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Well hello blog world. I am back. Is anybody still out there? No. It’s okay, I am used to talking to myself.

So, I love biscuits with a capital L. I am not really going out on a culinary limb here, because really who doesn’t love biscuits? If you don’t love biscuits, I don’t trust you as a person. Period.

These biscuits are from “America’s Test Kitchen The TV Companion Cookbook 2009″. I could not find this on Amazon so I think this is the book that comes with one of the DVD sets. I borrowed/stole it from Nick’s dad, so I don’t know where he got it. I am slightly obsessed with this book at the moment, pretty much everything in it sounds and looks super tasty.

These drop biscuits were the first thing I made from this book. They are fuss free and so quick to make. There is no cubing and cutting in cold butter, no kneading and rolling, and no worrying about over handling the dough. To make these biscuits, all you need to do is combine your dry ingredients, combine your wet ingredients and then combine them together. I had these bad boys in the oven in 10 minutes. In fact, your oven will probably take longer to preheat to a stifling 475F than it will take you to prepare the biscuits.

These came out of the oven smelling of buttery deliciousness. And they tasted like it too. They had a rich butter flavor (thanks Strauss butter), and I loved the texture contrast between the golden brown crispy outside and the soft fluffy inside. They were perfect. Taste wise, I think they can rival any rolled biscuit, and texturally they are just different so it’s hard to compare.

However, I was impressed with the tenderness of these biscuits. Normally, in a rolled biscuit the ice cold butter that you cut into the flour creates steam as it melts in the hot oven and that is how you achieve the light flaky layers. There was a definite lightness to these drop biscuits, and ATK explains that they figured out the way to do this by mistake. The wet ingredients in this recipe are melted butter and buttermilk. In one trial, due to some impatience, they combined slightly cooled melted butter and cold buttermilk straight from the fridge, getting a clumpy butter-buttermilk mixture. They tried to whisk the crap out of it to get it to emulsify into a smooth liquid, but the butter was too stubborn. They decided to bake them anyway with the chunky butter. These butter clumps created steam in the biscuits and helped them rise higher and bake up fluffier than all their other trials with a smooth buttermilk mixture, mimicking what happens in a standard rolled out biscuit.

Nick’s opinion was that these were really good, but he still likes the more standard rolled out flaky biscuits that I make. He informed me that his benchmark for biscuits is Popeye’s biscuits, and he thought that Popeye’s were still better than these. I pointed out to him that it had been far too long since he had a Popeye’s biscuit to make such a statement, so I do not accept his opinion. I think that these are just as good as a Popeye’s biscuits and when you take into account the low fuss factor, they are making a play for my favorite biscuit to bake.

I served these fluffy pillows alongside a roast chicken, also courtesy of ATK, which I will post about soon.

If you are an astute reader you will notice that there are 6 biscuits in this picture:

And only 5 in this picture:

I am sure you would just assume that is because we ate one of them before taking a picture. Unfortunately, this is not true. The 6th biscuit lost it’s short life almost immediately after coming out of the oven when it gingerly slid right off the baking rack into a sink of dirty dish water. It was a sad moment. I let out a gasp that actually prompted Nick to get up from the computer to make sure I was okay. It takes a lot to get Nick to look away from the computer when he is in the zone.

Make these very soon, they do not disappoint.

Recipe after the jump.

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for us, of course. *insert additional lame Generation X marketing mantra speak here <---* Our friend Jacqueline Pham of Pham Fatale is hosting a bread baking contest, and I submitted Sara’s 5 braid Challah. The winner gets a pretty knife that is destined to one day sever (at least) one of my fingers. Please help us make this happen by heading over there and giving Imafoodblog a big fat, wet, juicy, passionate, er um, vote…

Do it for the children!

Okay, so I went on a bit of a challah making craze. Over the week while I was on vacation I made 3 batches of challah yielding a total of 6 loaves.

You may recall a few weeks ago I made my first challah for our Bread Baking Day roundup. I used Peter Reinhardt’s recipe from Bread Baker’s Apprentice, and at the time I was pretty pleased with the results.

However, I wanted to do some experimenting to deepen the flavor and I also wanted to try some other braiding besides the 3 strand braid.

So I set out again, still using Peter Reinhardt’s recipe, except that I incorporated a preferment so the challah would have the richer flavor that I am used to. I also doubled the salt because my first loaves were a bit on the bland side.

Overall I was very pleased with the outcome. The flavor was absolutely better and richer, and I was able to achieve a deeper golden crust as well by using a whole egg as the egg wash instead of just egg whites as Reinhardt calls for. I was also very happy with the way the 5 braid looked.

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I was lucky enough to host this month’s Bread Baking Day. I decided to challenge all you awesome internet bread bakers to try something, *GASP* brand new, never tested, maybe even a bit challenging. The results are in, and by God they look delicious. The amount of gym hours required to work off all these carbs is daunting - but probably oh-so-worth-it (who am I kidding? I’d just eat all the bread up and then lay around on the sofa and bitch about how fat I am all night, bound in a thick layer of self-loathing, instead of ACTUALLY going to the GYM). Without further ado and in no particular order, I present to you BBD #23

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***update - check out my improved 5 braid challah.***

I made this challah bread a few weeks ago for two reasons. One, I have never made a challah before and decided this would be my entry for August’s Bread Baking Day which we are hosting, and two, I wanted it to be a test run for possibly making challah with my mom for the upcoming Jewish high holidays.

For those of you who may not know, Challah is a traditional Jewish egg bread which is eaten on the Sabbath and holidays. It is delicious and you can make unbelievable French toast with it. I decided for my first challlah I would use the Peter Reinhardt’s recipe from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. We have had much success with all of the other recipes we have tried and I find the book to be very user friendly, especially when you are making something for the first time.

I am not going to post the recipe because it is long and I don’t feel like typing it up. I would recommend you buy this book if you are interested in bread baking, or you can find the recipe by doing a Google book search. The challah recipe is a part of the preview. You can also find a fabulous picture tutorial on making this bread over at Pinch My Salt.

Overall I was extremely pleased with my first attempt at braided bread. Although I felt that the bread was a tad bland for my taste I think it may have just needed a bit more salt, and a preferment would also go a long way for a more complex flavor. I will do both of these things when I make more challahs for the Jewish holidays. I would also like to do a version studded with raisins. A bunch pictures and some assistance with how to braid bread after the jump.

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So… WE, the humble imafoodblog.com staff, have been graced with the opportunity to host Bread Baking Day #23, and we couldn’t be more excited about it. I’ve even come up with a theme, one for which I can guarantee that no one from the lowliest home bread baker, to the greatest of all time, has ever made before… bold statement, I know, but ever so true.

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Bruschetta has been around for a long time, like 15th century long time. It originated, of course, somewhere in central Italy. The word bruschetta is derived from the word brucare which is of Roman dialect and means “to roast over the coals". (Thanks Wikipedia). I think a lot of people assume that bruschetta refers to the delicious topping on this Italian snack, but it in fact refers to the grilled bread.

It seems to me that the most traditional type of bruschetta is topped with a raw tomato and basil combination. Since Nick and I both do not like raw tomatoes this is not something that we would normally eat. However, since bruschetta was July’s Recipe to Rival challenge, and it is easy and inexpensive to make, I figured we may as well try this recipe out.

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This is yet another quality recipe from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhardt. When I saw that our friend Stefanie at Hefe und mehr chose Sweet Breads as this months Bread Baking Day, I knew this was what I was going to make. The title of the recipe is pretty self explanatory. I believe that Reinhardt’s version also calls for walnuts, but I decided to leave them out this time.

This was my first attempt at a loaf bread and overall it was a success. As you would expect, it smelled amazing as it was baking - so comforting and homey. Nick and I made it together on a Sunday afternoon and it was the perfect way to end a nice relaxing weekend at home.

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Due to the many and varied ways in which all you bread bakers out there name/size you images, I decided to leave them all in native resolution, except those too big to fit in my content area w/o being distorted. I couldn’t believe how many submissions there were for this week. So many, in fact, that I decided to put them after the jump. Thank you so much to all of this week’s participants and to Susan of Wild Yeast Blog for allowing me the pleasure to host this weeks edition! I made a list, and checked it twice, but if I missed anyone, please let me know ASAP so I can get your submissions up.

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Well, normally Nick writes the posts on this blog about our forays in bread baking. He has a much better understanding of bread baking and the science behind it. However, we made this focaccia together, and somehow I got the task of writing a post for it.

When I think focaccia bread I think thick soft chunks of herby oily bread with a light golden crust. That is exactly what Peter Reinhardt delivered in his focaccia recipe from

The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread. This is our newest cookbook acquisition and we couldn’t be more pleased with the results of the recipes we have tried so far. The focaccia recipe is on page 164-65 of the book.

One of the first breads that Nick ever made was a focaccia recipe from King Arthur Flour. It was delicious and he made it multiple times. However, I remember thinking that it didn’t seem like authentic focaccia that I sometimes get in Italian restaurants or pizzerias. It seemed too thin and chewy. So when this came out of the oven so thick and fluffy, I was super excited and pleased.

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