Flour

In the restaurant, we serve our guests hot cheese biscuits and hoecake cornbread at lunchtime, but at dinner we swap out the hoecakes for these wonderful melt-in-your-mouth corn muffins.

Never miss the opportunity to make these when you have turnip greens left over from a previous meal.

The yeast, in addition to letting the batter sit for at least six hours, gives these waffles a chewy consistency and a slightly pungent flavor. One note on preparation: Since this batter needs to stand overnight, be sure to prepare it a day in advance. You can freeze these waffles, well wrapped, for up to a month. Simply heat them until nice and crispy in a preheated 350°F oven for 5 to 10 minutes.

The agreeably assertive flavor of buckwheat flour, the nuttiness of wheat germ, and the pleasantly chewy texture of rolled oats combine to make these pancakes hearty and full-bodied. They’re really a meal on their own, though nobody would complain if you were to offer Venison Sausages (page 185) or thickly cut Maple-Glazed Bacon (page 177) alongside.

These colorful scones are crumbly and rich from the combination of Cheddar cheese and spinach. A more substantial scone than some of the sweet ones, these go well with just about any salad and are also good with a frittata.

The sweetness of the honey and the spiciness of the jalapeños make for an intriguing flavor combination in this rich corn bread. Wear rubber or plastic gloves when handling and chopping hot chile peppers—the chiles can make your fingers sting—and wash your hands thoroughly afterward. Serve with butter, honey butter, Maple Butter (page 274), or jam.

This recipe could almost be labeled a health bread, except that it tastes too good. It’s packed with a generous quantity of bananas, plus an assortment of mix-and-match dried fruit. Spread the bread with any of our fruit butters (pages 270–272) and serve at a fall or winter brunch.

Packed with all kinds of good ingredients, these muffins make a densely flavorful treat that, if paired with yogurt, could almost be a light meal on its own. Buckwheat flour is made from the dry fruit seeds of the buckwheat plant, and is available at most health food stores.

Buttermilk gives these muffins a tender crumb and light texture, and they really need no accompaniment—though they’re even more irresistible topped with butter or one of the delicious flavored butters in the Toppings and Sauces chapter. If you like a fruity muffin, add fresh raspberries or any other berry, and for a cheese flavor, stir in grated sharp white Cheddar (see variations). You can also add a zing by adding black pepper or jalapeño peppers.

Goat cheese—sharp, chalky, a little salty—makes a sound addition to the blandness of a potato cake. The fun is coming across a lump of melting, edgy cheese in among the quietness of the potato. This is what I eat while picking eagle style at the carcass of a roast chicken or wallowing in the luxury of some slices of smoked salmon. It also goes very well with a humble smoked mackerel.

Bubble and squeak is an iconic British dish made by frying leftover boiled potatoes and cabbage to make a large, flat potato cake that is crisp outside and soft within. Bubble and squeak can be as simple as the traditional leftover cabbage and potato fry-up or somewhat more sophisticated, with the introduction of cheese, smoked pork, fish, or other vegetables. The bells-and-whistles versions can often successfully disguise the fact that your supper is made from stuff you found at the back of the fridge. Keeping the potato pieces quite coarse makes the texture more interesting.

There are many ways to make a starter, some more effective than others. You’ll find numerous systems online, along with loads of information, misinformation, and folklore. Many people obsess over their starters, coddling them like newborn infants, keeping them on a regular feeding cycle, and fretting when the starter doesn’t bubble up the way they think it should. Because there are many ways to create a starter, let’s start by focusing on what a starter is and how it works. The most common misperception about wild yeast or sourdough starters is that the wild yeast is what causes the sour flavor. Within the dough, there’s an interesting microbial drama taking place. Wild yeast is living side by side with various strains of bacteria, and it’s the bacteria that cause the sour flavors as they metabolize sugars and convert them into lactic acid or acetic acid. Different strains of bacteria create different flavors and aromas, which explains why breads made in different parts of the world may have different flavors even if they’re made using the same formula. From a functional standpoint, the role of the yeast is to leaven and slightly acidify the bread by producing carbon dioxide and ethyl alcohol, while the role of the bacteria is to acidify and flavor the dough and, to a lesser degree, create some carbon dioxide. This can be viewed as a symbiotic relationship, since the organisms harmoniously share the same environment and food source, and each supplements the work of the other. In a best-case scenario, the acidifying work of the bacteria lowers the pH of the dough sufficiently to create an ideal environment for the growth of the desired strains of wild yeast. Of all the mysteries of bread making, this symbiotic relationship is perhaps the most fascinating. As the pH lowers to more acidic levels, commercial yeast doesn’t survive, but wild yeast does. It all gets very complex, but fortunately this complexity manifests itself in the final flavor, as it also does in great cheeses and fine wines. If you feel intimidated by making or using a sourdough starter, realize that it’s simply a medium in which the microorganisms can live and grow in order to create their important by-products: alcohol, carbon dioxide, and acids. The job of the baker is to build the starter to a size that’s capable of raising the dough. Combining the delayed fermentation method used in this book with the complexity that a wild yeast starter brings to the dough allows us to create extremely tasty dough with many layers of flavor—or, as one of my students calls it, “Bread to the max!” First Stage: The Seed Culture, This starter comes together in two stages: first, you’ll create the seed culture, then you’ll convert it to a mother starter. In the first stage, you aren’t making the starter that actually goes into your dough; you’re making a starter (the seed) that makes another starter (the mother), from which you’ll make your final dough. There are many ways to make a seed culture. The simplest is with just flour and water. This does work, but not always on a predictable schedule. I’ve seen methods on the Internet calling for onion skins, wine grapes, plums, potatoes, milk, buttermilk, and yogurt. These can all serve as fuel for the microorganisms, and all of them also work for making a seed culture. But ultimately, a starter (and bread itself) is really about fermented flour. So in this book the goal is to create the conditions in which the appropriate organisms can grow and thrive so that they can create great-tasting bread. The following method produces a versatile starter that can be used to make 100 percent sourdough breads as well as mixed-method breads (breads leavened with a combination of wild yeast starter and commercial yeast). However, if you already have a starter or used a different method to make a starter, feel free to use it. The starter...

In Greece and Turkey, this bread is called Christopsomo or tsoureki (also known as lambpropsomo during Easter). It differs from stollen in that it’s proofed before baking, but the proofing time is shorter than for panettone. Mastic gum, also called mastica, is an aromatic gum resin derived from the bark of a Mediterranean shrub tree in the pistachio family. It can be found at stores that specialize in Greek and Middle Eastern ingredients. It adds a subtle and......breath-freshening flavor and aroma (no surprise, it has long been used as a natural breath freshener).

Hot cross buns are a traditional Good Friday bread, but they can be made anytime (in Elizabethan England they could only be baked during Easter week or during Christmas, but times have changed). There are, of course, many similar commemorative breads throughout Europe, each with their own twist. Currants and spices such as allspice, mace, nutmeg, and cinnamon are commonly used in the English version. Much folklore and many recipe variations for hot cross buns are available on the Internet (and they’re worth reading), but I prefer the following additions to the basic holiday bread recipe. However, feel free to use your own favorite spice and fruit combinations, or simply bake the buns without any additions, as the buns are wonderful with or without the fruit, spices, and glazed cross.

Panettone is the famous Christmas bread of Milan, though it is now made and consumed year round. Pandoro, or “golden bread,” originated in Verona and is traditionally baked in starshaped molds, but otherwise bears strong similarities to its more well-known Milanese counterpart. Although this dough can be mixed by hand, it’s very hard to do so because of the long mixing time required, so I recommend using a stand mixer. (You could also use a food processor if you pulse, rather than processing for extended periods.) At first, the dough will be more like a batter, but as you scrape down the mixing bowl, it will eventually form a very supple, delicate dough that feels wonderful to the touch. It can be formed into a ball or other bread shapes, but if you squeeze too hard it will become loose and sticky again. You may want to purchase paper or metal panettone or pandoro molds, which are available at specialty cookware stores. Keep in mind that smaller loaves bake more quickly and are softer and less crusty than larger loaves. Muffin and popover pans, as well as small brioche cups, make nice molds for mini loaves, as do small cans. You’ll end up with a better loaf if you let the dough rise slowly at room temperature rather than force the rise (for example, by placing the dough in a pilot-lit oven, which is a tempting way to speed up the rising time for many doughs). It may take up to 12 hours for the dough to rise and fill the form, but it’s worth the wait. Warmer proofing risks melting the butter in the dough, so the finished product will have the structure of a kugelhopf coffee cake—which isn’t bad, but it doesn’t have the unique peel-apart qualities of the slower-rising panettone or pandoro.

This recipe makes a home-baked cracker similar to the famous, wonderfully buttery tasting Ritz brand crackers. Recipe tester Pamela Schmidt, who worked long and hard on this one, determined that a little garlic powder in the dough made these taste even more like Ritz crackers. I don’t know if Ritz actually puts garlic powder in their version, but it does add a nice flavor, so I’m going with Pamela on this one.

Okay, I’ll admit it: Although I’m known primarily as a bread guy, I’ve been eating far more crackers than bread lately—probably always have, actually, and it’s a safe bet that I always will. Sure, artisan bread is the sexy sister, but a good cracker is the hardworking Cinderella of baked goods, and I think it’s time to bestow the glass slipper. In fact, I have a feeling that there are many other undeclared cracker freaks out there just waiting for crackers to be validated as a significant player in the exploding American culinary renaissance. A quick look at supermarket shelves shows that the real growth for both crackers and bread is occurring in the whole grain category. Even iconic brands such as Ritz are coming forth with whole grain products. I’ve spent nearly twenty years trying to convince folks to bake bread at home, even tilting at windmills by trying to encourage them to make 100 percent whole grain breads at home, but I’ve encountered far less resistance in urging that same audience to try making their own whole grain crackers. Why the receptivity? It’s probably because crackers are far easier and faster to make than bread (and the dough doesn’t even need to be held overnight in the refrigerator). But I also think there are deeper reasons. Crackers are so versatile, and so easily substituted for chips and other guilt-laden snacks. Whole grain crackers are the perfect, guilt-free snack. Not only do they have a satisfying, toasty flavor, they’re also loaded with dietary fiber, which helps lessen cravings for sweets and reduce mindless eating between meals. When properly made, crackers have a long finish. Eat some now and you’ll still be enjoying the lingering, earthy flavors in 30 minutes. Crackers can be naturally leavened with yeast, like Armenian lavash; be chemically leavened with baking powder or baking soda, like many commercial crackers; or be completely unleavened, like matzo or Triscuits. They’re usually crisp and flaky but don’t have to be. They can be buttery (with real or fake butter), or lean and mean, like saltines and other variations of water crackers. Whole grain crackers, regardless of the leavening method, have one major factor going for them: fiber, lots and lots of fiber. This cracker recipe is easy to make at home, even if you’ve never baked a loaf of bread in your life. It’s a variation of one of the most popular recipes from my previous book, Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads, and is especially fun to make with kids. I’ve adjusted the recipe so that these crackers, which are unlike any crackers you can buy, are even more crisp than the original. I’m ready to start a home-baked cracker revolution to match the bread revolution of the last fifteen years and hope I can enlist you in the cause.