I find all kinds of photos of recipes on Pinterest that make me lick my lips and wish there was someone in my family that would eat the recipe if I made it. Smitten Kitchen’s Cheddar, Beer and Mustard Pull-Apart Bread is one of those recipes. I fell in love with the look of this loaf, with its peel-apart slices.

Having recently bought a 10″ x 5″ loaf pan, I decided to use my tried-and-true Pull-Apart Challah Rolls, but stacked layers in a loaf pan instead of rolled balls in a cake pan. It worked beautifully, thought the layers did not pull apart as delicately as they would have if I’d have put cheese or butter in between each one.

The boys loved the challah baked this way, and G. said he even preferred it to the rounded version. Although I’d still like to try the cheesy mustard version, I felt very satisfied with this result.

Who doesn’t like challah? My whole family adores this recipe — we’ve made it at least a half-dozen times since we first tried it. I find that many challahs sold today are almost like dessert. They are sweet and super-eggy; they practically squish rather than tear. They’re very different from the challah I grew up with, which was barely sweetened and much more dry. That’s why it made such good French toast.

This challah recipe is a nice blend of those two varieties. It is enriched with eggs, just a bit. There is honey used as a sweetener, but the sweetness is subtle and not cloying. My boys think the pull-apart nature of the rolls is the best thing since… well… sliced bread.

After making Peter Reinhart’s (Two-Day) Challah last month, I was exposed to the idea of a “cool rise” in bread making. It’s very convenient to be able to make a dough the night before, store it the fridge, and bake it off the next day. As a yeast newbie, I had been afraid I’d kill off the yeast. But that fear is unfounded, at least for this recipe. I think that, as Peter explains, the overnight in the fridge deepens the flavors and makes a better product. It’s still delicious with two warm rises, though.

We like this challah so much that I’d temporarily stopped experimenting with other bread recipes. I’m going to remedy that tonight with a nice loaf of French bread.

Pull-Apart Challah Rolls
Adapted slightly from Honey Challah Rolls

4 c. bread flour
2 packages active dry yeast
1½ tsp. kosher salt
2 large eggs, 1 of them separated
1 c. hot water (120° to 130° F)
3 Tbsp. honey
2 Tbsp. olive oil

In the bowl of a stand mixer, use your paddle to mix 3½ c. bread flour, yeast, and salt, blending well. Add 1 whole egg and 1 yolk, hot water, honey, and oil to the bowl. Mix until combined, scraping down the sides if necessary. Refrigerate your remaining egg white. Then switch to your dough hook.

Knead the dough for about 6 minutes, adding more flour if the dough feels sticky, until it is smooth and elastic. (I usually add another quarter-cup.) Place the dough in a greased bowl, then turn it over once. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rise in a warm place for 45 minutes to an hour, until it has doubled in bulk. Punch the dough down and let it rest for 5 minutes.

Divide the dough into 16 even pieces. I like to do this by forming it into a loose roll and then cutting it into halves until I have 16 pieces. Form each piece into a ball, pulling and pinching the dough underneath itself so each ball has a smooth top. Arrange the balls in a greased 9-inch cake pan: 10 around perimeter, then 5, and 1 ball in the center.

Lightly beat the reserved egg white and brush it over your rolls. Cover lightly with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, up to an hour if doing a warm rise. You can also do the second rise in your refridgerator, overnight. Just remove the dough from the fridge an hour before you are ready to bake it, so it comes up to room temperature.

Bake rolls at 350° F for 22 – 25 minutes, until golden brown. Check challah at 20 minutes for color — if it is browning too quickly, you can cover the top loosely with foil while it finishes baking.

Let challah cool on a wire rack for at least 45 minutes, and then pull apart to eat.

It is not every day that I have 11 egg yolks in my fridge. But after making a double batch of meringue frosting (all egg whites) for a Dairy-Free Frosted Birthday Cake, I did. What happened to the twelfth yolk, you may ask? I (accidentally) carefully placed it in the drain of my kitchen sink instead of the bowl with all its brethren. Apparently I was bored and distracted by the the time I hit a dozen eggs.

So, with 11 egg yolks I had three options: make hollandaise, custard, or challah. Hollandaise was out; no one in my family would eat it. Custard was a toss-up: perhaps the boys would love a homemade pudding, but it could just as easily go the other. Challah, however, is no-fail in this house. So I settled on a recipe from Michael Ruhlman’s blog, Peter Reinhart’s Challah.

There are two things about this challah that are different from other bread recipes I’ve made before: first, it used all yolks instead of some whole eggs and some divided; second, it calls for the initial rise to be done in the fridge, at least overnight but for up to four days.

I posted some pictures of the dough rising on the Chick in the Kitchen Facebook page, including a photo of the dough after the final (third!) rise and before baking. My dough took a little more flour to come together than the recipe suggests, and I did choose to add the vanilla. The fridge rise was amazing. When we opened the door of the fridge the next morning, it looked as though the dough had tried to escape the bounds of the bowl — it had more than doubled in size. I don’t know a lot about the chemistry of bread-baking, but it was very interesting to experience this “cool” rise cycle.

I choose to make 8 large challah rolls (we call them “nose” rolls because of the nubbin in the middle) and 1 large braided challah. The dough was very easy to work with after the first rise, and braided easily. I used both the recommended thump test (the bottom of the bread should sound hollow) and took the internal temperature of the bread (should be 190 degrees F) when done. I overbaked the rolls by about 2 minutes, so if you are making smaller breads watch the time carefully.

This challah was fantastic. J. said it was hands-down the best homemade challah he had ever tasted, and that it was just as good as something from a bakery. The texture of the bread was light but still with a bit a chewiness, and it didn’t taste overly sweet or eggy. A. preferred slices of the challah which was slightly more moist than the rolls. G. liked them both, but told me he still prefers the Pull-Apart Honey Challah Rolls.

Although the recipe takes two days to complete, it’s not any more complex than any other yeast bread. You just have to have the time. If I were ever in a position again where I had a large number of egg yolks to use up, this would be my go-to recipe. But since I don’t have imminent plans to whip a dozen egg whites, it won’t be in the near future.

“Make your own pizza” nights have become a favorite of my boys, although G. chooses to make calzones from the same ingredients as the pizza. I used to buy pre-made whole wheat dough at my supermarket (they kept it in the refrigerated section near the shredded cheese), but although it was serviceable it bounced back a lot. It was hard to stretch it out to the thinness we wanted, so the crust was always relatively thick and turned out chewy at best, and underdone at worst.

Since getting a stand mixer, I’ve tried making my own pizza dough a few times, though I’ve been working on a white flour version from the book that came with my mixer. Last night I got it perfect. We were able to make very thin crust pizza that actually crackled when I cut into it with a chef’s knife. Both boys agreed that this was the best dough we’d ever made, and that it did not need any more tweaks. See how thin that pizza is? It had a great crunch when we bit into it, too.

Because I am new to working with yeast, I use an instant-read thermometer to double-check the temperature of the water I’m using before I add the yeast. Turns out, “warm” water is actually much hotter than I would expect.

Also, my kitchen is the coldest room in my house, even though it’s not drafty. In my parent’s home, we’d let dough rise in the small utility room that held the water heater — it was clean, draft-free, and toasty. I don’t have an area like that, so instead I preheat my oven to 180° F, then turn it off. This creates an insulted, warm space for my dough to rise, but without being hot enough to start cooking it.

Next up: figuring out a whole wheat crust we all love.

Pizza & Calzone Dough
Adapted from Crusty Pizza Dough, in the KitchenAid Stand Mixer manual

Note: This recipe includes 2 hours of rising time.

1 package active dry yeast
1 cup warm water (105° to 115°)
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
2 tsp. olive oil (+ a little extra)
3 c. bread flour, divided (+ a little extra)

Add yeast to the bowl of your stand mixer, and then pour warm water over it. And salt, oil, and 2 cups of the flour. Using your dough hook, mix on Speed 2 for about a minute.

While continuing to mix, add in the remaining cup of flour, a bit at a time, until the flour is incorporated and the dough starts to pull off the side of the bowl. Knead on the same speed for 2 more minutes. Your dough should feel smooth, and not sticky at all.

Lightly coat a bowl with olive oil, and place dough in the bowl, then flip it over so it has a thin layer of oil on top.

Cover the top of the bowl with plastic wrap or a damp tea towel. Let it rise in a warm spot for 1 hour until it doubles in size. If you press a finger into the dough, the indentation should stay there. Punch the dough down, and let it rise, covered for another hour. Punch it down a final time.

Dough can be rolled with a pin or stretched to make pizza or calzones. Bake at 400° F for about 20 minutes, or until done.

Thanks to a great Black Friday sale, I am the new owner of a bright red KitchenAid stand mixer! I’ve been entering blog giveaways to win one of these babies for years, but was never successful. I finally decided to treat myself to one when I saw a price for the Professional 600 that was lower than I’d ever seen before.

I have never been much of a bread maker, but with the new mixer I was tempted to try out the dough hook. I used a recipe for Sixty-Minute Dinner Rolls that came in the instruction manual of my mixer. The recipe comes together easily, and they smell delicious even before they hit the oven — just the smell of the raw dough rising is warm and homey. Out of the oven, they were very tasty if a little plain. My boys loved them and gobbled up several on the spot. They won approval from 2 out of 3 of my dear friend Sharon’s kids as well.

However, once the rolls cooled they were quite tough. The recipe makes 24 rolls, so not all of them are going to be eaten warm. I am a very inexperienced bread maker, so the tenderness issue could be from several technique shortcomings: too much flour, under kneading, or over kneading (I think this is the least likely). I felt that I followed the recipe closely, but I will need to try them (or another recipe) again as I develop my bread legs and get used to what my new mixer can do.

We went camping in the Kenneth L. Wilson campground last weekend, just for a night. I couldn’t wait to try out a technique for cooking crescent rolls over a campfire! I originally saw the idea on Pinterest, but there are lots of pictures of this camping treat online.

I used Immaculate Baking Co.’s Crescent Rolls instead of Pillsbury — the ingredients are a little better. The picture above is the first and only roll we cooked on a stick. Unfortunately, the dough didn’t separate into triangles when I popped open the can — it was one big blob. I had to just rip it apart, stretch out the dough, and then wrap that small piece around a stick. It took a while to cook, but once it was done all four of us agreed it was fantastic — we each got a nibble from this one stick.

As good as that roll was, I didn’t feel like standing around for another 10 minutes per roll to make the whole batch this way. Instead, we made a makeshift baking pan from a piece of aluminum foil and pinched off pieces of the rest of the dough to make lots of little rolls. Covered with another piece of foil and set on a grill over the coals of the fire, these itty bitties baked in about 20 minutes and were just as delicious.

Although we need to work on our technique, these Campfire Crescent Rolls will definitely be part of our next camping trip.

Poor A. has strep and he’s been feverish all weekend. I thought I’d bake a treat for a lazy Sunday breakfast while my three boys tried to unlock yet another character on Mario Kart. I came across a recipe on Parenting.com for Sour Cream-Chocolate Chip Muffins, which looked fast and simple. Only, it omitted the quantity of sugar in the ingredients list. I used a scant 3/4 cup of granulated sugar and otherwise followed the recipe.

G. came running into the kitchen as soon as he smelled them baking, excited to have chocolate chip cookies for breakfast! He was not even a bit disappointed when I told him they were muffins, not cookies (might as well have been dessert with these ingredients, though). We all loved them, and I was tickled by the fact that J. was able to snap off the muffin top from the “stump” — the muffins were just the right balance of substantial heft (not fluffy like a cupcake) but not too dense so that they sat heavily in your stomach. Really delicious, and a treat that made A. feel better, if only for a moment.

I still had sweet potatoes left from my last farm share, and although I kept intending to make burritos with them it just never happened. I was going to make Sweet Potato Buttermilk Cornbread, but didn’t want to buy buttermilk for just that recipe. Instead, I decided to try my hand at another yeast roll (I’d made Pumpkin Dinner Rolls once before — what is with me and orange bread?).

I settled on Sweet Potato Rolls, using the puree from my microwaved CSA sweet potatoes, and they turned out beautifully. They are soft and substantial, with a bit of chewiness when you bite into them. I thought they were texturally perfect, so yay me! However, the flavor was bland. Really no hint of the sweet potato, and not quite sweet or savory. Like white bread. But, hot out of the oven they are wonderful — what could be bad about a freshly-baked roll? A. liked them a lot and G. said they were “pretty good,” but then he only ate a nibble.

I had to start this recipe at 2 PM in order to have them ready for dinner — they need to rise twice. I scheduled them today because I knew I’d be home all afternoon, but I wonder if it’s worth it. It is an easy recipe, and I did feel a sense of accomplish in baking with yeast successfully. Still, even though the hands-on time is low it just seems like a lot of work for not enough reward. A fun project for once in a while, but not something I’d want to do regularly.

Edited to add: These were very good at room temperature the next morning. You could taste more of the sweetness in the recipe, and they made a lovely breakfast.

I had buttermilk leftover from making cupcakes out of my Dr. Pepper Cake recipe, and a bag of sweet potatoes from my farm share, so I headed over to CookThink to see if I could find a recipe to use them up. I got a perfect match: Sweet Potato Corn Bread. Even more perfect because it was spectacularly delicious.

This is a moist, sweet corn bread — but not so sweet that you feel like you’re eating cake. The small amount of cayenne adds a subtle background heat which was just enough so that A. detected it, but didn’t mind it. The sweet potatoes are pureed before being added to the batter, so they were very stealth — perfect for my produce-averse kids. My parents, Jason, and I loved it as well. I might not buy buttermilk specifically for this recipe, but if I had to use some up I would definitely make it again (maybe as muffins next time).

Schmaltz is rendered chicken fat used in traditional Jewish cooking. You can make schmaltz yourself or even buy containers of it in a supermarket that carries kosher products. I’ve never used schmaltz in a recipe — I just substitute olive oil or similar — but tonight’s dinner reminded me of it!

I roasted (at 400° F) two leg & thigh pieces of chicken on top of three bulbs worth of peeled garlic cloves (from my CSA) for about an hour and a quarter. Aside from spraying my glass baking dish with Pam, I didn’t use any oil and because I was cooking the chicken specifically for the boys tonight, I left it unseasoned — I cook it with the skin on and then remove it before serving. I have the best luck getting them to eat chicken this way.

The garlic, since it’s underneath the skin-on chicken, cooks in the drippings as the fat renders during cooking. The cloves become all buttery and smooth, and mild as can be. Once the chicken was cooked, I removed the garlic with a slotted spoon and blotted it with a paper towel. Then I spread several cloves on a piece of challah and… mmmmmm. Heaven. If this is schmaltzy, I’ll take it.