Which Peter Reinhart book?

If you like cranberries, you must try the Cranberry Walnut bread.  I'm making several in time for Thanksgiving on Thursday. It's fantastic.  I never braid it; there are too many cranberries to make it easy to braid, but it works well as a sandwich bread, too.

SOL

Could you supply us with a genuine speculaas recipe please. The recipe I have is nice but it came from a wonan's mag from down under, so it may have been modified to suit Antipodean tastes!

Oh yes, and the loaf is very more-ish and delicate.M

Cassonade looks like what we call raw sugar (wish my French was better) which is probably white sugar mixed with a brown syrup here. I'll use a speculaas spice mix but the baking soda will make all the difference to the product. M

Gosh it's so festive around here! Bart, I'm not even fond of raisins, but this looks delicious.

That is very interesting to learn that you've managed to live however long without cinnamon bread. In the U.S. at least, many of us grew up eating toast sprinkled with cinnamon sugar for breakfast or for snacks.

Hello Bart,
When i have previously made speculaas I have used a Dutch speculaas spice mix recipe which includes cinnamon, mixed spice, ginger and cardamom. This mixture gives the biscuits a unique flavour. My recipe didn't have any raising agent which I had thought might have been the Dutch way of baking them, but the addition of baking soda, as in [your recipe, will improve them a lot. When I have made them before I have drizzled a runny icing over them flavoured with vanilla and cinnamon oil. M

Hello Bart,
Actually i'm in New Zealand. Alkali would be translated as baking soda here (sodium bicarbonate). I make my own spice mix because in no way would you find such here. I have several recipes for speculaas spice mixes but the one with cardamom is my favourite. The recipe sources were Australian and it mystfies me that in each recipe there was no mention of a raising agent. I used a cookie cutter rather than a mould. i'll give them another go now that I know they are meant to have a raising agent in them. M

Hi, Bart.

PR's cinnamon, raisin, walnut bread is about the only straight dough bread I bake. My wife loves it so much, she has even made it herself! (The only bread she's baked in the past 30 years.)

I know that shop in Brussels! It's the one with a big display of antique speculaas forms, including some that are hundreds of years old, right? About 20-30 meters off the main square. Some of the forms are immense! I may have some photos of the shop.

Thanks for the recipe. I'm going to try these without forms, because I don't have any. It will be a big surprise for my wife, who loves them.

David

Oh Bart !,
I haven't made any speculaas up til now as i previously indicated, but with my cafe in low gear, being winter/spring, I intend to try your recipe this week. I have to use a cookie cutter as I have no knowledge about the 'forms'[ you and David use. I have some sort of "op art" cookie cutters which give the speculaas ( as tried before with a different recipe) an eye-catching appeal (which is necessary for some of my rather conservative customers).
I guess the flavour of the spices I use over here would not compare with what you are familiar with, but for New Zealanders (I hate the word 'Kiwis' as the birds are diminishing in numbers) the combination is more exotic than what is usually used in baking here. M

Hi Bart.,
Yes, I made speculaas for the cafe using the strange shaped cutters I had and we finished them off with thin multiple stripes of piped chocolate and white icing flavoured with vanilla and cinnamon oil. My customers were a bit wary of them at first (probably because of the Dutch spelling) but they (the speculaas) went in the end. The biscuits looked beautiful. Sorry no photo yet to put up - I have not yet mastered that skill; being a child of the 40's and technophobic- but will get my son to show me some time soon! M