THE NIBBLE Gourmet News & Views
Trends, Products & Items Of Note In The World Of Specialty Foods
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Archive for Bread, Crackers, Muffins
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April 12, 2008 at 6:27 pm
· Filed under Cheese/Yogurt/Dairy, Bread, Crackers, Muffins, Tip Of The Day, Daily Food Holidays
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| Today is a holiday you can really sink your teeth into: Grilled Cheese Day! In fact, April is also Grilled Cheese Month—a much tastier concept than Taxes Are Due Month. Grilled cheese sandwiches are one of our favorite comfort foods—for lunch, light supper or snacks (you can cut them in quarters for casual hors d’oeuvres, too). Ask at your cheese counter for a tastier alternatives to American cheese, and test to find your favorites. We love smoked mozzarella and Jarlsberg, a Swiss-type cheese from Norway; and we find that making our sandwiches in a panini press in the best method. Otherwise, a frying pan will do just fine. Assemble the sandwiches and butter the outsides with softened butter. Fry: When the bottom slices are golden brown (2 to 3 minutes), flip them over, press down with a spatula and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes. We like tomatoes on our sandwiches: We first sprinkle them with oregano or marinate them briefly in a vinaigrette for added flavor. |
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 Tuscan-style grilled cheese combines Fontina, mozzarella and grilled vegetables. |
| But don’t stop there. We have a dozen gourmet grilled cheese recipes for you, along with tips on making the perfect grilled cheese sandwiches. Read the full article and pick your favorite recipes. We’ve been making two a day for lunch at THE NIBBLE offices, and the voting is intense. (HINT: If you love blue cheese, the two blue cheese recipes are a slam dunk…except for the sweet mascarpone and dulce de leche recipe. Testing and voting is HARD WORK!) Get the gang together and make all 12, for one heck of a grilled cheese-a-thon. When you’re done, you can fnd more sandwich recipes in the Bread Products section of THE NIBBLE online magazine. |
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April 11, 2008 at 11:53 am
· Filed under Top Pick Of The Week, Entertaining, Bread, Crackers, Muffins
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 Moist, creamy Iveta Scones are a departure from the dry, traditional variety. These raspberry scones are among our favorites. |
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Today’s scones are quick breads, similar to American biscuits. They are traditionally made with wheat flour, sugar, baking powder or baking soda, butter, milk and eggs, and baked in the oven—both in the traditional wedge form and in round, square and diamond shapes. We don’t enjoy traditional, hard, dry scones. They come from an earlier time, when cooking wasn’t as easy as it is today. The Scots, and others who enjoyed them back then, covered them with butter, jam (and more later, clotted cream), to take the edge off the dryness. But the cream scones from Iveta Scones—called cream scones because they substitute cream for the butter and eggs—are a moist delight that require no further embellishment (but go ahead—slather them with lemon curd and Devon cream). They’re available in 16 flavors plus sugar-free Vanilla. Read about our favorites—for even among a line that is uniformly delicious, there are standouts. Gift boxed and around $6.00, they make nice house gifts and—thinking ahead—stocking stuffers. Better yet, you can have delicious scones in 20 minutes, just by adding cream to the mix, shaping and baking. The scones also substitute for shortbread biscuits. |
| While scones can be found in many flavors today—both sweet and savory—traditional English scones may include raisins or currants, but are often plain, relying on jam, preserves, lemon curd or honey for added flavor—perhaps with a touch of clotted cream. You may have heard two different pronunciations for “scone.” Which is the authentic one? They both are! The word is pronounced “skahn” in Scotland and Northern England (rhymes with gone) and “skoan” in the south of England (rhymes with own), the pronunciation adopted by the U.S. and Canada. Read more in the The History of Scones. You’ll also find the difference between clotted cream, Devon cream, and other scony mysteries. See more of our favorite scones and other bread products in the Bread Section of THE NIBBLE online magazine. |
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March 12, 2008 at 7:29 am
· Filed under Top Pick Of The Week, Bread, Crackers, Muffins, Gifts, Breakfast
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Can’t you taste the goodness of Callie’s Country Ham Biscuits? The Cheese and Cinnamon are also stunning. |
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She catered Reese Witherspoon’s and Ryan Philippe’s wedding, and other catering clients have been clamoring for her country ham-stuffed biscuits for years. She couldn’t hand over the secret recipe, of course, so Charleston, South Carolina caterer Callie White did the next best thing: She charged her daughter with opening up a division to sell the bodacious biscuits online. Now, there’s no need for you to imagine what super Southern biscuits taste like. Buttermilk, cheese, cinnamon and the country ham biscuits that started it all will come to you. Get yourself a variety pack for Easter dinner or breakfast. Send some to Mom for Mother’s Day. Each biscuit is handmade with just a bowl and no other equipment (save for the oven, of course). Callie says that the secret to making a great biscuit is to not over-mix the dough. Each batch is mixed by hand, and the expert biscuit makers know by the feel when the dough is ready. It’s art, it’s science, it’s delicious! Read the full review. Visit more of our favorite breads and biscuits in the Gourmet Bread Section of THE NIBBLE online magazine. |
| And here’s our Question Of The Week (you’ll find a new one each week on TheNibble.com home page—we usually don’t post them here): Why do the British refer to cookies and crackers as biscuits? It’s because the word biscuit comes from the Latin bis coctum, which means “twice cooked.” This is manifested in biscotti, the hard Italian cookies which are baked twice. Americans get “cookie” from the Dutch word, “koekje,” which means “little cake.” Both terms arrived in America in the 1600s, with their respective groups of Colonists. According to The Encyclopedia of American American Food and Drink, the first American usage of “biscuit” as a soft bread was in 1818, in the Journal of Travels in the United States of North America, and in Lower Canada, by John Palmer.By 1828 Webster’s Dictionary defined a biscuit as “a composition of flour and butter, made and baked in private families.” These small, puffy leavened breads were called soda biscuits or baking-soda biscuits, to differentiate them from the unleavened cracker type of biscuit. These bread-biscuit recipes are ubiquitous in 19th-century cookbooks. In addition to serving up plenty of soda biscuits, Southerners also developed the beaten biscuit, first mentioned in print in 1853. In 1930, General Mills introduced Bisquick, the first packaged biscuit mix. And the rest, as they say, is history. Pass the butter, please. |
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March 7, 2008 at 7:28 pm
· Filed under Bread, Crackers, Muffins, Daily Food Holidays
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| Does National Cereal Day sound like nothing to get worked up over…because you enjoy that bowl of Cheerios 365 days a year? Are you bummed that it isn’t National Bacon Cheeseburger Day or National Apple Pie À La Mode Day? Show a little love, please! Cereals are wild grasses, subsequently cultivated. Their edible grains, or seeds, are staple crops throughout the world (that means that the crops are grown in greater quantities, and provide more energy calories, than other crops). In some developing nations, grain constitutes almost the entire diet. But, here’s a happier factoid: Cereal takes its name from Ceres, the Roman goddess of harvest and agriculture. (The Greek goddess equivalent is Demeter.) |
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Amber waves of grain. Note the grains, or seeds, at the top of the stalk. Edible kernels are inside the husks. |
Corn, wheat and rice account for 87% of cereals grown worldwide—wheat in temperate regions, rice in tropical regions, corn in the Americas and Africa. Many grains are grown for livestock and for specific human uses—barley (for beer and other malted foods), millet, oats, rye and sorghum (used to make a sweetener). Buckwheat and quinoa (an incredibly high-protein, nutritious grain), both food crops, are not true grasses, but “psuedocereals.”- Read about some of our favorite grain-based foods in the Breads Section and Cereals Section of THE NIBBLE.com.
- Read our feature about whole grain cereals. |
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February 9, 2008 at 1:03 pm
· Filed under Fish/Seafood/Caviar, Bread, Crackers, Muffins, Tip Of The Day
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February 9th is National Bagels and Lox Day. “Lox” is an old generic term that is fading away, replaced by much more complicated choices. So how does one decide among the Irish, Danish, Nova Scotia, Norwegian, Scottish and other smoked salmon contenders? They differ in saltiness, smokiness and fishiness; the only way you’ll know is to taste. If it’s sliced-to-order, you can try a piece at the counter; but packaged salmon (which can be equally fine or better quality depending on manufacturer) is often less expensive because factory slicing is cheaper than store labor). Buy small amounts of each and compare. You don’t need bagels: Slices of salmon with a sprinkling of dill and capers, a lemon wedge and an optional garnish of crème fraîche make a lovely first course for brunch, lunch or dinner. TIP: Once you decide what you like, write it down—they sound so similar, it’s easy to forget.
- Learn about the different types of smoked salmon.
- Discover sustainable, line-caught smoked salmon from Nantucket Wild Gourmet & Smokehouse.
- See David Burke’s smoked salmon pops.
- Try a savory, smoked salmon cheesecake (for hors d’oeuvres or a first course). |
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 How many types of smoked salmon can you name? |
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January 30, 2008 at 8:12 am
· Filed under Bread, Crackers, Muffins, Breakfast, Daily Food Holidays
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Is there a person reading this who does not enjoy a buttery croissant? (Alas, not all are made with butter…but avoid buying croissants at inexpensive delis, and eagerly seek out new bakeries to see what they have to offer.) Our only complaint is that the flaky puff pastry that is so delightful in the mouth invariably ends up all over our place setting and our clothing. We admire people who can eat one neatly. A good croissant already contains so much butter that it needs no more embellishment. If you get one from a top baker who uses the best butter, enjoying each bite without the interference of additional butter or jam is, in our opinion, the way to go.
Making croissants by hand is very labor-intensive. Much of what is available today is factory-made, pre-formed and frozen, delivered to the bakery, food store or restaurant and “baked on our premises.” In the 1970s, the croissant evolved into a fast food, filled with everything from broccoli to ham and cheese (and in many cases, lowering the quality of the puff pastry itself). |
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Hold the butter: A truly fine, fresh croissant is buttery enough. |
| There are several stories about the invention of the croissant, but all appear to be legends. According to the Oxford Companion To Food, no recipe for what we know as the croissant appears before the early 20th century. It thus seems highly unlikely, for example, that the croissant was invented in Vienna in 1583 to celebrate the defeat of the Turkish siege of the city. Bakers, who were up in the wee hours making the city’s bread, are said to have heard the enemy tunneling under the city and were able to warn the army, thus saving Vienna from siege. In honor of the victory, the bakers created the croissant, the shape taken from the crescent emblem on the Turkish flag. (Eat this!) Such a heroic story; you will find it just about everywhere you look for “history of the croissant.” But one of the ways that food historians try to determine the truth is by looking at old recipe books. There are enough cookbooks from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries to deprive bakers of their most famous moment in history, alas. |
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January 14, 2008 at 10:05 am
· Filed under Bread, Crackers, Muffins, Tip Of The Day
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Merely switching breads can make the same old, same old seem new and exciting. Instead of sandwiching your tuna, egg salad or turkey on standard whole wheat, rye or multi-grain, think about focaccia, sourdough, semolina or walnut raisin. (Yes, you can put tuna, egg salad or turkey on walnut raisin, just like you can toss raisins into chicken or tuna salad.) Sliced bread can be kept in the freezer at your beck and call. It defrosts in seconds in the microwave, to be used au naturel or toasted. Click here to read our review of Rudi’s organic breads.
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January 3, 2008 at 1:51 pm
· Filed under Gourmet News, Bread, Crackers, Muffins
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| Just ten years ago, if you asked someone to name a flatbread, they’d probably say lavasch (an Armenian cracker bread, popularized as sesame-encrusted strips sold under the brand name Nejaime’s Lavasch)—if they could name anything at all. Today, we look at flatbread in a much broader scope—and it’s a rapidly-growing segment of the $14 billion bread industry. In fact, wraps (tortillas) are flatbread; tortillas, Indian naan (and a festival of other Indian breads including bhatura, chapati, papadum, paratha, poori and roti), Greek pita, Ethiopian inerja, Scandinavian crispbread and the most famous of the unleavened (flat) breads, matzoh. There are many others: Flatbread is the original bread; leavening was developed much later. Pizza crust is a flatbread, too. |
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Turkish flatbread. Flatbread can be spread with hummus, tapenade, or with goat cheese, tuna salad, or whatever appeals to you. Photo by Enver Uçarer | SXC. |
The next time you’re thinking about putting together an interesting bread basket for your guests, consider a flatbread basket. As we reported in April, 2007 in this space, you have quite a lot to choose from—there are about 60 different flatbreads worldwide, including:
- Unleavened flatbreads (arepas, crepes, matzoh, pita, tortillas)
- Chewy leavened flatbread (bruschetta, ciabatta, dosai, focaccia, inerja, naan and other Indian breads)
Stop by your local specialty food store and ethnic markets to see what’s available. But flatbreads are no longer isolated there—they’ve gone mainstream. Quiznos is including flatbread with much of its salad line. Dunkin’ Donuts is testing flatbread sandwiches. Arby’s has flatbread melts. And Stouffer’s has flatbread pizzas. Goodness gracious, the world is flat! |
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December 29, 2007 at 9:35 am
· Filed under Salts/Seasonings, Bread, Crackers, Muffins, Tip Of The Day
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 Whole nutmeg: Once you try it freshly-grated,
you’ll never go back to pre-grated.
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Just as freshly-ground pepper bears no resemblance to the bland, pre-ground powder, freshly-ground nutmeg is a vibrant spice that perks up sweet and savory dishes alike. We use it to flavor apples and other seasonal fruits (pies, compotes, sautéed sliced fruit), to make cookies and pastries and in custards. We love it in egg dishes and vegetable purées. It’s our favorite seasoning with spinach in any form, and on pasta with broccoli rabe. For beverages, use it in addition to (or instead of) cinnamon on hot chocolate, coffee, cappuccino, mulled cider, warm milk, cold milk, chocolate milk and of course, eggnog! |
| While some cooks grate the whole nutmeg against a fine plane kitchen grater, we value our skin and use a nutmeg grinder or mill—the same principle as a peppermill, but accommodating the larger nutmeg, which is the size of an unshelled hazelnut. If you’ve had the nutmeg for several years, you can check the quality by piercing it with a needle. If the skin pierces slightly and a drop of oil flows out, the nut is still fresh. If the skin won’t pierce, it’s dried out. (See how to check your other spices for freshness.) The nutmeg is the seed of an evergreen tree fruit. The tree, botanically known as Myristica fragrans, is indigenous to tropical southeast Asia and Australasia. Mace is the milder-tasting dried hull of the nutmeg—the part you peel off to get to the nut. |
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December 26, 2007 at 10:10 am
· Filed under Top Pick Of The Week, The Nibble, Condiments, Cheese/Yogurt/Dairy, Snacks, Jam/Peanut Butter, Bread, Crackers, Muffins
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No sandwich will ever taste the same once
you switch to Ojai Cook mayonnaises. |
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Our final Top Pick of the year is actually the Top Picks of 2007, five products we wrote about earlier this year that continue to bring happiness to our table. These are not fancy boxes of chocolate or special foods for entertaining, but everyday foods that have become part of our every day life. One of our goals is to introduce you to foods you might not have discovered on your own. So if you aren’t familiar with these special products, we hope you’ll have the opportunity to try them in the coming months. You can read the Top Pick Of The Week with capsule summaries of each product, or click on the links below to read the full reviews.
- Cypress Grove Chevre, a northern California cheese maker, creates a broad variety of creative fresh and aged goat cheeses, including the popular Humboldt Fog.
- Peeled Snacks Fruit & Nut Mixes, of New York City, makes nutritious, grab-and-go fruit and nut mixes in innovative packaging that keeps the fruits moist and the nuts crisp. Better than a candy bar! |
- The Ojai Cook Gourmet Mayonnaises, of California, reinvents mayonnaise into something flavorful, fabulous and worth every calorie. Made in a variety of flavors from lemony to Latin, any recipe that these mayos touch will be vastly improved.
- Pierre Marcolini Confitures (Jam), the only import on the list (from Belgium), are jams unlike any in the marketplace. Using so little sugar that diabetics can enjoy them (20% or less), these velvety, spreadable fruits have the richness of a curd without curd’s calorie- and cholesterol-laden eggs and butter. Truly a jam miracle.
- Starr Ridge Bread Sticks, from Phoenix, are so flavorful that they require no embellishment—although a tapenade or other dip makes a splendid hors d’oeuvre. The five flavors—Asiago Cheese, Olive Oil, Parmesan Cheese With Black Pepper, Roasted Garlic and Seed—can be served at elegant dinners or for casual snacks.All of the Top Picks Of The Week (dating back to 2004) are archived on TheNibble.com. |
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