Biscuits and Jam
Makes about 12 biscuits and 5 cups of jam
BISCUITS
INGREDIENTS
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
½ cup shortening
¾ cup buttermilk
STEPS
• Preheat the oven to 425°F.
• In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Cut in the shortening with a pastry cutter as you would for pie crust until the mixture is crumbly with pea-sized pieces of shortening.
• Pour in the buttermilk all at once and stir gently with a fork, just until the dough clings together in a ball.
• Put the dough on a well floured board and knead ten times, dusting with flour only if necessary. The dough should be springy and elastic.
• Dust the top with a little flour and roll out gently to ½-inch thickness. Use a 2½-inch cutter (or the top of a juice glass) to cut out rounds and place them on a greased cookie sheet with the edges touching. Push the remaining dough together and cut out the rest.
• Bake for 12–15 minutes or until puffed up and golden brown on top.
• Eat them as soon as possible after they come out of the oven!
FREEZER JAM
INGREDIENTS
2 cups ripe, hulled strawberries (about one quart)
4 cups granulated sugar
1 package pectin
¾ cup water
STEPS
• Wash and dry about five 1-cup jelly jars.
• Use a potato masher to make a rough puree of the strawberries. Stir in the sugar and let sit for about 10 minutes.
• Dissolve the packet of pectin in the water and stir over heat while it comes to a boil. Boil for about 1 minute and then add to the strawberries, stirring until most of the sugar is dissolved. There may still be a few granules.
• Pour into the jars, leaving about ½ inch at the top. Wipe the rims and screw on the covers. Let the jelly sit at room temperature for a day. Then it is ready to use or store in the fridge for a week or in the freezer for up to a year!
Chris
In my neighborhood in Brooklyn there was a pizzeria on every other corner. A slice was nice but my mother made pizza at home. What I really looked forward to at the pizzerias were zeppoli. They would take little pieces of the pizza dough and drop them into the deep fryer. In just a few seconds they looked like deep brown asteroids from outer space. Three or four of these little fried dough balls were thrown into a paper bag and completely doused with powdered sugar. The bag was closed and shaken until the zeppoli were completely coated.
Zeppoli
Makes about 24 zeppoli
INGREDIENTS
1½ teaspoons yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup warm water (115°F)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1½ cups flour
Oil for deep frying
Powdered sugar
STEPS
• Sprinkle the yeast and sugar on top of the warm water. Add the olive oil and wait for the yeast to foam.
• Put the flour in a bowl and stir in the yeast mixture. Stir for a few minutes until a stiff batter forms. Sprinkle on a tablespoon or so of additional flour and stir until the batter just starts to clean the side of the bowl. Cover and let rest for one hour. It should double in size.
• In the deep fryer, heat the cooking oil to 365°F and drop in golf-ball-sized pieces of dough. Cook until well browned.
• Drain on paper towels and dredge in powdered sugar.
Chris
My mom made pizza every Friday night of my childhood. She had well-seasoned black square pans that were perfect for our style of thick-crusted Sicilian pizza. She really had it down to a science. Mix the dough at 3:00 pm; put in the pans and top with sauce and cheese at 4:00 pm; into the oven at 5:00 pm; out on the table at 5:30 pm. At the request of my father, Mom always made 5 pizzas. That allowed for plenty at mealtime and at least one pan to enjoy cold the next morning as we all gathered around the television to watch cartoons. This recipe is a little scaled down from Mom’s.
Pizza Dough
Makes 2 thick-crust or 3 thin-crust pizzas
INGREDIENTS
2 cups lukewarm water
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 teaspoons yeast (or one package)
1 tablespoon sugar
4 cups high-gluten bread flour, divided
1 tablespoon salt
STEPS
• Heat the water to 120°F. Stir in the olive oil, yeast and sugar and let stand 5–10 minutes while the yeast develops.
• In a bowl, mix the salt with 3 cups of the flour, then stir in the liquid. Stir until well blended and smooth. (You can use the dough hook on your stand mixer, but one of the simple pleasures of this recipe is to get your hands in the warm and supple dough.)
• Once the dough is smooth, add the remaining flour a few tablespoons at a time until the dough is dry enough to turn out on a floured board to knead. Continue to knead and add flour as needed until the dough is no longer very sticky. The less flour you use, the more delicate the dough will be.
• Put the dough in a large greased bowl and cover. Let it sit until it has doubled in size.
• The dough is now ready to be cut and spread into pans or used for any number of pizza dough-based recipes like calzones, breadsticks and focaccia.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT YEAST
People tell me that they have no “luck” with yeast. But the only thing you can do to kill yeast is to dissolve it in water over 130°F. Cooler temperatures won’t kill the yeast, only increase the amount of time it takes for the product to rise. Do yourself a favor and get an instant-read thermometer. Test the water temperature before you stir in the yeast. You’ll never have a problem with yeast again.
And one more tip: if you are going to be doing any baking, it is much more economical to buy yeast in bulk. A little package containing 2¼ teaspoons can cost as much as $.70 but you can buy a two-pound bag of yeast for around $4.00.
Daniel
I make sourdough bread with my own starter. Starter is a culture of yeast and bacteria that feeds on water and flour,