The Daring Bakers Challenge January 2010: Nanaimo Bars

So my dealings with Canadians up until a few years ago had been of disbelief. What? Canada? That's a completely different world. Of course, I never said this, but rather, "You're Canadian? Really?" Until I began to work with them, and my whole perception changed. Canadians are awesome. I am just going to repeat that in case you skipped over that sentence. Canadians are awesome.

One of my favorite radio shows, This American Life, even had an episode dedicated to Canadians, called "Who's Canadian?" in which they out several famous Canadians. I won't say who, but prepare yourself to say, "Really? Canadian?"

Aside from a recent New Yorker article arguing that Poutine is rapidly becoming Canada's national dish, I have no clue when it comes to Canadian specialties. So it was quite surprising to find out that the January Daring Baker's Challenge was Nanaimo Bars. Don't worry, I hit backspace a few times while typing that out, so you'll also get some time to adjust to the name.

The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca. You can get the recipe here, though I'll post my measurements in metric at the end of this post.


I typically never, ever buy this kind of flour, though after reading Mark Ruhlmann's Ratio, I think I'll have to reconsider. Type 405 flour is low in protein and is taken from the very center of the endosperm of the wheat, so it's the whitest of the white flours, and is actually the most common. You can normally get 2kg for about a Euro in any discount supermarket, but I spent a little more to get a half kilo of a slightly better quality.


If participating in the BBA Challenge has taught me anything it's that having a good mise en place makes things go faster. It's also taught me that taking photos of your baking makes the whole process last as long as it would if you hadn't had a mise in place.


Here's the mise en place for the Graham Crackers. The only odd ingredient is the brown sugar, which is not the same as Brauner Zucker in Germany. Good brown sugar, the kind with healthy molasses mixed back in, can be found in almost any Asia Laden in Berlin. Why? No clue, but that's where you get it.


One of the problems I had with the recipe instructions was its high reliance on a food processor. I've generally been against them, but after having this small attachment to my hand-held blender, I might start looking at them, particularly since I love making hummus.

I did want to make the Graham Crackers gluten-free, but I could not find the flours in time, and the 405 was all-too-readily available. I think maybe next time I'll try Whole Spelt, just to see if there is a difference in flavor.


The liquid ingredients are mixed together. Honey, milk, and the ever-beautiful Vanilla floating atop the milk.


Mashing the dry ingredients is supposed to happen in the food processor, but I just didn't have the capacity. Instead, I relied on my Made-in-the-Czech-Republic Danish Dough Whisk.


I gathered the dough together as though making a pie, and refrigerated it overnight.


The next day, I rolled out the dough.


Put the flat pieces of dough on my baking sheet...


And poked holes in the crackers using a pair of coffee stirrers.


So the actual Nanaimo Bars- remember, we're making Nanaimo Bars. So the Nanaimo bars require Graham Cracker crumbs. One of the helpful suggestions was to crush them in a resealable bag. It worked wonderfully.


Although you can't tell from this picture the Graham crackers themselves came out rather brown. I think it is because I used my very heavy (and very dark) blue steel sheet pans. The bake time was way shorter than the 25 minutes the recipe called for.


Again, the mise en place: unsweetened flaked coconut, Sarotti Cocoa Powder, Graham Cracker crumbs (in all their dark glory), egg, butter, sliced almonds, and sugar.


You basically melt the butter with the sugar and the cocoa in a double boiler, and add the egg to thicken. When it's all thick and liquidy, you add the crumbs, coconut, and almonds. Stir until it all comes together into a wonderful crumbly consistency.


And then press down to make a uniform base for the bars. I used a rectangular Pyrex dish instead of the square one called for in the recipe.


The next step is my discovery of buttercream frosting. The mise en place is pictured above. 254 glorious grams of powdered sugar are called for in the recipe, but I used a 250g box since I just had it lying around.


The ingredients are creamed together. If the butter had been at room temperature, I would have put everything into my DLX and cranked it up to make the frosting. But I thought it would be a bit much to use a 8 quart capacity mixer to make a small amount of frosting. Maybe once I get through Ratio and bake a few cakes.


The frosting is spread over the first layer. That's two out of three.


The last step involves a chocolate frosting layer. I melted 85% Lindt chocolate with butter.


Though I'm by no means a chocoholic, this is is one of my favorite things to do with chocolate.


The mixture is then spread over the top of the two layers and chilled.

Here's where this post takes another turn. This batch was taken to the last day of work celebration of one of my friends and no pictures survive. Luckily, one of Amy's colleagues is having a last day on Friday, so I made these again.


This is what they look like in the Pyrex dish just waiting to be devoured. Plus, the first photo, way at the top, is what a special round bar, just for me, looked like before I discovered just how good this recipe is. You will too.

The recipe for the bars themselves is as follows, lifted wholesale from the Daring Baker's Challenge Page, but listed in metric measurements from my notes. The recipe for the gluten-free Graham Crackers can be found at the Daring Baker's recipe page for this month, as well as at Celiac Teen's wonderful post.

Nanaimo Bars

Ingredients:

For Nanaimo Bars — Bottom Layer

115g Unsalted Butter
50 g Granulated Sugar
40g of your best Unsweetened Cocoa
1 Large Egg, Beaten
160 g Gluten Free Graham Wafer Crumbs (See this recipe)
55g Almonds (Any type, Finely chopped- My first bars used sliced almonds, the second ones used slivered almonds)
100g Coconut (Shredded, sweetened or unsweetened) Mine was finely shredded.

For Nanaimo Bars — Middle Layer

115g Unsalted Butter
40g Heavy Cream
2 tablespoons Vanilla Custard Powder (I used Vanilla Pudding powder because it was all I could get)
1 box/250g Icing Sugar

For Nanaimo Bars — Top Layer

115g of your best Semi-sweet chocolate (in my case, 85% Lindt chocolate)
28g Unsalted Butter

Directions:

1. For bottom Layer: Melt unsalted butter, sugar and cocoa in top of a double boiler. Add egg and stir to cook and thicken. Remove from heat. Stir in crumbs, nuts and coconut. Press firmly into an ungreased 8 by 8 inch pan.
2. For Middle Layer: Cream butter, cream, custard powder, and icing sugar together well. Beat until light in colour. Spread over bottom layer.
3. For Top Layer: Melt chocolate and unsalted butter over low heat. Cool. Once cool, pour over middle layer and chill.

BBA Challenge #29: Pugliese

I never did get to say good-bye to 2009, particularly since we were flying when the time changed over. We had no party on the plane, drinks were not handed out, and the pilot barely announced "Ladies and Gentlemen, it is now 12:06 in Frankfurt" as we speeded over the Atlantic. When we landed, all of our suitcases were with us, and after two layovers, we were completely beat. Still, we attempted our best to stay up despite sleeping only three hours on the plane and three the night before the flight.

On January First, after two weeks of mostly cold weather in California and Nevada, we landed to a winter paradise in Berlin. Snow, white and resplendent. Snow that hadn't been seen here for two years covered the city. The city was covered in clouds that made cast everything blue, and riding home in the taxi, I was happy to be home.

The very first things I unpacked were the bottles. Hennepin is my second favorite beer (after Saison Dupont), and I brought back one bottle of that, one bottle of Ommegang Abbey ale from the same brewery, one bottle of the Stone Brewing Company XI Anniversary Ale, which was the inspiration for their

The last bottle I opened is the most special. Hitachino Nest is the only Japanese Beer imported into the US from Japan. Put down your bottles, Asahi and Kirin are probably brewed in Canady in order to allow them to put "Imported" on the label. In addition, they brew interesting ales, in comparison to the light lagers that most world breweries make.

This is their classic ale- a plain pale ale aged in cedar casks. It is amazing. Amazing like only really special beers are. Amazing in the way Matilda from Goose Island or Trappistes Rochefort 10 are. Amazing in the way you think you've discovered a secret that no one else knows.

Unfortunately, the sore throat that I had been cultivating for most of the vacation decided to go at me with full force, and that night I fell into a deep slumber filled with the strangest dreams I have ever encountered. I had actually wanted to start bread the day after we landed, but, it took until the third of January. With barely enough strength, I took out the flour and began to measure.


As with all baking, there must always be something that goes wrong. In my case, it was a small mistake. I had made the full suggested amount of biga pre-ferment for this dough, figuring I'd keep the left over for pizza or ciabatta or something. I measured out the Semolina flour. Oops. I was going to use a 50/50 mix of semolina and flour, but measured out the whole thing in semolina. No matter, I thought. I measured out an equal amount of Type 812 flour. I'll just make the mise en place, I figured, and then just use half of it in the recipe after I photograph it.

Did you follow? Yes, no? Basically, I measured out twice the amount of flour. Tossed the entire thing into the mixer and... Yes. The dough was too dry and here I am trying to figure out why.

I forgot to only add half the flour. I thought about tossing the dough and starting over for less than the split second it took me to add the rest of the biga, measure out more water, yeast and salt, and throw it all into the mixer, thumbs pressed. (You press your thumbs here instead of crossing your fingers, though, really, I just cross my fingers and say I'm pressing my thumbs.)


I know, you are all calling foul for not having a mixer picture that you can all drool over. I'm sorry. I wasn't feeling too good, and just sort of decided not to take too many photos.


But, hey, the bread came out great, no? A little- no, a lot pale in color, unlike Kelly's deliciously golden loaf and rolls.


There is a very special place in my heart that is now reserved for Italian Breads. First the Casatiello, then the Ciabatta, then the eponymous Italian Bread, the surprisingly excellent Pane Sicilano, and now the Pugliese.

Without Peter Reinhart and the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge, I probably never would have baked any of these breads. I probably would have stuck to the French Breads. Hey, I hear the Miche is coming up.

Other Pugliesers are:

Mags from The Other Side of Fifty

Angela from Gourmet Hotdish and Other Culinary Disasters

Carolyn from Two Skinny Jenkins

Janice from Round the Table

BBA Challenge #28: Potato Rosemary Bread

Possibly the most humbling thing about baking, or even cooking, in someone else's kitchen is that nothing is where it should be. Rather, everything is somewhere else- The flour is in the pantry, but on a different shelf, and even the pantry is on the wrong side of the kitchen.

Last Thanksgiving was a whirlwind marathon of cooking. It's one of the few holidays I enjoy, mostly because I get to cook for people I absolutely adore as well as be thankful that I am able to cook and that these people are in my life. The bad thing about it is that it takes up so much prep time, and that this year, I was unable to do much in advance.

Everything was made from scratch, even the bread from the stuffing came from two loaves I had baked earlier in the week. The bad thing, though, was that I had to move most of my kitchen equipment in order to cook and bake. In all, we had to take a taxi there with half of our extant kitchen (one wheelie-cart, and two of those large Mexican shopping bags), and a taxi back because of exhaustion after a day of cooking and eating.

As some of my readers already know, Sunday night is Tatort night. However, sometimes Sunday night turns into an extension of the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge, and I find myself, like I did last weekend with the New York Deli Rye Bread (to come!), shaping and putting loaves in the oven while the show is running. The thing is, that the program lasts 90 minutes and is uninterrupted by commercials. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't a crime show, where anything could be a clue.

On the particular Sunday for the Potato Rosemary Bread, we were traipsing through Berlin doing I have no idea what. All I remember is that I was able to roughly time the rises according to where we were going.


Despite all this, I was able to make a mise en place for the bread, which included some pretty awesome roasted garlic thanks to a tip from Paul at Yumarama. I do have to confess that the mashed potatoes were left over from Thanksgiving, and were a week old at the time of their use. Also, they already had garlic, butter, cream and rosemary in them.

In addition, I didn't have any fresh Rosemary on hand. I do however, get fresh Rosemary every now and then, and dry it myself. No worries, there is no trick, I just put it in a bowl with the fresh thyme I also don't use and make sure it is in a dry spot in the kitchen. It pretty much dries itself. Though, I did soak it in hot water for a half- hour, and then used the same water in the dough.


This is what the melange of ingredients looks like at the bottom of the mixer.


As soon as I put on the scraper and roller, the fun begins and the dough takes form.


And all of a sudden, the bread just bakes itself!

No, not really. The true story of why I have so few pictures it that it was a really busy day and I just didn't have time. We were watching Tatort over at a friend's house. I knew she wouldn't mind me using her oven, since I had used it for about eight hours straight the weekend before for Thanksgiving dinner.

So, just before we left the house, I packed the bread in its first-rise bowl, and tossed a Gärkorb (Ironically called a Brotform in English) into a cloth bag. I thought it was a bit funny to carry the bread on the U-Bahn, but no one noticed. As soon as I got to her apartment, I politely asked, as I always do, if I could use the oven.

Possibly the most humbling thing about baking in someone else's kitchen is that you don't have your own tools on hand. A serrated knife stood in for the lame, and the bread was baked on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

But what has to be the most humbling of all is that the oven is completely different. The thermostat lies on every oven I've ever used, so an oven thermometer has been one of the best purchases I have ever made. This time, though I didn't have it on hand, the oven heated from the bottom so the crust did not get as dark. I have become so used to my small electric oven that I forget that baking bread in another oven will not be the same.

Still, the bread smelled heavenly and the taste was- well, I kept sneaking slices of this plain. The bread was soft and the crumb was moist and flavorful, like a savory cake made with flour, yeast, water, and salt.

Check out these other loaves of Potato Rosemary Bread:

Carolyn from Two Skinny Jenkins

Oggi from The Home Baker

Janice from Round The Table

Sally from Bewitching Kitchen