Replacing Butter: Vegetable Oil

It's been a while since I've been able to post something here on the blog, but I promise I have a good reason for it. Last month, I moved from Washington, DC (my home of the last few years) to New York City as part of a new job. I was so busy trying to get everything together, I just didn't have the time to bake or blog. 

But now I've been here for a couple of weeks, and last week I kicked off the new chapter of crazy baking. I began with some hamentashen for Purim, then made a gingerbread cake for Sabbath. I was all set to spend some time on Sunday making some cookies when an idea hit me. Now would be a good a time as any to revisit a problem that had been plaguing me for many years: how to replace melted butter in a cookie recipe.

[I suppose now is a good a time as any to alert you that there's going to be a lot of science talk in this post. Hold on to your hats. Also, it's worth noting that I relied heavily on Harold McGee's "On Food And Cooking" for the science aspect of this. It's an invaluable resource.]

As I've said before in other posts, when I make cookies for Sabbath or holidays, I usually need to keep them pareve, which means they have to be dairy-free (and meat free, but who's putting meat in a cookie?). The usual solution is to grab a stick of dairy-free margarine and substitute it for the butter. I've never been a big fan of this for a couple of reasons:

1) Margarine is pretty gross. 

2) Pareve margarine isn't so easy to find (at least back in DC).

3) Margarine is not so healthy for you. 

Let me take a moment to address that last one. While doing some research ahead of this post, I discovered that, for a while, margarine was thought to be healthier than butter. Butter is high in saturated fat (not heart healthy) while margarine is high in unsaturated fat (more heart healthy, relatively speaking). But more recently, scientists discovered that the process by which oil is made solid for margarine, known as hydrogenation, turns those healthier unsaturated fats into trans fats. Trans fats are just as bad as saturated fats, and in certain ways, somewhat worse. (For more information about this, I'd recommend the American Heart Association page about fats and oils, with thanks to Leah McGrath, R.D. for pointing me towards the source. You should follow her on Twitter at @InglesDietitian)

For all those reasons, I decided to see how well I could replace butter using liquid vegetable oil as the fat, thus preserving the unsaturated fats and being a heck of a lot more convenient to boot. I don't know about you, but I've always got a bottle of vegetable or canola oil in my pantry, while my margarine is very single purpose (and did I mention gross? It smells like apples and I can't tell why!). 

Taking a page out of my creaming method experiment, I decided I would take a cookie recipe that used melted butter, make a batch, then make a second batch with my substitution of vegetable oil. Then, I would get people to try one of each cookie and tell me what they thought. I would use that information to draw some kind of conclusion, although it would never stand up to rigorous scientific scrutiny.

I chose America's Test Kitchen's Molasses Spice Cookies for this test; somewhat because I wanted my first NY post to pay tribute to my first DC post, but mostly because I like the recipe. I made the first batch without any problems then moved on to the second batch. I checked the recipe and saw that it needed 12 tablespoons of melted butter.  "Great," I can hear you saying. "Just put in 12 tablespoons of oil and be done! Right?"

Wrong! 

Interesting fact: Butter is required by law to be about 80% fat by weight. Look at any box of butter and you should see that for every 14 gram serving, only 11 grams are fat. Approximately 16-18 percent of the remaining weight is water (depending on who you ask) and the rest are milk solids and basic elements. The inclusion of water makes a difference in the final end product as well, as it leads to steam which gives some extra puffiness to the cookie during baking. Therefore, 12 tablespoons of oil was not the right way to go here.

Back when I made the first batch of cookies, I weighed the butter on my scale and got 172 grams. Using the ratio of 11 grams of fat per 14 grams of weight, I came up with about 135 grams of fat. Accounting for some rounding errors, I settled with 136 grams of oil. The water was a bit trickier. I was aiming for 32 grams of water, which would have been 18.6% by weight. Unfortunately, I over-poured a bit and ended up with 34 grams of water (19.7% by weight). I made a note to add a bit of flour later on to account for the extra liquid. 

I proceeded with making the cookies without any other incidents. One thing I did note was the difference in the consistency of the cookie batter. The butter batter was much stiffer and drier, whereas the oil batter was very loose and sticky. This wasn't particularly unexpected though. Butter is a semi-solid at room temperature, with some of the solid fat turning into liquid (and back again if the temperature is right) and other fat particles remaining in the liquid state once it's reached. So with time and the right temperature conditions, the butter-based batter would tend to be a bit firmer.

When I removed the oil-based cookies, I noticed that they were a lot flatter than I expected. I couldn't figure out what had happened. I thought i had accounted for the puff by adding the water! It wasn't until a couple of hours later that I realized what the culprit might have been: the lack of acid. Milk, believe it or not, is an acid; primarily lactic acid. That acid reacts with baking soda to produce lift and puff in the cookie. Oil, on the other hand, has no pH value and is therefore neutral. I wasn't getting as much of a reaction as I wanted from my leavening agents! I'm not sure what the best way to fix that would be, but that's for another experiment.

"Enough with the science!" I can hear you shouting. "What about the TASTE?"

OK, OK! I gave four people one of each cookie and asked them to tell me which they preferred and any other comments (A fifth person was given cookies as well, but I lost track of which cookie was which so I had to invalidate her data point. Sorry, Rebecca.). Three out of four preferred the oil cookie, praising its chewiness. Everyone agreed that the texture of the oil cookie was softer than the butter cookie (one called it "mushy"). Two people said the butter cookie was sweeter, which I could understand given the presence of lactose (milk sugar) in butter. Overall, everyone thought both cookies were good and they'd eat both again.

So what's the takeaway from this experiment? I think my oil and water solution gets me about 80% of the way towards a good replication of the butter cookie. I still need to find a way to introduce a bit more acid to work with the leavening agents. I also would like to see what would happen if I used a bit of shortening to provide more structure to the fat, since shortening is a solid at room temperature. It would negate a lot of the "health benefits," but I could live with that.  Broadly, I think the takeaway is that using the oil to replace the fat proportionally by weight works very well and is worth some more exploration in the future. 

Oh, and I guess the other takeaway is: Either way, you've still got a darn good cookie to eat.

(Challenge-winning!) Reverse Chocolate Chip Cookies

Preface: Hello, regular and visiting readers. It's been a while since I've written a full post on this blog, but I'm trying to get back into the swing of things with this post. There's been some insanity going on with other parts of my life, but with any luck, they'll be under control sooner vs later. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy the story below.


From time to time, friends of mine hold potluck meals over Sabbath and assign different parts of the meal to the guests. I almost always get dessert, which usually leads to stories that you've read in previous posts (of which the most drastic example is probably the Miracle Blondies). It also makes friends of mine raise a hue and cry when I have to use margarine instead of butter, since most Sabbath meals are meat and I can't serve something with butter.

But this week, I received one of my favorite e-mails ever: "The meal is dairy. Can you please make a dessert?"

I was ecstatic. I could make a Sabbath dessert with butter instead of margarine. I knew I had to bake something special, so I racked my brain for some good ideas. Finally, it hit me: reverse chocolate chip cookies. These are chocolate cookies that contain white chocolate chips. Often, macadamia nuts are mixed in as well, but I've never been a big "nut in cookie" fan, and I wasn't going out of my way to find some. Deal with it, folks.

[Quick side note: I mentioned to a friend of mine that I was making reverse chocolate chip cookies and described them to him. Here was the exchange after I had finished:

Him: That's pretty negative of you.
Me: Well, it's just my way to commemorate Kodak going bankrupt.
Him (shaking my hand): Nicely done.

Nerd humor! Anyway, back on track...]

I found a recipe online (posted below) which looked really straightforward and could easily be done in the stand mixer. "But, wait, Avidan," I hear you regular readers screaming, "how could you do it in the stand mixer? You've said over and over again that you can't use the stand mixer for butter because it has to be pareve (dairy and meat free)!"

Well, regular reader: First, let me thank you for not writing anything in all caps. That would have made me rather upset. Second, back in November,  a friend donated his stand mixer to me, thinking that I would get more use out of it than him and his wife who rarely baked. So now I have TWO stand mixers, and one of them is dairy. And ever since I got it, I've been making all kinds of things. OK, mostly a lot of different chocolate chip cookie recipes, but that's a different story. Anyway, the upshot is that I can cream butter without using a wooden spoon anymore (which is good, if you remember the Mixer vs. Spoon challenge).

I've got no great stories to tell about making the cookies themselves except for one: portion size. The recipe instructed me to use rounded teaspoons, which seemed a little small, but not so bad. Once I had the first batch in the oven, I realized I had a lot of cookie dough left, so I double-checked the recipe. Turns out, the intended yield was 60 cookies. I really didn't have time for that, so I upped the size of each cookie to about a tablespoon (give or take) and increased the baking time a bit.

A word of caution: Baking chocolate cookies is very tricky, because you can't see them brown. You have to rely on a sense of touch to know when the cookie is done. The usual rule of thumb is to gently poke the edges; if they're set, then the cookie is either done or is very close to it. The cookie will firm up out of the oven, so it's always better to underbake than overbake the cookie. I had a few anxious moments about the cookie being done, but they all turned out great and were incredibly well received.

Which brings me to the "challenge-winning" part of this story. It occurred to me after I had made the cookies that they might be the perfect cookie to win a challenge I had accepted some time ago. A friend of mine had mentioned that she had never eaten a chocolate chip cookie that she liked. I accepted the challenge to make her one that she would like, no matter how long it took me. Standing in my kitchen last weekend, I realized that this cookie might just win her over.

The next day, I gave her a cookie and asked her to try it. Her eyes lit up when she realized it was a chocolate cookie with white chocolate in it. Unbeknownst to me, she loved white chocolate, so I felt pretty good about my chances. She ate the entire cookie and proclaimed it to be delicious. I asked for confirmation that I had successfully completed the challenge (and on my very first attempt, too!). With a bit of a sigh, she conceded that I had accomplished the goal of the challenge.

Victory is mine!

(PS: I know someone out there is saying that white chocolate isn't really chocolate, so it doesn't count. While it is true that from legal and culinary definitions, white chocolate is not true chocolate because it doesn't contain any cocoa solids, I'm not getting that nitpicky. We're going with common parlance here. And besides, the friend in question is a lawyer, so if anyone was going to rule on validity, it would be her. So thank you, but I still win.)
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"Reverse Chocolate Chip Cookies" (Adapted from Toll House® White Chip Chocolate Cookies)

INGREDIENTS

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup cocoa (I prefer dutch processed if I can get it)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup butter or margarine, softened (please, use butter)
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 1 package white chocolate chips (10-12 ounces)

INSTRUCTIONS

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2) Combine flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt in small bowl. 

3) Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. 

4) Beat in eggs. 

5) Gradually beat in flour mixture. 

6) Stir in chocolate chips. 

7) Drop by well-rounded teaspoon onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake for 9 to 11 minutes. IF YOU'RE USING A LARGER SIZE COOKIE: Increase baking time by 2-3 minutes. In either case, remove cookies when edges begin to firm up and centers are somewhat firm. 

8) Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Brief Update

It has come to my attention that I've been nominated for "Best Kosher Food Blog" over on the Joy of Kosher's website. I would say I'm surprised by this, but I'll admit that I self-nominated. Given that the current leader is at 1000 votes and I'm at 12, I don't think I'll win, but I figure I may as well take a shot, right? If you haven't voted, you can do so here: Best Kosher Food Blog (just search for "Baking It Up As I Go Along" to vote)

If you've arrived at this site through that voting page or via some other means, you'll probably notice that I haven't posted much since October. This is due to some technical issues I was experiencing at the time; namely, I hadn't had time to do so because of other obligations. However, I have a few posts in the works and hope to get them out as soon as possible, including a mega-ultra-gigantic-insane chocolate chip cookie. So in the meantime, please peruse the archives, subscribe through your favorite RSS reader, and I promise I'll have something new here shortly.

Enjoy!

--Avidan

Non-Exploding Cinnamon Rolls!

Last month, I wrote a post about attempting to make cinnamon buns using a recipe from America's Test Kitchen. Needless to say, it didn't go very well (let's face it, I named it "Exploding Cinnamon Loaf" for a reason.) In response, America's Test Kitchen wrote a post on their site in an attempt to figure out where I went wrong. They suggested two things that might have contributed to my failure: 1) Converting the measurements from ounces to grams, and 2) Using a baking sheet instead of the countertop when working with the dough.

I'll address the countertop issue later in this post, but I want to talk about the gram/ounce conversion right away. (Warning: math lesson follows) My kitchen scale is accurate to one decimal place when using ounces and to zero decimal places when using grams. 1 ounce is equal to 28 grams, so 0.1 ounce is equal to 2.8 grams. This means when I have to deal with really tiny fractions like 1/8 ounce, it's much more accurate for me to use grams instead of ounces. 1/8 ounce is 0.125 ounces, but it's 3.5 grams. If I use grams, I would only be off by half a gram, which is about 0.017 ounces. Using ounces, I'd be off from anywhere from 0.025 to 0.075 ounces. So I highly doubt that using grams instead of ounces played a significant role in the cinnamon rolls failing. (Math lesson over.)

As I prepared to make my second run at the cinnamon buns, I decided that there was no way I would do this half-assed. The last time, I used a silicon spatula when rolling the dough, despite America's Test Kitchen's directions to use a metal spatula or bench scraper. So I went out and bought myself a bench scraper, just in case. I have to say, as someone who's never had a bench scraper before, it's pretty awesome. Though I don't recommend walking around town holding one; you look like you're carrying a large razor blade.

I began baking the same way I did before. Measured out my dry ingredients (this time with ounces), combined my wet ingredients in a separate bowl, then mixed the two together with the wooden spoon. Immediately, I noticed the dough come together much better than the last time. I finished the stirring, then floured my counter and turned out the dough.  I started kneading the dough and discovered that it was nowhere near as sticky as the last time. Could the problem really have just been the ounces/gram conversion? As I thought about it, I realized it was something much simpler: last time, I used the wrong flour.

This recipe uses whole wheat flour in an attempt to make the cinnamon buns healthier than the average cinnamon bun. Last time, I used the only whole wheat flour in my pantry: white whole wheat flour. This time, I remembered to get "real" whole wheat flour for the recipe. It may not seem like a big deal, but it all comes down to water absorption. Whole wheat flour (the brownish stuff) can absorb up to 13% more liquid than white all-purpose flour. While I don't know what the percentages are for white whole wheat flour, I imagine that it also cannot adsorb as much liquid as whole wheat flour. So the reason my first attempt was so sticky was that it didn't absorb all the liquid in the recipe. And if you're asking why America's Test Kitchen didn't catch that in their response, it's because I didn't mention it in the original post. Above all else, I think this is why my first cinnamon buns failed so miserably. 

That being said, I must admit that using the counter helped a lot as well. It was much easier to knead on the counter than on a surface that moved around. The dough was still stickier than I would have expected or liked, but it was nowhere close to the ungodly mess I was trying to work with before. Soon, I shaped by dough into a 9 x 12 inch rectangle (with help from the bench scraper's ruler). I spread some melted butter on the surface and sprinkled on the filling. 

Now was the moment of truth: could I roll the dough up without al the tears and spills from the last attempt? Well, sort of. Using the bench scraper did make things much easier, but  at the last roll of the dough log it tore. I did a slightly better job at patching things up, but it still wasn't great. What I was able to do this time around was roll the entire log so the tear was on the bottom where I'd cut through it anyway. I used the ruler on the bench scraper to figure out where I'd need to cut the log and made corresponding indentations. I cut the individual rolls, but discovered that my serrated knife wasn't long enough and the resulting rolls where a little uneven and torn. Still, they remained cohesive enough to arrange in the pan without too much difficulty.

I covered the pan with foil and stuck it in the oven. Midway through the baking, I removed the foil and kept a close eye on their progress. I had some problems figuring out whether they were brown enough, but I eventually made a decision and pulled them out. I inverted them onto the cooling rack and let them sit there for a moment. This seems like another time to pull out the "beached whale" metaphor I used last time, but I want something more upbeat, so let's say that they lay there like…a giant block of cinnamon awesomeness. Yeah, that's it.

Eventually, I turned them right-side up and marveled at the awesomeness. Abandoning the idea of frosting again (really, I don't need more sugar), I carefully removed a roll from the block and took a bite. It was very, very good. I didn't discern too much of a difference in taste from the exploding cinnamon loaf, other than the loaf was drier. But I was glad to have something I could share with others that didn't require me to rip off random sized pieces and scrape off burnt sugar.

In the end, I still think there's some procedural issues with this recipe, but it was a significantly better experience than the first attempt. One thing I might try if I do this again is using dental floss for the cutting instead of the serrated knife. I also think I need to work the dough some more on the counter before shaping it. But with the use of the right flour and the some additional equipment, I can move this recipe from the "complete and utter failure" category to the "pretty good but needs a bit of tweaking" category. 

Not bad, if you ask me.

"Exploding" Cinnamon Loaf

UPDATE (10/1/11) - America's Test Kitchen took a look at this post and tried to figure out what I did wrong. You can read their response here: Exploding Cinnamon Rolls

I'm still not sure what went wrong. What was supposed to be quick and tasty cinnamon buns (or, according to the recipe, Everyday Cinnamon Buns) turned into…well, that mess you see above. 

It shouldn't have ended like this. Baking is mostly a precision science, which is why most bakers prefer using recipes that use weight instead of volume. It ensures a more consistent outcome with little surprises. So how did this recipe, which had weights for the dry ingredients, become so crazy? Better yet, this was a recipe from America's Test Kitchen! And it failed! Is nothing sacred anymore?

It started out innocently enough. I put my measuring bowl on the scale and weighed my flours and my sugars. I even converted the ounces to grams so I would be more accurate. I combined the dry ingredients in one bowl, the wet in another, and the cinnamon sugar filling in a third. I was supposed to combine the wet and dry ingredients and stir until the dough looked shaggy. Leaving aside the problem that I'm not totally sure what "shaggy dough" looks like, I gave everything a good stir until it looked like everything was combined.

I turned the dough out onto a baking sheet which I had floured liberally. See, my baking sheet is 12 x 18, and I eventually needed to pat the dough into a 9 x 12 rectangle. "Perfect," I thought, "I'll just pat the dough into half of the baking sheet and I'll be good to go!" I was so pleased with myself for devising this plan. In the end, it's probably the best decision I made because it allowed me to salvage the end product…but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I was warned in the recipe that the dough would be sticky, and that I "should not be afraid to add more flour" if it was difficult to manage. That one line did not prepare me for just how sticky this glob was. When I think of sticky dough, I imagine small amounts adhering to my hands. This dough covered my entire hand every time I tried to do something with it. The goal was to knead it just a few times until it came together, but I was having enough of a problem just picking it up. Each time I tried, it took the whole baking sheet with it. 

Every minute or two, I washed my hands off in the sink so I could grab more flour from the bag and throw it onto the baking sheet and the dough. As my wrestling match with the dough progressed, I started to worry. By my estimation, I had used at least half a cup of flour, if not more, and the dough was only starting to get easier to handle. I was worried about adding too much flour and overworking the dough. In retrospect, this was a stupid concern, because if I had overworked the dough, there would have been high gluten development and the dough would not have been a sticky mess. But you can probably guess this was not my time for wholly rational thought.

Eventually, I reached a point where the dough could be molded without coating my palms. I gave up on the kneading, and began to pat the dough into shape, throwing a little bit more flour here and there as I worked. Once I reached the right dimensions, I brushed on some melted butter and spread the filling mixture on top. I pressed the filling in as best I could, though there was a lot of loose sugar and cinnamon on the surface that was less enmeshed with the butter and dough. With that done, I prepared to roll the dough up.

That's when things began to fall apart. Literally. As I used a spatula to lift the dough up and roll it, tears appeared everywhere. Filling began to spill out through the bottom like sand in an hourglass. And no matter how hard I tried to seal the holes with more dough, the dough (ironically) wouldn't stick together (I assume because of the butter). In the end, I somehow managed to make  something that was vaguely log shaped but was torn on one side. I'll confess that I didn't follow instructions exactly; the recipe suggests using a metal spatula or a bench scraper to lift the dough, but I used a silicon spatula. Still, I don't think it should have made such a difference with this step.

I ended up with a log of dough that had one side completely in shambles. The place where I was supposed to seal the dough shut had become a mess of dough, butter, and filling, and was barely holding together. When I tried to roll the log down the sheet so the seam would be on the bottom, I ended up with more tearing. I threw my hands up, hoped for the best, and started cutting individual slices off the log for rolls. That didn't last very long. The dough tore even more, and the first two slices I made left me with dough scraps and some filling while a mess of cinnamon sugar remained behind in the pan. 

At this point, I wasn't sure what to do. Keep on cutting and hope that subsequent rolls would be easier? I didn't have much faith in that, given the first couple of slices. Throw the whole thing away? That didn't make much sense either, because the taste of the log was (presumably) still good, even if the final assembly was disastrous. So I said, "What the hell," and decided to try baking the whole log (now deemed a loaf) in the oven. I didn't know how to adjust the temperature for the loaf from the original bun recipe, so I left it as it was. In my final act of attempting to make sense of the whole thing, I tried moving the log off the sheet onto a piece of parchment paper, but the log started to tear even more, so I let it be. I covered it with foil as the recipe instructed and threw the whole thing into the oven. When the time came to remove the foil midway through baking, it stuck on and pulled a layer of dough with it.

As the baking continued, it occurred to me that the loaf might be in danger of "exploding." There was a fair amount of baking powder and soda in the dough, and I believed that in the loaf shape, it could expand too quickly and release a burst of cinnamon sugar filling all over my oven. I ran out from my room to the kitchen and yanked open the oven door, only to see that the various tears in the dough had taken care of my problem for me. All around the loaf were puddles of burning sugar, leaking from various locations. So I guess the tears were helpful after all.

After about 30 minutes of baking I pulled the loaf out of the oven and put it on a cooling rack. Of course, the loaf couldn't resist one last shot at me, and promptly tore in two when I tried lifting it off the sheet. Torn, slightly burnt, and with a bottom soaked in melted sugar, the "exploding" cinnamon loaf lay on my cooling rack with the air of a beached whale. When it was cool enough to eat, I tried a piece. Thankfully, despite every effort to thwart me, the end result tasted quite good. 

So where did I mess up in this recipe? I haven't been able to figure it out. The only thing I can think of is that I didn't knead the dough enough before shaping it. But the reason I didn't knead it that long was because I couldn't imagine a recipe essentially leaving out a cup of flour from the recipe. So I'd lay the fault with the recipe's construction. Either add some more flour at the beginning or state clearly in the recipe that a large amount of flour may be needed towards the end. And I'd probably reduce the quantity of the filling, too.

Making this recipe has taught me a few things. One, America's Test Kitchen can make mistakes. Two, even some of the most hopeless messes can be turned into great successes. And third, the next time I want cinnamon buns, I should just make a cinnamon swirl loaf of bread. It's basically the same thing as this loaf but with less sugar.

And, hopefully, less danger of exploding.

Making Pizza in my PJs

I am not a morning person. When I see my roommate after I wake up, I greet him with a hearty "Guhhhhhhhh." For all intents and purposes, I'm a walking zombie who has just enough mental capacity to do simple things like move around (albeit slowly) and maybe eat some food. I don't really get moving until about 30-45 minutes after I wake up.

Thankfully, sometimes I have just enough functional thought processes to do slightly more complex things like measure quantities of ingredients. Which is how I found myself recently making pizza dough in my pajamas.

I got this recipe from Joe Yonan's "Serve Yourself: Nightly Adventures in Cooking For One." It's a no-knead pizza dough that's about as straightforward as they come: dump a bunch of ingredients in a bowl, mix until combined, cover and forget about it for 8-12 hours. The timing is great for me because I can put the dough together in the morning before I leave for work and when I get home at the end of the day, I have pizza dough all ready for me to work with.

I also like that I don't need to think that much when putting this together. As long as I can read a measuring cup I'm pretty good, and I usually reach that level of functionality about 15 minutes after I wake up. Since it's a no-knead recipe, I don't have to make an effort at physical activity well before my body has the strength to do much of anything. And the upside of doing this in my pajamas is that if I get a little bit of flour or pizza dough on me, it's not that annoying, while if it got on my work clothes, I'd be a lot more upset.

A word about the dough itself: this dough is pretty sticky and wet. You're not looking for a smooth and not tacky dough as you would normally expect. Since the recipe is not given in weight, but rather in volume, there's a good chance you'll have to adjust your water based on how much flour you ended up with in the bowl. The most important thing is that all the flour is mixed into the dough. If it seems a bit wet before the rise, don't worry: you can always add more flour down the line. Better to err on the wetter side. And remember, this is a no-knead dough. You don't need to work this thing to death, just enough to ensure everything is combined.

Joe Yonan's book is full of recipes that use this dough, almost all of which involve  a broiler or a pizza stone at 500 degrees. I don't have a functional broiler or pizza stone, so I've been sticking it in the oven on a baking sheet at 425. But you should play around with it until you find something you like. I'm pretty sure this will work well in most existing pizza recipes.

Finally, you are obviously not required to make this in your pajamas. But it's a lot of fun to do. Especially when your roommate comes out of his room, sees you in the kitchen mixing dough, asks what you're doing, and gets a "bluuuuugggh" in return while you shake your flour covered hands in his general direction.

I'm pretty sure that happened. Maybe. I wasn't quite awake enough to remember everything.

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"No-Knead Pizza Dough" Adapted from Joe Yonan's Serve Yourself: Nightly Adventures in Cooking for One. (Another version of this appeared in the Washington Post here: No-Knead Pizza Dough)

Ingredients

• 4 cups bread flour, plus more as needed
• 1/4 teaspoon instant dry yeast (also known as rapid rise or bread machine yeast)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt
• 1 1/2 cups water

Instructions

1. Combine flour, salt, and yeast in a large bowl. Add water and stir until blended.
2. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rest at room temperature for 8 to 12 hours.
3. The dough should be ready to work with after at least 8 hours, when it has risen and is bubbly on the surface. I've had it rise for 12 hours without any problems; I suspect it could go longer but I've never tried. When you think it's close to ready, put the bowl in the refrigerator for an hour to make the next steps easier.
4. Rub your hands and the work surface with olive oil and turn the dough out. Dust it with flour and fold it over on itself a few times. Continue with this until the dough comes together and holds its shape. 
5. Cut the dough into 5 equal pieces (about 6 ounces each), one for each personal pizza.
6. Sprinkle each dough ball with flour, cover, and let rise for an hour before baking. 

Any dough balls you aren't using immediately should either be refrigerated (up to 3 days) or frozen (up to 3 months). Keep each ball separate in its own Ziploc bag. You can coat the dough ball in olive oil inside the bag, but I haven't found that to be so necessary. If the dough ball is refrigerated (or defrosted in the fridge), leave it in a room temperature environment for an hour before you start to use it. 

Miracle Blondies

The story behind these blondies is not about making the blondies themselves, but what led up to their creation.

On Wednesday night, I received an e-mail from a friend asking if I and a couple other friends could put together a Sabbath meal for Saturday lunch. I quickly volunteered my apartment and said I would make a dessert and the main course. The only restriction was "no chocolate" as one of my guests couldn't eat it. That's a restriction that cancelled out a lot of my go-to desserts, but I had a plan.

I recently bought a copy of David Lebovitz's Ready for Dessert, which has a great collection of recipes. One of them is a Fresh Ginger Cake which has the benefit of being completely butter-free. I've made a ginger cake using only fresh ginger before from Joy of Cooking, but this is on a completely different level. How? Well...this one uses molasses! That's classy, right?

Anyway, I had all of the ingredients on hand except for the ginger. Friday morning, I went out to the Trader Joe's and picked some up to use later. Unfortunately, in my early morning barely-conscious haze, I neglected to check the quality of the ginger. And so it was, at 5:00 pm on Friday as I joyfully began to prepare making my ginger cake, I discovered that the ginger was moldy.

Oops.

In retrospect, the best thing to have done at this point would have been to walk down to the Safeway (about 2 minutes away), pick up some more ginger, then come back. Instead, I panicked. It's one of my great failings that I don't deal well when my plans go awry. For the next 20 minutes I rummaged through every dessert cookbook available to find a recipe I could make. Eventually, I settled on making a pie with the blackberries and blueberries I purchased in the morning. The problem here was 1) making a pie dough quickly, and 2) making it dairy-free. The obvious answer was to use shortening, but I only had a limited amount.

I turned to my favorite emergency baking resource, Ratio by Michael Ruhlman. In his book, he provides a ratio for pie dough - 3 parts flour:2 parts fat:1 part water (all by weight). Simple enough, right? I threw some shortening into the freezer to chill, then went over the recipe to see if there was anything I was missing. Suddenly, I realized that I would need to blind bake the crust, which meant I needed dried beans. I racked my brain for a moment, trying to think if there were any dried beans in the apartment, then recalled I had a bag of lentils. Somewhere. I checked the pantry. No lentils. I checked the random shopping bags in my kitchen. Still no lentils. I spent the next 15 minutes tearing up the apartment before I found the lentils...in my bedroom closet. Yeah, I don't know either.

Having recovered the lentils, I removed the shortening from the freezer and hacked at it with a paring knife. Whirling in place, I grabbed a bowl near the sink, put it on the scale and haphazardly poured out some flour. I added the shortening, then put on a pair of latex gloves and started rubbing the fat into the flour.

Next, I needed to add some ice water until the dough came together. Lacking ice cubes (yeah, don't ask) I resorted to the Brita pitcher in the fridge. I gradually poured in an ounce of water and mixed it together with my hands. It came together, but I had some doubts. By weight, I should have needed more water, but the dough in front of me didn't seem to need any. Stupidly, I added more water anyway, resulting in a dough that was way too wet. I tossed in a bit more flour and shortening, and tried to rescue it.

Then, I realized I forgot to put in the salt. Rather than do the intelligent thing of measuring it out, I opened up the container and kind of shook it at the bowl. The result was a stream of salt going into the bowl, far more than the pinch or two I needed. Resigned to the fact that the dough was no longer salvageable, I tossed it in the garbage. The time was now 5:45 pm.

At this point, I was about to say "screw it," and make brownies, a very straightforward recipe that could be assembled in a brief period of time. In fact, if you follow me on Twitter (@TalkingTV), you'd know that I even said "Screw it, I'm making brownies." But I couldn't do it. Remember, I had a guest that couldn't eat chocolate. As someone who has a very long list of food sensitivities, I couldn't knowingly make something that one person couldn't eat. Especially when that person has done a lot to cater to my problems in the past. So brownies went out the window.

Finally, I came across a recipe for blondies in a copy of Baking Illustrated that I checked out from the library last week. The only chocolate involved was chocolate chips, which I figured I'd just leave out in part of the batter. Since the original recipe called for a 9x13 pan, I decided to use two 8x8 pans. One pan would contain no chocolate chips, the other would have some stirred in. It was 6:00 pm.

I was up against the clock. I quickly shoved everything around the counter to clear some space, and grabbed some margarine from the fridge. I portioned out what I needed, threw it in a small saucepan, and set it on medium heat. It melted quickly, but started to bubble, so I lowered the heat slightly. Using the paring knife, I tried to cut the margarine into smaller pieces as it melted, with only some degree of success.

Once melted, I poured the margarine into a large bowl, then glided across the kitchen to get the brown sugar from the pantry. Yes, you read that right. I glided. Flour and sugar had accumulated on the floor during my frantic tossing and mixing, so my traction was significantly reduced. I was supposed to pack the brown sugar into measuring cups, but I was so caught up in the frenzy that I ended up just grabbing handfuls of the sugar, squeezing it tightly, then dropping it into the bowl. Thank goodness there was a weight measurement too, or it would have been the fourth disaster of the day. Quickly, I whisked the sugar and margarine together, and perched the bowl on top of some other kitchen detritus.

Next, I whisked the dry ingredients in a small bowl, taking my time to measure out the salt. I found some space on a small table in the kitchen and put the bowl down. Turning back to the sugar/margarine mixture, I tossed in two eggs and vanilla and whisked them in. Finally, I gradually added the dry ingredients to the batter and folded until just combined.

I was incredibly nervous at this point because the amount of batter was so...low. I couldn't fathom how it could normally fill a 13x9 pan, let alone my 8x8 pans. But it was too late. I finally had a dessert that was going reasonably well and I couldn't give up. I scooped half the batter into a lightly greased pan and tried to smooth it out with the spatula. (Incidentally, the recipe says to make a foil sling for the pan. I was too tired at this point to deal with it.) Then, I measured out a reasonable amount of chocolate chips for the remaining batter. OK, fine, I grabbed the nearest bag of chocolate chips and just started pouring directly into the bowl until it kind of looked right. That dough went into the second pan, and both went into the oven at 6:15.

I carefully monitored both pans, concerned that the change in volume would affect the baking time. The recipe says to remove the bars when the tops are "shiny and cracked and feels firm to the touch." After 25 minutes of baking, it didn't look like the first two conditions would be met anytime soon, so I poked the cakes a bit before deciding to remove them. I dropped them onto the cooling rack and gave them the once over.

They didn't look too bad, actually. But my confidence was so shattered after all the prior failures that I gave them a 60% chance of being edible and a subsequent 30% chance of being tasty. But I frankly didn't care anymore. They were done, they were decent, and I could move on with other things I needed to do.

By the way, I did realize later why the volume of dough seemed less than expected. I had left out the cup of chocolate chips and cup of pecans which would have significantly increased the total volume. But I don't like pecans in my desserts (except for pie) and the chocolate chips were added later in the process. It was a relief to figure out that I wasn't crazy. Or, at least, not that crazy.

The moment of truth came the next day at the meal when I served the blondies to three friends and two guests that came at the last minute. I cut out pieces from both pans and handed them to my guests. I anxiously studied their faces as they bit into the blondies, chewed, and swallowed. I held my breath as I waited for someone to render the first judgment. Finally, it came.

Tasty!

What?!?! I had managed to pull it off?!?! I grabbed a piece of the blondies for myself and tried them. They were, in fact, very good. A little denser than I usually like, but considering everything that led up to them, I wasn't complaining. My friends stuck around for a few more hours and together we kept taking more of the blondies. By the end of the day, both pans were almost completely empty.

Because the end result came out so well despite so many setbacks, I've decided to call these blondies "Miracle Blondies." It may not be a miracle of biblical proportions to have a piece of cake come out well, but when my friends didn't spit it out and instead reached for seconds, I certainly whispered thanks to God for having my back.

Maybe He likes blondies too.

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"Miracle Blondies" (Adapted from Baking Illustrated)

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/2 cups (7.5 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter (or margarine), melted and cooled
• 1 1/2 cups (10.5 oz) light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup white chocolate chips (I don't like white chocolate, so I just used more semisweet chocolate chips)
• 1 cup pecans, toasted and chopped coarse (optional)

INSTRUCTIONS

1) Adjust an oven rack to middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 13x9 inch pan with nonstick cooking spray. Make a foil sling by placing two sheets of foil or parchment paper in the pan perpendicular to each other and greasing both sheets. (I find the sling optional, but that's up to you.)

2) Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

3) Whisk melted butter/margarine and brown sugar together in a medium bowl until combined. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well.

4) Using a rubber spatula, fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just combined. Do not overmix.

5) Fold in the chocolate chips and nuts and turn the batter into the prepared pan. Smooth the top with a rubber spatula.

6) Bake until the top is shiny and cracked and firm to the touch (the latter is the most important one), 22 to 25 minutes. Cool completely on a wire rack, then (if using a foil sling), remove the bars from the pan and transfer to a cutting board.

7) Cut into 1 1/2 x 2 inch bars and serve.