while at Chelsea Market in NYC.

Most food bloggers would be content with sharing three different varieties of a dish, but no, not us. As we continue to do with brownies, we are constantly looking for exciting new twists on one of our favorite treats, banana bread. Bananas are something that we always have on hand in the kitchen, and when they get a bit long in the tooth we either craft a bread out of them, or peel, cut and freeze them for use in morning smoothies. Last week, when I needed to deal with 2 leftover bananas, I found our frozen banana remnant bag full to capacity, so bread it was.

I Bow Down to Jim Lahey and His No Knead Bread

April 20, 2012 By Steve Dunn Leave a Comment

As best I can determine, this recipe was the first viral success story of the food blog age way back in 2006. It was then that Mark Bittman wrote about Jim Lahey's revolutionary and quite unconventional no-knead bread technique, and in the process enticed a whole new generation of home cooks to craft their own artisanal loaves.

Why, you might ask, am I dedicating a post to a recipe that has already been so widely touted in the blogosphere? Because even though all the great food bloggers from Bittman, to my friend Stacey at Stacey Snacks have written about this bread, if I can tempt just one of my intrepid readers to try this recipe, then it's worth my effort to share it once again……yeah, it's that good. In fact, it is so good, and so easy that unless you are one of the lucky few that have an artisanal bakery within walking distance of your home, I bet that this will become your go-to resource for the highest quality bread.

Nutella Banana Bread

June 9, 2011 By Steve Dunn 7 Comments

Fate dealt me a lovely hand last week when I found a bag of chopped hazelnuts in the pantry that were getting a little long in the tooth and needed to be used. I can't remember why I had bought them in the first place, in fact, I can't remember buying them at all…..dang memory.

My first thought was to toast them and toss them into a grain and veggie based salad to have with some grilled chicken over the weekend, and as I was rifling through the grain bin to find a suitable partner for the nuts, I glanced overhead and found a half-eaten jar of Nutella in the chocolate bin above.

Pumpkin Date Bread

March 18, 2011 By Steve Dunn 12 Comments

Not unlike our recent “Tortilla and Chicken Lasagna”, this treat came to be as a means to use up some hangers-on in our pantry. A recent inventory turned up a few cans of pumpkin puree leftover from holiday baking, as well as some medjool dates that were starting to show their age and dry a bit. We always have a few boxes of dates lying around, because they are an easy and healthy sweet treat for our after school scavengers, and terrific with a spot of tea as an afternoon pick-me-up for us elders. Sadly, one of our boxes of dates got buried under some nuts in the pantry and languished there until their skins turned papery, robbing them of their normally glossy curb-appeal.

Chop Chops Cocoa Banana Bread

February 15, 2011 By Steve Dunn 15 Comments

I had the good fortune a few weeks back to meet Sally Sampson, a woman I’ve admired for some time. Sally has worked for years as a cookbook writer, and as such, brought a number of my favorite cookbooks to market. Some of my most worn volumes were written by Sally, including Todd English’s The Olives Table, The Olives Dessert Table, and the first book of his I ever owned, The Figs Table. Sally is also the author of my most used cookbook (if its physical disrepair is any indication), the terrific Party Nuts!, from which we’ve pulled many recipes for the nut mixes we give friends and family in our annual holiday gift baskets.

Monkey Bread

November 22, 2010 By Steve Dunn 16 Comments

This is one of those dishes that should come with a warning label.

You know, something written in neon ink, and including words like…..”not to be made or consumed without proper adult supervision“…and….”the manufacturer shall not be held liable for any physical or emotional damages incurred as a result of the chaos typically associated with the consumption of this product“.

I am not kidding.

The sharks will start circling about half-way through baking, when the aroma of this lovely will have finally found its way to each corner of your home. The real fun starts though with the onset of the feeding frenzy which is guaranteed to commence as soon as the bugger is cool enough to touch. You’ve undoubtably seen it before, the gruesome footage they show over and over again during “Shark Week”, of sharks in such a tizzy over a bucketful of chum, that they actually start eating EACH OTHER in their frothy confusion.

You’ve been warned.

Cranberry Nut Bread

November 14, 2010 By Steve Dunn 20 Comments

This recipe is from the simply gorgeous Elise Bauer of Simply Recipes, and is a really terrific take on this New England favorite. Having some cranberries to use up after making last week’s cranberry tart, I was determined to find a new recipe for one of my favorite cranberry studded treats, cranberry nut bread. I cruised the web looking for the best recipe I could find, and while I came across tons of them, found Elise’s to be the most appealing for a number of reasons.

First, she used less sugar than most in her bread, and given that I often eat this treat for breakfast, I find a less sweet version more appealing. Second, her addition of orange juice and zest adds a depth of flavor that makes this bread truly memorable. There is hardly anything better (for breakfast, or at any other point in the day) than to toast up a thick slice of this goodness, slather it was some lovely salted butter, and luxuriate in its tender, tart-sweetness.

Artisanal "5 Minute" Bread

September 1, 2010 By Steve Dunn 9 Comments

For years now we have talked about baking our own bread, but the vigilance and care required to nurse a sourdough starter, or the time required to mix, knead, proof and bake a traditional loaf, always proved too much of a hurdle for us to overcome.

That all changed recently when we were given the game-changing cookbook, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking , by our sister-in-law Margo, who is a very accomplished bread baker in her own right. Margo has been baking fabulous breads and bagels the old fashioned way for years, keeping everyone she knows abundantly supplied with delicious baked goods. She has trained at the King Arthur Flour Education Center in Norwich, VT. (which she has come to affectionately refer to as “Mecca”), and has diligently baked her way through a few of the bibles of bread baking such as The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread , & Crust and Crumb: Master Formulas for Serious Bread Bakers.

In short, this gal knows what she’s doing, so when she endorsed the new “short-cut” methodologies in “5 Minutes a Day”, we decided we had run out of excuses for not making our own….it was time to get baking.

Anadama Bread

November 18, 2009 By Steve Dunn 12 Comments

I had never heard of Anadama bread until we were presented with a couple of loaves by a friend of ours about a year ago. As I recall, the whole episode went something like this……

Ding-dong….the doorbell rings, and I hop up to answer it……

HERE…HAVE SOME DAMN BREAD.

Huh?

TWO LOAVES OF DAMN BREAD TO BE PRECISE, HOT OUT OF THE OVEN. I MAKE IT ALL THE TIME, IT’S A BIT OF A SPECIALTY OF MINE.

Excuse me?

YOU KNOW…..I THOUGHT I’D BRING SOME BY AS A SORT OF HOUSE WARMING GIFT, A LITTLE WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD KIND OF THING. I MAKE THE BEST DAMN BREAD IN TOWN!

Oh…. I get it, this is like when George and Mary Bailey (Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed) bring bread, salt and wine to the Martini family when they move into their new home in “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Only Mary’s presentation was a bit more, how shall we say, lyrical?

You remember what she said, don’t you?

Bread.....That this house may never know hunger!
 
Salt......That life may always have flavor!

and Wine…..That joy and prosperity may reign forever!

Ahhhh……Donna Reed, she was something special wasn’t she? Broke the mold after she was made I dare say, and she had such a way with words. Of course that was a gentler time, and given that we now live in a faster-paced world, there’s something to be said for a more direct approach as well, like “HERE, HAVE SOME DAMN BREAD!”

JEEZ, I SAID “HERE HAVE SOME ANADAMA BREAD”….DO YOU NEED A HEARING AID OR SOMETHING?

Oops….help me Clarence, it’s time to earn your wings!

Bran Muffins Even Your Kids Will Like

October 13, 2009 By Steve Dunn 13 Comments

A bold claim, I know.

Just the mention of the word “bran” will have most kids turning tail and heading for the hills, but if you can get them to try these, I betcha they’ll be hooked…..hey, have I ever lied to you? This is a muffin that I make in double batches to freeze for a quick, healthy re-heatable breakfast or snack. They get their moist texture from pureed raisins, which along with a little brown sugar, make them perfectly sweet, but not overly so. They are dense, rich, packed with flavor, and because they don’t finish with a crown, but rather a flat-top, they are oh-so-fun to stack!

The recipe is Nancy Silverton’s, perhaps you’ve heard of her? She is thought by many to be the preeminent pastry chef in the States, and her famed La Bea Bakery in L.A. enjoys world-wide acclaim. I bought her cookbook “Nancy Silverton’s Pastries from the La Brea Bakery” some time ago, but it wasn’t until I read a recent blog post by David Lebovitz raving about these muffins, did I decide to give them a try. I am so glad I did.

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