... pan pizza season! Last Sunday we all returned home late after a weekend of being in different directions in multiple states for various activities. The fridge was mostly bare except for a round of grandma pizza dough I had made earlier in the week. It looked slightly past prime, but I gave it a go, turning it out onto a buttered and oiled sheet pan, letting it rest briefly, then stretching and topping it simply: I had some homemade tomato "butter" on hand (from this recipe) and pepperoni....
13 days ago • 2 min read
Friends hello, We may be two days away from the official start of fall, but we are still many weeks away from the end of tomato season. If you mentally have not moved on to apple and squash season — I'm trying! —here's one more recipe to add to your must-make-before-it's-too-late recipe list: one-pot baked ziti. You'll need 1.5 pounds of cherry tomatoes, some garlic, olive oil, and any tubular, ziti-like dried pasta you like — I have been really liking mezzi rigatoni (which I use in this...
20 days ago • 2 min read
Friends hello, When I first saw variations of cinnamon-sugar focaccia circling through my social media feeds, I thought: Why?! Can't we keep focaccia as it is, oily, salty, and rosemary-flecked, perfect just the way it is? I felt grumpy watching the videos of bubbly dough being brushed and dimpled with cinnamon-sugar butter baths and drizzled with milky glazes. When I received comments with questions about how I might adapt this focaccia recipe into a cinnamon roll, I would reply: Don't know!...
27 days ago • 2 min read
Friends hello, Last week, one of you (hi Lauri 👋) emailed me sharing a solution to the overdone-at-the-edges-but-needs-more-time-in-the-middle problem that arises when baking crackers, specifically these sourdough discard crackers: Crediting a Cooking Light cracker recipe from years ago, Lauri wrote: "After rolling, scoring, and seasoning, I’ve been sliding the parchment onto upside-down sheet pans and baking them at 325. It works fabulously!!" I tried the method immediately as I had a vat of...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Friends hello, Earlier this summer, I shared a recipe for this charred cherry tomato salsa. It was something I started making this time last year, when the local sun golds abounded everywhere, from my little co-op two blocks away, to all the farmers' markets, to friends' gardens. But by the time I got photos and a recipe together, sun gold season was nearly over, and everyone, I feared, had moved on to butternut squash, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. So I waited to share the recipe till...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
As noted a few newsletters ago, recently my daughter and I dined at a local restaurant whose menu featured eggplant meatballs with Hazan tomato sauce and housemade ricotta. I ordered them, loved them, and began experimenting with various recipes in the days that followed. One method called for sautéing diced eggplant, skin and all, before puréing the flesh with seasonings and binders; another called for roasting the eggplant whole before doing the same. One method called for pan-frying the...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
One of the most frequently asked questions I receive is how to add X, Y, or Z ingredients to my loaf of sourdough bread. I have always added inclusions during the stretch and fold phase of the sourdough bread baking process, and as such, I have advised doing so upon being asked. Recently, I saw a recipe for an olive sourdough bread recipe that employs a different technique: lamination. Lamination calls for spreading the dough into a thin rectangle, scattering the inclusions over the top, then...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
This week I found myself at home with one child and a broken refrigerator. It felt like the universe was telling me to go out to eat, to go have dinner with my 15-year-old, to go anywhere that won't distract from a conversation with my eldest, who seems happier and happier to slip away to her room for hours on end. And so I did, first to a local sushi restaurant, Wasabi, which we know and love, and last night, to Innovo Kitchen, a place I don't know well at all but whose patio, this time of...
2 months ago • 2 min read
One of the most frequently asked questions I receive on this brioche bun recipe is if it can be used to make hot dog buns. It sure can! is how I always respond, supplying a rough guideline on how to do so. And while these exchanges in the comments section have been sufficient over the years, I thought it was time to give a hot dog bun recipe its own space. Here it is, a no-knead recipe, the dough identical in makeup to these brioche buns, with the mixing process simplified even further. If...
2 months ago • 2 min read