A Weekend of Gluten-Free Bread Baking

If there is one food other than eggs I love, it must be bread. When given the choice, growing up I always preferred a loaf of bread or a bocadillo over dessert. Pan con chocolate was always my favorite mid afternoon snack after school.

My mom or aunt or anyone who would pick us up from school in the afternoons, always had a loaf of bread stuffed with bars of chocolate inside. Sometimes even Nocilla, which was our version of Nutella.



Although I did have bread baking classes in culinary school, pastry chefs and bakers always had different roles in all the places I worked. Even rivalry at times. Bakers were super fast and sometimes even messy. Pastry cooks meticulous. (ok, I know I will get some grief by saying that!). Pastry was my love.

I did however go through a bread baking phase a few years ago. I became a bit obssessed with Peter Reinhart, Richard Bertinet and Ciril Hitz. I read and experimented at home.



Soon after that, C. also started experimenting with sourdough bread baking trying to emulate the taste of the northern California sourdough loaves he grew up eating. But recently all that came to a halt when we had to start living gluten free. I have had great gluten free bread before (particularly from this place), but apart from this, I had not been very successful at baking it at home.



A few days ago, my friend K. sent me a link to a recipe published in Body & Soul magazine. It was loaded with great grains and molasses. Not just plain rice flour, but millet, teff and quinoa (a substitution I made since I cannot have soy).

So this past Sunday morning, while I had the house all to myself, I decided to bake bread and play around with the recipe. I made different batches with raisins and pumpkin seeds, chocolate chips, and dried fig and walnut.



Nothing beats the smell of yeast fermenting and bread baking in the oven. This is a great basic recipe that can be adapted to add other flavors and textures. My freezer is now stocked up with bread and I will certainly be using this recipe again.

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A Weekend of Gluten-Free Bread Baking

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Dreaming of Paris, Croissants and Bonbon

Today I am a guest blogger at Deb's. She went to Paris for a little trip and all I wanted to do was to sneak in her luggage. I am dreaming of Paris, Spring, the last time I visited the city and the amazing croissants we had every morning for breakfast. Please visit here to read the full story.

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Dreaming of Paris, Croissants and Bonbon

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Rosca de Reyes and Galette des Rois

Holidays can be difficult for me since I am so far away from my family and many traditions that I miss. Although today is no longer a holiday in the US, it is a big day in many countries around the world. It is the last day of the Twelve Days of Christmas, also known as Epiphany.

On this day, we got to eat Rosca de Reyes, which is a brioche dough, that is shaped in a circle, topped with candied fruits and it comes with a surprise mini figurine inside. In our family, whoever got the slice of rosca with the figurine had to do the dishes for an entire day. It was a fun day that wrapped up the Christmas season.




A few years back, my French chef Sebastien introduced me to the "Galette Des Rois", which is a traditional tart composed of puff pastry and frangipane also eaten on Epiphany. I couldn't resist making this since I had some leftover puff pastry in the freezer. For the filling, I went with a pistachio frangipane because if you have not noticed, I have a bit of an obsession with pistachios.

My friend Helen told me that in the South of France where she is from, they also have a similar cake called "Couronne des Rois". Check out her version here.



This year, we celebrated Epiphany a few days early because life was going to go back to normal after a couple of busy weeks. A slice of sweet pastry and good coffee is all I really wanted.

For the recipes, please click on all the links I provided. I hope you are enjoying the new year!

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Rosca de Reyes and Galette des Rois

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Brioche, Burnt Milk Ice Cream and a Decadent Breakfast

In my family, we are known to indulge on breakfast once in a while. My grandfather was a man who enjoyed food. He liked to eat and he liked those around him to eat well. Because in the bakery work started around 4am, by the time doors opened around 9am and us children would go in, there were always eggs cooking, cheese, anchovies and so on. Worked stopped for a few minutes to enjoy a big breakfast in peace with a little cafe con leche and maybe a quick glance at the morning newspaper. I also clearly remember Christmas morning with cream cake and champagne. So big and sweet breakfasts are a tradition I have inherited.

During this last trip home, we drove all the way to San Sebastian partly to visit Galparsoro Okindegia. This little bakery located in the Parte Vieja (Old Town) has quickly become the most popular bread bakery in the Basque Country, supplying bread to all the Michelin Star restaurants such as Mugaritz, Martin Berasategui and more. They are known for their organic bread, but it was the brioche that stole my heart. It was buttery, tender, pulled away like a feather. Unreal.

It is moments like these when I am really inspired to create a dessert. I immediately thought of tostadas de pan (pain perdu or French Toast) with cinnamon and vanilla and paired with a burnt milk ice cream. This might sound like an unusual ice cream but it really represents very well the smells of a pastry kitchen. Slightly burnt and caramelized milk. It is unforgettable.



I have made brioche many times before and it is a favorite in my household. I have found that although most recipes tend to have the same ratio of ingredients, the procedures are often times different and in some cases elaborate. I am always intrigued by technique, so I set out to try a new recipe for brioche that I had not tried before. This time out of Rose Levy Beranbaum's "The Bread Bible".

The burnt milk ice cream is very light and it never really thickened much in the ice cream machine but once frozen, it was very, very silky. I suppose it resembles more a gelato than an ice cream since it contains mostly whole milk and just a small amount of heavy cream.



Basic Brioche

adapted from "The Bread Bible"

This dough takes between 24 and 48 hours to complete so have this in mind before starting. You will need a baking pan that is about 8"x4".

Dough Starter

30 grams water, at room temperature
13 grams sugar
1/4 tsp instant yeast
70 grams unbleached all purpose flour
1 large egg

Combine all ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer. Whip this mixture with a whisk by hand for about 3 minutes until a thick batter forms. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap while getting the following ingredients ready.

Flour Mixture

155 grams unbleached all purpose flour
25 grams sugar
4 grams instant yeast
3 grams salt
2 large eggs, cold
113 grams unsalted butter, at room temperature (very soft)

In a bowl, whisk the flour, sugar and instant yeast. Add the salt and mix. Sprinkle this flour mixture on top of the dough starter that is already in the mixer bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let this ferment at room temperature for about 1 1/2-2 hours. The dough starter might bubble in between the flour mixture and this is fine.

After this period of fermentation, transfer the bowl to the mixer. Add the 2 cold eggs and mix the dough with the dough hook for a couple of minutes in low speed until ingredients are well combined. Stop the mixer and scrape the sides of the bowl. Mix in medium to high speed for another 5 minutes until dough is silky.

Add the soft butter one tablespoon at a time and wait until the butter has been absorbed by the dough before adding the next tablespoon. The dough will be very sticky but don't add any flour.

Transfer the dough to a clean bowl that has been slightly greased. Cover with plastic wrap and let it ferment at room temperature for another 1 1/2-2 hours.

After this time, refrigerate the dough for an hour. Deflate the dough with a spatula and mix slightly. Cover the bowl again with plastic wrap and let it sit in the refrigerator for another hour.

Remove bowl from refrigerator and transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface. Deflate the dough with your hands and form a rectangle. The size of the rectangle doesn't really matter. Give it a letter fold. Turn the dough 90 degrees and give it another letter fold. Wrap the dough with plastic wrap and insert it in a large freezer bag. Refrigerate the dough for at least 6 hours or up to 2 days.

Remove dough from refrigerator. Transfer to a lightly floured surface and form a rectangle that is about 8"x5". Roll the dough forming a log. Seal the ends tightly with the palms of your hands. Place the dough in a lightly greased rectangular mold (8"x4") seam side down. Cover with plastic wrap and let it ferment for another 2 hours at room temperature.

Have the oven preheated to 350F for about 30 minutes prior to baking the brioche. When dough has doubled in size and has reached the top of the mold, brush with an egg glaze made with yolk and heavy cream. Cut the top of the dough with a sharp knife leaving about an inch on each side.

Bake in the preheated oven in a lower rack for approximately 35 minutes.

Burnt Milk Ice Cream

adapted from "Frozen Desserts"

900 grams whole milk
70 grams heavy cream
160 grams sugar
70 grams egg yolks

In a pan with tall sides, heat the whole milk with a quarter of the sugar in medium to high heat. The milk will start to stick to the bottom of the pan and may bubble up. This is fine and will give the milk its distinct flavor. If the milk starts to bubble over the pan, remove from heat and let the bubbles deflate. When it starts to smell like burnt milk, remove from heat and measure out 750 grams of the liquid.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the yolks, remaining sugar and heavy cream. Temper the hot milk into the base and whisk. Transfer the custard to a medium size pan and cook to 82C. Because there is not as much fat as in a creme anglaise, the custard will never really thicken or achieve the "nappe" so go by temperature.

Strain through a fine sieve into a clean bowl and chill in an ice bath. Refrigerate overnight and churn in ice cream machine.

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Brioche, Burnt Milk Ice Cream and a Decadent Breakfast

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A Gluten Free Daring Bakers... and a "Laster Arte"

Tomorrow my little boy and I will be hopping on a transatlantic plane on our way to Bilbao. We will be gone for two weeks, visiting family and friends.. eating, walking, conversing, playing and enjoying life. But before we leave, here is this month's Daring Bakers challenge. Challenge, it was. I decided to go ahead with the gluten free recipe and it took three attempts to get it right, but the end result was fantastic.

Although we had the option of taking a savory route, I decided to stick to my sweet side and sprinkled my crackers with cinnamon sugar. I also made a pear, fig and vanilla bean jelly to go with it and a baked pear custard to dip the crackers into.




For the recipes, please visit my friend Jill's blog where I post all my gluten free recipes. And a big thank you to Sheltie Girl of Gluten A Go Go and Shel of Musings from the Fishbowl for hosting this month's challenge and to see what other Daring Bakers' interpretations, please go here.

Laster arte and in the meantime, cook and eat well! See you soon!

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A Gluten Free Daring Bakers... and a "Laster Arte"

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Daring Bakers: Danish Braid and the Patience for Laminated Doughs

When I learned that this month's Daring Bakers Challenge was Danish dough, the first thought that went through my mind was, "how in the world am I going to be able to keep my son home for at least 4 hours straight so I can roll the dough?". And then my second thought was, "I better lower the air conditioning right now!". So yes, in that sense this was a true challenge.

It has been a while since I have made laminated doughs. As a matter of fact, I believe this is the first time that I have ever made laminated dough at home. Laminated doughs require a cold environment, cold surfaces and a long, long time. I had to reserve this task for a weekend so I could have some help with my little boy. He will not stay home all morning or afternoon so I can bake, so having an extra set of hands was crucial for me to finish this challenge.

Since timing is everything I decided to start about mid-afternoon so I could let the dough rest overnight and shape, proof and bake the following morning. It has been hot, hot, hot here lately so I had to make sure the air conditioning was turned down and that no cooking needed to be done while I was rolling the dough. I worked as quickly as I could and given that this was a small batch, it was not too terrible to handle. I remember the large batches of croissant dough that I had to make in past lives and that's when I really had to work fast so the dough never got warm. But I also had a sheeter back then.



This dough is soft and very, very aromatic with all that orange zest, vanilla bean and of course, cardammon. I struggled during the rolling process trying to keep the lock-in butter cold. It was getting sticky at times. Streching the dough so it relaxed was difficult because my hands were melting the butter a bit, but I finally made it.

I divided the dough in half and decided to make a large braid and some individual pastries. I filled the large braid with hazelnut frangipane and some black cherry preserves that I have from back home. With the other half of the dough, I made some mini cinnamon sugar snails that I topped with pistachio crumble and some frangipane diamonds that I topped with fresh strawberries.



Thank you very much to Kelly of Sass & Veracity and Ben of What’s Cookin’? for hosting this month's challenge. Please visit their blogs for the recipe. For other Daring Bakers' creations, please visit the Daring Bakers Blogroll.

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Daring Bakers: Danish Braid and the Patience for Laminated Doughs

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Black Cherry and Brioche Pudding Brulee

I am really getting anxious for summer to arrive so we can get some beautiful stone fruits in. I think stone fruits are my favorite fruits to bake with. Clafoutis, galettes, tarts, roasted, jams... Endless possibilities. But as they say, patience is a virtue and I think I still have a good couple of months before we start seeing sweet, juicy stone fruits in the markets.

A couple of weekends ago, I walked into Williams and Sonoma and found some sour cherries preserved in syrup. Score! They were quite expensive but these griottes are really worth every penny. So far, I have been eating them straight out of the jar but I must stop before I finish them all. I must get a few desserts out of this one jar! I had some brioche in the freezer so of course my first thought was to make bread pudding, and I did. This was my breakfast today. I couldn't resist!

I sprinkled the tops with some demerara sugar and burnt it with my super dooper blow torch. It adds a little crunch to the otherwise creamy pudding.













Black Cherry and Brioche Pudding

1 cup organic whole milk
1 cup organic heavy cream
100 grams sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
4 eggs
2 small brioche
1/2 cup black cherries in syrup, drained

Whisk together the milk, cream, eggs, sugar, vanilla extract and almond extract. Cut the brioche into medium size pieces and divide these with the drained cherries amongst your ramekins. Pour the custard on top of the brioche and cherries.

Place the ramekins on a sheetpan, bring this to the oven and pour hot water in the pan. Bake them in a 300 degree oven in a water bath for about 30 minutes or until the center is set.

Let them cool. Sprinkle demerara sugar on top and burn with a blow torch. Decorate with extra cherries on top. I had some creme anglaise left over from another baking project and I added a little bit of pistachio paste to serve alongside the pudding.







On another note, I might have a special guest blogger visit me tomorrow. I am so excited! I don't want to reveal too much in case we cannot get to do it but for now, it seems like she will be at my house on Friday and that we will be baking and photographing together. I can't wait!

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Black Cherry and Brioche Pudding Brulee

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Chocolate, Olive Oil and Fleur de Sel

Chocolate, arbequina olive oil, fleur de sel and crusty baguette


Do you ever feel like you wake up one day and life is telling you something? Signs, signs, signs... everywhere. This is what happened to me a few days ago.

I haven't had a chocolate sandwich or "bocadillo de chocolate" as we like to call it, since I was 18 or so. It used to be our afternoon snack when we were kids. We got out of school at 5pm and our mothers (because all kids had this) had chocolate bocadillos waiting for us. Dark chocolate inside a piece of crusty baguette wrapped with aluminum foil. That was our afternoon snack and everyone loved it.

I think I remember the last time I ate a "bocadillo de chocolate". I say, I think, because my memory has been failing lately but my last recollection of eating one of these is when my friends Amaia, Jill and I were travelling through Europe in the summer of 1992. We had just graduated from high school and we went on a two week backpacking trip across Western Europe. We were young and broke so we slept in youth hostels, on the train and on park benches. We ate bread (lots of it), yogurt, fruit... anything we would find at the local markets and lots and lots of chocolate. I mean, we were in France and Belgium and Switzerland... what else would we eat but chocolate, right? So bread and chocolate was an everyday staple. That's my last memory of eating chocolate bocadillos.

A few days ago, I stumbled upon a food blog out of the Basque Country called Sukaldean. Fun food blog by accomplished cookbook authors Hasier Etxeberria and David de Jorge. And what was the first thing I saw? You guessed it! Chocolate bocadillo but this time with olive oil and sea salt. "Wow!" I thought to myself... "I have to make that soon!". But life got busy and I didn't. A few days later, I went to Tartelette's blog and what did I see? A baguette she made for the Daring Baker's February challenge stuffed with a bar of chocolate! It seems like Helen and I have been sharing the same brain lately. I couldn't control myself so today, I ran to Paul, got some good crusty bread and made myself this bocadillo.






Green & Blacks 70% organic chocolate



I used Arbequina olive oil from Hacienda Queiles which is mild and fruity. The first time I ever tried this olive oil, it was at Akelarre in San Sebastian. It was so fragant and unusual. It tasted just like bananas, I thought! I got the name of the producer from the maitre d' and a couple of days later, I bought myself a small bottle. It goes perfectly with the chocolate.

As for the salt, I used fleur de sel from Ile de Re that my friend and former pastry chef Sebastien brought back from France for me a couple of years ago. I know, I know... it's been a while but I've been saving it for special occasions like this one.

Chocolate, Olive Oil and Fleur de Sel Bocadillo

1 crusty baguette
2 70% cacao chocolate bars
2 tsp organic arbequina olive oil or any good quality extra virgin olive oil you like
Couple of pinches of fleur de sel

Cut the baguette in half and toast it under the broiler. Remove it from the broiler, drizzle some olive oil and place the chocolate on top of the bread. Place it back in the broiler for 5 seconds so the chocolate warms up a bit but remember that we don't want to melt the chocolate! Remove from the oven and finish it with the salt.

Open your mouth big and eat right away!

I want to thank Sukaldean and Helen for bringing back these wonderful memories!

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Chocolate, Olive Oil and Fleur de Sel

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Sunday Morning Brioche

This will be a short post because it's Sunday morning. My mom and I made these brioche last night with all our love and care. I was really excited this morning when I got up at 5am to take the pans out of the refrigerator to let the dough rise for a second time. I love the smell of coffee brewing, yeast fermenting and bread baking in the oven.


Happy Sunday to you!

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Sunday Morning Brioche

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