bread

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Raspberry Coconut Bread

It’s nice to cook with seasonal ingredients. Luckily for me, coconut is in season now in Canada so coconut bread is a good idea. By in season I mean a few packages of coconut flakes were being sold at my local grocery store, of course. Unfortunately, since the last ice age, coconut trees have not grown in Canada. If you’re in a tropical country you probably don’t even have to go buy coconut for this recipe, just walk outside and look around – it seems that tropical countries have coconut trees everywhere. Just open the coconut (you want a brown one) and hit it with a hammer so that the coconut “meat” separates from the shell, shred the “meat” in your food processor, and then dehydrate it. If you’re not lucky enough to live near a coconut tree then just buy some coconut flakes in the grocery store.

Coconut bread with raspberry-lime compote and fresh whipped cream

I used frozen raspberries for this recipe because I still had a lot left over from my raspberry hazelnut torte. While I was waiting for them to defrost I was reading the plastic bag they were stored in and found out that the raspberries were imported all the way from Lithuania.

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Challah Hamburger Buns

Sandwiches range from really good to really bad. From chipotle chicken and juicy pineapple chunks smothered with tomato sauce and stuffed between two pieces of foccacia to, well, something far less exciting. The secret to a great sandwich is not as much the filling as the bread. Bread can make or break a sandwich. Bread shouldn’t just be a vehicle for tuna salad.  It should be a fully equipped sandwichmobile.

Homemade challah hamburger buns with butter and chives

Sandwiches are named after John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich. Although it’s debatable about how the sandwich was invented, most historians believe that the Earl would ask servents to bring him slices of meat inside two pieces of bread so that he could eat while playing cards with his friends. His friends often asked for the same snack and later served “sandwiches” themselves at their parties.

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Tutorial: French Croissants

Croissants aren’t bread rolls; they’re more than half butter. Croissants, with their 70+ rich and flaky layers, are a must-try item in any French bakery. Regardless, few bakeries can beat a homemade croissant. Even if cutting your croissant doesn’t reveal a cross section with a perfect honeycomb of layers, the buttery treat is sure to impress even the pickiest of eaters.

EDIT (April 1st, 2013): I originally wrote this croissant tutorial on August 13, 2012 and wasn’t completely satisfied with the results. The croissants were delicious, sure, but they weren’t perfect. The pictures were pretty embarrassing as well since the batch came out flat due to improper lamination. I also recently realized that the croissant history I shared was not accurate. My post on French croissants was actually about German croissants. Sigh. I’ve spent a while working on this recipe to significantly improve it, and that’s what this updated post now contains.

If you want to kick your croissants up a notch, you can also check out my Ispahan croissant post with instructions for raspberry, rose, and lychee croissants. You can find it here.

Homemade, fresh, and fluffy croissants

Croissants are made with a yeast-leavened dough that is folded with butter in a process called “lamination”. While baking, the layers of butter give off steam and cause the layers of dough to separate, leaving large gaps. The quality of a croissant can be determined by studying the size of the gaps, since large gaps are a result of proper lamination.

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