Lemon Pistachio Biscotti

For the last month, I've been working at a bakery a few days a week as a temporary helper during the holiday season. The existence of this very blog would attest: this is the realization of a small but very persistent dream of mine. And even with the heavy pans and sore feet and pounds and pounds of bread dough to cut and knead, bake and bag, I have yet to become disenchanted.

When there's five of us standing around the long kneading table, pushing dough and watching snow fall out the front windows, I don't think of what I'm doing as work. The world beyond the arched wood rafters of the bakery fades, and I lose sense of passing time. But I do wonder: would I feel the same if I did this every day?

Last week my mom and sister and I had our annual Christmas bake. I took charge of the biscotti, those dry, crunchy Italian cookies that are made for dipping in coffee. The process for these is rather drawn out compared to other cookies, as one batch hits the oven three separate times before it's done. I may have considered this a rather tiresome to-do had I not helped bake, slice, and package hundreds of biscotti just a few days prior. Woah, perspective.

At the bakery, each of these biscotti slabs is about the size of an eight-month-old. We cut into them with long bread knives on extra large cutting boards before laying the oblong cookies on their sides and sliding them back into the rotating rack oven. Halfway through the second bake, we stand at its hot open mouth and burn our fingers flipping each cookie.

And I'm hardly complaining. I think I could be happy in a bakery, making my living -- day after day, year after year -- among chocolate chips and the smell of warm bread. But if I had to choose between baking by trade or baking by hobby, I feel quite certain of which I'd pick.

I want to bake in small batches. I want to cut my small biscotti on a small cutting board with a small serrated knife, and I want to pull them from the oven as Johnny Mathis sings to us through the record player. I want to look out the window and see pine trees. And I want to finish the cookies by lamplight because the sky is swimming with gray clouds -- or in this case, fog.

If I had to choose, that's what I'd choose.

Apple cinnamon coffee cake

It's November. The day is new, the kitchen is cool and morning-lit, and there's a 15-inch roll of sweet dough spiraled around an apple marinade of brown sugar, cinnamon, butter, walnuts, and lemon juice, risen and ready for the oven.

And I'm sick.

I have a nose stuffed to capacity with who knows what (I guess I know what) and a cough that won't quit. But what am I to do? 

The coffee cake is waiting.

I brush some melted butter over the dough and make up a small bowl of sugar and cinnamon. My intention is to recreate the crust of my beloved cinnamon rolls that owe their glory to those three ingredients. I lift the bowl to my nose to see if I added enough cinnamon, and that's when I realize my handicap. I can't smell a thing.

I look at the apple-cinnamon-sugar-nut parcel that's about to be treated with the baker's trinity and sent to tenderize and bubble and caramelize in a 350 degree oven, after which it will cool off and get sliced and I'll have nothing to do but get lost in the turns of bread and filling because  I can't taste a thing.

I snap out of my sickly torment. What can be done?
The coffee cake is waiting.

Into the oven it goes. See you in thirty minutes.

But not two minutes go by and it takes me by surprise. Melting cinnamon and sugar, ever so briefly. In my nose! A second later, it's gone. It returns in fleeting waves, penetrating the unwelcome monster in my nasal cavity and greeting my olfactory receptors like an old friend. So nice to see you again.

Thirty minutes later it's out of the oven, and the cinnamon sugar runs rampant. I don't mind. Run along, I say.

It runs across the parchment paper. It runs to the corners of the apartment.

The apple filling is creeping out of the slits in the dough, and the just-from-the-oven warmth will only last so long. I know I won't pick up the more delicate suggestions of my morning treat, but there is nothing more that I can do.

The coffee cake is waiting.

Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread

I've been doing a lot of business talk. And cupcake talk, and vetting cupcakes for the business talk. It's exciting stuff, indeed. But we must continue to practice that part of baking dearest to us: the one that leads not to publicity, or profit, or a bakery, or even a blog post - but to comfort, and catharsis, and aesthetics; to uninhibited indulgence; to a warm oven and the smell of melting brown sugar and chocolate on a rainy evening; and in this case, to the unmistakable current of caramelizing cinnamon and sugar, slowly filling our fall morning.

This is why we bake.

So let's regroup with some bread.

After some basic sweet dough preparation, this process gets fun. The dough is rolled thin and coated generously with butter, cinnamon, and sugar. Then it's sliced into strips that are stacked and sectioned. Those sections are placed in a bread pan to rise.

Each individual slice does its own thing in the oven. Some recede into the pan, others tower over the runts; some lose themselves in the loaf and become indistinguishable from the rest; and yet others push hard to set themselves apart from the group. I'd imagine putting a pan of these little dough squares in the oven is much like sending your kids off to school. You've done your best to shape them, and now you've got to let them grow. As their parent, of course, you love them all the same, and will eat them indiscriminately.

Warning: it's hard to quit with these things. Every slice is different from the last and appetizing in its own unique way. Your mental workings go something like this:

"Okay, last piece."

[Eats slice]

"Oh, look at this one! Okay, last piece."

This could easily go on until the loaf is gone, so watch it. I managed to freeze a third of the loaf, and it reheats beautifully. But really, if you eat it all and you feel warm and full and happy, then well done to you.

After all, that's why we bake.

Petit Pain au Chocolat

Chocolate-filled rolls: that was my next bread endeavor. I had my own illusions for what they would be like; I had experienced similar pastries at PAUL in London and at a tiny patisserie in the boulanger's promised land itself: France. It was there that I double-fisted a croissant and a pain au chocolat and discovered the ambrosial apex of the bread and chocolate rendezvous. So when I began my petits pains, I imagined soft semi-sweet chocolate enveloped in warm, buttery croissant-like bread. But the recipe didn't call for croissant dough - rather, I was to prepare brioche dough.

We made the dough the night before because brioche dough must be chilled when you work with it. It's a beautiful, sticky rich dough, thanks to five eggs and two sticks of butter.

After all the flour is added the dough is still sticky and in no shape for kneading. So instead of the push-turn-pull, B.C. introduced us to the pull-and-throw. Grab the dough in one hand, pull a large handful of it about 14" above the bowl, then throw it back "with considerable force." At first the action seemed futile - the dough was sticky and uncooperative - but it quickly became malleable. The gluten strands became stronger and more resilient with each throw, delivering a before-the-eyes demonstration of dough's metamorphosis.

 My mom and I gave the dough hell for twenty minutes (tag-teaming at five-minute intervals - not easy work!) then gave it a well-deserved three hour rest in front of the fire before stirring it down and putting it to rest in the fridge overnight.

The next day we found our dough refreshed and raring to be rolled out. It wasn't entirely easy, though. It took a bit of patience and a lot of flour to coax the dough into the specified length, width, and thickness. Don't be fooled by the photo - it looks so agreeable, doesn't it?

And now we really have fun. Enter chocolat.

After the chocolate is nestled inside and the brioche pinched shut, an egg and milk bath sets them up for a deep golden brown finish.

No, they didn't taste like my pains au chocolat from London and Paris - they didn't even look like them. But I have to respect brioche dough and how it comes to be, and I have to respect that, alas, I'm not a French baker - yet.

Croissants to come.

My First Loaf

All right, I have some news: I am no longer going to baking school. After much debate I officially withdrew last week. To be completely vague, it just didn't feel right at this point in my life. One of the nagging, recurring thoughts during my weeks-long deliberation: You started a blog about going to baking school! What now?

Well, it's really not too difficult: I keep baking. My goal to be a baker remains intact, and so will this blog. My latest undertaking? Yeast bread.

I received Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads as a Christmas gift a few years ago, and have only now found myself rich with the time and brain space it takes to start learning bread - from scratch. I read the introduction about Bernard's take on bread baking; I read through the ingredients and their functions; I read about equipment, leavening agents, kneading and rising. Then I had my pick of hundreds of recipes. Where would I begin my foray with bread? B.C. contributes his own suggestion for the first loaf, but I wasn't having it. I skimmed the table of contents and found the winner under French and Italian Breads: Pain Ordinaire Careme it would be.

The series began with stirring the flour, yeast, and hot water together, a movement all too familiar. Then I added more flour and the batter became dough; it was time to ditch the whisk and acquaint my hands with the tactual world of kneading. Why, there's nothing quite like working with bread dough. It's soft and giving, but it won't yield completely. Mere seconds into the push-turn-fold, push-turn-fold of kneading, the dough begins to push back, reminding me that I'm not the only force at work here. There's a presence in the dough, and it's got a small agenda of its own; whether or not it aligns with my plan is left at the mercy of a few controllable factors and a few uncontrollable ones, too. I lack the erudition required to explore those things you can attempt to control, but I can leave you with a suggested frame of mind for baking bread: don't let the active, dominating motions of kneading fool you; the transformation dough goes through to become bread is its own - you're just there to lend a hand.