Sweet Memories

Yield: 1 Bundt cake, making 12 to 24 slices

My sister-in-law, who was 7 years old when I married her brother, had a recent craving for this bread, which I haven’t made since she was little — but it deserves a comeback.

3 cups all-purpose flour, preferably bleached

1 1/2 teaspoons salt, preferably fine sea salt

2 cups granulated sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons poppy seeds

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

3 large eggs

1 1/2 cups milk

2 sticks unsalted butter, melted, or 1 stick butter, melted, plus 1/2 cup canola oil

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract

Glaze:

1/4 cup orange juice

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Grease a 10-inch Bundt pan, and preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Whisk flour, salt, sugar, poppy seeds and baking powder together in a mixing bowl. Add eggs, milk, butter, vanilla and almond extracts. Beat for 1 minute with an electric mixer on medium speed.

Pour batter into Bundt pan and bake bread for 1 hour, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs clinging to it. Cool on a wire rack while you make the glaze.

In a small saucepan, heat all glaze ingredients, whisking, until sugar dissolves.

Invert bread onto a wire rack set over a baking sheet (or directly onto a serving plate). Slowly pour or brush the glaze over the bread; if you set it on a rack, you can scoop up the glaze from the baking sheet and brush it on the bread, rewarming it if needed.

As a child, I found snow days magical. A North Carolina dusting meant everyone stayed home, with my mother mixing up treats in the kitchen and my father guiding us on death-defying sled rides.

A good bit of that magic hit the snow with a plop 10 years ago, when my son was 6 months old. Blasted with a true blizzard, he and I were stuck indoors for a week. Unlike my sweet memories of my father and mother being home with us, I had a husband who was, indeed, home — and on the phone the whole time. Telecommuting kills snow days.

Unfortunately, the snow hit right as my son’s brain made a leap away from infant toys. A week inside with the same toys, over and over, each one holding his interest for about a minute, meant that at 3 p.m. I’d look at my watch and start the countdown to the end of my husband’s workday. At 3:15, I’d look again … and 3:20, and 3:25 …

As soon as that snow melted, I hit the toy stores like a mother gone mad.

This year’s snow, though, came Friday night, and at the end of my vicious virus. For the first time in years, my husband had sole snow duty. No standing in the snow watching my kids sled for the 100th time; I snuggled on the window seat instead to admire them.

I can’t sit still for long, though, so I started making preparations for the icy kids who would soon be thrashing their way out of snowsuits. Hot chocolate, of course. But after so long away from the kitchen, my fingers were itching to cook something special — so long as it was quick, as I still couldn’t breathe well enough to stay standing for long stretches. In such situations, don’t you, too, think of deep-frying?

Probably not … but what a shame. Quick, easy, inexpensive, and not messy if you do it right, frying flatters your diners. To them, it’s slightly exotic and  definitely a treat, a sure way to show your love.

Doughnuts often come to mind when I want something special, but they’re best when the dough is done ahead and chilled. I went with a thoroughly simple churros recipe, heated my oil in a cast-iron pot to 350 degrees (you can use any deep pot, and you rarely need as much oil as a recipe says — about 1 to 2 inches deep is plenty), piped in the batter, and fried the sticks for about 2 minutes. Rolled in cinnamon-sugar and dipped in hot chocolate, they were the perfect welcome for chilled children and a blessedly homebound husband.

Recipe: Churros

Yield: About 40

No fear of frying here: An easy batter, a deep pot, and a pastry bag are all you need. A candy/frying thermometer will make life easier, but you can do without it. Just set up your workspace ahead of time: Get the oil heating in the pot, with tongs and a pan lined with paper towels alongside, and a bowl of cinnamon sugar beside that. This recipe makes a lot of churros, and they don’t keep well (eat them the day they’re made). To cut the recipe in half, use 2 tablespoons cornstarch, and whisk up 1 egg and use about half of it (it’s OK if it’s not exact).

Canola oil

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 cup plus 3 tablespoons granulated sugar, divided

3 cups all-purpose flour, preferably unbleached

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/4 cup cornstarch

1 large egg

2 cups milk (any from skim to full-fat)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a deep pot or skillet (preferably cast-iron), heat 1 1/2 inches of oil on medium heat to 350 degrees.

Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, whisk together cinnamon and 1 cup sugar; set bowl near stove. In another medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, cornstarch, and 3 tablespoons sugar. In a measuring cup, whisk together egg, milk and vanilla; stir in to flour mixture just until well-combined.

Transfer batter to a pastry bag fitted with a large star or flower tip. When oil is at 350 degrees (if you don’t have a thermometer, toss in a pinch of flour. If it sizzles but doesn’t burn, you’re at the right temperature.), squeeze sticks of batter out in about 5-inch lengths, cutting them off at the pastry tip with a table knife.  Don’t overfill the pan; cook about five at a time. Fry about 2 min, until golden; remove with tongs to paper towels, then roll in cinnamon-sugar.

For me, ginger ale equals comfort. As children, my sister and I rarely got to drink cokes (as we call any soda in the South, i.e., “You want a coke with that? What kind, root beer, Cheerwine, Sprite?”). We had two chances: illness and travel, both thanks to my father.

Daddy, a Nebraskan of German descent, seems made up of opposites. A tall, imposing man, one look from him, one “Sharon Lynn!” could set me to quaking, knowing I’d disappointed him. He’s also totally silly, eminently huggable, and, relatively speaking, the pushover of my parents.

My mind’s picture of my father always has him in a coat and tie, even though he wears those far less often now. As I drive around my university town, I’m struck by how casual professors look (and much less impressive), compared to my father in his teaching days. Even in a simple sweater and slacks, he still seems to loom over me and my children — and still reduces them to giggles with some silly turn of a phrase.

Whenever I got sick, I knew I’d get sympathy from Daddy. (My mother, also loving and caring, knew where to draw the line when we started milking an illness a bit too much.) He’d buy me a bottle of ginger ale, hold my forehead in his big hand, and soothe me with his presence.

And when it came time to load up the camper for a trip, we knew he’d come through with 7-Up. It was never as good, though, as the ginger ale.

These days, I drink it on two similar occasions: on an airplane, and when ill. And, socked with a knockout virus the past two weeks, I’ve been drinking gobs of ginger ale. Oddly, it’s one of the few foods that still tastes right to me.

Before I grasped just how sick I was, I got a cappuccino on a “coffee date” with my son. It was, I thought, the worst cup I’d ever had. Days later, I realized my tongue was the problem: The pancakes I made when I started to feel better seemed chemical-bitter and salty, clementines tasted tinny, an attempt at a burger was simply bizarre, and blueberries, which my children downed by the bowlfuls, felt flat and astringent.

But oh, the ginger ale. I think I’ve survived on that 2-liter bottle, cold, tingly and rightly flavorful. All I’ve missed is Daddy’s hand on my forehead.

Seeing the light at the end of the viral tunnel, I’m determined, as soon as I can stop my weeble-wobble imitation, to get some ginger syrup in the fridge. I’ve loved my Canada Dry, but even better is fresh ginger syrup and a bottle of club soda. Homemade “ginger ale” from those two, plus a squirt of lemon or lime juice, really will cure what ails me.

Recipe: Ginger Syrup

Tell me: What’s your illness comfort food?

You’ll find this base, nothing more than a ginger-flavored simple syrup, tastes great in all sorts of drinks; it’s also nice brushed on to hot candied-ginger muffins. If you have easy access to an Asian market, get your ginger there. The quick turnover gives you a better chance of getting fresh, juicy ginger.

Yield: About 3 1/2 cups

About 1/2 pound ginger

2 cups sugar

3 cups water

Peel and slice the ginger about 1/4″ thick (this doesn’t need to be exact). Turn your knife on its side over the ginger and bang on it with your fist to smash the ginger slightly.

In a medium saucepan, bring the suga, water and ginger to a simmer, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Keep at a fairly fast simmer for 20 minutes. Strain and chill.

To make ginger ale, mix syrup to taste with chilled club soda and a squirt or two of lime or lemon juice.

Question: I read your recipe for sourdough sandwich bread, but I want to make something faster. What about the new 5-minute recipes?

Answer: I like the 5-minute recipes for some things, but I don’t think they’re a single solution to all my bread needs. (The 5-minute recipes call for stirring a very wet dough together, letting it rise for several hours, and then chilling it for several hours to several days before shaping and baking it. You never have to knead the dough, and its flavor develops slowly as it chills.) I find them better for what I think of as supper breads — rustic loaves with an open crumb (that is, very holey inside) and a great crust. They also work well for pita and lavash. I’ve used them for pizza, but have other recipes I like better. For sandwich breads, so far I’ve found the loaves a little lean and a little hard to shape, though I may experiment with them some more. Meanwhile, here’s the recipe for a very basic sandwich bread that I always used until I came across the sourdough version.

Yield: 2 8-by-4-inch loaves

This was my standard, easy sandwich bread for years. Below, I’ve also listed the quantities for 3 loaves, or 2 9-by-5-inch loaves (you need 3 1/2 cups minimum of flour for a 9-by-5 loaf). To make it more nutritious, substitute white whole wheat flour for some of the all-purpose; this flour maintains the slightly sweet, creamy crumb I want from white bread. You can sub up to about 2 cups of white wheat flour. Also, I often use dry milk powder for the milk, mixing it with hot water and the butter  — easy and cheap.

5 to 5 1/2 cups all-purpose, unbleached flour

1/4 cup granulated sugar

2 teaspoons instant dry yeast

2 teaspoons fine sea salt

2 cups milk

1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter or vegetable oil

In a large bowl, whisk together 5 cups flour flour, sugar, yeast and salt. Heat milk with butter to 120 degrees (butter doesn’t need to melt; if you use oil, just add it to heated milk). Stir into flour mixture until you get a shaggy dough. Knead dough, using a mixer’s dough hook on medium speed for about 4 minutes, or by hand for about 10 minutes, until dough is smooth and elastic. Add remaining 1/2 cup flour if  needed while you knead, but keep dough as moist as possible. Cover with a piece of greased plastic wrap pressed directly to the surface of the dough and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour. If your kitchen is quite chilly, put the dough in a cold oven with a small pot of boiling water.

When dough has doubled (a finger pressed gently into dough will leave an indentation that will not spring back), gently press it down, divide into two pieces, and shape into loaves. To shape, press dough into a rectangle, fold into thirds like a letter, turn a quarter-turn, and fold in half, pinching the bottom seam together. Gently press and roll each loaf until it fits, seam-side down, into greased 8-by-4-inch loaf pans. Cover with greased plastic wrap and let rise until almost doubled.

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bake loaves for 30 minutes, until the bread sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. Turn loaves out of pans and cool on a wire rack.

This bread also takes well to various add-ins — make it into cinnamon-raisin bread, or add dried cranberries or herbs, or shape it into small rolls.

Proportions for 2 9-by-5-inch loaves, or 3 8-by-4-inch loaves:

7 1/2 cups all-purpose, unbleached flour

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1 tablespoon instant dry yeast

1 tablespoon fine sea salt

3 cups milk

1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter or vegetable oil

I’m in mourning for the RV I never had.
In my life, I’ve been the owner of two high-top conversion vans, both of which I adored despite their endless technical problems and the fact that the front seats are so far apart, I couldn’t drive and hold hands with my husband at the same time. My first van had a back bench seat that folded into a bed, and a little table between the bench and the captain’s chairs, which swiveled to face the bench for thoroughly delightful car picnics with my baby boy.
They didn’t hold a candle, though, to the camper I grew up with: the same size as my vans, but with a little kitchen, a hammock that folded out from the ceiling for my sister’s bed, storage for all sorts of playing-house sets of camping dishes and percolators and mugs, and a back bench with a huge table that folded down in front of it for card games. That bench folded out into a snuggly soft bed, and in the glory days of no carseats or seatbelts, my sister and I would climb in on the way back from trips to the mountains or Washington, tell ghost stories, and fall asleep to the gentle rocking and the roar of the wind (this because of the campers one downside — no air conditioning).
That camper left me with a lifelong desperate need to travel. Go too long without getting out of town and I get really cranky, especially because we live in a fairly small town. A marathon trip last summer, finally undertaken after years of waiting for my baby to get old enough to remember it, filled me up for a while, and I thought I’d be fine this summer with smaller trips to the beach and mountains. As the end of summer loomed, though, my version of restless leg syndrome kicked in, and I started trawling travel guides for day trips.
The first took us to Bailey, a small town east of Raleigh, home of the Country Doctor Museum (and, charmingly, not much else). There we saw the implements of well-intentioned torture from a century ago, from live leeches to a Civil War doctor’s saw. A few of the implements, though, I didn’t actually see — just the docent’s description of the tooth-pullers was plenty.
On the way home, we stopped in Raleigh for ice cream in the old Wonder Bread bakery building, where I had to explain to the kids what squishy white bread is.
Somewhere in between those two — squishy and tooth-pulling — is how I like my bread (bet you didn’t see this story getting around to that!). To my mind, too many bread-bakers today confuse “artisan” with those old pliers that would, the docent said, sometimes fail to finish the job, leaving you with snapped-off tooth stem.
That’s led to my continuing quest for perfect bread, both sandwich bread and what I think of as supper bread — any loaf that I wouldn’t use for the kids’ pb&j. I’ve gone through multiple sourdough phases, with all sorts of starters; trendy five-minute artisan loaves (which take just a few minutes to mix and shape); food-processor dough; by-hand, long-kneaded loaves; and endless recipes for perfect focaccia. The only thing missing from my attempts has been anything with a bread machine, as I’ve never owned one.
I love the concept of having a sourdough starter in my fridge, but I’ve always disliked the tyranny of sourdough, demanding to be fed and used every few days. My current starter, though, has taken to long stretches in the back of the fridge with equanimity, never turning or going too sour on me.
Funny, though, that I’ve never bothered to attempt an actual loaf of sourdough bread, chewy and “artisanal,” with this starter. It’s intended instead for sandwich bread, and for that it has proved pretty terrific. I found the recipe on the message board at the website for King Arthur flour (the website is well-stocked with terrific, well-tested recipes, and some of the member recipes on the message board have been great). Because I make all the sandwich bread we eat, I look for recipes I can make in bulk, giving me a month’s worth of bread to freeze.
That stocked freezer, of course, also makes day trips easy … and a camper, if I ever get one again, would be the perfect spot for a loaf or two of bread, sliced and toasted on top of the little stove, spread with jam and eaten on the back bed before a lulling ride home.
Recipe: Buttermilk Sourdough Sandwich Bread

Yield: 3 8-by-4-inch loaves

Read this recipe all the way through before beginning if you’ve never made sourdough before. It’s truly easy, but there are multiple steps to follow. You’ll first make a starter, wait a week, then pull the starter from the fridge, add buttermilk and flour, and let it stand overnight before mixing up your bread dough. After that, whenever you want to make bread, you’ll have starter in the fridge but will always need to begin at least eight hours before wth the addition of buttermilk and flour (this is “feeding” your starter).

This starter cheats and uses instant yeast, rather than capturing wild yeasts from the air. I have made wild yeast starters before and find it very satisfying, but I’m also perfectly happy to cheat. This one keeps very well in the fridge, ignored for weeks at a time.

Once I had made the recipe as printed below a few times, I fed my starter 3 cups of buttermilk and 3 cups of flour, so I could increase the total amount. Then I pulled out 4 cups at one go to make a very big batch of bread (not that I kneaded all the bread at once — I mixed up separate bowls of dough). You don’t need to go for that quantity, of course — just know that it’s OK to remove more than 2 cups starter at a time if you’ve given it a little extra food. It can feel like starters have so many rules to follow, but really, it’s fairly flexible stuff.

You can knead this dough by hand. I prefer to split the recipe between two bowls and let my stand mixer do the work (even a heavy-duty KitchenAid can’t happily handle 10 cups of flour at a time, though I do ask it to from time to time).

You can use this starter in other recipes calling for a sourdough starter (though it’s not particularly sour). Just feed it the 2 cups buttermilk and 2 cups flour and let it stand overnight before removing the amount the recipe calls for.

This recipe, with my adaptations, came from the message board at the website for King Arthur flour.

First, make starter:

Do this one week ahead of time (you’ll do this just once, not every time you want to make bread):

3 cups buttermilk (preferably low-fat or full-fat)

3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons instant yeast

1/4 cup honey

In the morning, in a large plastic or glass container, thoroughly mix all ingredients together and let them stand, loosely covered, at room temperature. I use a 1-gallon plastic pitcher with a lid. Check the starter several times during the day, stirring it down when it’s gotten very bubbly so it can rise again. That night, cover and refrigerate it. Check it for the next week, stirring down as needed. Then continue with the recipe below.

Buttermilk Sourdough Sandwich Bread

At least 8 hours before you want to make bread:

2 cups buttermilk

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

Sourdough starter, above

Remove the starter from the fridge. If it has liquid sitting on top, stir it in. (If you haven’t used the starter for some time, just give it a sniff; it should smell sour but still pleasant. If it smells like nail-polish remover, you’ll have to toss it — but this has never happened to me.) Stir in the buttermilk and flour and let stand overnight or at least 8 hours at room temperature, until bubbly. When you’re ready to bake, remove 2 cups starter (this is the “refreshed” or “fed” starter) and return the rest to the fridge, covered.

To make bread:

2 cups refreshed sourdough starter, above

3 cups milk, warmed to 110 degrees (or mix together dry milk powder and warm water)

1/2 cup (1 stick) melted butter or vegetable oil

1/3 cup honey

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon fine sea salt

2 teaspoons instant yeast

About 10 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, or more as needed

In  a large bowl (or two stand mixer bowls), stir all ingredients together until well mixed. Loosely cover and let stand for 15 minutes, then knead, adding flour as needed to make a soft dough,  for 10 minutes, until smooth and elastic; place in a clean bowl to rise. With a mixer, knead with the dough hook for 7 minutes on speed 5, adding flour as needed — don’t let the dough get too stiff. Cover dough with a piece of greased plastic wrap, pressed directly on the dough, and let rise until doubled. If your kitchen is very cold, let the dough rise in a cold oven with a small pan of water that’s been brought to a boil.

When dough has risen (a finger pressed into the dough should leave an indentation that does not spring back), gently press it down, divide into three pieces, and shape into loaves. To shape, press dough into a rectangle, fold into thirds like a letter, turn a quarter-turn, and fold in half, pinching the bottom seam together. Gently press and roll each loaf until it fits, seam-side down, into greased 8-by-4-inch loaf pans. Cover with greased plastic wrap and let rise until almost doubled.

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake loaves for 35 to 40 minutes, until golden brown on top and bottom. A loaf should sound hollow when you rap on the bottom.  Remove from pans and let cool on wire racks.

This recipe also takes well to add-ins, such as a cinnamon-sugar swirl, raisins, dried cranberries, or minced herbs. If you like, you can brush the tops with a bit of melted butter when the loaves come out of the oven.

When we built our house, I dreamed of a large pantry with neat shelves stocked with my jars, and a freezer with shelves neatly organized and labeled. I got the large pantry. Got the shelves stocked (not always so neatly) with jars of applesauce,tomato sauce, pickles, chowchow and jam experiments to get us through the winter. Got the freezer. Sure didn’t get the freezer neatly organized.

Every few days, it seems, I shuffle things around to fit in a cake I need to freeze before frosting it, or a batch of cookies for lunchboxes, or the big bags of blueberries I froze at the height of the season. The hidden blessing? Nothing stays hidden. I may not know which shelf something is on, but because I keep having to move things, I’m constantly reminded of what’s there.

That led me last weekend to use the final bag of pie dough I still had lurking; I’d been saving it, but I needed the space. Thawed in the fridge, two rounds of dough awaited me the next morning when I wanted something sweet and special for a Saturday breakfast. On the counter, bags of apples from my latest over-enthusiastic trip to the farmers market awaited. (How does anyone resist all those apples? Every time I go, it seems, little signs tempt me with five new-to-me varieties to take home and test.)

Still, though, it was Saturday morning, and I wanted to jump from the dough-in-the-fridge stage straight to the coffee-and-a-hot-slice stage. This did not call for complicated ideas.

Thus, a few sliced apples and two roughly rolled-out pie discs later, I had a tart. I highly recommend this for showing your family some love, and if you’re lucky, your child will want to make this with you. Let her. It means more flour on the floor, but next time, with a little pre-made dough, who’s to say she won’t just make the whole thing for you?

Here’s the plan: Put a dough round on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet, top it with cinnamon sugar mixed with a bit of flour, scatter on some apples (or, if you’ve had your coffee already, neatly arrange them), and lay on another dough round. Press the edges together with a fork, cut a few slits in the top, and sling that sheet into a hot oven. Make coffee. Read the paper. Turn the oven down after 15 minutes. Drink more coffee. Play canasta with your kids. Eat tart. Get sticky thank-you kisses. And re-arrange your freezer — surely there’s some hidden dough in there for Sunday.

Recipe: Apple Tart