Not Your Mother's Cookbooks

Bao buns, encasing a filling of char siu pork, are a popular dim sum item in Cantonese restaurants. Old-timers usually steam them until fluffy white. Immigrant chefs who came to America discovered that when baked, the buns turned golden and pleased the locals. What they got was sort of an Asian hamburger.

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I took a bread baking class at a virtually unknown cooking school, long gone and forgotten now, with my mother in the 1980s and learned this Italian whole wheat bread. It is called a traditional pane integrale.

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This is my friend Ilana Sharum’s grandmother’s recipe from Russia, which she had transcribed over the phone to me from her recipe written in cursive Hebrew. It is one of my most treasured recipes and I make it for just about every special occasion. There is a saying that when you make this traditional bread (every Friday), you are creating an atmosphere, not just food.

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It used to be that to have a luscious seafood roll, you had to travel to New England for this regional seashore specialty. Nada no mas.

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I think we are in a waffle renaissance. Not pancakes. Waffles. The food of the kids on the weekend. Waffle are just everywhere and they are begging to be reinvented anew.

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There are an entire world of rustic ethnic breads that are easily reproduced in your modern home kitchen. These are breads that were once only available regionally, tasted by the adventurous traveler. But no more. The invisible family boundries are down and the light is rushing in. What is old is now new. What was hidden by geography and religion, is now open to interpretation. Bakers are pushing the envelope. They want to master the techniques.

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Recently I was invited to an open house and wanted to bring bread, but didn’t have time to make it from scratch.  So this was my opportunity to use Bridgeford Ready-Dough, easily found in the freezer department of all supermarkets. …

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Sometimes you want fresh bread, but don’t have time to make it from scratch. So this the opportunity to use commercially made Ready-Dough packaged by Bridgeford, easily found in the supermarket freezer department. Using the three 1-pound loaves that come in one package, you can make the best Italian flatbread focaccia.

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The Stollen that is prevalent in the USA is a style known as Dresden Stollen, named for the capital city of Saxony, near the Czech border, where it was created in the 14th century. As the royal residence, Dresden was a center for art and culture. Whenever you had royalty, you have the top bakers nearby aiming to impress, which morphed into the Bakery Guild of Dresden, the keepers of the tradition of the Stollen.

The special occasion bread is loaded with butter, sugar, raisins, and citron, but it wasn’t always so rich and yummy. Known originally as striezel, it contained no butter or milk.

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There are interviews and there are interviews. I do a lot of print and radio spots and it is one of the perks of a most often solitary job of testing recipes then writing them down, which can take hours per recipe. Interviews give me the chance to get out into the community and interact; to chatter with like minded foodies about what I love. I get really inspired when an interviewer has unique and well thought out questions that make me think and dig deep into my wellspring of knowledge. Here is an interview I did last year on baking bread and its renaissance in the home kitchen.

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