Dorie’s Cookies Parmesan Galettes: Ooh La La

Here’s something delightfully intriguing: the Dorie’s Cookies cookbook has a chapter devoted to savoury cookies. I’m not used to seeing non-sweet things in my baking cookbooks, but there are plenty of interesting (and weird: I’m looking at you, hot-and-spicy togarashi meringues and honey-BLUE CHEESE madeleines) recipes here.

(I am never going to make those madeleines. I hate blue cheese.)

A little while ago, I was supposed to head to a friend’s house for a pre-dinner birthday gathering. I thought the Parmesan Galettes sounded perfect for an appetizer, so I decided to try my hand at my first savoury cookie.

(I ended up having to turn the car around and skip the party because the roads were horrible – so I had these all to myself.) (Note: I wrote this post back in February when snow was still a thing…)

The ingredient list is short and sweet: all-purpose flour, butter, Parmesan cheese, and a bit of sea salt. If you’re reading this, I probably don’t have to tell you to buy the kind of Parm that you have to grate yourself. But just in case… there you go.

This recipe doesn’t require a mixer; it uses the food processor to mix the butter, flour, and Parmesan. Here’s how the dough is described: “process in long bursts until you have a moist curds-and-clumps dough”. Although that sounds incredibly vague and non-scientific, somehow, I knew exactly what Dorie meant when the time came.

I’m pretty sure this is what moist curds and clumps looks like?!

It’s super easy to smush the dough into a log. I was surprised at how teeny tiny the log was, but the recipe yielded 15 galettes, as the book said it would. Before slicing, you pop the log into the fridge for a couple of hours (or the freezer for just one hour, if you’re of the opinion that time is money).

After the dough has chilled, it’s time to slice and dice. The sidebar of the recipe says that these galettes pair nicely with a variety of herbs and spices, so I experimented (conservatively) by grinding a bit of fancy pepper over each galette. (If you’re wondering what fancy pepper is, it comes from France and includes tasting notes – thanks Mom and Dad!!!)

Note: If you look closely, you can see that some of my galettes have a tiny hole in the middle. This is because I didn’t roll my log quite tightly enough. Lessons learned!

The cookbook says that you can either bake the sliced galettes in a muffin tin (for a perfect circular shape and satisfying edges) or free-standing on a cookie sheet.

I baked 12 in the muffin tin and the rest on a baking sheet, and while the muffin ones looked prettier, I found they took a little longer to bake than the designated 15 to 17 minutes. They were more like 20 minutes.

Here’s the verdict on the galettes:

I LOVED them. They reminded me of dinner parties when I was younger. I feel like my mom used to serve cheese straws or something that were just like this. I loved the slightly crumbly texture and I thought they tasted just the right amount of Parmesan. I like Parmesan, but usually as a side cheese, not as a cheese on its own. Like, I wouldn’t typically eat Parmesan alone on crackers. These galettes were fantastic and felt fancy to me.

Cedric did not like them. I did not see this coming from a mile away – in our relationship, I am the one who favours sweets and he likes all things savoury (though he’s never met a chocolate chip cookie he didn’t like). Not only that, but he LOVES cheese – including Parmesan. He will gladly slice Parmesan and put it on a panini (which is exactly what he did with the leftover Parmesan from this recipe). But for whatever reason, this recipe didn’t do it for him.

Oh well. More for me!

Bread Illustrated’s Caramelized Onion Bread

Watch out, Cheddar and Black Pepper Bread. You’ve got some competition.

Previously, Cedric declared the Cheddar and Black Pepper Bread to be his all-time favourite. He’s got a point: it is incredibly delicious. I’ve made it four or five times and it has NEVER lasted long enough to make it to the freezer – it always gets eaten fresh.

But there’s a new bread contending for the number one spot on Cedric’s most beloved bread list. Incidentally, it is the recipe that immediately follows the Cheddar and Black Pepper Bread in the cookbook. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Caramelized Onion Bread.

If you like savoury, you’ll love this bread. You’ll just have to get your hands a little dirty if you want to make it.

Since this bread comes from the Bread Illustrated’s “Upping Your Game With Sponges” chapter, it’s no shocker that this bread requires a sponge to be made ahead of time. You can either make it the day before and let it sit up to 24 hours, or you can time your day just right by making the sponge in the morning and continuing with the rest of the steps six hours later. I opted for the former.

After the sponge has risen and started its collapse, it’s time to caramelize the onions. This is pretty straightforward and also involves a little garlic, thyme, sugar, salt, and pepper. You have to let the onions cool completely before mixing them into the bread.

The caramelized onions are incorporated in two different steps. The first half of the onions is kneaded in right away with the flour, yeast, and water. This part went alright for me. The second half of the onions is added after the dough has had a short rest and salt has been added – you add the onions in increments of one tablespoon while the dough is mixing away. This made my dough very sticky and it had trouble “catching” on the hook attachment in my mixer. Scraping it with a rubber spatula didn’t do much – I had to periodically stop the machine and use my hands to pull the dough off the bottom of the bowl to get it to mix properly.

It was worth the constant stop-scrape-start, because my onions looked pretty incorporated when it was all said and done – though the dough was very sticky.

Pre-shaping – doesn’t it look like molten lava?

After another brief (30 minute) rest, there are a couple of fold-and-rise sessions. Then, the dough is shaped.

I use a colander lined with a tea towel as the book suggests – be sure to dust the tea towel with AMPLE amounts of flour, as my dough got quite stuck to the towel even though I’d floured it.

Aaaaand this is why you use plenty of flour. This is one sticky dough!

I’ve talked about Bread Illustrated’s lava-rock-in-pie-plates method of baking before – it’s the one I use when I make my weekly sourdough or any other crusty type breads (think pain de campagne). It took just under 50 minutes in the oven for my bread to get nice and crusty.

I salvaged the shape somewhat despite the tea towel stickiness.

While Cedric LOVED this bread (even for breakfast), I wasn’t quite as passionate about it. It was good and the onion flavour was definitely there, but it didn’t sweep me off my feet and it required a little more effort than your typical loaf. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t go out of my way to make it again – but since Cedric is such a fan, I’m sure I’ll whip it up every now and then.

YUM. (Yes, I added heaps of flour pre-bake.)

Truthfully, I think I’m just more of a sweet or neutral bread person. The savoury ones are nice, but they’re usually not my favourites.

What do you think – is sweet or savoury bread better?

---

I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Cheddar and Black Pepper Bread: A Mouthwatering Savoury Match Made in Carbohydrate Heaven

The Bread Illustrated cookbook has done it again: another home run of a bread recipe.

When I first sank my teeth into a still-warm slice of this loaf, I knew that the combined flavours reminded me of something I’d had before – but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

A few slices later, I figured it out: fancy macaroni and cheese. Not the kind that comes from a blue box (though that kind, too, can be delicious in the right context) – the kind that you order at a restaurant that also has bison burger and truffle curly fries on the menu. Classy mac n cheese.

I’m not sure how we ended up cutting this loaf so strangely…

Had I known the cheddar and black pepper bread would be so astonishingly delicious, I would have made it a lot sooner. I held off because it seemed less all-purpose than many of the other loaves; for instance, it probably wouldn’t taste very good toasted and topped with jam for breakfast.

(On second thought, that actually sounds amazing.)

I made it to accompany a salad we had for dinner, and Cedric has already requested that we add it to the rotation. It requires making a sponge the day before, which can sit out between 6 and 24 hours. I let it sit for nearly an entire 24 hours, which I like to think helped it taste extra delicious.

The day two directions aren’t necessarily tricky. They’re just a little time consuming. Mix for two minutes; rest for 20. Mix for 5, rise for 30. Fold dough; rest for 30 minutes; repeat three more times, then let it rise for another hour and a half, then an hour more. Whew – that’s a lot of waiting around.

There are two secret ingredients to this bread – actually, given that they’re in the name of the bread, they’re not all that secret. The first is cheddar: one cup is mixed into the dough towards the beginning of the process, and another is rolled in later, kind of like a cinnamon raisin bread. Cracked pepper is added both in the dough and as a final topping before baking. I didn’t measure out my pepper – I just cracked away until it looked about right. I was pretty happy with the flavour.

I used approximately this much pepper

I was careful with all the resting and rising times because it was quite warm the day I baked it. It didn’t take as long for the dough to rise and double and all that good stuff, so I stuck to the low end of any suggested ranges. You guys – I think I’m finally getting it!

It felt really good for the bread to come out looking as it should and tasting better than I could have imagined. I was planning on using Cedric’s camera to take some photos of the final product, but we couldn’t wait to dive in. Whoops. My phone photos will have to suffice.

Savoury breads, I’m not longer afraid of you.

---

PS – I’ve made this bread once more since – both times, it hasn’t lasted more than 24 hours. This is a bread for the books.

A Savoury Sage-Polenta Bread

I’ve shied away a little from some of the more savoury bread recipes in Bread Illustrated. I think that’s because I consider them a little less versatile (i.e., not so tasty with Nutella in the morning). But I’m pleased to say I’ve finally dipped my toes into the world of savour with the Sage-Polenta Bread recipe – and it was delicious!

As the recipe name would suggest, there are two star ingredients in this loaf: sage and polenta.

The sage is just right – enough to give it a nice, herb-y flavour, but not so much that it screams “SAGE!!!!!!” in your face. The four teaspoons of minced sage provide a subtle but present taste.

The polenta is pretty cool – you don’t just use cornmeal, you actually whip up some polenta and mix it into the dough. Whereas the sage lends to the flavour, the polenta is all about the texture. It gives the bread a substantial quality that’s hard to describe – not quite dense, but definitely hearty. It would be a great bread to pair with a nice soup in the fall or winter, or to support a fully loaded sandwich (you know the kind – with artichokes and roasted red pepper and fancy deli meat). The cornmeal also plays a supporting role in the crust. While most loaves are dusted with flour, this one is dusted with a combination of flour and cornmeal. This gives the crust an appealing grit (but don’t worry, it’s not overpowering – it’s not like eating spoonfuls of raw cornmeal).

As for the recipe itself, it’s a two day affair. You start by making a simple sponge, which sits for 6 to 24 hours. Then you whip up some polenta, let it cool, and divide it in half: some gets mixed into the sponge, while the rest gets added to the dough a little while later.

It’s usual bread business from here (lots of waiting and folding), and then comes the fun part: shaping the loaf. This recipe called for an almond shape loaf, which feels fancier than the usual ball (or should I say boule) shape. After the initial shaping, you let it rise under a couche (i.e., a dish towel, in my kitchen) – as you can see, I had a little gaping at the seam, but I just pinched it all together and it was good as new.

Uhh… what happened?

I loved this loaf. It’s made me more amenable to some of the other recipes in this book. Fig and fennel, caramelized onion… what next!

Good as new!