Strawberry Barley Scones

Oh, where do the days go.  I made these lovely scones last Saturday for the Good to the Grain Potluck held at 18 Reasons in San Francisco.  The potluck entailed each of the 25 attendees baking something from the book and bringing it to share, including author Kim Boyce.  We then spent the evening trying each others baked treats and discussing the recipes.

It was so fun to try each of the tasty creations, especially because they were made with a variety of whole-grain flours. And it was a perfect excuse to purchase Good to the Grain, a forward-thinking cookbook that had been on my list of must purchase items.  Kim does an excellent job of walking readers through the different types of flour, ranging from whole-wheat to teff to barley via breads, muffins, granola's and much more.

I chose to make the strawberry barley scones because I'd never tried barley flour and I had a fresh batch of homemade strawberry jam just waiting to be put to good use. I followed the recipe fairly closely, for those of you that have seen the book.  As far as scones go these came together quickly (less than 30 minutes) before I popped them in the oven.

I can't wait to work my way through the rest of Kim's recipes.  A couple good ones that I remember from Saturday are the Olive Oil Cake with spelt flour and rosemary (check out this version shared with everyone on Saturday), and the Iced Oatmeal Cookies with multi-grain flour - which tasted just like Mother's Iced Oatmeal Cookies. If your looking for a simple stand out recipe that will impress I would recommend giving these a try.

Strawberry Barley Scones
from Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce

butter for the pan

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons barley flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt*
1/2 cold unsalted butter (1 stick)
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1/2 cup Strawberry Jam
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, and place a rack in the center of the oven.  Rub a baking sheet lightly with butter.  Sift the dry ingredients, flour through salt, into a large bowl, pouring back into the bowl any bits of grain or other ingredients that may remain in the sifter.

Cut the butter into 1/2 inch pieces and add them to the try mixture.  Using your hands, toss the dry mixture with the butter until it is thoroughly coated. Starting from the back of the bowl and working forward, pinch the pieces of butter between your fingers breaking it into smaller bits.  Continue rubbing until the butter is about the sizes of peas.  Be sure to do this as quickly as possible in order for the butter to stay cold.

In a small bowl, whisk together the buttermilk and egg until thoroughly combined.  Scrape the buttermilk and egg into the dry mixture, and mix until barley combined.  Use a spatula to transfer the dough onto a well-floured surface.  If the dough is too sticky to handle dust it with flour and fold it together a few times.  Divide the dough into 2 equal size pieces.  Flour your hands and pat each piece of dough into a disk about 1/2 inch thick and approximately the same size.

Cover one disk with the jam or marmalade. Place the other disk on top of the jam and press down gently so that the dough settles into the jam.  (I found an offset spatula very helpful to ease the 2nd round of dough off the counter and onto the jam.) Brush the dough lightly with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar.  Use a sharp knife to slice the circle into wedges, like a pie.  Carefully place the wedges on the prepared baking sheet, leaving a couple inches between them.

Bake the scones for 20-25 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through.  They are ready when their tops are golden brown and some of the jam has bubbled over onto the pan.  To keep the scones from sticking to the pan, slide a thin spatula underneath them while they're still warm and move them to a baking rack.  The scones are best eaten warm from the oven or later that same day.

*Kim made a note about using kosher salt that was new to me so I'm passing it along here (in case you don't have it).  She says, "You can substitute sea salt or any common table salt you have on hand, but you'll need to adjust the amount you use because sea salt weighs twice as much as an equal measure of kosher salt (depending on the brand). Food scientist and cookbook author Shirley Corriher uses this formula: 1 tablespoon of table or sea salt = 1and 1/2 tablespoons Morton kosher salt = 2 tablespoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt." This recipe is based on using Diamond Crystal kosher salt, so adjust accordingly. 

Stats: Makes at least 8 medium size scones
Time: 1 hour, less than 30 minutes active time
Seasonal/local ingredients:  The butter was from Clover Creamery, and my strawberry jam was homemade from organic strawberries I picked up a couple weeks ago at the Berkeley Farmer's Market.

happy baking,
alison

Sunday Picture - Homemade Croissants

Today I'm just posting an inspirational picture.  Though some might look at this and think, oh that looks like a picture of croissants; to them I say, yes - isn't it grand!  I know, I'm kinda crazy about this sort of thing...but it was my first attempt at making croissants, and I'm so excited I just had to share.

I'm sure everyone has a recipe or idea that they want to try but are to overwhelmed to even go down that path, however, I'm here to tell you it is so worth the effort.  I've been wanting to make croissants from scratch for a long time, but I've always been turned off by the four (yes, really!!) pages of directions in the Tartine Bakery cookbook.  It was wonderful to share these with friends over brunch this morning, and the satisfaction of conquering the recipe was just an added bonus.  

I'll be back tomorrow with a recipe for Long-Cooked Broccoli.

happy cooking this week,
Alison

orange semolina cake

With oranges in abundance these days this cake caught my eye. Well that, and because I recently printed off an Olive Oil Semolina Cake recipe from a Tasting Table post that I received. In less then two weeks I have come across two recipes for semolina cake, I took it as a sign.




But why semolina flour? Truthfully I'm still not sure. The cake came out denser and courser than a basic white flour cake. Perhaps I will make the cake again and tweek the recipe to use only white flour and see what happens. Hmmm...more cake does not sound like a bad idea.




In the course of making this cake I did look up semolina flour in my handy Food Lovers Companion, it is made from durum wheat and it is more coarsely ground then most wheat flour. One word of caution for those who are gluten sensitive, semolina flour is high in gluten so sadly this cake is not for you. Looking back through my previous recipes I couldn't find another recipe to suggest instead. Sounds like another reason to make another one to me. Things are looking good in the cake making department.



One note of caution. You must make the syrup. I tried to do without and it is just too dense to really enjoy. But once you douse a piece in syrup it comes together nicely. The dense piece of cake soaks up the syrup and your taste buds will go crazy with orangy goodness.




orange semolina cake
adapted from The New Cook

2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups fine semolina flour
4 eggs separated
3/4 cup caster (superfine) sugar, or baker's sugar
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon grated orange rind
1/2 cup orange juice
pine nuts (optional)

syrup
1 1/2 cups sugar (superfine sugar or regular sugar will work)
1 1/4 cups orange juice
1 1/2 tablespoons grated orange rind

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place the flour, baking powder and semolina flour in a bowl and mix to combine. Place the egg yolks, sugar, oil and orange rind in a bowl and beat until well combined. Fold the egg yolk mixture into the flour mixture with the orange juice.
(Be careful not to over mix. I simply poured the entire egg yolk mix and orange juice over my flour mix and carefully folded the whole thing over and over until it was almost completely mixed but I could still see flecks of flour.)

Place the egg whites in a bowl and beat until soft peaks form. Fold into the flour/egg yolk mixture. (With this folding you want everything well combined, but I found if I mixed it all up good the first time, then it was both harder to add the beaten egg whites, and the final cake was more dense as well.)

Pour into a greased 8x8 inch square cake tin. If using, sprinkle a small handful of pine nuts over the cake so they bake into the top. Bake for 30 minutes or until cake is cooked when tested in the middle.

While the cake is cooking prepare the syrup. Place the sugar, orange juice and rind in a sauce pan over low heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Allow to simmer for 3 minutes. Pour half the syrup over the when it comes out of the oven.

To serve, cut the cake and cover with the remaining syrup. (I also served mine with fresh whip cream when I had guests over and the whole thing was a huge hit).

Serves 8.

Buckwheat Pear Pancakes

Sometimes I have a hankering for eating something specific, and this morning it was pancakes. On a crisp fall Sunday morning, this sounded like the perfect breakfast.

Not sure if I've mentioned my marathon training yet, but - for the past three months I've been training for the Santa Barbara Marathon with Team in Training. As the mileage has continued to creep up each week (next Saturday I'm running 20 miles, the longest I've ever run before), I've had to be more and more careful with what I eat. And the thing is...I want to be.

The more I run, the faster and stronger I want to get and much of that has to do with what I eat. As my coaches say, "You are what you eat." I've heard this before, but training for a marathon has made it more real for me than ever before.

Needless to say, these days I'm really trying to cut down on the sugar, processed food, and saturated fat in my diet. And at the same time figuring out new ways to eat good, nourishing food. Which is how the buckwheat pancakes came about. When I woke up wanting pancakes this morning, I knew that I wanted to make a healthier version of this breakfast treat. Buckwheat flour, which I picked up a while ago from my local food co-op, is a whole grain flour with a distinct nutty flavor, and its loaded with magnesium and other heart healthy benefits. Making it the perfect flour substitute in my pancakes.




Also, instead of regular sugar I used honey. A friend recently turned me on to the idea of using honey instead of sugar. She was telling me that up to a certain point you can use a one to one ratio of honey over sugar. I'm pretty sure it was at least 1 cup, so my substitution worked out just fine in this recipe.



I added the pears for the fun of it. I thought they were a nice flavor combination with the buckwheat, and I like how cooking them directly into the pancake batter softened and toasted them just perfectly.



Buckwheat Pear Pancakes
adapted from Betty Crocker's Fast Pancake Recipe

makes 9 medium sized pancakes

1 large egg
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 teaspoons baking powder
3 pinches salt
1/2 pear, thinly chopped

Beat egg in a medium bowl with a fork until fluffy. Stir in the remaining ingredients, except the pear just until smooth. Heat skillet over medium heat or to 375. Grease pan with butter.

For each pancake, pour about 1/4 cup batter onto the skillet. Place the thinly chopped pears into the batter. Cook until bubbly on top, puffed and dry around the edges. Turn and cook on the otherside until golden brown.

Notes:
- Next time I might try using all buckwheat flour to see what it tastes like, or adding chopped nuts instead of pears. There are all kinds of combination's to try here.
- This was a great recipe for two, but I would definitely plan to double it if there were more people coming for breakfast, or I wanted left overs for the week.