You know what I love about coffee cake? It's not special-occasion cake. It's "coffee cake," which means it's "any time of the day or night and for any purpose except possibly a wedding" cake. Which makes it an excellent type of food, the all-purpose workhouse of happy snacking. Add sour cream and you get tender, light, delightfully most -- so I'm really looking forward to this one. 

Hopefully it will also have enough yumminess to launch me out of the Onion Rolls orbit I've been in for two weeks (Two weeks! I've been making Onion Rolls for two weeks, they were that good!)

And maybe I will actually get pictures posted. (we keep eating the evidence before I can get the camera out, as it turns out.) 

Looking forward to seeing everyone's results!

Cookie Monster is a well-loved friend in this house, and so I'm looking forward to making this one. I'm especially intrigued by the idea of making loaves of the cookies, then cutting them when cool -- this isn't a cookie technique common in my family of origin, though I realize it's pretty common elsewhere. 

As always, I'm interested in seeing what everyone else comes up with, too!

Now that we've had a bit of a baking warm-up with the breads, cakes and pastries to date, it's time to tackle the bakery equivalent of the 3-meter high dive. Danish or puff pastry. I'm a little breathless with anticipation, but it could also be the fear of a metaphorical 3-meter belly-flop, as well. 

This recipe, on p. 143 of the book, calls for either Danish laminated pastry OR blitz puff pastry, and can have either sweet or savory fillings. I  have shamelessly enlisted the help of a friend blessed with superior baking skills on this one (though she's never made laminated dough, either). Can't wait to see what we all turn out!

After the excesses of the  holidays, something warm and comforting and thrifty like soup and bread sounds like a great dinner. We've had soup probably four times since the New Year already, and have a wonderful lineup for the next couple of weeks, as all of my cooking magazines seem to have taken soup as their mantra for January and February issues.

Ok, back to the bread. This just looked good. And I promise, promise, promise that I am going to improve upon my (as-of-now) deplorable batting average and actually post on this one!

Looking forward (as always) to everyone else's experiences as well!

Kendra

Happy New Year, everyone!

I thought we could start the New Year off sweetly with this rye-based Honey Cake. I've never made anything like this before, so will be very interested to see what it's like and to hear what experiences others have. I have  a secret, hidden hope that it's like the honey cake with glorious chunks of crunch sugar in it that is sold commercially in Belgium, where I've spent some time. Regardless, I'm sure it will be delicious!

Also -- sorry for the tardiness in getting this forum post up. Thanks for your patience!

Almond (anything) + bread = bliss, in my book. These almond buns struck me as potentially winning additions to the Christmas brunch table. Or perhaps as a pre-brunch snack. If they last past my getting them off the baking sheet, that is.

Please note that the Bun Dough recipe (p. 152) has an error. The fix is listed in the errata section of the NY bakers website: http://www.insidethejewishbakery.com/files/IJB_Errata.pdf. Scroll down until you see "Bun Dough" and the correction is listed there.

These buns call for three sub-recipes (bun dough, almond filling, and simple syrup), and please note that the almond filling recipe calls for 3 cups of cake crumbs (which I'm assuming most of us will have to make ourselves, not living in a bakery), bringing the baking dominoes that need to fall in line up to 4. Or five if, like me, you plan on concocting your own almond paste (p. 256).

Clearly, these are buns for the bold. But what better way to end 2011?

Looking forward to your posts and pictures!

I'd never made challah before test-baking for ITJB, and just loved the beauty and ease of it. I chose this bread for this week because our traditional Christmas Eve dinner is clam chowder with homemade bread (usually Swedish limpa). This year I'm going to substitute this challah for the limpa -- different culture, equally festive. I'm especially looking forward to the variety of braids we come up with -- I tested the six-strand bakery braid in the book and it's a stunner and not as hard as it appears. Looking forward to seeing (and yes, finally, posting) some great pictures this week!

Much like the planets, my need to refresh my 100% rye starter aligned with the arrival of Inside the Jewish Bakery. I've tried to do a 'traditional' yeasted rye in the past using commercial flour, but the results weren't particularly great, and neither my wife nor I like whole caraway seeds. When I read the recipe for the Old School Jewish Deli Rye, and saw the ground-up caraway, a little light went on, and I knew that was going to be my first bake from the book.

My home-cultured rye starter is kept at 100% hydration (and I'm pretty sure can be used as superglue in an emergency). It had been 11 days since it had been fed, so I started out with 1.5 ounces I turned into 4.5 overnight, then turned that into the 21 oz needed for the preferment with another step up and overnight fermentation.

I followed the recipe with the these alterations:

• 0.5 teaspoon caramel coloring
• 1.5 oz of the final flour was blue cornmeal left over from last night (see Blue Corn Cornbread)
• The remaining flour was a 50/50 mix of hard red and hard white wheat. I sifted it to 85% extraction (#30 seive) then re-milled and re-sifted the bran, giving me a final extraction of 93% WW at a fine texture.
• I didn't add any yeast. Instead, it got a 4.5 hour bulk fermentation and a 2.25 hour final proof
• I made four miniloaves (plus a large roll)

The result is a crunchy exterior with a great caraway nose that enhances the subtle caraway taste. After chewing for a few seconds, the sour hits with the best flavor expression I've gotten out of this particular starter. This one is definitely going to go into my regular rotation.

Thanks for a great book guys!

Hi,

I am looking for some traditional jewish recipes to prepare for a lecture about Israel. It would be great to make some typical bread that goes with savory spreads and salads, but I could not find any on various jewish web pages. Only Challah and Matza are mentioned there.

Then I realised there are recipes for so called "Jewish rye" here on TFL and in some breadmaking books. But nowhere did I find any history or other connection to jewish tradition. So my question is: Is "Jewish rye" really typically jewish (or israeli)?

zdenka

Here are some photos from last night's Rosh Hashana Challah bake!