That was completely new to me and I’m pretty sure I ate nothing but that for about six months after discovering it. It’s one of my absolute favorite flavor combos so I try to sneak it into dishes every chance I get.

Some people (my wife) have a serious aversion to capers for some reason and you could definitely leave them out of this omelet if you want. To me though, they make the whole thing work.

The Basics

It’s true that smoked salmon is a pricy ingredient, but the good news is that you don’t need to use a lot to get a lot of flavor from it. The same goes for capers. A little go a long way.

This four ounce package of smoked salmon set me back about $7, but it’s enough salmon for four omelets so that isn’t too bad.

It’s not my normal weekend omelet, but it’s a fun treat every once in awhile.

To get the fillings ready, dice the red onions pretty finely and just kind of shred the smoked salmon so it’s in pieces. Again, you don’t need a lot of each filling to get the flavors going.

Cooking the Omelet

In a small nonstick pan (this is a good one), add your butter over medium-high heat. Once it’s melted then go ahead and toss in all your filling ingredients: capers, onions, and salmon.

Let this stuff cook in the butter for just a few minutes. Basically, you just want to cook the onions a bit and heat everything up nicely.

While that’s cooking, you can go ahead and scramble your eggs. Just mix together a few eggs with some milk and whip them together until they are nice and fluffy.

I snapped a cool action shot of my scrambling. I was even using my left hand!

Go ahead and pour your eggs right over your fillings in the pan. It’ll sizzle and hiss and complain, but that’s good.

As the eggs cook, use a spatula to kind of push the cooked eggs into the center of the pan. Tilt the pan a bit then to let the uncooked eggs flow to the outer parts of the pan and cook.

After doing this for about 2-3 minutes you should end up with a lovely almost 100% cooked egg. There will still be a very thin layer of uncooked egg on the top, but that’s okay. It’ll finish cooking after we add the cheese.

For the cheese, just kind of toss a few spoonfuls of cream cheese on one side of the omelet. Don’t worry about smoothing it out or anything. Cream cheese melts quickly and as it melts it’ll even out.

Then just take your spatula and fold over the omelet like so…

Put this back on the heat and cook it for about 30-45 seconds per side. When you’re flipping this guy, don’t be nervous about it. The melted cheese should keep everything together.

Cooking it briefly on both sides will make sure the cheese is melted and also finish cooking any uncooked egg on the inside of your omelet.

Serve this bad boy just like that or if you want to get fancy you can sprinkle on some chopped dill.

This was one of the more flavorful omelets I’ve made for Macheesmo actually. All these flavors together just work.

It’s really delicious and would actually be a nice treat for the holidays also.

Assuming you can get your hands on some good smoked salmon, you’ve got to give this a shot!

I had dreams of making a creamy pumpkin grilled cheese sandwich, but cream cheese doesn’t do a great job of holding together when it gets hot so the whole thing kind of just melted all over the place. Don’t get me wrong though… it was very tasty! I had no problem scarfing it all down, but it’s definitely easier to just use it as a spread.

Making the Spread

You could go the complete sweet route with this spread by mixing in standard pumpkin pie spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, etc.), but I decided to give it a slightly different flavor with some chili powder and orange zest.

It’s very important when making spreads like this to make sure you get just canned pumpkin. You don’t want the canned pumpkin pie filling with lots of crap in it. If you’re in doubt, take a look at the ingredients. They should only have pumpkin listed. Nothing else.

Once you pop your can open just mix the cream cheese and pumpkin together really well. I just used a fork and kind of mashed it all together.

It’s okay if there are some lumps. The only way to get rid of those would be to beat the mixture with a hand mixer or something and that’s more work than it’s worth in my opinion.

Once your base mixture is mixed, you can add in your spices. The orange zest really makes the whole thing pop so try not to leave it out.

Then just add a pinch of chili powder and salt to taste. The finished spread should be a lovely light orange color.

Honestly, I recommend stopping here. Use the spread like this for toast, bagels, or heck. Just eat it with a spoon if you want. It’s really delicious.

But if you want to venture into the world of the messy, I have a sandwich for you!

The Pumpkin Sandwich

The key with this sandwich, if you are daring enough to try it out, is to do the exact opposite of what you would normally do with a grilled cheese. Normally, I recommend cooking grilled cheeses on medium-low heat which lets the bread toast slowly while the heat radiates into the cheese, melting it.

If you do that with this sandwich, you’ll have a huge mess on your hands.

Instead, you want to cook the sandwich on a high heat for about 45 seconds per side. That will toast the bread nicely, and just warm through the filling.

Butter a piece of bread and set it in a hot skillet. Add a few dollops of pumpkin spread to the bread.

Top it with another piece of buttered bread (butter side up) and set it over medium-high heat. After about 45 seconds, carefully flip the sandwich and you should have a lovely browned toast.

Cook it for another 45 seconds and your done. If you do it right, none of the pumpkin mixture will spill out.

Let this cool for a minute before eating it. I cut mine in half just so you could see the runny (but delicious) mess that this sandwich is capable of.

By all means make the pumpkin spread in this post. It’s very Fall-ish. It would go great on a huge number of breakfast foods.

Maybe don’t try to do what I did with the whole sandwich thing. If you wanted a sandwich you could always just toast two pieces of bread and stick them together with some spread in the middle!

Don’t make something delicious harder than it needs to be.

The problem was that smoked salmon is one of my favorite foods of all time. I don’t like to mess with it. I like it very simply on crackers or a bagel. Why would you do anything else with it?

Besides that, it’s not the most economical thing in the stores. Four ounces of it can easily set you back $8-$9.

Don’t screw it up, I kept telling myself.

It was really hard for me to just call the whole quiche off and eat the salmon straight. But I pulled through. I made the quiche and it was good. The key to it is to make sure you don’t try to challenge the salmon flavor. Just let it do its thing and add a few other simple ingredients to accent the flavors.

Making the Crust

This is my standard pie crust recipe, but if I’m making it for a real pie I add in a pinch of sugar also. You can definitely buy pie crust pre-made, but I enjoy the process of making it and think that the homemade versions are generally better even if they aren’t always as pretty.

To get started, mix your flour and a pinch of salt in a bowl or food processor. Then cube up your cold butter and cut it into the flour. You can either pulse it a few times in a food processor or just mix it in with your fingers.

Once the butter is mixed in, add a few tablespoons of ice cold water and mix a bit more. You’ll end up with crumbs basically.

This scares some people I think because it doesn’t appear to be a dough at this point, so they add more water and that’s a bad idea.

You should end up with crumbs, like this.

If you press these together a bit, you’ll notice that the crumbs stick very nicely to each other. After all, there’s a lot of butter in those there crumbs!

Eventually you should be able to mold the crumbs into a tight ball of dough.

Wrap this guy in plastic wrap very tightly and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes, preferably an hour though to make sure it’s really nice and cold.

Then, roll out the dough slowly. Use flour to keep the dough from sticking to the counter. It’ll probably crack some but just work slowly and try to keep it rolled in a circle. For a nine inch quiche, you’ll probably want 12 inches of pie crust.

Then just carefully plop it into your dish.

As you can see, there’s some cracks in mine and it isn’t even all around. I cut off the parts that overhang and use it to patch up the missing parts. It almost always works out well.

I tried to form a kind of pretty edge around the crust, but mine definitely has a “homemade” feel to it.

The good news is, the hard part is over!

Pre-baking the Crust

I’m not sure if this step is entirely necessary, but I always pre-bake my crust a bit for quiches. To do this, just line the pie with some parchment paper and add a few cups of dried beans. I use the same beans every time which I just store apart from my cooking beans.

Bake this guy for 10-12 minutes at 350 and it should be slightly firm, but probably not browned at all which is perfect.

Let it cool a bit while you make the filling!

The Quiche Filling

I kept my filling pretty straightforward. Some of the ingredients (salmon, goat cheese) are a bit pricey though.

To fill the quiche, I like to add about half of my filling into the bottom of the pie crust. Just kind of evenly distribute the ingredients.

How pretty is that salmon?!

Then mix your eggs, cream, and milk together well and add a pinch of salt and pepper. Pour half of that on top of the filling. Then add the rest of your filling ingredients (more salmon, goat cheese, etc). Then finish it off with the final bit of egg mixture.

Doing this in phases will create layers of sorts in the quiche so the goodies are evenly distributed throughout the quiche.

This guy is ready for the oven!

Bake the quiche as 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes. It should be slightly firm in the center. If you’re unsure if it’s cooked all the way through, use a tester to check the center for any uncooked egg.

If you can help it, let this cool for a few minutes before slicing it up.

I was very happy with the flavors in this quiche. The eggs were nice and fluffy and the smoked salmon flavor was intense, which I was hoping for. The goat cheese just adds another level of richness.

Was it hard for me to rip up 4 ounces of delicious smoked salmon and pour eggs all over it? YES.

But I’m glad I did.

The saying goes that cooking is an art and baking is a science. While it’s cool (and encouraged) to experiment with substitutions and different amounts when making, say, tacos. It’s maybe not the best idea to try too many crazy things the first time you try croissants.

When I started Macheesmo, baking was my weakness by far. I just couldn’t really wrap my head around how things worked. What’s the difference between instant yeast and dry yeast? How about bread flour and all-purpose flour?

I thought laminating had to do with making fake IDs.

In fact, in the early days of Macheesmo I posted very few baked goods just because I wasn’t sure they were good enough to post. But as I did it more, I realized that I could completely handle baked goods and started getting more confident.

So I thought I’d take a post and go over some tips that I wish someone would’ve told me two years ago!

Let me start this list by saying I’m very far from a professional baker. I’ve never been to culinary school. I’ve only been to the airport in Paris.

That said, I’d firmly put myself in the advanced home baker category. I frequently make homemade bread that I’m really proud of. I’ve done enriched breads, donuts, pretzels, bagels, and even experimented with a sourdough starter. The one area that has eluded me so far is laminated items. I just can’t get croissants down, but mastering them is in my future. I can feel it.

Here’s a few things, in no particular order, that might help you become a better baker.

Weight Matters

This was probably the biggest change I made to my baking. I got a cheap digital kitchen scale and started weighing my ingredients instead of measuring them by volume. In reality, I only weigh flour and sugar really, but it makes a huge difference in making sure you get the same results time after time.

The other nice thing about having a scale on hand is that it makes it a lot easier to half recipes. Say you want to halve a recipe with 3 eggs in it. This would be a guessing game without a scale, but with one it becomes pretty easy to weigh three eggs, scramble them together, then weigh out half the amount.

Fresh Ingredients

There are some ingredients in the baker’s arsenal that I never really realized could go bad. And the thing is, they don’t really go bad, but they do lose their potency. What this means is that you could use them and they will seemingly perform okay, but they won’t have the same power as fresh ingredients.

Yeast is the most obvious ingredient that can become inactive. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to test your yeast by putting it in some water with sugar before baking. If it bubbles and foams, then you’re in business. The harder ingredients are things like baking powder and baking soda. Those really need to be replaced every six months or so.

Strong Hands

I love my stand mixer as much as the next person, but I still make bread by hand pretty frequently. I think it’s really important if you want to learn to make bread to know how it feels. It may sounds cheesy, but as you work with the dough, you start being able to tell subtle things about it. Is it too dry? Too wet? Is it ready to rise or does it need to be kneaded more?

These things are kind of hard to tell in a stand mixer as it whips the dough around at 90 miles an hour. Making bread is an old school hobby and sometimes you need to go old school on it. So unplug the stand mixer and start kneading! Not only will you become a better baker, but you’ll get a bit of a workout also.

Learn

If you’re new to cooking/baking, you’re going to need to learn a bit about baking essentials before you can really become a proficient baker. Have no fear though. This isn’t organic chemistry (although there is some chemistry).

Eventually, you might want to graduate to an actual baking textbook (I’m almost there), but for starters, here’s a few great books that not only give solid recipes, but explain the processes and science behind baking.

Baking From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan.

The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart

My Bread by Jim Lahey (probably the easiest of the three)

What You Don’t Need

You’ll notice that I didn’t include in this list that you need to spend thousands of dollars on equipment. Of course, you’ll need some equipment, but nothing too expensive. Good bread was being made before professional mixers and gadgets so I encourage you to give it a shot without those things first!

My Five Favorite Baked Things

To finish off this post, here are my five favorite baked things I’ve made on Macheesmo to date:

Kaiser Rolls

English Muffins

Homemade Pretzels

Olive Bread

Gougeres

What are your tips? I know I have a number of really good bakers that read Macheesmo, some are professionals. What are your tips for people that want to become better bakers?

Last week I probably weirded out some of the workers there by obsessively dissecting my cream cheese to figure out all the veggies that it included.

Yep. I reverse engineered cream cheese. And you should be glad that I did.

Adding a bunch of really crunchy vegetables to cream cheese just takes it to another level. Not to mention it makes it somewhat healthier.

Prepping the Veggies

Ideally, you want to end up with about 2-3 cups of very finely minced or grated veggies for this recipe. The above measurements are far from scientific and you should feel free to add more or less if you want.

This ratio worked great for me though. I thought it ended up with the perfect mix of veggies and cheese.

The fastest way to get the veggies to a nice even mince is to use a grater. I was being pretty lazy on this day and decided to try out my grater disc on my food processor. It worked pretty well except on the celery and scallions. Those I just diced by hand.

As you can imagine though, the most important thing for this recipe is just making sure your veggies are minced or grated super-fine.

So take your time and use the best tools you have to get the job done. Even a box grater would work great for this.

Here’s my finished veggies.

Mixing in Cream Cheese

Mixing in the cream cheese is really easy if you let it come to room temperature before you try mixing it. Otherwise, it’s a bit of a workout.

I, of course, forgot to take my out of the fridge so I had two hard blocks of cheese in my bowl.

The Secret Ingredient

Once you get everything mixed up, you can add the secret ingredient: LOTS of crushed black pepper.

It gets mixed in with the veggies and everything and just works beautifully.

Once everything is mixed together, you’ll have a nice and thick mixture. It’s creamy, but crunchy.

It looks a bit like a hot mess, but trust me. It’s good.

Of course, the first thing I did with my cream cheese is deploy the traditional schmear.

This is a quick and simple recipe that you can make it just a few minutes and it keeps fine for a week or two.

It really does take the standard bagel to another level and is vastly better than the veggie cream cheese that you can buy in the store.

Turns out that the combo is pretty genius. The yogurt makes the muffins really tender and soft and the lemon zest and juice just makes them really light and flavorful. I added a lemon glaze on top because it seemed like the right thing to do.

Making the Batter

If there’s one thing that I really don’t get, it’s pre-packaged muffin mix. I just don’t get how it’s faster to use a mix since you still have to add in the liquids and stuff.

But, I guess if you make it, people will buy it right?! This batter couldn’t be simpler to pull together. The real flavor in it comes from these guys though.

Take a lemon and use a zester to get off as much zest (just the yellow part) as you can. The zest is very flavorful and just a Tablespoon or so will completely flavor the batter.

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl (flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda). Then mix all the wet stuff together (yogurt, butter, lemon zest and juice, eggs, milk).

Then just stir the wet into the dry and your batter is ready to go. The whole thing takes maybe five minutes.

If you’re batter is too dry, feel free to add a bit more milk than I indicated in the recipe.

The Greek yogurt gives a really great texture to the muffins and the lemon is just such a fantastic flavor.

You could use muffin cups for these guys, but I just lightly buttered my muffin tins and then added the batter. You can almost fill up the tins with the batter. It won’t rise quite as much as some muffins do.

Baking the muffins

Bake these guys at 375 for about 25 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. I pulled mine after 25 minutes and they were pretty much perfect.

As these cook, they will make your whole neighborhood smell like lemon.

Glazing the muffins

You could be done at this point if you wanted. They are very delicious just like this.

If you wanted to take them over the top though, wait for the muffins to cool completely and then add an nice lemon glaze to them.

Just mix a few cups of powdered sugar with the juice from 1/2 a lemon. Depending on how juicy your lemon is, you might need a few drops of water also.

Stir this together until it’s a smooth glaze and then drizzle it over the muffins.

Just really are some super-easy muffins to make, but they’re texture and flavor is pretty complex.

I loved the glaze on them because it just ramps up the lemon flavor even more.

If you’re looking for a quick muffin to try out, ditch the mix and make these guys!

On Memorial Day weekend, I was making something delicious that needed a good hard roll. One that was crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. I looked at a few places and wasn’t impressed so I just decided to make some myself. It was a really good idea.

Without a doubt, if you take the time to make some great hard Kaiser rolls, I guarantee it will elevate your burger or sandwich to another level of deliciousness.

Note: This is a two day recipe so plan accordingly! It’s not actually that much work… just a lot of waiting.

Making the Pâte Fermentée

This is a fancy name for a dough starter basically. In fact, I’m just going to call it the starter from now on because I’m sick of looking up the special characters. This is similar to the sponge you make when making bagels, but it’s a firmer final product.

To make it, just stir together all your dry ingredients in a bowl and then add your water. Stir it together until it forms a firm ball. It shouldn’t be sticky or stiff, but if you’re worried, err on the side of sticky. It’s easier to add flour than water.

Then roll your dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead it for about 5 minutes until it’s smooth. It should be soft and smooth but not sticky at all.

Then lightly oil a bowl and turn the ball around in the oil so it’s coated.

Fermenting the Starter

Cover this and let this rise at room temperature for about 90 minutes. Then put it in your fridge overnight! This will keep in the fridge for 3 days if it’s covered well or you can freeze it for up to 3 months.

Making the Kaiser dough

The first thing about this dough is that you need to bring the cold starter up to room temperature. To make this a bit easier (and to make the mixing easier) just chop it up into a bunch of smaller pieces in a large bowl. You can use kitchen sheers, a dough cutter, or even a serrated knife for this.

Let this sit out at room temperature for about an hour to warm up.

Next, add all your dry ingredients for the dough (flour, salt, yeast) to a large bowl. Mix your wet ingredients separately (malt syrup, eggs, oil, water). Then add your chopped up starter to your dry ingredients along with your wet ingredients.

Stir it together with a large spoon or if you’re using a mixer then mix it on low speed with the paddle until it starts to come together. Mine ended up a bit too wet which isn’t a big deal.

I just kept adding flour until the dough formed a ball which was about another 1/2 Cup for me.

Then you can either mix this on medium with the dough hook (6-8 minutes) or if you’re doing it by hand, roll it out onto a floured surface and knead it for about 10-12 minutes until the dough is soft and tacky but not sticky at all. If it’s too sticky, keep kneading in extra flour until it’s not sticky.

The final dough whether you use the mixer or by hand should pass the windowpane test.

Fermenting

Once your dough is ready, oil a large bowl and roll the dough ball in the oil to coat. Then cover it and let it ferment at room temperature until it doubles in size which should take about 90 minutes to 2 hours.

Shaping the rolls

To make really even rolls, it’s almost essential to have a kitchen scale so you can weigh each roll before shaping it. You can of course eyeball it, but your rolls are probably going to be a bit uneven.

I went with a 3.5 ounce roll. I wouldn’t go larger than 4 ounces.

Once you have your dough weighed, shaping these guys isn’t too hard. Just try not to freak out if they aren’t all perfect because they probably won’t be. This is how I shaped mine.

I rolled my dough out into a long strand about 18 inches long. Try to keep it as even as possible. It should roll really evenly. Just use your hands.

Then take the left end and put it over the right end forming a loop (top left). Next, loop the right end through the center (top right). Do the same thing with the left end but in the reverse direction (bottom left). Then roll both ends through another time and they should basically meet in the center, filling the hole (bottom right).

Once you finish one, add it upside down to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and sprinkled with some cornmeal or semolina flour. If you look at mine carefully you can see that I messed some up, meaning that there are a few ends that don’t meet in the middle. They all baked up fine though so don’t stress out about it too much.

Second Rising

Once you get them all shaped, let them rise for 30 minutes, then flip them so the top of the roll is up and let them rise for another 30 minutes.

Topping the rolls

Before baking the rolls, it’s important to spritz them all with water. This gives them that crunchy texture after they get done baking. Since you’re going to spritz them all with water, you might as well sprinkle on some delicious toppings. I went with poppy seeds.

Baking the Rolls

To bake these right, preheat the oven to 425. When you put the rolls in the oven, spritz the sides of the oven with water also to create some steam in the oven. Bake them for 10 minutes. Then reduce the temperature to 400 degrees and bake them for another 20-25 minutes, depending on how large you make them.

They should be golden brown and sound kind of hollow if you thump them.

These were perfect.

Cooling the rolls. As with most baked things, these need to cool for a while before you eat them. Cool them for at least 30 minutes. It gives the crust a chance to form and also lets the center of the rolls set up a bit. It’s really important to cool these on a rack if at all possible.

Then you can slice into them!

These were my exact definition of a good hard roll. They were worth the extra work.

Want to know what I did with them? Here ya go!

As tends to happen, we ended up having way more food than we could eat because it turned into kind of a potluck thing. There were about 10 people total which is probably the max our apartment can comfortably handle.

In my humble opinion, one of the best brunch foods you can make to feed a crowd is a good quiche. I made two varieties for the affair. This was one of them!

I have to give a quick shout-out that a few of these photos were taken by one of our friends, Yasmin, who’s also photographing our wedding. She happened to bring her camera over so I put her to work.

Making the crust

Can you buy a pre-made crust? Of course. But seriously people, I think it’s worth learning it. Once you get it right, you can bang out a crust with just a bit of effort. It gives you the flexibility to make a pie or a quiche on the fly without having to go to the store and is also a lot cheaper.

As you might know, the key to a good crust is to keep everything cold. This keeps your butter in small chunks so it doesn’t get immediately absorbed by the flour. Then as it cooks it melts and creates a delicious and flaky crust.

So step one is having cold butter. Chop it up into pieces to make your life easier.

The best way to mix in the cold butter with the flour is to use a food processor. Just add your flour and salt and then throw in your cold butter and pulse it a few times. Your butter should be in chunks, like this:

If you don’t have a processor you can definitely use your fingers, but the butter will just warm up a bit which could theoretically make your final crust not as flaky. I’ve done it with my fingers before though and it works just fine.

Next add enough cold water (like ice cold) to this so that it just comes together in a ball. The dough should barely hold together. Then split up your dough into two balls and wrap them in plastic wrap. Refrigerate these for 30 minutes at least or stick them in the freezer for 10 minutes if you are in a hurry.

Once your dough is very cold, dust a clean surface with some flour and then roll your crust out to two inches in diameter larger than your pan. It might tear a bit around the edges, but just work slow and it should be okay. You can repair any holes once you get it in the pan.

I think it’s easiest to carefully fold the dough in half twice (forming a quarter of a circle) and then set that in your pan and unfold it. Once it’s in the pan the hard part is over! Then carefully press the dough into the corners of the pan and, only if you want, do something decorative around the edges. At a minimum, you can use the tines of a fork to make some designs all the way around the edge.

Pre-baking the crust

For quiches, it’s important to pre-bake your crust or else it might not cook all the way. The problem is that if you bake it like this, it will puff up a lot and just be a disaster. The solution is to either use pie weights to weigh down the center or just cut out a circle of parchment paper and lay it down in the center of your crust and pour a layer of dried beans in the pie! The beans will give just enough weight to prevent the dough from puffing too much.

Also, take a fork and poke holes over the crust and around the edges to help steam escape.

Don’t worry, you can’t taste the beans in the final product. Just make sure to get them all off before you add your quiche filling!

Bake this at 425 degrees for 10-12 minutes until it’s lightly browned.

For the record, if you don’t have a pie pan, it’s pretty hard to do this using a cake tin. I tried it and it failed miserably. The edges just curled all over the place. I tried a second time and wrapped foil around the edges to keep everything in place. It worked a lot better but was a pain in the butt.

If you need to make two at a time, it’d be worth buying two pie pans. This was a fail:

Once your crusts are pre-baked, the rest of the quiches are pretty easy to throw together. You could pre-bake these hours ahead if you wanted. I’m not sure I would pre-bake them the day before, but a few hours wouldn’t hurt.

As an aside, I also found some of the largest bacon slices I’ve ever seen for this brunch. The package was 24 ounces of bacon and there was only 10 slices of bacon in it. I ended up cutting them all in half, but check these suckers out!

Anyway, back to quiche, let’s make some fillings.

Heat the butter or oil in a large pan and then add all your onions. Cook them until they wilt down and start to brown, about 20 minutes. In a separate bowl, whisk together all your other ingredients in a bowl. Let your onions cool slightly and then add them to the egg mixture. Pour this all in your pre-baked shell.

If you wanted to kick this up a notch, you could grate some cheese on top before baking it.

Bake this at 325 for about 40 minutes or until it is golden brown and the center is firm. Let it cool before slicing into it!

The Mushroom Variety

I made a mushroom variety also that was the exact same as the onion except I used about 1 pound of crimini mushrooms and sliced and sauteed them in butter for about 10 minutes until they were soft. I also grated a little smoked Gouda on that one and it worked nicely.

There was a ton of other food for this brunch including a baked oatmeal dish that I’ll be stealing and someone even made bagels!

I also contributed a loaf of the babka I made a few weeks ago.

Tipsy the cat was hard to find during this event. She’s in her angst-y teenager phase and doesn’t like to interact with her parents’ friends.

Yasmin found her hiding in her tunnel at one point…

All in all, this was a great brunch. Quiche is a fantastic warming winter dish that I’d recommend everyone try to learn. It’s very versatile as you can use all kinds of stuff in the filling.

Just remember the keys:

1) Keep your butter cold for a flaky crust.
2) Pre-bake your crust.
3) Watch out for cats in tunnels.

I realized recently that I’ve never made bagels before, but I knew the process was somewhat similar to pretzels. For my first bagel attempt I went with cinnamon raisin. They are probably my favorite basic bagel.

This recipe produces fantastic bagels. I might be willing to put them up against any DC bagel I’ve had. I’ve definitely had better in New York, but not by much. They are really quite good.

The recipe calls for an ingredient that isn’t very common: malt syrup. I happened to have a jar of it laying around because a neighbor at work gave it to me because she didn’t know what to do with it. I kept it in my fridge and figured I would need it someday. I was so right.

If you don’t have it though you can substitute honey without a problem or brown sugar.

Making the Dough

I don’t think this recipe is all that difficult. It just takes a little bit of love. The dough is pretty straightforward. Start by combining all your sponge ingredients in a large bowl. It will be a soupy mixture (Top left). Cover this loosely and let it sit at room temperature for 2 hours.

Meanwhile get all your final dough ingredients ready (top right). If you don’t want to do cinnamon raisin, just get rid of the cinnamon and raisins obviously. Also, cut out the sugar and reduce the yeast to 1/2 Teaspoon. But assuming you are doing cinnamon raisin, be sure to wash your raisins to remove any dirt or natural yeast that’s on them. Just pat them dry afterward (middle left).

After two hours, your sponge should be bubbly (mid right). Then add all your dough ingredients except the flour (bottom left) and finally stir in your flour until the dough forms a ball (bottom right).

Turn your dough out onto a floured surface and knead it for about 10 minutes. It’s kind of weird to knead dough with a bunch of raisins spotted throughout, but it works just fine. Eventually it should pass the windowpane test.

Making the Bagels

Once your dough passes the windowpane test, immediately start forming your bagels. Cut your dough into about 12 or 13 even pieces. If you have a digital scale this is super easy. Just weigh your entire dough ball, divide by 12 or 13 and see what you get. Then you can weigh out each tiny ball for evenly sized bagels. Each one of my bagels was a bit over 5 ounces of dough.

Of course, you could also just guess. If you end up with 30 balls, they are too small. If you end up with 3, they are too big.

Let your balls of dough rest for about 20 minutes just so they relax a bit (you want to catch them off guard you see). Then grab a ball and gently press down in the direct center of it with your thumb. Eventually it will poke through. Then slowly work the side of the bagel out, making the hole bigger, until the hole is about 1-2 inches in diameter. The goal is for the bagel to be perfectly even all the way around.

Set each bagel on a parchment lined baking sheet when you’re done forming it. Let the bagels rise again for about 30 minutes. You’ll know when they are ready because they will float! You just have to test one and they should all be done.

At this point Peter recommends letting them sit in the fridge overnight to develop more flavor. I did this but my main problem was figuring out a way to stack two sheet trays in my fridge without crushing the bagels! I eventually came up with a complicated system of props (including hand mixer attachments) that let me evenly stack two trays without crushing the bagels on the lower tray.

Of course, I think you could also just make the bagels immediately and avoid that whole mess…

Boiling the bagels

Just like the pretzels, it’s very important to boil the bagels so they develop that nice chewy interior and get that great crust on the outside. Put a large pot of water on and once it is slowly boiling add 1 Tablespoon of baking soda for approximately every gallon of water. Now would also be a good time to preheat your oven to 500 degrees.

Then boil your bagels a few at a time for 1 minute per side. Move them straight to a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. If you were topping them with something, now would be the time!

Baking the bagels

These do not need to bake that long. Bake them for 5 minutes at 500, then rotate your sheet pans and bake them for another 5 minutes at 450. You can bake them a bit longer if you like them darker.

Move them onto a rack to cool right away and let them cool for at least 10 minutes before cutting them open and eating!

Storing the bagels

These are obviously great straight out of the oven, but I found that they lose very little in quality if you freeze them correctly. Just make sure they are cooled completely and then store them in a sealed plastic bag.

I’m still eating mine that I made 3 weeks ago and they taste great! To de-thaw them, just set the bagel in a 350 degree oven for about 5 minutes and then slice it and toast it as you would normally. Works like a charm!

These bagels are chewy and delicious. They are jam packed with raisins and cinnamon flavor. One of my pet-peeves is getting a raisin bagel with like two raisins in it. I hate raisin rationing.

I thought these were really fun to make. The final product was very tasty and they store great. What’s not to love about this recipe?

I can’t believe it’s already November. This year has really flown by for me. I’m not sure what I’m going to start doing in January instead of food letters. I’ll have to come up with something else for 2010!

What to Eat in November:

Brussel Sprouts – Sprouts get such a bad rap. Cooked correctly, they are in my top five veggies. No question.

Sprouts with Red Wine Reduction - Crisp up the sprouts in the oven and then toss them in a reduced and flavorful sauce. This is one of my favorite recipes on Macheesmo that gets very little love.
Fresh Pasta with Brussel Sprouts – I’ve never shredded brussel sprouts like this, but seems awesome to me. And can’t go wrong with fresh pasta. (@ TFIMB)
Brussel Sprout Salad with Asian Pear and Bacon Vinaigrette – This is a really healthy salad actually and the vinaigrette is packed with flavor (@ Gastronomer’s Guide)
Brussel Sprouts Baaji – An Indian twist on the standard stir-fried brussel sprout dish. Love it. (@ The Well-Seasoned Cook)

Chestnuts - I admit that I’ve never actually cooked with chestnuts. That will change though this month. I guarantee a chestnut recipe sometime in November!

Chestnut-Stuffed Brussel Sprouts – Bonus! Two food letter ingredients in one. Can’t go wrong with this! (@ Lucullian Delights)
Brown Rice with Chestnuts – Great directions on cooking and storing chestnuts and a simple recipe to give them a shot. (@ Local Lemons)
Stir-Fried Shrimp with Chestnuts – I can’t wait to try this recipe. Looks quick and delicious. A great weekday November dish. (@ NY Times)
Apple Crumb Cakes with Chestnuts – Apples and chestnuts were made to be together. (@ Pittsburgh Needs Eated)

Turkey - Obviously November is the month of the turkey (if you live in the U.S.) due to Thanksgiving. But there’s a lot of other things you can do with a bird besides overcook it in an oven.

Grilled Turkey and Brie Sandwich – Another recipe with two of this month’s ingredients! Of course, the last two ingredients are almost always eaten together so that’s not too hard. (@ Closet Cooking)
Flatbread with Turkey and Greek Yogurt – I put Greek yogurt on all kinds of stuff. I use it instead of mayo and sour cream so I don’t see why it wouldn’t work great for this recipe! (@ Very Culinary Blog)
Turkey and Spinach-Herb Meatloaf - Sometimes I like to make meatloaf with something other than beef. It’s lighter and definitely healthier so this looks great. (@ Living Tastefully)
Smoked Turkey – Oh if I had a smoker! This would be amazing. Such a different take on the standard. (@ Culinary Sherpas)

Cranberries – Another staple food for November. I love cranberries. They can bring a lot of interesting flavor to a variety of dishes.

Peanut Butter Granola Bars – I made these a while ago and they use dried cranberries, not fresh, but still worth a look and are cranberry packed.
Cinnamon and Cranberry Bagels – I just made some cinnamon raisin bagels using this same recipe and they turned out amazing. (@ Life’s a Feast)
Making Cranberry Juice – This looks really simple actually and is probably better than store bought stuff (@ Kitchen Simplicity)
Cranberry Crumb Bars - More bars, but with fresh cranberries this time! (@ Good Life Eats)

Notable November Holidays – These are just a few holidays to mark on your calendars.

Veteran’s Day (Nov. 11) – This doesn’t have much to do with food, but it’s very important to honor our troops with this day. If you know a Veteran, maybe cook them dinner or something!

Homemade Bread Day (Nov. 17) – The perfect holiday for me! Try some no knead bread or maybe some olive bread.

Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 26) – The big day. It’s really all about food so I don’t really feel a need to link to anything. Roast a turkey, make some mashed potatoes, watch some football. Maybe my favorite holiday.

Day After Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 27) – Yes. The day after Thanksgiving is an official holiday. Ok. Maybe not official official. But official in my mind! Take all those leftovers and make a sandwich or just relive Thanksgiving all over again!

Have a great November everyone!

Photos by Sweetbeetandgreenbean and Muffet.