Kendra, I might have to miss the first ones, though, being in Mexico.

Happy Thanksgiving to you, too,

Karin

Would someone help me with the pronunciation of "Hamantashen"?  Thanks.

Bun dough recipe has order of  egg/water and flour additions reversed.  See the Errata link at http://bit.ly/vnPEbf

Good luck in the challenge! We'll be watching with great interest.

Stan & Norm

PS. Since the 1-2-3 Dough has many applications, Kendra, you should probably choose a particular pastry using that dough, say Hamantashen, rugelach, Mohn bars, etc.

Please!

Karin

Thanks to flournwater and Mini Oven for pronunciation help.   I was excited to see the schedule posted.  Ready to get started. 

I'll be checking out everybody's progress through the challenge.  Your photographs will be a real pleasure.  My baking is reduced because I've had to diet, and will power is no challenge to a nice, available loaf on the counter!  Fortunately, vicarious eating is truly calorie-free.  I learn lots from looking and reading, so this will probably push me to sin occasionally and do a recipe, but only rarely, of necessity, and infrequently enough to  be harmless.  Let the baking begin!

I'm a mere amateur, but really looking forward to this. My book should arrive tomorrow - had to Amazon it as I couldn't track down a UK distributor. Hopefully my newbie status will be gradually left behind as we work our way through!

hi all,

Some more tweaks, posted at http://bit.ly/vnPEbf

Thanks and keep that feedback coming!

Stan

It would be great if we could have an idea of where folks live when we share some of these posts... I am sure over the time of the challenge we will get to know each other quite well. I am curious as to the effects of climates and altitudes on the results of some of the recipes... Can't wait to get started!!! Thanks to Stan for all the clarifications and good words. ;-)

The first recipe we're making uses the 1-2-3 dough. It calls for "pastry flour". The only pastry flour I can find around here (SW coast of FL) is Whole Wheat Pastry Flour. Is that acceptable, or is there a formula to mix cake flour & bread flour to achieve the stated description of 9.5% protein (p.18).

Also, I've started a blog so that patrons of my recently closed bakery/cafe can follow us as we bake through the book. I grew up in Brooklyn in the 50's and many folks I know here are former New Yorkers who miss those classic baked goods. You can find it at bonnibakesbrooklyn.blogspot.com

Bonni

Urchina, 

Once we have created our masterpiece =)  ... do we use this post avenue to let you and everyone know the results? Is there a user friendly way to send pictures of our finished product?  Please advise. Thank you.

Hi all, I just wanted to check the recipe for the filling, please: is it correct that it's only 1/2 cup of water to start with? I'm just wondering about how to bring that to the boil with all those poppy seeds, as it doesn't seem wet enough. I know you add water as you go, but is that enough to begin with? Many thanks!

Can't wait!

We almost split over the Mohn Bars (just kidding). I love poppy seed pastry, and I liked the filling. My husband detected a hint of bitterness in it (I didn't), but praised the dough and the streusel. My 92- year old mother suggested the poppy seed might have been a bit old, or I might not have ground it long enough. She also mentioned that she always found the dessert to be the best part of a meal, and sighed that she was a long flight away in Hamburg....

Anyway, I happily ate half of the bars over the next three days.  Since I used a mix of white pastry flour (270 g) and whole wheat pastry flour (70 g), I even had a better conscience, sneaking out in the porch to get yet another one.

One observation: Using a whisk for creaming butter and sugar for the dough did not work for my Cuisinart, the mass just stuck to the wires (and were a pain to scrape out). I had use switch to the paddle right away.

All in all, a nice dessert - and I told my husband not to be such a whiner!

Karin

I had a lot of fun making these. My first batch of poppy filling was totally spoiled, as the poppy seeds I'd bought turned out to be off: that'll teach me to buy seeds from Sainsburys (I've had that happen before) and I should have trusted my gut feeling that they smelled a bit odd. Anyhow, a second batch bought elsewhere worked a treat. The blender/food processor/suribachi couldn't touch them, but luckily my bargain manual grain grinder made short work of 'em. 

I had to bake them in a roasting tin as I didn't have a big enough tin, but that worked fine with a lining of greaseproof paper, which I used to measure how big to roll out the dough. Other than that, I followed the instructions and all went well! 

As for taste, we both liked them - I think they have a strong shortbread-y taste with a touch of nuttiness from the poppyseeds. They really tasted 'foreign' in a Continental kind of way, definitely not like a British bar or biscuit - but that was no bad thing! 

Mine are cooling. Too dark for pics tonight, will take some and post tomorrow!

These bars were really good.  I also felt that my food processor did not adequately grind the poppy seeds. I didn't have any other grinder, so just went ahead and made them anyway and they were fine.  Just didn't get the texture I would have liked in the poppy seed filling. 

Carlene

As a child, one of my favorite holiday treats was a slice of a poppy seed roll, and so I was very interested in trying this "close cousin". The recipe was easy to follow. The only catch was that our food processor was useless in trying to grind the seeds. I switched to a spice grinder, and that handled the job easily in batches of 1-2 ounces at a time.
My wife and I both love the bars! However, next time I'll try to accentuate the lemon flavor by adding more lemon zest or a little lemon extract to the mohn filling.

Hi all

I would love to do this challenge, but need to get hold of the book still! Would someone mind sending me a or email with the first recipe in the meantime please?!!

Cheers

Lisa

I too found that the food processor didn't do a great job with the poppy seeds and ended up doing small batches in my spice grinder.  However I had to be careful not to overgrind using my spice grinder, as they can easily turn to a sticky paste.  I also found the amount of water to be a bit sparse, so added another 10-15g.  I thought the comment in the recipe that the filling should have the consistency of farina was very helpful!

I liked the Mohn bars, but my wife informed me after tasting them that she isn't a fan of poppy seeds.  No accounting for taste I guess.  I especially liked the honey and lemon zest in the poppy seed filling, as it added signficant depth of flavor.  I also thought the streusel topping was very good and very easy! 

Finally, I had just a bit of the 1-2-3 dough left over, so I made a couple of sugar cookies from the leftovers.  Rolled them out, topped with sugar and baked.  They were great!  To me this dough definitely tasted like a shortbread.  

- Greg

These bars were giving me fits.  I used the spice mill to grind the poppyseeds fine enough as others have stated.  The filling was a bit damp- I should not have added the last bit of water toward the end of the 15 minutes.  Everything took about twice as long to bake to the desired level of doneness, but the bars themselves are exceptional in flavor, rich but subtle. 

My bars were a disaster.  The filling was not right.  I didn't use it.  After reading everyone else's posts, I bet the processor didn't grind them enough.  I just gave up using that filling. 

with all of the folks who tried them. We had an ArtWalk this weekend and I shared samples, and a chance to look at the book, with a few dozen people who stopped by. Even mid-westerners loved the delicate "shortbread" base and were pleasantly surprised by poppyseed as a filling. As for myself, I don't remember eating this particular cookie before, but the crust evoked memories of a yummy hammentashen, minus the prune filling. I look forward to produce those for myself. I loved these.

I didn't have the right size pan available so instead I baked them on a parchment lined larger flat cookie sheet. I assumed this recipe wouldn't spread much and it worked out fine. I just made the base the correct size and went from there. Our various pictures show different ratios of base to filling and I'm wondering Norm & Stan, which is more correct. Thin base/thicker filling or thicker base/thinner filling or equal amounts? Mine worked out to be a base double the thickness of the filling. To break down the poppyseeds I used a mini processor, in two batches, which did a good job and didn't need to add any additional water to the cooking filling. All together just wonderful!!

Bonni

I didn't take a picture but the bars turned out great!  I was hesitant to try this recipe as I never have liked poppyseed recipes before, but these were a little sweeter and had more depth of flavor (maybe from the apricot and honey).  Very delicious!

Full entry with more pics at my blog.

Baking notes:

• The food processor did nothing for my poppy seeds -- I ended up using my blender, which did a great job.
• I ended up adding almost a half cup extra of water while boiling the poppyseed mix.
• Also, through bad reading, I boiled the honey rather than adding it at the end.
• I cooked the shortbread an extra 10 minutes to get some color into it (and it's still pretty pale)
• I cooked the final bars an extra 15 minutes, with the broiler on for the last 2 mins, to get the streusel browned

These bars are illustrative of why I'm in the challenge -- they have a (wonderful) flavor that I've never encountered, and would have never thought to try. I'm hoping there's still half a pan left for my wife to take to the office tomorrow, I really don't need to eat all of these :)

I am too kitchen challanged (its, its usual disaster area self) at the moment, along with trying to do other things in the house like move some furniture etc. to go into the challange, but looking at all the lovely bars, certainly will try this as soon as possible.

Looking at the dough in the recipe, I think it would work nicely for making my currant tarts into a bar! And I can see it with a prune filling like mentioned above, so it looks a lovely versatile recipe and worth the work of producing it! I will definitely try the bars as is though first before playing with other fillings.

i've baked w/ poppy filling/paste/butter before, actually a lot, and just by tasting the filling my spontaneous thought is that it lacks substance. will see tomorrow when i bake the whole thing if i'm pleasantly surprised after all.

please cast your votes for ITJB as 2011's best new Kosher Cookbook at http://www.joyofkosher.com/nomination-category/best-new-kosher-cookbook/

btw, love the posts and photos and am so pleased that this first recipe is meeting/exceeding expectations!

I'll continue to follow the challenge with great interest.

Stan

I'm not Jewish and Kosher is not fully understood by me, but any cookbook that can make you laugh, make you cry and make you say I remember doing this with my family members, or think of things that we do with family that are traditions, is as far as I'm concerned the best cookbook period.

I love my copy, still haven't read it the second time, but will. I want to try out the recipes and find the ones I like the best and then they will become traditional in my house. So while I may not be Jewish, some of the traditional foods will continue being made.

BTW I'm number 8

now that I've actually (happily) baked something from the book, I'd like to add a review on Amazon. I'm sure I'm not alone. Stan could you point us in the right direction? Thanks, Bonni

Hi there

I'm a bit confused - how does signing up for the challenge work? and how does the correspondence work? Do we continuously post and comment under this single ever-growing thread? Or is there another web link that I've missed? Or do we pm Urchina?

Sorry - I'm a bit new to the challenge protocol!!

Thanks

Lisa

I will post some more in-depth musings on my personal blog. While I'm still skeptical regarding the overall flavor profile, my Turkish-born husband thought these were great. Personally, I love the pastry base (1-2-3), but am still unsure about the poppyseed filling. I think next time I shall do what I always do w/ poppyseed: use milk instead of water and just "steep" the poppyseed rather than cooking it. I am also going to add some lemon flavor - just a hint - to give it more depth. Other than that, these are "garnicht schlecht". :)

From the looks of it, my Mohn Bars look good, but the reality is VERY different!!  I couldn't cut them for the life of me, the dough was like concrete!  I cut through the poppy seed layer, but the bottom crust needs a jacknife to blast through it.  It is now sadly soaking with boiling water so that I can try and remove it somehow from the pan.  I'm guessing the problems were maybe 2 things and I'd like your input on this: 1) Pastry Flour is nonexistent in my area (I live about 1 hr from Boston).  I went to 3 supermarkets and none had regular pastry flour except 2 of them had whole wheat pastry flour.  I though it was better than nothing...... not true.  Is there another way to get REGULAR pastry flour?  I could tell while mixing that this would bomb b/c there was no stringy/stretchyness to the dough.  2) My oven is about 60 degrees off.  In the next couple weeks I need to decide on which oven and fridge to buy, but I have a lot on my plate and will have to wait a few weeks.  In the meantime, I turn up the temp an extra 60 degrees, but still takes double/triple time to cook.  So.... anyone have success with whole wheat pastry flour?

I do not think your "concrete" problem had anything to do with the whole wheat pastry flour. Pastry flour, whether whole wheat or regular, has low protein, and that is what is required for this dough. I substituted 70 g of the flour with whole pastry flour - for a little healthier option. Mine turned out just fine.
The problem will be your oven temperature that is so way off.
Karin

Hello Kendra

Thank you, that helps!

OK (*assuming novice-warrior-of-the-kitchen pose*), I hereby sign up to bake those recipes and share my experiences ! Amazon tells me my book should arrive around the 13th, woo hoo. So my first post will be a smattering early (unless I corrupt an innocent law-abiding baker into alleged copyright violation - *evil grin*) ;-)

Oh - and the advice about changing the viewing options to 'Newest first' (and collapsed thread) - that makes all the difference. Now we're in business :-)

Splendido

Lisa

Hi, everyone. I have news about how we're going to post for this challenge. Thanks to FloydM, we now have a "Challenges" forum in which to post  for our ITJB challenge (and any other book or recipe challenges people dream up). I've taken the advice of several folks here and decided to create a separate thread for each of the weekly challenge assignments. So it should be easier to move in and out of the challenge now, and also easier to see just the parts you want to see, instead of the whole thing. 

The first week's entries (Mohn Bars with 1-2-3 dough) will be kept here on my blog for simplicity, but Weeks 2 - 90 (or so) will each have their own forum topic/thread in the Challenges forum. Please move all postings starting tomorrow (for Florentines / lace cookies) over there. 

The location of the challenges forum is: Forums > General > Challenges

You'll see the ITJB, Week 2, Florentines, listed there, along with a re-post of the first semester's schedule. 

Thanks to all who suggested this approach, and thanks to all who are baking. I'll get my Mohn bars photos posted soon....

Bake on!

Kendra

OK, so Saturday I mixed up the dough, and yesterday the filling and topping. I really enjoy the sweet poppy seed flavor. I am not that enamored of the shortbread. The issue is not with this shortbread, just shortbreads in general.

This exercise is a good teaching tool. Breaking the dough has an amazing effect, one much more effective than I would have imagined. I learned that poppy seeds are very oily. And I learned that streusel  is easier to make than I thought.

I took no pics, as mine turned out looking like the others'.  As to the over all goodness, I'll be giving some to a neighbor and some to my sister for evaluation. These are not at all bad, but as mentioned above, the cookie base is not a favorite of mine. I'm not qualified to judge pecan pies either since I don't much care for them.

//edit: I meant to ask, how does one pronounce mohn?  ~gt

cheers,

gary

The "o" in Mohn (= poppy) is pronounced pretty much like the long "o" in "home", as opposed to the short "o" in "rock" The "h" after a vowel lengthens the vowel.
Karin

Hmm. I grew up around Yiddish and Hebrew speakers and it was always pronounced as a short 'aw' sound. As in to rhyme with the French 'bonne' or 'comme'. Imagine the word 'born', but shortened to remove any trace of the 'r', so it sounds more like 'bohn'. In Hebrew, it's a vowel sound written as a vav with a dot on top. NOT the diphthong 'oh' (o + oo, which would make it sound like 'moan'), but a monophthong which is kind of an elision of both sounds (mohn).

Well, there appears to be the same differences of opinion regarding "mohn" as there are for how to pronounce "pecan". Those differences are, of course moot, as my pronunciation is the correct pronunciation. :D

I will allow these variations to dance on my tongue until one or another takes up residence.  Thanks to each of you.

gary

Guys, I don't want to argue with you, but whether incorporated into Yiddish or not - " Mohn" is a German word, and pronouncing it with a short "o" is for me as a German just weird.
Karin

So, I finally uploaded the pictures of the Mohn bars I made for this bake. I think these have serious potential. We liked how the poppy-seed topping almost became a toffee during the baking process, and the flavor profile is promising. However, I think we got rancid poppyseeds because they were very bitter. I'm not sure how to source poppy seeds -- this recipe calls for a lot and I have limited options for purchasing them in bulk. We'll see if any of our local health-food stores sell them, refrigerated, in bulk.

I can say that the 1-2-3 dough was fantastic. We loved it. I'd never "broken" dough before and that was an experience in and of itself -- a good one. We'll definitely keep the 1-2-3 dough in rotation. I'm thinking of using it as a base for raspberry-streusel-bars.

Here's the photo of the Mohn bars. Will work on making the streusel topping less "giant clump of stuff" next time: