Banana nut bread

I know I haven't updated this blog in forever - not because I haven't been cooking and eating lots of delicious things, but just because I've been so busy with other stuff like studying, dancing, and traveling! However, the second I bit into this bread/cake I knew I had to post the recipe, if only so that I can remember it to make it again!

And again and again and again...


For some reason, I've suddenly started making all sorts of American dishes that I've never made even once in my life before. I suppose it all started a couple weeks ago when an Italian friend asked me for a recipe for chocolate chip cookies (which I have made, plenty of times) and followed up with a request for a recipe for brownies (which I never have made, not even once). I immediately emailed my mom for both recipes and, as I was translating them into Italian, I thought "hmmm, these sound really good..." and a few days later, there I was, scouting out my local grocery store for baking chocolate, butter, and vanilla extract!

The banana bread was even less planned than the brownies, but several days ago my housemate bequeathed a couple of medium-ripe bananas on me, and as I already had several bananas of my own, the obvious solution was to wait a few days for these new bananas to get super-ripe and then turn them into delicious banana bread! Having never baked banana bread before, I scouted around for some recipes, and finally settled on a recipe by David Lebovitz, which I then tweaked quite a bit to fit my tastes/available culinary options! The original recipe can be found here. My own version is given below. It's a bit breadier than most (uses whole wheat flour, yogurt, etc.), but it still tastes quite sweet, and the nutmeg really adds a kick.

Ingredients:
2 very ripe bananas
125 g. cake flour
125 g. whole wheat flour
125 g. sugar
A largish spoonful of vanilla sugar
A small spoonful of salt
A small spoonful of baking soda
A spoonful of baking powder
175 g. plain, whole milk yogurt
50 g. unsalted butter + extra for buttering the pan
2 eggs
75 g. walnuts
Half a nutmeg
A spoonful of cinnamon

Leave the eggs out until they are at room temperature. Then preheat the oven to 180º C / 355 º F, and butter a loaf pan.

Melt the 50 g. butter and let cool a bit. Grind the nutmeg, and sift together the two flours, the salt, the baking powder, the baking soda, the nutmeg, and the cinnamon. Stir the sugar and the vanilla sugar into this mixture.

Chop the walnuts into small bits and mash up the bananas until they are very soft. Beat the eggs and combine them with the melted butter, the yogurt and the bananas. Stir the liquid ingredients together thoroughly, and then make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients, stirring until just combined but no longer (until you can no longer see any bits of flour or anything). Stir in the walnuts, and spread the whole mixture into the loaf pan.

Bake for 40-45 minutes until the top is browned and a fork stuck into the middle comes out clean. Let cool and then eat!

Muhammara

When it comes to dips, you really can't beat Middle Eastern cuisine. With their rich tradition of appetizers (meze), the countries of the Middle East have come up with a huge collection of fantastic foods to put on a pita - hummus, tzatziki, baba ghanoush, skordalia, and on and on... Muhammara is yet another one of these dips: a delicious combination of red peppers and walnuts that is perfect to make now as red peppers are just coming into season.


Though it's a bit labor-involved if you don't have a food processor, muhammara keeps really well, so I usually just make a ton and freeze the stuff I don't eat in a few days. Before you eat it, just move it to the refrigerator a day before. It's wonderful to make some in the fall and then enjoy it in the middle of winter when you've all but forgotten how a good pepper tastes!

Ingredients:
4 large red bell peppers
250 g. walnuts
A spoonful of cumin seeds
A couple cloves of garlic
Lemon juice from half a lemon
A few spoonfuls of olive oil
Salt
Hot pepper flakes
Pomegranate molasses

Preheat the oven to 350º F / 180º C. Wash the peppers, cut off the stems, and remove the seeds and white bits as best you can without actually cutting into the peppers. Roast the peppers in the oven for about 45 minutes, giving them a quarter turn approximately every 10 minutes, until the skins are all black and blistered. Remove the peppers from the oven and let cool.

Toast the cumin seeds and then separately toast the walnuts. Peel the garlic cloves and, using a mortar and pestle if possible, crush them together with the salt and the cumin seeds until you get a brownish paste.

Peel the peppers, and scrape away any remaining white bits or seeds. If using a food processor, combine the peppers with the walnuts, garlic-cumin mixture, pepper flakes, lemon juice, olive oil, and pomegranate molasses, and process away.

If making muhammara the old-fashioned way, grind the walnuts and the peppers separately by pounding down on them with a potato masher for a very very long time. Then add the peppers to the walnuts, pound a bit more, and stir in the garlic-cumin mixture, pepper flakes, lemon juice, olive oil, and pomegranate molasses. Taste and make any necessary seasoning adjustments.

Cover the muhammara well and refrigerate for at least an hour - it's better to make this a day in advance though, so the flavors have time to really blend. When it's ready, serve with pita or other bread.

Sourdough walnut bread

Though I'm not a big fan of walnuts per se, I adore walnut bread - somehow the bread part manages to bring out the best of the walnuts and the walnuts bring out the best of the bread!


I've been baking a loaf or two of bread every week for awhile now, and though I try to vary it up from week to week with different types of bread, I've found that I just keep coming back to the walnut bread. I know it will be delicious, and I know I'll never get tired of it. The only downside to this bread is that it's so good that I hesitate to pile on lots of sandwich toppings because I'm afraid they'll drown out the flavor. In fact, this bread is fine to eat just by itself - add a bit of olive oil and salt and it's absolute heaven!

Ingredients:
350 g. whole wheat flour
150 g. bread flour
A spoonful of salt
A spoonful of olive oil
Half a cup of walnuts
Sourdough starter
Warm water (as much as is necessary)

Naturally, to make sourdough bread, you'll need to have some sourdough starter. If you don't have the time to make starter, I suppose you could just use yeast, but the starter really adds a wonderful flavor here, so I strongly advise you to make your own. Once you make a starter, you can keep it in the refrigerator for years, just feeding it with flour and water every so often, and it will only get better over time!

The method I've been employing to make my sourdough bread recently is to make the dough one evening, let it rise in the refrigerator overnight, and then give it a second rise and bake it the next day. While this does require a bit of planning ahead, it definitely improves the flavor of the bread, and I kind of like being able to spread out the bread-making over 2 days - that way I don't have to worry about not giving the dough enough time to rise.

So, if you want to follow that method, the day before you plan to bake your bread, make the dough. When I have time, I try to feed my sourdough starter about 5 hours before making the dough, so that I can build it up from roughly half a cup to almost a cup and a half - again, this is all with the aim of strengthening the flavor of the bread, and if you have time, I definitely recommend it.

Measure out your starter and add equal parts water and flour (I generally use whole wheat flour, but you can use any sort of wheat or rye flour), place in a covered container, and let sit several hours in a warmish place.

When you're ready to make your dough, mix together the two flours in a large bowl. Chop the walnuts into medium-small pieces and set aside. Prepare your kneading space by dusting with flour, and have a large cup of warm water ready. Also, just in case you forgot, make sure to remove any rings and watches, tie your hair up if it's long, and wear an apron (I know these are very basic bread-making tips, but I often forget at least one of these things until I'm already halfway through the dough-making and my hands are covered with flour, so I thought I'd include them here). The apron is not always necessary, but it's a good idea, especially if you're wearing dark clothing.

Measure out a quarter cup of the freshly fed starter, mix with a quarter cup of flour and a quarter cup of water, and return it to the refrigerator. The rest of the starter will go into the dough. Form the flour into a sort of well, and sprinkle the salt around the outside of the well. Pour the olive oil into the middle of the well, and then add in the starter. Incorporate the flour into the starter, starting from the inside and working your way out. Add water as needed, pouring in a bit and then mixing until the dough starts to become dry, and then adding more. Continue this way until all the flour has been incorporated into the starter and water, and you have a slightly wet, sticky dough.

Turn the dough out onto your floured board, and do something called "fraisage". I first read about this on the baking site The Fresh Loaf, and though it's generally recommended as a way to get flakier pastry crusts, it's featured in this video of Danielle Forestier showing Julia Child how to make french bread, and I've found that if nothing else, it cuts down on the kneading time. Probably improves the flavor too, but I haven't done any scientific experiments to determine that yet...

In any case, fraisage is just a technique in which you turn the dough out and then sort of stretch it all out. Place the palm of your hand in the center of the dough and then push it out towards the left end of the board. Repeat, only this time push out the dough at an angle slightly closer to the center, and continue pushing out the dough all around. After this, let the dough sit for a couple of minutes (you can use the time to wash any dishes that need it).

Once the dough has sat a bit, turn it out again, and knead for 5-10 minutes, until it is resistant when you push down on it. Fold in the walnuts by taking a few spoonfuls, placing them in the middle of the dough, folding the bottom of the dough over the top, giving the dough a quarter turn, and then pushing it down again. Repeat with another few spoonfuls of walnuts, and continue this way until you have used up all the walnuts. Then fold the right and left sides of the dough over into thirds, give the dough a quarter turn, and repeat.

Shape the dough into a ball and place in a floured bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit in the refrigerator overnight.

The next day, take the dough out of the refrigerator at least 2 hours before you want to bake it, more if possible. Because the dough will be cold, the second rise takes longer than it would if you had let the dough rise at room temperature - for that I generally give the dough a second rise of one hour, but here I aim for more like 3 hours.

Punch the dough down, and divide it into whatever shapes you want your final loaves to be. I went for two oval-shaped loaves this time.


Cover the dough with a well-floured cloth, and let rise for 2-3 hours. 45 minutes to an hour before baking, preheat your oven to 450º F / 235º C. If using a baking stone, make sure the baking stone is in the oven before you preheat it!

Just before baking, score the loaves, by making several deep cuts into the tops with a sharp knife or razor blade. Place in oven, and after about 5 minutes turn the heat down to 400º F / 205º C. Let bake another 20-30 minutes, remove from oven, and let cool.

Serve as a tartine, a sandwich, a complement to a meal, or simply on its own!