Bread and Kale Gnocchi

During my recent vacations in Poland I did not cook at all but ate a lot. I enjoyed Polish food and most of all Polish bread. I think we have one of the best breads in the world and the richest variety of it.

In any Polish home it is almost religious to have plenty of bread in a bread box. But, because we are so obsessed with bread, we often buy too much of it. Then, on the next day, we cannot resist buying a new batch straight from the bakery, fresh and warm and this way we repeatedly end up with significant amounts of old bread which, although still good on the next day, cannot compete with the fresh one.

Unfortunately, we do not recycle bread, not even to feed animals. The only way then to use old bread is to cook with it. Today's recipe, which comes from the Italian cuisine where this gluten loaded delicacy is also very popular, is one of the great ideas how to recycle old bread. Not surprisingly, Italians being Italians use bread leftovers to make yet another variety of gnocchi.

For this particular recipe I used different types of old bread which I happened to have, mostly whole wheat and country style. Just to make it more healthy and nutritious I added kale, which also enriched the taste of my gnocchi, which can be served with butter or butter fried sage.



Bread and Kale Gnocchi

Ingredients:
2 lb of one or two-day old bread, such as country style, cut into smaller chunks,
1/2 lb kale, preferably Tuscan,
3 eggs,
1/2 cup all purpose flour,
salt,
a pinch of nutmeg,
6 tbsp unsalted butter,
8-10 sage leaves
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan.

Preparation:
1. Place bread in a large bowl and cover with milk. Let it soak for about an hour. Squeeze the milk well out and place the bread in a food processor.
2. Chop roughly kale and blanch it in a hot water. Drain well on the colander and add to the soaked bread. Puree all the ingredients until smooth.
3. Transfer the mixture to the large bowl. Sift in flour, add eggs, 1/3 cup Parmesan, salt and nutmeg. Mix well.



4. Bring to boiling a large pot of salted water. Scoop a portion of the mixture on a soup spoon and drop into a pot by dipping the spoon in boiling water. Let the gnocchi afloat and cook on a low temperature for about 4 minutes.



5. Drain the first batch of gnocchi and follow with the remaining batter.
6. To finish the dish, fry the butter in a small pot until it bubbles. Add sage leaves and fry them until crispy for about a minute. Pour the hot butter and sage on gnocchi and finish with Parmesan.

Bread Dumplings--Bread Recycling

I cannot speak for others, but in my culture bread has always been a symbol of hospitality and kindness, and throwing it away is considered a sin. Therefore I always feel very uncomfortable when a perfectly good bread becomes stale and there is not much to do with it. I collect all bread remains in a paper bag and use them for breadcrumbs (so useful for lining the baking tins) or use it for different dishes in which soaked white bread is needed.

But as I already said many times we are bread lovers, so I often have good breads at home. Many of them, especially an Italian ciabatta or a French baguette, or the one I make myself, become dry very quickly. Last month, I found a huge bag of stale bread in my pantry and it came to me that it could be used to make dumplings. I dug out the recipe to make it again and also did a little more research on that subject.

Surprisingly, my research yielded a lot of interesting recipes. For example. I learned that stale sweet bread can be turned into attractive desserts, very popular in France and England. Unfortunately, I almost never buy sweet bread or even a typical American toast bread. My recipe for today works with any European style bread, that has no sugar, or virtually no sugar in it. It is particularly worth trying if you happen to collect more stale bread than you know how to use.

Those dumplings can be served as a dish in itself or be done without mushrooms and served as meat accompaniment. Those who like hearty meals can add also fried bacon to the dough or put some fried bacon on top with instead or in addition to the mushrooms. If you are curious of that dish but do not have stale bread you can use breadcrumbs, although they have usually a little bit of sweetness that can be detected in those dumplings.

My favorite version was the vegetarian one, served with melted butter or shredded Parmesan, and accompanied by crispy cabbage or lettuce salad.

Stale Bread Dumplings
(Serves four)

Ingredients:
2 and 1/3 cup breadcrumbs (11 oz),
1/2 cup shredded cheddar,
8 oz white cup mushrooms,
2 eggs,
1/2 onion, thinly chopped,
1/2 cup table cream,
salt and pepper,
2 tbsp olive oil.

Preparation:
1. Wash mushrooms and grate them on a grater with large holes.
2. In a frying pan heat the oil, add onion, and fry it on a medium heat until transparent.
3. Add mushrooms, salt and pepper, and continue to fry for 5-8 minutes, until water evaporates and mushrooms become lightly gold. Take the pan from the heat and let it cool down.
4. Put the pieces of dry bread in a food processor and pulse them several times, until they make breadcrumbs.
5. Place the breadcrumbs in a large bowl and add mushrooms with onion, cream, cheese, and egg yolks.

6. Beat egg whites into a stiff foam and add to the dough. Using hands mix all the ingredients until they form a homogenous dough.
7. Form dumplings about one-inch wide and two-inch long. Place them on a board sprinkled lightly with flour.

8. In a large pot boil water with a tbsp of salt. Throw in dumplings and cook them for about 3 minutes from the moment they rise to the surface. Drain them on a colander.

Serve with melted butter or shredded Parmesan.

and with fresh salad.

Bread Baked in a Pot--Listen to It Crack

Every year my neighbors organize a soup party. They serve an interesting menu of soups (guests are invited to bring they own specialties) and a self-made bread. It is very fresh, often still warm and it is so good that it disappears fast. It tastes great as a starter with a glass of wine and I usually eat so much of it that by the time soups are served I am already so full that I am hardly able to taste anything else.

I had to ask for the recipe and try to make this fabulous bread. Unfortunately, it did not come out too good first time I made it. This bread comes from a French tradition and is baked in a pot. Perhaps it did not come out exactly as my neighbors' masterpiece because I did not have the right vessel.

Last Christmas Eve, my neighbor came over and offered to teach me how to make it. He made it. I watched. It took his three visits, before the bread was ready to be baked. When I took it out of the oven and finally tasted, it was perfect. Again, my whole family, including my sister who was visiting us from Poland at that time, did not even let it cool down. It was gone to the last crumb, still hot. Now that I finally learned its secret, I make it from time to time over the weekend and we have it warm and aromatic with our Sunday brunch.

Talking about secrets, there are two that you need to learn about its preparation. First, the dough has to rise for a long time, so the best way is to make it a day before in the evening and let it stand overnight. Second, it must be baked in a pot with a cover that can tolerate very high temperature--450F. I was able to find such pot at Home Goods for just eight dollars and it works perfectly. Beside that, you do not even need any mixer or bread machine to make it. And when the house smells like a bakery, and the bread is already cooling down, just listen to it crack.

Bread Baked in a Pot

Ingredients:
3 and 1/2 cup bread flour, preferably King Arthur flour,
1/4 tsp dry yeasts,
1 and 3/4 cup water,
1 tsp salt.

Preparation:
1. Put water, flour, and yeast in a large and a relatively deep bowl (because the dough will grow overnight) and using a wooden spoon combine all the ingredients thoroughly. Leave it overnight covered with a dishtowel.
2. Dust a wooden surface with flour and dump the dough on it. Cover the dough with a dishtowel and let it stand for 15 minutes.
3. Spread a dishtowel over a round bread basket, dust it with a tablespoon of cornflour, put the dough on it, fold the ends of the dishtowel on top of it and leave it for 30 minutes.

4. Preheat oven (preferable a convection oven) to 500F and put an empty baking pot in it for about 15 minutes.
5. Lower the temperature to 425F, take out the pot and gently dump the dough in it. You can draw a cross on top of it or make a couple of diagonal cuts. Cover the pot with the lid and put it back in the oven.
6. After 30 minutes take the lid off and bake the bread in an open pot for another 15 minutes.
7. Take the pot out of the oven. Let the bread cool down and listen to it crack.

Cut a slice, spread butter on it, and enjoy.

Polish Whole Wheat Bread--A Piece of Home

These days, quality food from every region of the world spreads fast across borders and oceans. You can get the same Starbucks coffee in Seattle and in London. In your local food store you can buy your favorite French wine, best Parmesan cheese, and green beans from Kenya. But I am sure that everyone of us who lives outside his or her country of origin misses some things that are not available anywhere else or just do not taste the same as they did back home.

If you ever find yourself among Poles when they get sentimental about their home food, no doubt it would be Polish bread for which they yearn most. No wonder, bread consumption in Poland is probably one of the highest in the world. A bread sandwich was what we took to school and our parents to work for lunch. Bread was also eaten for breakfast and supper, and only at dinners it ceded its prominent position to potatoes or dumplings. In past centuries, to express our hospitality, we welcomed our guests at the doorstep with bread and salt.

Polish bread is most similar to German or Russian bread, but it is still quite different than either of them. It is most often a rye or whole wheat bread, based on a starter dough which gives it a natural sourness. And, unlike white breads, it is still very good a couple of days later.

Making a true Polish bread takes time and experience. I am still experimenting with various versions of it trying to come as close as possible to the inimitable ideal. This variety, which I currently make often at my home, is reasonably satisfying. It is also an easy shortcut to what our bread is. It preserves well for up to three days, so usually I double the amount of the dough and bake two of them at once.

Polish Whole Wheat Bread

Ingredients:
1 cup white bread flour,
2 cups whole wheat flour,
1 cup warm water,
1 cup natural yogurt at room temperature, you can use buttermilk instead, but then you need to add about 1 cup of flower,
1 sachet active fast rising dry yeasts (1 tbsp),
1 tbsp salt,
1/4 cup sunflower seeds,

Preparation:
1. In a large bowl (or a bowl that comes with a stand mixer) place flour, yeast, and salt, and mix gently with a wooden spoon.
2. Add both kinds of flour to the bowl, add warm water and mix it with the flour, and follow with yogurt.
3. Knead the dough with you hands or using the Kitchen Aid stand mixer with the dough hook attachment for about 5 minutes, until it turns into a a smooth ball. At the end, add half of the sunflower seeds and kneed the dough for another minute or two.
4. Transfer the dough to a loaf baking pan slightly greased with vegetable oil. Brush the top of the dough with cold water and cover with sunflower seeds. Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and set it aside for 30 minutes, after which the dough should rise by a few inches.

5. Preheat oven to 370F and place in the baking form with the dough.
6. Bake for about 50 minutes.

Let the bread cool down before you cut it. Although there is a common opinion that warm bread is not good for your stomach, there is nothing better than an aromatic piece of warm bread with butter that melts faster than we are able to eat it.

Wheat Rolls--Straight from the Oven

If I lived in Paris or even in Warsaw I would not even bother. I would just go down the street and buy it. But because I live in Washington DC, whenever I crave warm bread straight from the oven, I need to bake it. Yes, I can buy baguettes in my neighborhood's upscale stores, such as Balducci's or Marvelous Market, but they are not exactly what I have in mind when I recall the baguettes I used to buy in some places in Europe.

Actually, it was not in Paris, but in Geneva, where I ate the best baguettes ever--always gold and crispy on the outside, and fluffy and incredibly white inside. You could buy them warm, also on weekends. My apologies to all the French readers who may stumble upon this post, but during my last visit to Paris I spent 30 minutes on Saturday morning standing at a lovely boulangerie in Marais, to buy famous French bread--precisely a baguette--and have never been more disappointed. Unfortunately, this was not the only culinary disappointment that I experienced during that trip.

I come from a family of bakers--my grandfather owned a bakery before WWII and later he continued to work in a state-owned bakery. Therefore, appreciation for good bread runs in my blood and I eat quite a lot of it. I used to make bread in Poland, and I still experiment with different recipes here. Years ago, when I first came to the US, I bought a bread machine and made wonderful rye bread that once got even high reviews from my Italian friends, but recently, I bake bread directly in the oven, because I find the bread made in the machine too soft and lacking the crispy crust, which I like very much.

I still have not been able to make a perfect baguette. One of my French friends maintains that the secret of the baguette lies in the quality of the flour it is made of, and the best quality flour is not commonly available outside France. Having that in mind, I decided to make rolls of whole wheat flour and not be disappointed that they are not as perfect as they should be. Still, when I ate them warm, just with butter, they were exactly what I was looking for.

Wheat Rolls
(Makes 12-16 rolls)

Ingredients:
2 and 1/2 cups flour,
1 cup whole wheat flour,
1 and 1/2 cup warm water,
3 tbsp oil,
2 tsp yeast,
1 tbsp salt.
2 tbsp oatmeal or sesame seeds.

Preparation:
1. Put all the ingredients in a stand mixer and using the dough hook attachment let it run for about 5 minutes. You can also make the dough just with hands, and knead it until the dough is smooth.
2. Take small pieces of dough, roll in hand and place on a cookie sheet tin.
3. Cover with plastic foil and let it rise for an hour.
4. Preheat oven to 375 F.
5. Remove the foil and sprinkle the rolls with sesame seeds or oatmeal.
6. Bake for 20-30 minutes.

Let the rolls cool down a little bit before you eat them, but they taste best when they are still slightly warm. You can make a large batch and freeze some of them for later.

Easy Cheddar and Apple Bread--An Excuse to Empty my Pantry

When I visit grocery stores, one reflection often comes to my mind--there are many products that I never buy because I simply do not know how to use them. Especially here in America I have this feeling more often than in Europe. Peaking into someone else's cart, and seeing things that I never buy myself, I wonder what these people do with that (especially in such amounts). Recently, when I was buying ingredients for my Christmas cake, I carefully looked at the packages to make sure that I do not buy accidentally something that I do not know how to use.

It happened a couple of months ago when in a rush I bought a bag of self-rising flour instead of the regular one. Most of my cakes or tarts do not contain baking powder and only some of them require just a teaspoon of it or less. I also hardly use baking soda in my recipes. For that reason I do not know how to use a self-rising flour, especially that I cannot imagine how much baking powder is in it. But because of my mistake I had a bag of it on my pantry shelf. Ever since I made that mistake I had been desperately looking for recipes to use this flour before it became too old for anything. Recently, being in a mood for baking a variety of different breads, I found one such recipe in my old English cookbook. This bread always looked very appetizing to me, but required self-rising flour, which has always put me off. But this time it was a perfect time to try it out.

I come from a yeast-based bread culture and only such breads truly love, but I was willing to make a different one just to try out this self-rising flour.
Breads based on baking powder and soda come from the English or Irish tradition. The one I found also had cheddar cheese, apples, and peanuts, which made it much more than just a bread. I used walnuts as I am not a big fan of peanuts. The bread came out drier than the yeast-based bread, almost as a kind of spicy cake, but its shape and texture were bread-like and the whole result was not bad at all. Since I still have a lot of that flour left, I think that--before I discover some other recipes for its usage--I will make those breads a couple of times more.

Cheddar and Apple Bread
(Adapted from the Good Housekeeping New Step-by-Step Cookbook)

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup self raising flour,
1 cup aged cheddar cheese coarsely grated,
2 tbsp butter,
1 medium apple, peeled off and grated on a big hole grater,
1/2 cup nuts-- I used walnuts, the original recipe calls for peanuts but any kind would probably work as well,
1 egg,
5 tbsp milk,
1 tbsp vegetable oil,
freshly ground pepper.

Preparation:
1. Put flour in a large bowl and using fingers rub the butter in it.
2. Add grated cheese, apple, pepper and chopped nuts. Mix all the ingredients.
3. Whisk together egg and milk, pour them into the flour mixture, and make a soft dough.
4. Preheat oven to 375 F.
5. Grease lightly the baking sheet with oil and place dough on it formed into a flat disk with diagonal cuts on top.
6. Bake for about 40 minutes, or until golden brown.

Just a couple of slices with butter make a rich and fulfilling lunch and can be served with salads. It tastes best on the same day.

Rosemary and Himalayan Pink Salt Focaccia

A friend walked in to my house the other day, bringing with her a gust of the cold wind. As I opened the door she inhaled deeply the aroma that was filling the whole house from the basement to the second floor. "Mmmm... Smells like home" she commented. Indeed, is there anything that smells more homey than a freshly baked bread?

As the cold, too cold days arrived unexpectedly I forgot quickly about all the frozen desserts that I did not have a chance to post yet. All I dreamed of was a piece of warm cake, maybe one based on yeast? Or even better a piece of warm bread. I looked through the window at my gigantic rosemary bush bent by the strong wind and I instantly knew what I wanted to do.

From the youngest age, I have felt the urge to bake. I watched my grandmother bake and later helped her make hundreds of different cakes and I have never been afraid of experimenting with baking. I was only ten years old when, as a first person in my family, I made my own pizza from scratch. Of course it was a Polish version of it, based on a very thick crust and rich in sausage. But those first tries gave me the confidence to make more sophisticated desserts, and later also breads.

It is kind of funny how baking with yeast is different from other ways to bake. I know people who can make absolutely the best yeast cakes, which are light like feather, with different seasonal fruits, or with poppy seeds (e.g., for Christmas) but are not able to make any other kinds of cake. And I have met some, who bake excellent sponge cakes, but their yeast cakes are heavy, and often slack-baked. I still cannot reproduce the perfect yeast cakes my grandma made, but did OK with the Italian and Polish breads.

I haven't made focaccia for 20 years or more, so with some curiosity, I tossed all the ingredients in my Kitchen Aid mixer and let it work.I left a dough to rise for an hour, finished with fresh rosemary and finally salted with the Himalayan pink salt which is acclaimed to be the purest salt on earth. I put it in the oven and in half an hour the focaccia was ready. Before it even cooled down completely my two friends and my son were fighting for the last piece of the warm bread, licking their fingers to pick up every last grain of salt from the baking tin. There was nothing easier to make and more enjoyable on a cold November evening.

Rosemary and Himalayan Pink Salt Focaccia

Ingredients:
3 1/3 cup white flour,
1 1/2 cup warm water,
1 packet of fast rise yeast or about 3 tsp.active dry yeast.
4 tbsp olive oil,
2 tbsp fresh rosemary leaves,
1 tbsp coarse Himalayan or sea salt.

Preparation:
1. Place all the ingredients in a Kitchen Aid food mixer.
2. Using the bent arm attachment (see picture below), mix all the ingredients for about 5 minutes, until the dough is smooth and shiny.

3. Cover the dough with plastic foil and let it rise for an hour.
4. When the dough doubles in volume, put it on a working surface dusted with flour and stretch to make it one-inch thick.
5. Preheat the oven to 400F.
6. Sprinkle the baking tin with a little bit of olive oil and put the dough in it.
7. Finish the top of the focaccia dough with rosemary leaves and coarse salt.
8. Put it in the oven for 20-25 minutes.
9. Take it out of the oven and let it cool down a bit before serving. Of course you can also eat it cold, but it's best when it is still warm from the oven.