Baking

This pie makes a good picnic breakfast.

Soda bread is the national bread of Ireland and is made with baking soda for leavening instead of yeast. It is traditionally baked on a hearthstone or in a Dutch oven in the embers of a fire. From beginning to end, this recipe takes no more than an hour.

Cream biscuits are melt-in-your-mouth delicious on their own for breakfast, served with Fried Chicken (page 347) and savory stews, for desserts baked in a cobbler with juicy fruit (see page 178), or in the classic Strawberry Shortcake (page 365).

You can put this dough together in just a few minutes. These scones are surprisingly light and are delicious as an after-school snack or with afternoon tea.

My friend Lulu from Bandol often serves these—usually the variation with anchovies. Hot from the oven, they are perfection with chilled rosé wine.

In Italian, biscotti means “twice-cooked.” Biscotti are baked first in long loaves, then sliced into thick cookies, and baked again until lightly toasted. The cookies are crisp and dry, and store well; and I like the fact that they are not extremely sweet. Various ingredients such as nuts, chocolate, spices, liquor, and dried fruits are added for flavor. I make biscotti flavored with lightly toasted almonds and aniseed. They go equally well with a cup of coffee or tea or a glass of wine. The biscotti recipe I use most often has no butter. Eggs and sugar are beaten together until they increase in volume, turn light in color, and form a ribbon when you lift up the whisk or beaters. This means the mixture will fall back onto itself slowly and thickly in a ribbon-like pattern. When the eggs are warm it will take about 3 or 4 minutes to beat the eggs to this point; when they are cold, it can take up to 10 minutes. If you have forgotten to take the eggs out of the refrigerator in advance, warm them for a few minutes in their shells in a bowl of almost-hot water. Air trapped in the beaten egg mixture lightens the texture of biscotti. Be careful to stir in the flour only until it is just incorporated, and then gently fold in the other ingredients so as not to deflate the eggs. Form the dough into long loaves on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. The dough will be very wet and sticky. Wet your hands before touching it to keep them from sticking. Use a spoon and your hands to smooth the logs. Bake them until golden and set. When removed from the oven, the loaves are quite delicate until cooled. Carefully pull the whole sheet of paper with the loaves right onto a cooling rack. When cool, slice the loaves with a long serrated bread knife (on a diagonal, for longer cookies). Spread the cookies out on the baking sheet and bake again until golden and toasted. They will keep for up to a month in an airtight container.

A vast array of cookie recipes spring from one basic formula: butter and sugar are beaten together, eggs are stirred in for moisture, and flour is mixed in at the end. The consistency of the resulting cookie dough can range from one firm enough to roll out and cut, to a dough soft enough to drop from a spoon right onto a baking sheet, to a very wet dough moistened only with egg whites that has to be piped and thinly spread with a knife onto a baking sheet. (A charming cookie called a langue de chat, or cat’s tongue, is made from this last kind of dough.) Beating butter and sugar together until fluffy and light-colored is called creaming. Sugar is added, and the beating continues until the mixture is light and fluffy again. The creaming process aerates the butter: air bubbles are literally forced into the butter mixture. These air bubbles expand during the baking, making the cookies light and tender. Butter can be creamed by hand or with a mixer. If using a mixer, the butter and sugar can be added at the same time. Mix at medium-high speed for 2 or 3 minutes (if using a stand mixer, use the paddle attachment). Stop the machine once or twice to scrape down the sides to ensure that all the sugar gets incorporated into the butter evenly. In a pinch, cold butter can be used: just put it in the mixing bowl by itself and beat until soft before adding the sugar. The butter has to be soft to cream properly. Once the butter and sugar are creamed together, add the eggs and mix well. If using a mixer, scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed. It is important that the eggs be at room temperature, too. If they are added cold, the butter will seize up, deflating the air bubbles, and the dough will resist thorough mixing. Add liquid flavorings and sweeteners such as vanilla extract, liquors, molasses, and honey along with the eggs. Flour is the last ingredient to be added. Be sure to measure the flour the same way every time. This will make your baking more consistent. I recommend this method: Stir the flour up to fluff it. Use a dry measuring cup, the flat-topped kind that fills to the brim, and either scoop up the flour with it or spoon the flour into it; then draw a spatula or knife across the top of the cup to level the flour. Don’t tap the cup or the flour will compact. Add the flour to the butter and eggs and stir it in until just mixed. You want all the flour to be completely mixed in, but too much stirring will activate the gluten in the flour and make the cookies tough. Mix salt, ground spices, and baking powder or baking soda into the flour before it is added to the cookie dough. Chunky flavorings such as chopped nuts, chocolate, or dried fruit should be stirred in gently after the flour has been mixed in. Dough for drop cookies can be baked right away or chilled and baked later. Cookies that are to be shaped or rolled out often require chilling first to firm up the dough. Many cookie doughs can be rolled into logs, chilled, and then sliced into neat cookies to bake. Shape the logs into ovals, squares, or rectangles for different shapes. The logs can be frozen for up to 2 months and the sliced cookies require no defrosting before baking. Slice off as many cookies as needed and return the rest to the freezer for later. To bake cookies properly it is worth investing in one or two heavy baking sheets. They help the cookies to bake evenly, particularly by keeping them from browning too much on the bottom. An oven thermometer is helpful for determining your oven’s actual temperature. I like to line baking sheets with parchment paper or a silicone mat, both of which keep cookies from sticking and make cleanup much easier. The parchment paper can be reused from batch to batch. Bake the cookies in the center of a preheated oven. Adjust your oven racks if necessary. Every oven has a hot spot where the cookies will bake more quickly. To compensate for this, rotate the baking sheets halfway through the baking. Turn the ...

It’s a satisfying thing, knowing how to make a classic buttery, delicate cake from scratch. A 1-2-3-4 cake is a version of a traditional recipe the name of which refers to the quantities of butter, sugar, flour, and eggs—the cake’s principal ingredients. The cake has wonderful flavor, and the texture is moist and tender, the two qualities that make a cake great. Unadorned, it makes a simple tea cake perfectly suited for a garnish of fresh fruit; decorated, it can be anything from a birthday cake to a wedding cake to individual cupcakes. Baking requires more precision than most other types of cooking and it is enormously helpful to gather and measure your ingredients carefully at the outset. The first steps to baking a cake are preparing the pan, preheating the oven, and assembling the ingredients. To prepare the cake pan, first butter the inside, spreading softened butter thinly and evenly with a butter wrapper, a brush, or your fingers. To ensure that the cake does not stick to the bottom, line it with parchment paper: trace the bottom of the pan on a piece of parchment paper, cut it out, and put it into the pan. Butter the piece of parchment paper as well. The recipe may also say to flour the pan. To do so, put a couple of tablespoons of flour (or cocoa, for chocolate cakes) into the pan and carefully rotate it to distribute the flour evenly over the butter. Once all the butter has been coated with flour, invert the pan and tap out all the excess. Bake cakes in a preheated oven. The first few minutes of baking determine how a cake will rise. When the oven is not up to temperature, the rising is inhibited. Preheat the oven for at least 15 minutes and check the temperature with an oven thermometer before putting the cake in to bake. Having all your ingredients measured and at room temperature before you start makes the whole process smoother and easier, and you’ll be less likely to make mistakes. Room-temperature ingredients are essential. Adding cold ingredients will cause the batter to “seize,” or shrink and deflate, which will compromise the cake’s texture, making it dense instead of light. Butter needs to be soft; take it out of the refrigerator to soften for at least 30 minutes. It will soften faster if you cut it up into small pieces. Measuring out the milk and separating the eggs ahead of time will give them time to warm up. The flour is mixed with salt and a chemical leavener, either baking powder or baking soda. For a lighter, more delicate cake, use cake flour; it is made from soft wheat, which has a lower protein content, and is milled very fine. Pastry flour is the next-best thing. All-purpose flour can be used, too, but the texture of the cake will be heavy and coarse; cake flour makes a big difference. The most accurate measure of flour is by weight, but most recipes in the United States use measurements in volume. The amount of flour added to a cake makes a big difference in its final texture so, for consistency, try to measure the flour exactly the same way every time. For delicate cakes I suggest sifting more flour than the recipe calls for before you measure it. Sifting aerates the flour and makes it easier to mix, which helps to keep the cake light. Scoop or spoon the flour into the measuring cup (use a dry measuring cup, with a flat rim and no pour spout) and scrape a spatula or knife across the top of the cup to level it. Don’t compact the flour by tapping the cup or smashing the flour down. After sifting and measuring, stir the other dry ingredients into the flour. Many recipes instruct you to sift the dry ingredients together, but stirring does a better job of mixing the ingredients. The first step of assembling the batter is to cream the softened butter with sugar. Beat the butter and sugar until the mixture is soft and fluffy and very light in color. If you do this with an electric mixer the butter and sugar can be beaten together from the start, but w...

These simple, exquisitely rich, bittersweet chocolate tartlets are beautiful, with shiny surfaces and golden crusts. The prebaked tartlet shells are filled with ganache, a soft chocolate filling made from warm cream and bittersweet chocolate. (Ganache, cooled and thickened, is what chocolate truffles are made from.)

Crisps and cobblers are humble desserts, not too sweet, and full of flavor. A deep layer of fruit is baked under a crunchy topping or cream biscuits, much like a deep-dish pie with a top crust. Every season has fruit to offer: apples and pears in fall and winter, rhubarb and strawberries in the spring, and all the stone fruits and berries of summer. A crisp topping is a coarse mixture of flour, brown sugar, nuts, and spices, with butter worked into the flour mixture just until it’s crumbly. Crisp topping is as easy to make in large batches as it is in small batches, and it freezes very well for up to 2 months. It is a convenient staple to have in the freezer for a quick dessert for an unexpected occasion. Topped with biscuits, cobblers are less sweet than crisps and best made with juicy fruits. I make simple cream biscuits out of flour and butter worked together, leavened with a little baking powder, and moistened with heavy cream. The dough is rolled out on the thick side and cut into shapes. Once cut, the biscuits can be held in the refrigerator for an hour or two before baking. Crisps and cobblers work best when the fruit is piled high. For both desserts the fruit is cut into bite-size pieces (1/3-inch-thick slices or 1-inch cubes) and, like fruit pie fillings, tossed with a little flour and a little sugar. Use less sugar for crisp fillings because the crisp topping is so sweet. Tart rhubarb needs quite a bit of sugar, apples need less, and sweet fruits such as peaches need almost none at all. Taste the fruit while you are cutting it and again after it is sugared; you can always add more. The flour thickens the juices that would otherwise be too soupy. It doesn’t take much, a tablespoon or two at the most. A crisp or cobbler is served straight from the dish it has been baked in, so choose an attractive one. Ceramic dishes are best, as metal pans will react with the acid of the fruit. The dish needs to be about 3 inches deep to accommodate a generous layer of fruit. Place the dish on a baking sheet to catch any overflowing juices. Cook until the crisp is dark golden brown and the fruit is bubbling up on the sides; a cobbler’s biscuits should be cooked through and golden. If the crisp topping is browning before the fruit is done, place a piece of foil over the top to protect it. Lift off the foil for the last few minutes to recrisp the topping. Serve right away or put back in the oven to warm for a few minutes before serving. Cobblers and crisps are delicious on their own but are even better served with a little cold heavy cream or whipped cream.

When it is time for dessert, I like to eat fruit. A simple piece of ripe fruit is what I would choose first, but fruit tarts are irresistible, too. Almost any fruit can be made into a tart, either alone or in combination with others. Apples, pears, plums, apricots, peaches, nectarines, cranberries, quince, raspberries, blackberries, huckleberries, all are ideal, and the list goes on and on. Fruit is best used when ripe—but not so ripe that it is getting soft. Don’t hesitate to use bruised or blemished fruit; just discard the damaged parts. With the exception of berries and cherries (which are usually left whole and pitted), the fruit is cut before using. Apricots and small plums (pits removed) and figs can be cut in half and placed cut side up on the pastry. Larger plums and nectarines are better sliced thin. Peaches, apples, and pears should be peeled, pitted or cored, and then sliced. Some fruits, such as quince and dried fruit, need to be poached—gently cooked in sweet syrup—before being sliced and arranged on a tart. Rhubarb can be cut into matchsticks or slices. For best results the fruit should be sliced between 1/4 and 1/3 inch thick. Arrange the fruit on the pastry, leaving a 1 1/2-inch border. The fruit can be scattered evenly over the dough or it can be placed neatly in concentric circles. Apples and other drier fruit should be arranged tightly in overlapping circles. Juicy fruit such as plums and peaches should be one layer deep. Either way, the fruit should be fitted snugly together, one piece placed close to the next, because it will shrink as it cooks. Juicy fruit will give off more liquid as it cooks, making the crust soggy. There are a few things that can be done to mitigate this. The easiest is to scatter a tablespoon or two of flour over the pastry before arranging the fruit on top. Only sprinkle it on the part where the fruit will be arranged, not on the border. The flour can be mixed with sugar, chopped nuts, or ground spices for more flavor. Another way to create a barrier between the pastry and the juice is to spread frangipane (a mixture of almond paste, sugar, and butter) over the pastry; 1/2 cup is about the right amount for a single tart. Two to three tablespoons of jam can also be spread onto the pastry. This works best for fruit that’s only slightly juicy. Fold the border of dough up over the fruit and brush it generously with melted butter. Sprinkle with sugar, using up to 2 tablespoons. Lightly sprinkle the top of the fruit with more sugar: most fruit will only need 2 or 3 tablespoons. Rhubarb, tart plums, and apricots are exceptions and need a lot more sugar than the others. Taste the fruit as you are assembling the tart. The sweeter it is, the less sugar it will need. Once assembled, the tart can be kept in the refrigerator or freezer until time to bake. It is nice to put a tart into the oven as you are sitting down to dinner: that way it will be ready in time for dessert, still warm from the oven. Bake the tart on the bottom rack of the oven until the bottom of the crust is golden brown. As with savory tarts, it is important that the bottom of the pastry get brown and crisp. Here are a few suggestions for embellishing any simple fruit tart: After the tart has baked for 30 minutes, sprinkle it with soft berries such as raspberries, huckleberries, or blackberries (first tossed with a little sugar)—this way the berries cook but don’t get dried out. Currants, sultanas, or other raisins can be scattered over the crust before arranging the fruit. (If the raisins are very dry, soak them in water and Cognac, then drain them well before putting them on the tart.) And try sprinkling chopped candied citrus peel over the tart when it comes out of the oven. For added gloss and flavor, glaze the tart after baking. If the fruit is juicy enough, the juice that pools around the fruit during baking can be brushed back over it—a bit like basting a roast with...

Sweet tart dough, or pâte sucrée, is very different from the dough of the previous tarts in this chapter. It is sweet, soft, and almost crumbly instead of crisp and flaky. I use this dough for dessert tarts baked in tart pans with removable bottoms. The pastry is often prebaked so that it will stay crisp when baked with liquid fillings. Some of my favorite tarts of this kind are lemon curd, almond, and chocolate. Though made from flour and butter, sweet tart dough has the additions of egg and sugar. The ingredients are combined in a process closer to making cookie dough than to that of pastry. In fact, this dough makes delicious thumbprint cookies, little rounds with depressions made by the baker’s thumb and filled with lemon curd or jam. Sweet tart dough is soft and tender for a number of reasons. First, the butter and sugar are creamed (mixed until soft and fluffy) so that they combine thoroughly with the flour, inhibiting the gluten and tenderizing the dough. Finally, the dough is moistened with an egg yolk instead of water, making it even more difficult for the gluten to activate. Nevertheless, the dough can be overworked, so the egg is mixed into the butter to distribute it evenly before the flour is added. Soften the butter for 15 minutes at room temperature before creaming. It needs to be soft enough to stir in the egg yolk, but not so soft that it will melt into the flour and make the pastry oily. Beat the butter until it is soft and fluffy with a wooden spoon (or use a mixer) and then beat in the sugar. Add the egg yolk and vanilla and mix until completely combined. The yolk will be much easier to mix in if it is at room temperature. A cold egg will harden the butter around it. (If your egg is cold, put it in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes before separating it.) Mix in the flour, folding and stirring it into the butter-egg mixture. Don’t leave any floury patches in the dough or the pastry will be crackled in these places. The dough will be soft and sticky (sugar makes dough sticky) and needs to be refrigerated for at least 4 hours to firm up before rolling. Gather the dough into a ball and wrap in plastic. Flatten into a disk and chill. The dough can be made and kept in the refrigerator for 2 days or in the freezer for up to 2 months. Let it thaw overnight in the refrigerator before using. When ready to roll out the dough, take it out of the refrigerator. If it is quite hard, let it sit about 20 minutes to soften. Because the dough is soft and sticky by nature, it is much easier to roll out between 2 sheets of parchment or waxed paper. Cut two 14-inch-square pieces. Flour the bottom piece and center the unwrapped dough on it. Dust the top of the dough with flour and place the other sheet of paper on top. Roll the dough, from the center out, into a 12-inch circle. If the dough sticks to the paper, peel back the paper and dust the dough with a bit more flour. Replace the paper, turn the whole package over, and repeat the dusting on the other side. If the dough gets too soft while rolling, put it on a baking sheet, paper and all, and chill it in the freezer for a few minutes to firm it up. Continue rolling, flouring when needed, until the dough is about 1/8 inch thick. Let the rolled pastry rest for a few minutes in the refrigerator before using. A 12-inch circle of dough will line a 9-inch tart pan. (A tart pan with a removable bottom will make unmolding the tart much easier once it is baked.) Peel the paper off the circle of dough and, if it is to be baked blind (or empty), lightly prick it all over with a fork. This process is called docking, and it allows the escape of air that otherwise might cause the pastry to bubble up while baking. Invert the dough over the tart pan and remove the other piece of paper. Press the dough gently into the edges. Cut off the excess dough by rubbing your thumb across the top edge of the pan in an outward direction. Press the sides in and up after tri...

There is a long list of variations of savory galettes and most of them begin with sautéed onions. Sautéed onions are the perfect foil for the crisp, buttery crust of a tart. When combined with other vegetables, onions add protective moisture and deep flavor as the tart bakes in the oven. The pastry can also be rolled into long thin rectangular tarts, which can be cut into small pieces that make very popular finger food for a party. Surprisingly, onions vary quite a bit, and not just in appearance. Sometimes they cook quickly and are so juicy they need to be drained before they can be used; other times they take a long time to soften and don’t give off any liquid to speak of. Onions with very thin skins are usually much more sweet and juicy, while those with very hard, dark, golden skins tend to take longer to cook. All onions will eventually soften and be delicious, but when given the choice, I recommend selecting large onions that have a delicate, thin, lighter skin. In the summer, when they are in season, sweet Walla Walla, Vidalia, or Bermuda onions make excellent tarts, baking up almost as sweet as honey. In the spring there are fresh onions, or spring onions, that have not been dried and cured, and still have their green stalks attached. Peel them and trim off their stalks, slice them thick, and cook until just soft. The flavor of spring onions is delicate and less sweet than that of mature cured onions. The right amount of onions cooked to the right consistency is what makes a good tart. Pile the onions into a low-sided, heavy-bottomed pan with a generous amount of fat, and cook them slowly with herbs until soft and tasty; this will take at least 30 minutes. The onions must be cooled before they are spread onto the pastry or they will melt the butter before the tart bakes. The onions should be moist but not dripping wet or the tart will be soggy. If the onions are too juicy, drain them. Save the juice; it can be reduced and served with the tart as a little sauce or added to a vinaigrette. If the onions are still juicy, even after draining, sprinkle a little flour over the pastry (avoiding the border), before adding the onions, to soak up some of the juice while the tart cooks. Bake on the lowest rack of the oven for a crust that is crisp and golden brown on the bottom. Check the underside by gently lifting up the tart with a spatula. When the tart is fully baked, slide it off the pan onto a cooling rack to rest. If left on the baking pan to cool, it will steam and the pastry will not stay crisp. Once you have mastered a basic onion tart, there are many variations you can try: add sliced sweet or hot peppers to the sautéing onions about halfway through cooking; grate some summer squash and stir it into the onions during their last few minutes of sautéing; or, before you fill the tart, while the onions are cooling, stir in either seasoned cherry tomato halves or roasted, peeled, and sliced peppers. You can also top the layer of onions with sliced tomatoes or lightly grilled slices of eggplant. For a sweet and savory tart, mix chopped roasted figs into the onions. Other variations include sprinkling the pastry with grated cheese or brushing it with a slurry of chopped herbs and olive oil before spreading on the onions. Artichoke hearts also can either be sautéed and stirred into the onions, or sliced and baked and arranged on top of them; when the tart comes out of the oven, try painting it with garlic and herb butter. And most of the year you can mix the onions with sautéed greens—collards, chard, spinach, broccoli rabe, or mustard. Or when the tart has only 10 minutes left to bake, top it with anchovies and black olives.

Dramatic, puffy, and feather-light, with quivering, gilded caps, soufflés are surrounded by an aura of culinary mystery. Surprisingly, beneath the mystery lies a rather simple, but ingenious, dish. In a basic soufflé, a simple white sauce made of flour, butter, and milk is enriched with egg yolks; a flavoring element such as cheese (or fruit or liqueur for a dessert soufflé) is added; and the mixture is lightened with egg whites beaten to many times their original volume. The air trapped in the egg whites expands in the heat of the oven, puffing up the soufflé even more. The only critical point is that a soufflé should be sped to the table the moment it’s finished baking. Out of the oven, a steaming soufflé cools quickly and loses its triumphant height. Here is a basic method to follow to make savory soufflés. Start by making a white sauce, or béchamel: Melt butter in a heavy saucepan. Stir in flour, cook for a minute or two (this mixture is called a roux), and whisk in milk, a little at a time, whisking thoroughly after each addition before adding another. The flour and butter will bind up and then slowly loosen as more milk is added. If you add all the milk at once you are almost guaranteed lumps in the sauce. (If the sauce does get lumpy, push it through a strainer to smooth it.) After the milk is whisked in, bring the sauce to a boil, stirring all the while. This cooks the flour into the milk and fully thickens the sauce. Turn the heat down as low as possible, and simmer for at least 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, to cook out the taste of raw flour. Season the sauce to taste with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne. Let it cool slightly. Separate the eggs, stirring the yolks into the béchamel one by one and putting the whites into a large bowl in which they will be beaten later. Take care not to break the yolks: egg whites containing even a tiny bit of yolk refuse to be whipped into a foam as high, stiff, and stable as those without. If there are visible traces of broken yolk in your egg white, you may be able to scoop them out with an eggshell half; if you can’t, you may have to separate another egg and save the broken one for some other use. Eggs that are many weeks old have watery whites and fragile yolks, which makes them more difficult to separate than very fresh eggs, with their thick whites and stand-up yolks. To the béchamel and egg yolks, add grated cheese or other flavoring elements such as a vegetable purée (of leeks, asparagus, or garlic, for example), chopped shellfish, or a few herbs. This mixture is called the base of the soufflé. It can be prepared ahead of time and refrigerated, but be sure to take both the base and the egg whites out of the refrigerator at least an hour before baking to come to room temperature. When ready to cook, preheat the oven to 375°F (or to 400°F if you decide to make individual soufflés rather than one big one). The soufflé needs to bake in the center of the oven. Rearrange the racks, if necessary, to allow plenty of headroom for the soufflé to rise. Butter a baking dish liberally with soft butter. A soufflé can be baked in a traditional soufflé dish, in a shallow gratin dish or other baking dish, or in individual ovenproof cups or porcelain ramekins. Even a fl at sheet pan with sides will work; the soufflé won’t puff as high, but it will have more surface area to brown. Beat the egg whites vigorously with a wire whisk until they form peaks that are stiff, but still moist and smooth. It’s easy to overwhip egg whites with an electric mixer, so pay close attention when the whites start to thicken, and stop and check them frequently. (Overwhipped whites have a chunky granular look to them.) Stir about one third of the whites into the soufflé base, to lighten it. With a rubber spatula, scrape the rest of the beaten eg...

The pastry determines the outcome of any tart: how it’s made, how it’s rolled out, and how long it’s cooked. The tart dough I make most often is good for both savory and sweet tarts and it makes good pie crust, too. Simply made with flour, butter, and water, the pastry is tender, flaky, and crisp. I avoided making tart dough for years; I found it difficult to make, and I was often disappointed with the results. Then a friend who is an excellent pastry chef explained patiently just how the flour, butter, and water work together, and after a little practice I began to get a feel for the feel of the dough, and the look of it, and my tarts got to be consistently good. As explained in the bread chapter, flour contains a mixture of proteins known as gluten. When mixed with water, these proteins are activated and begin to form a molecular network that makes dough elastic. The more a dough is stirred, or worked, the more the gluten is developed. Gluten is good for bread, which needs a strong supporting network in order to rise, but not so good for tarts: the more the dough is worked, the tougher the pastry will be. That’s why it’s important not to over-work tart dough or knead it. All-purpose flour is the best flour to use for this recipe; bread flour is too high in gluten and so-called pastry flour and cake flour are too low (which makes the pastry mealy). All-purpose flour has just the right amount of gluten to give the dough a flaky texture. This is where the butter comes in. Butter adds flavor and richness to the pastry and has important effects on texture as well. When butter is mixed in, it coats some of the flour, isolating the flour from the water—which slows down the activation of gluten, making the pastry more tender. When some of the butter is left in larger, uneven pieces and flattened by rolling, it will steam during baking, separating sheets of gluten from one another, and creating a flaky texture. The more butter, the more tender the dough. The more irregular the sizes of the pieces of butter, the flakier the pastry. When it’s mixed into the fl our, the butter should be quite cold—refrigerator temperature. If it gets too soft or melts, it makes the dough oily. Have all the ingredients ready before you start: butter chilled and cut into roughly 1/4-inch cubes, flour measured, water icy cold. Work the butter into the flour quickly, using your fingertips. If you have one of those tools called a pastry blender, so much the better. The important thing is to work quickly, lightly rubbing the butter and flour together with your fingertips, or chopping and mixing with the pastry blender, for about a minute. (You can use a stand mixer, too, fitted with the paddle attachment, and mix for about a minute at medium-low speed.) Now it’s time to add the water. The water’s function is to hydrate the flour, thus activating the gluten. You need enough water to make a cohesive dough that is neither crumbly nor sticky. A dry, crumbly dough is hard to roll out and mealy to eat; wet, sticky dough makes tough pastry. The properties of both flour and butter vary, so the amount of ice-cold water you need to add will also vary. Measure out the amount called for, but don’t pour it in all at once. Start by adding about three quarters of the amount. Stir and toss the dough with a fork as you dribble in the water. Avoid working the dough or squeezing it together. (If using a mixer, pour the water down the sides of the bowl while the machine is on low speed, mixing for 30 seconds or less.) Add water until the dough is just starting to clump together—if it forms a ball it’s too wet. Test it by squeezing together a small handful. If it holds together, there’s enough water; if the mass is dry and crumbly, it needs more. Add more water a few drops at a time, stirring lightly between additions. When the dough is the right consistency, gently bring it together into a sha...

Fresh-made, homemade breadcrumbs have some obvious uses: sprinkled over a gratin to form a crust; as a coating for about-to-be-fried meats, fish, and vegetables; and to give a lighter texture to stuffings and meatballs. But in my kitchen they also have a major role as a sort of endlessly versatile crunchy sauce: golden, fresh-toasted breadcrumbs, tossed with almost any chopped fresh tender herb or combination of herbs (parsley, marjoram, thyme) and perhaps a little fine-chopped garlic, and then strewn over almost anything—pasta, vegetables, roasts, salads—as a finishing touch. Recently I’ve started to embellish toasted breadcrumbs with fried herbs. I fry the leaves of herbs such as rosemary, sage, and winter savory in olive oil for a minute (or less), just until crisp and then toss them with the crumbs. Not all breads make good fresh breadcrumbs. Most bagged, sliced, commercial breads—the kinds with preservatives and added sweeteners—simply won’t work: the additives reduce bread’s natural crumbiness and the sweeteners add the wrong flavor and cause overrapid browning. Breadcrumbs are best made from bread that has had a day or two to dry out just a little. Fresh bread has too much internal moisture to make good crumbs. Instead it clumps, forming moist wads of bread instead of integral crumbs. For breading and frying, loaves of fine-textured white bread such as pain de mie or pullman bread make the best crumbs. For toasted breadcrumbs, however, I prefer to use levain bread or another coarse-textured, country-style bread. These kinds of breadcrumbs are different from breadcrumbs made from completely dried out bread, and are totally different from the crumbs sold in boxes at the grocery, which are too fine, don’t taste good, and just won’t work for the recipes in this book. The easiest way to turn bread into breadcrumbs is with a blender or food processor. First remove the crust; it’s too tough and crumbs with crust in them brown unevenly. Cut the crustless bread into cubes and process them in batches. The bread should be thoroughly ground up so the crumbs are more or less the same size; this will ensure even browning while cooking. Crumbs to be used for breading need to be ground very fine, so they will stick to and evenly coat whatever is being breaded. Crumbs to be toasted can be coarse or fine, depending on the end use. When toasting crumbs, toss them first with olive oil (or melted butter or duck fat) and spread them evenly on a baking sheet. Every few minutes or so, stir them with a metal spatula. The crumbs along the edges of the pan always brown first, so mix these in well, moving them into the center away from the outer edges. The crumbs brown slowly at first, because they must dry before they brown, but they finish quickly during the last minute or two of toasting. Keep a close eye on them towards the end of their cooking time to prevent overbrowning. If you find you have more old bread than you can use, turn it into crumbs and freeze them for future use. When there is no dried-out bread and you need to make crumbs, cut thick slices of fresh bread and put them on a baking sheet in a warm oven to dry out slightly before processing.

When it comes to making bread, many things affect the outcome, some more obvious than others. Most important is the flour. You cannot make good bread from mediocre flour. Choose flour that is unbleached, untreated, and free of additives. All flours, and especially whole-grain flours, will eventually spoil and taste and smell rancid. Try to buy flour that’s relatively fresh; your best bet is to look for a local organic food retailer with a rapid turnover who sells in bulk. The water makes a difference, too; both its temperature and its quantity influence texture. The type of leavening agent and the length of time bread is allowed to sit and rise will both affect the outcome enormously: quickbreads made with baking soda or powder are tender and almost cakelike, while breads leavened with wild yeast and given repeated slow risings will be the chewiest and crustiest, with the most complex flavors. Weather also affects bread: humidity, heat, and cold each exert their influence. All this makes baking ever-changing and forever fascinating. There is a world of breads: quickbreads such as cornbread and Irish soda bread that are easy to put on the table on relatively short notice; wonderful flatbreads such as tortillas fresh off the griddle or whole-wheat-flour puris that puff up when they’re fried or pita bread grilled over a fire; and the classic yeasted breads of France and Italy—including my everyday favorite, levain bread. Levain bread is leavened with a natural starter of wild yeast and allowed a long, slow fermentation and rising period in canvas-lined baskets. Traditionally, before each batch is baked, some of the starter is held back to leaven the next batch. Rather than give a recipe for a levain-type bread (which is a little complicated to make at home), I offer instead a recipe for a dough that’s versatile enough to be formed and baked as a flat crusty focaccia or a traditional pizza. (Kids love to stretch out the dough and make their own pizzas.)

Made in a Bundt cake pan, this half flan, half chocolate cake is a decadent marriage of two dessert classics. The batter for the chocolate cake is made first, then poured into the Bundt pan, followed by the flan batter. The batters may appear to mix but they completely separate while baking, with the flan ending up on the bottom. I like to eat the cake warm, but traditionally it is chilled for 24 hours before serving.

As we well know, chocolate has been around for a very long time, dating all the way back to pre-Columbian Mexico. Once considered a gift from the gods by the Mayans, and after being introduced to Europe, reserved for Spanish royalty, chocolate has become a worldwide favorite when preparing desserts. You’ll find it in cakes, tarts, dessert sauces, and soufflés, as you see here. Mexican chocolate, available in Latin markets and some supermarkets, is flavored with cinnamon, almonds, and vanilla. It makes for an unmistakable—and irresistible—soufflé.