It’s not quite fall yet, but it’s getting closer. Rosh Hashanah is imminent, Eid is just days away. It seemed like time for a babka. Babka is not quite cake and not quite bread. I make my babka with my standard challah dough. For each loaf I start a teaspoon and a half of dry [...]
Tagged desserts, yeast doughsI think everyone should, at least once in a while, harvest their own food. Even if you don’t grow it yourself, it’s worth getting out there in a field or an orchard somewhere and harvesting what you’ll eat. Ideally, you should do enough of it to get a little tired, and a little bit wishing [...]
Tagged berries, desserts, home cookingBaking without dairy can be a challenge. Milk is not tricky, butter is not particularly tough. But sour cream, yogurt, buttermilk, and other cultured products can be hard to approximate. (You can just forget about cheese.) Of these, buttermilk is the easiest. You can sour soy milk in the same way that you would sour [...]
Tagged non-dairyI’m a mostly improvisational cook. I read cookbooks like other people read novels, as a leisure activity, but rarely refer to them while I’m cooking. Now and then I cook someone else’s recipe precisely as written, but I mostly use other folks’ ideas and methods as platforms upon which to build. For years I was [...]
Tagged bread, cake, desserts, fruit, home cooking