bread Archives - hello kelinda

July 8, 2016

Sweet Honey Skillet Cornbread

The downstairs apartment is apparently undergoing renovation, so as I write this, my floors and walls are shuddering from all the banging, thumping, and mysterious mechanical sounds that make me think maybe a Transformer is trying to build boat with its fists in good ol’ #203. Good grief.

Anyway, that has nothing to do with cornbread. I don’t even have a clever segue planned. Speaking of boats… No. Nothing of the sort.

But cornbread! You’d think having grown up in Texas that I’d wax poetic about how Southern cornbread is unbeatable and that these Northerners just don’t get it right, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But you’d be wrong. I grew up eating a lot of the stuff when I lived in Houston, and I loved it then as much as I love it now. But up until recently, the best cornbread I have ever had was from a barbecue joint in Seattle. I mean, the actual barbecue was… not exciting. But the cornbread! Holy shit!

And now that experience has been dethroned by the little slices of cornbread heaven I had in… Vancouver, Canada. I know. But I had another Texan with me and we both agreed that this was the best cornbread, A+ cornbread, 5 stars, 10 thumbs up. So obviously, this is now a true fact: delicious cornbread can be found anywhere. Even in your own home!
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AmyK

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March 6, 2016

I’m Aliiiiiiive! And Some Focaccia, I Guess

I’ve had a cold all week, and have made and eaten so much chicken noodle soup that I’m pretty sure all of my blood has now been replaced with broth. Oy. After all of this, if one of my coworkers so much coughs within a 15 radius of me, they are definitely getting Lysol-ed in the face.

But finally, finally, I am on the mend. And the only thing I wanted after days of soup, soup, and more soup was a good piece of bread. I talked about the comfort of sandwich bread before, but this time I wanted something a little more interesting. Something to wake my mouth up from its chicken broth slumber. Something like focaccia!

I love focaccia. It’s fluffy and crusty, fairly simple to make (if a bit time-consuming with all the proofing and whatnot), and you can top it with all manner of delicious things. It also makes a decent “sandwich” bread if you slice it in half, but the fact that it’s soaked in olive oil will make eating that sandwich a messy experience. But I am shameless, so that never stops me, muahahahahahahaahahaha!!!!

AmyK

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February 25, 2016

Pao de Queijo (aka Brazilian Cheese Bread)

“Why do I have so much Parmesan cheese.”

I’m a serial Forgetter of What I Already Have, and Buyer of Things I Already Own when it comes to food items. I once ended up with multiple bottles of coriander seeds because I always forgot I already had it in my pantry, and then there was also the “Three Jars of Peanut Butter” incident. And now I found myself with six hunks of Parmesan cheese.

I love cheese, but six pieces of Parmesan is still a bit… excessive. I knew I had to cull my collection, especially before any of them tragically sprouted fuzzy mold. And after a quick rummage through my pantry rack yielded a bag of tapioca flour, I knew a nice batch of pao de queijo was in order.

Oops.

Pao de queijo is a snack-sized Brazilian cheese bread, which I first had at my (Brazilian) high-school boyfriend’s home. His mom bought them frozen and would pop a few into the oven several times a day so that there was always a supply of them on the kitchen island for snacking. Now fast forward several (okay, many) years later, and I found myself making them in a cooking class, and learning that these are insanely easy to whip up. And also a great way to use up surplus cheese, should you ever find yourself in the luxury of that situation.

These are bite-sized and chewy (thanks to the use of tapioca flour), and though it does use a good two cups of cheese, is actually pretty mild on the cheese taste — though that may depend on what kind of cheese you use. I’ve had the most success using hard cheeses like Parmesan, and I think Parm is the usual cheese of choice for these unless you can get your mitts on more traditionally Brazilian cheeses, though I also like to mix in a bit of Pecorino as well because I just like Pecorino, okay?

Everything comes together in a blender, making assembly and cleanup a breeze. More time for eating, I’d say.

AmyK

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August 17, 2015

Vietnamese Hollow Fried Bread (aka bánh tiêu)

I wrote multiple drafts of this post, all trying to be a little funny, a little witty, a little ha ha ha. But the fact is I don’t particularly feel like any of those things today; I just feel tired, but also very much relieved.

After only a few months in my beautiful apartment, I packed all my things up again and hauled it upstairs to the top floor into yet another new beautiful apartment — this time with a view and without a disruptive upstairs neighbor who had made it impossible for me to sleep for the last four months. Best of all, Disruptive Neighbor proved disruptive to his own roommate and got kicked out anyway.

But moving twice in one year — nay, in one season — is a bit much, and I am spent. I speed-unpacked just to get things feeling like home right away, but I’m still very much in new surroundings and very much craving some comfort in the form of foodstuffs that I can stuff into my maw as I melt my exhausted carcass onto the couch and fire up Hawaii Five-0 on the ol’ Netflix.

My mom grew up in Vietnam,* which means that when she craved comfort food, it was typically some kind of Vietnamese fare from her own youth. As she was the primary Provider of Food for our family, my siblings and I grew up eating a lot of these things with her. This means despite being surrounded by the cafeteria pizzas, pot roasts, and mac and cheeses of my Texas upbringing, a lot of my comfort foods are actually Vietnamese too. Funny how that works.

Most weekends, we’d go visit a tiny Vietnamese bakery next to the Asian grocer, and she’d pick up a bag of bánh tiêu, or Vietnamese hollow fried bread. They are shamelessly greasy because they’re deep-fried, though it’s no worse than a donut. They’re also just a little sweet, though not dessert-sweet by any means. In any case, they make a satisfying midday snack.

AmyK

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May 1, 2015

Sausage and Cheese Kolaches

Seattle has been my home for about two years now, and after being here, there are certainly a lot of things I don’t miss about Texas (the long commutes to get anywhere, summer mosquitos with more bloodlust than Patrick Bateman), but there are also things I miss every waking minute of every day. Okay, I exaggerate, but I do miss easy parking, wearing sandals for 90% of the year, and my Monday morning kolaches.

Kolaches are a Czech soft yeast pastry that’s kind of like a soft dinner roll, and traditionally they’re filled or topped with fruits or cottage cheese. The Texas kolache is a variation of this, filled with sausage, cheese, and a slice or two of pickled jalapeño. Most bakeries and donut shops in the Lone Star State sell kolaches just as regularly as they sell burnt drip coffee.

It was very much a routine to grab a donut (or two) and a kolache (or three) to kick off my Monday mornings — I liked to think of it as a “starting another work week” treat. To my dismay, since moving to Seattle, I’ve discovered that kolaches just aren’t a thing here. The closest thing to a kolache I’ve been able to find are pirozhki (Russian hand pies), and while also delicious, they’re still not kolaches.
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AmyK

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March 25, 2015

New Digs & Good Ol’ Sandwich Bread

Well well well, it has been a while, hasn’t it? You look different — did you get a haircut? Oh, me? I didn’t get a haircut, but what I did get is a new apartment. I’ve been busy with moving these past few weeks, so for a while I was living in what seemed to be a very boring box-themed amusement park. But now I’ve officially bid farewell to my first Seattle home, and hello to my second — now with 800 square feet of lounging space! Finally, room enough for me to stretch my legs, and maybe dabble in the occasional breakdance routine.

Ready to get that boombox pumpin’

With the new apartment is a much bigger kitchen, and I am delighted to report that my range and oven setup is no longer fun-sized. That’s right, my oven can now hold two — that’s right, two — 9-inch cake pans at the same time on the same rack. This shit’s about to get real, y’all.

I don’t know about your method of unpacking and nesting, but the first box I always tackle is the one holding all my records and record player. This way, I can have some tunes immediately. Then, it’s on to unpacking and organizing the kitchen so I can break in the new cooking space pronto. All those other boxes can wait just a while longer.
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AmyK

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October 6, 2014

Hokkaido Milk Bread

Growing up, one of the staple weekend activities in our house was to go to the Asian market to replenish our fridge with bittermelons, salted eggs, Thai basil, and all that other stuff that we could never get from the local suburban supermarket. My mom loved to frequent one in Houston’s Chinatown called Hong Kong Market, and after an hour or so of grocery shopping (at the time, we had several aunts, uncles, and cousins living with us, so there were a lot of mouths to feed), we’d stop at the tiny Chinese bakery across the shopping plaza.

One of the things my mom would always get would be Hokkaido milk bread, though I always just knew it as “Chinese sweet bread.” It’s soft, fluffy, and a little sweet, and we always just ate it toasted with a thin layer of butter or completely plain. I guess the name “milk bread” comes from the use of milk powder or condensed milk, and some versions of the milk bread we’d get would also have swirls of grainy sweet milk mixture rolled in. It’s not as strange as it sounds, I promise!

This particular rendition of Asian milk bread doesn’t have anything swirled in, but I imagine you can easily roll in a cinnamon-sugar-raisin mix if you so please, or even the traditional milk mix (future recipe, perhaps?). The possibilities!

AmyK

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September 4, 2014

Buttermilk Biscuits

Labor Day weekend has come and gone, and you know, I honestly have no idea what people usually do on Labor Day weekend (buy mattresses at low, low prices, maybe?). I went hiking to Wallace Falls outside of Seattle, and it was beautiful. And also crowded. So I guess what people usually do on Labor Day weekend is hike Wallace Falls. Hmmm…

After the hike, I was completely drained of all energy, and what I could have used was a biscuit. An outrageously buttery biscuit full of carbs and energy and how was that for a segue?

Now, I’m pretty sure it’s a legal requirement to be way into buttermilk biscuits if you were born and raised in the South. But in my two-plus decades in Texas, I had never met anyone who made biscuits from scratch. It seemed like everyone I knew just bought the canned Pillsbury version instead, claiming that proper biscuits are too difficult to make. They talked about having to freeze the dough at random points, or brush layers with butter, or keep the mixing bowls and whatnot in the fridge so it’d all stay cold — what?

AmyK

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August 25, 2014

Challah French Toast

I admittedly have not really been cooking these past two weeks, and I don’t even have a good reason for it. It’s like I had suddenly reverted back to my college self, having nothing but ramen and instant miso soup for dinner and playing a lot of bad acoustic guitar. (You guys should hear my rendition of “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” it’s excellent. And by “excellent,” I do mean “really awful.”)

But yesterday, I broke the streak by making a monstrous loaf of challah.

Breakfast will always be my favorite meal of the day, though I rarely eat it during actual designated breakfast hours (TOO EARLY, PEOPLE). The food served before noon is so delightfully decadent and absurd; we don’t bat an eye to crispy pieces of fatty bacon, or to stacks of flat cakes smothered in syrup. It’s breakfast, after all, the most important meal of the day.

AmyK

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July 14, 2014

Challah Bread

Bread is a wonderful thing, and I contend that there are few smells more alluring, inviting, and all-around wonderful than the scent of baking bread. I have made a few breads before, like coconut loaves and dinner rolls, but few things beat the tender, well, breadiness of challah.

Make no mistake, making bread can be a bit of a challenge if it’s not something you do often (or ever), but this recipe from Einet Admony’s incredible Balaboosta cookbook is approachable enough even for total bread newbies. Unlike some other recipes I’ve followed before, there are no starter doughs or anything of that ilk. You just need some brawn for kneading and looooots of time for proofing. Keep your courage! The payoff to your toils will be so worth it.

I made just a few changes to the original recipe. I use olive oil instead of canola because when I first made this, I only had olive oil on hand. The same goes for the honey and brown sugar substitute in place of plain white sugar or honey. All desperate substitutions initially, but I happened to like how it all ended up, so I’m sticking with it.

AmyK

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