Mennonite Paska #BreadBakers

Peel and blend a whole orange and a whole lemon to create this slightly sweet yeast bread traditionally served for Easter in the Mennonite community. The buttery sugar glaze is not optional. Neither are the sprinkles. 

This month’s Bread Bakers challenge, chosen by our creative host, Camilla of Culinary Adventures with Camilla is to bake a traditional Easter, Passover or springtime bread, perhaps venturing into another culture or country to expand our horizons. I was determined to make homemade matzo because it’s impossible to find here and I thought with a homemade version at my disposal, I could try all the matzo-based recipes I’ve been seeing on the web like chicken soup with matzo balls, Chocolate Peanut Butter Matzo S’mores, Northern Fried Chicken and Chocolate Toffee Matzo, just to name a few. But the more I researched what it would take to make matzo at home, the more I realized that my sad, sad oven which can barely be coaxed up to 425°F or 218°C on a good day, was just not up to the task. So I started scouring the internet for something new, something different, something tasty.

According to Lovella, one of the authors of Mennonite Girls Can Cook and the sharer of this paska bread, she inherited the recipe from her husband’s grandmother and it’s one of the most viewed pages on their site. I was intrigued by the whole orange and lemon that are pureed then added to the dough. Lovella also declares, and I can confirm, leftovers make fabulous French toast or eggy bread.

Adapted from Lovella’s Paska Bread – I baked two in bread pans and one in a Nordic Ware 12-cup Anniversary Bundt pan but this could easily be stretched to fill four pans. Lovella made five to seven so they must have been smaller!

Ingredients
For the bread:
2 packets active dry yeast (1/4 oz or 7g each)
1 cup or 240ml warm water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 medium lemon
1 medium orange
1 1/4 cup or 295ml milk
1/2 cup or 115g butter, plus extra for buttering the mixing bowl before the first rise and the baking pans
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup or 150g sugar
About 7-8 cups or 875g-1kg flour, with a little extra for kneading

For the glaze:
3 tablespoons butter, softened
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Good pinch salt
2-3 tablespoons milk
2 cups or 250g icing sugar

For decorating: colored sprinkles

Method
In the bowl of your stand mixer, put your yeast, the tablespoon of sugar and warm water and allow your yeast to proof. After 10 minutes, if you have a bunch of foam in the bowl, proceed. If not, throw it all out and start over with new yeast.

Meanwhile, zest your lemon and orange with a microplane or fine grater into the vessel of your blender.

Use a sharp knife to cut all the white pith and peel off of the citrus and then cut off and discard any hard membranes between the pegs. Remove any seeds and discard. Add the orange and lemon to the zest in the blender.

Put your milk and butter in a microwaveable measuring cup and heat them in the microwave on a low setting until the butter is just melted. Add them to the blender and blend for two to three minutes.

Add in the eggs, the rest of the sugar and the salt. Blend again for a minute or two.

Pour the mixture into the bowl of your stand mixer (where the yeast has been hanging out and, if all is going to plan, foaming) and mix well.

Start adding the flour, a cup at a time, mixing very thoroughly in between, until you have a nice soft dough. You may not need all the flour.

You can use the dough hook to knead the dough but it should be quite sticky still so I found it easier to take it out and knead it for several minutes on a lightly floured countertop.

Before kneading

After kneading

Wash out your large bowl and rub the insides with butter. I keep empty butter wrappers folded up in my freezer door for this purpose. One use only, but they work beautifully. Go ahead and prepare your baking pans in the same manner.

Return the kneaded dough to the buttered bowl and cover the bowl with a loose tea towel. Leave it in a warm place for about hour.

Before then after the rising. This dough soars.

When the dough has risen, divide it into three or four even pieces.

Press them out gently and fold them over in thirds lengthwise. Put them buttered pans, seam side down, and sprinkle on a little more flour.

Cover the pans loosely with tea cloths and put them back in the warm place for about 45 minutes. About 15 minutes before the second rising time is up, preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C.

When the oven is preheated, carefully remove the tea cloths and place the loaves in the oven to bake.

As you can see, I could probably have made one more loaf.

Bake uncovered for 35-45 minutes or until the internal temperature of the bread reaches 200°F or about 134°C or the bottoms sound hollow when tapped.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool briefly in the pan. Turn the loaves out onto wire racks to cool completely.

Meanwhile, make your glaze by whisking the butter, lemon juice and salt with one teaspoon of milk. Add in the sugar and stir well. Add additional milk a little at a time until you reach your desired pouring consistency.

When the loaves are completely cool, pour over the glaze and quickly decorate with colored sprinkles while the glaze is still sticky. It will harden after pouring, making the loaves easier to wrap and carry.

Enjoy!

Do you have a traditional Easter, Passover or springtime bread you make each year? Perhaps you’ll find a new favorite in this great list from my fellow Bread Bakers:

• Casatiello by Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Choereg - Armenian Easter Bread by Chef Mireille's East West Realm
• Colomba Pasquale (Easter Dove Bread) by Cook's Hideout
• Cornish Saffron Easter Bread by Pastry Chef Online
• Folar (Portuguese Easter Bread) by Passion Kneaded
• Hot Cross Buns by En la Cocina de Caro
• Hornazo De Salamanca - Spanish Easter Bread by Ruchik Randhap
• Hungarian Egg Twist by Hostess at Heart
• Hungarian White Bread by Magnolia Days
• Individual Braided Easter Bread by Hezzi-D's Books and Cooks
• Italian Easter Bread by La Cocina de Aisha
• Lambropsomo - Greek Easter Bread by Spice Roots
• Lithuanian Easter Raisin Bread by My Catholic Kitchen
• Matzo by A Shaggy Dough Story
• Mennonite Paska by Food Lust People Love
• Pääsiäisleipä - Finnish Easter Bread by Bakers and Best
• Pane di Pasqua - Italian Easter Bread Wreath by Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Polish Bobka Easter Bread by Seduction in the Kitchen
• Russian Kulich by That's My Home
• Springtime Sweet Bread by Cooking club
• Strawberry Fritters by Cindy's Recipes and Writings
• Tsoureki (Greek Easter Bread) by Simply Veggies

                                                              

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all our of lovely bread by following our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated after each event on the BreadBakers home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. This month Camilla at Culinary Adventures with Camilla has chosen breads from around the world that are traditional for Easter, Passover, or Springtime. Thank you for hosting, Camilla!

If you are a food blogger and would like to join us, just send an email with your blog URL to foodlustpeoplelove@gmail.com.

Sliced up and ready to become French toast

Cheese in Ham Muffins #MuffinMonday

These guys are savory muffins, replete with cheese, baked in a ham cup. Nuff said. They might not cure what ails you, but they help.

This has been a shite week, as my British friends would say. No kidding. Bad news on several fronts. And while some people eat chocolate or turn to liquid consolation, I tend to bake and pray. And I try to understand why some things happen the way they do. To nice people. And why some nice people DO the things they do. When the decision is so obviously detrimental. So, as I said, I pray about it. For health, for understanding, for acceptance, for direction. And I bake stuff that I want to eat. Which means that this week, it’s a savory muffin. Can’t say I’m feeling a whole lot better, but at least I’m not hungry on top of that. How do you console yourself? All suggestions welcome.

Ingredients
1/8-1/4 cup or 30-60ml olive oil
12 slices thin cut ham, plus 1 more for garnish (I used the Oscar Mayer Delifresh stuff.)
2 cups or 250g flour
7oz or 200g strong and bitey cheese, divided
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup or 240ml milk
1/4 cup or 60ml canola or other light oil

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 12-cup muffin pan by greasing it liberally with the olive oil using a pastry brush.

Line each muffin cup with a circle of ham.

Cut the cheese into small chunks and set aside a good handful for putting on top of the muffins before baking. (Cut the rind off and discard, if there's a rind.) Cut the extra slice of ham into pieces.

In a large bowl, mix together your flour, the bigger pile of cheese, baking powder and salt, making sure that the cheese is well coated in flour and is not sticking together in clumps.

In a smaller bowl, whisk together your eggs, milk and oil.

Pour your wet ingredients into your dry ingredients stir until just mixed.

Divide the batter between the muffin cups, holding the ham up on one side with a finger while you spoon the batter in, if necessary.

Top each with the reserved smaller pile of cheese and a piece or two of ham.

Bake in your preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until the muffins are golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

Cool in the pan for a few minutes and then run a knife around the muffin pan to set the muffins free. Remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Enjoy!

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Carrot-Cumin Soup #EatRightforYourSight

This thick aromatic carrot soup, finished with creamy yogurt, will not only satisfy your hunger, but will also provide a substantial dose of vitamin A, minerals and antioxidants, all essential for healthy eyes.

When I was asked if I’d like to a receive and review a copy of Eat Right for Your Sight*, I jumped at the chance. Not just because it is a cookbook with tasty recipes from the likes of Jacques Pépin, Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, Ina Garten and Alice Waters, but because it would give me the chance to raise awareness about macular degeneration and to reminisce about my grandfather, a member of the Great Generation, a self-made man who worked hard, relaxed by gardening – which looked like a whole different kind of hard work to me – and who suffered from the disease the recipes in this book aim to prevent. He loved to grow and pick fresh vegetables as much as he loved to eat them so I am pretty sure Paw would have been a fan of this book. And if, by writing this, I can make even one person follow a link and learn something about preventing macular degeneration, or how to live well even following that diagnosis, then I will sleep well tonight.

My grandfather grew up on a farm, out “in the country” as we called it, in southern Louisiana. One day, many years ago, I was chatting with him on the phone and he began to speak about his first job, working for a furrier, after he left school. It was Paw’s responsibility to collect pelts from hunters and trappers that the furrier would use to make coats and hats. If I remember correctly, he earned $1 for every pelt, which was a substantial (if sporadic) payment in a time when a chuck roast could be bought for 15 cents a pound and the big can of Heinz beans was only 13 cents. He went on to discuss how he and my grandmother had started their major appliance business and how he built their shop himself, welding together large steel beams that would become the framework for the building. And how he had learned to weld when workers were needed to build supply ships at a new shipyard in New Orleans during World War II. He was rightfully proud of his contribution to the war effort and he gained a skill in the process. Everyone thought he was crazy since steel was an expensive building material but it meant that he could do most of the work himself, saving on labor costs and a steel frame building would last forever. This was key to my grandfather’s philosophy that a person should choose carefully when he or she buys something, making sure that it is worth the expense, and then should care for that something so that it might never have to be replaced. As owner-operator of the first Maytag appliance center in their town, he would have preferred to repair a customer’s old machine and keep it working rather than sell them a new one. Perhaps it was not the most lucrative business model but he lived a life of integrity and his customers appreciated that, always returning to buy the next appliance out of loyalty, knowing they’d be treated fairly. My grandfather’s handshake was better than a written contract and if he told you he’d do something, you could damn well bet he would.

I realized part way into the conversation that if I didn’t write all this down, I would never remember it so I began to take notes, as fast as I could. Later I transcribed the notes and saved them to my computer. Unfortunately, that computer became obsolete and I didn’t remember to print or save the file to the new one. So we are back to my faulty memory again, trying to recall what my grandfather shared with impressive accuracy, despite the half century between the living and the telling.

His memory for details was phenomenal and he was an avid reader, reading anything and everything to educate himself, making up for his early departure from formal education. The ever-growing stack of reading material next to his chair was a testament to all he'd like to accomplish, given the time. My whole childhood I remember both he and my grandmother reading two newspapers a day, cover to cover, The Times Picayune, published in New Orleans and The Daily Iberian, an afternoon paper from their hometown. As they both aged, he became a regular subscriber to Prevention magazine and each issue was covered in his scrawling almost illegible handwriting, with passages of particular interest underlined, as he tried to figure out how to live the healthiest life. My grandfather’s mailbox was regularly filled with packages of vitamins that he ordered in bulk from catalogs and swallowed faithfully, especially once he had been diagnosed with macular degeneration, that eye disease that steals one’s sight, from a central point of the retina, leaving only peripheral vision near the end.

For a man who loved to read, who was used to being independent and doing for himself, the diagnosis was nothing sort of devastating. A broken magnet on the old brown double-wide refrigerator held a grid that he was supposed to check to gauge the progression of the disease. (Check your own eyes on the grid here.) To prolong the inevitable, my mom bought him two large lighted magnifying lenses that could be c-clamped to both his kitchen table and his comfy chair, allowing him to continue reading, until he just couldn’t really much anymore. And the loss of his driver's license was a huge blow.

My grandfather with his passel of great grandchildren, on the occasion of his 91st birthday.

While there still isn’t a cure for macular degeneration, we know much more about its risk factors which include exposure to UV rays from the sun and welder’s flash(!), so the proper protective lenses are key. And smoking is a big no-no. We also know much more about how to prevent it through diet and supplementary vitamins. The eventual goal of the American Macular Degeneration Foundation is, of course, finding a cure. But meanwhile, get your eyes checked regularly and let's eat right for our sight as well.

Carrot-Cumin Soup - from Eat Right For Your Sight: Simple Tasty Recipes That Help Reduce the Risk of Vision Loss from Macular Degeneration*,  © American Macular Degeneration Foundation, 2014. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, The Experiment. Available wherever books are sold. *Amazon affiliate link

Ingredients for four 1 cup or 240ml servings
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 pound or 450g carrots
2 1/2 cups or 590ml vegetable broth
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
Freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 cup or 125g plain Greek yogurt
1/2 teaspoon sea salt or as needed

For garnish:
2 tablespoons toasted cumin seeds (I used way less.)
I also added a little more yogurt and some green onions.

Method
Peel your onion, garlic and carrots. Chop the onions, mince the garlic and, after cutting the ends off of the carrots, cut them into 1 inch or 2 cm pieces.

In a heavy pot, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat and sauté the chopped onion for two minutes, then add the garlic and sauté an additional minute.

Add the carrots, broth, cumin, coriander and a few good grinds of black pepper. (The recipe says to add the salt here as well but I suggest you wait till the end of cooking to see how much salt is needed after the soup cooks down. Vegetable broths come in varying degrees of saltiness.)

Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer until the carrots are tender, about 15 minutes.

Purée the soup with an immersion blender or, working in batches, purée in a blender or food processor until smooth.

Return the soup to the pot, if necessary, and stir in the yogurt and lemon juice. Add salt and and more black pepper to taste.

Ladle into bowls and sprinkle with the toasted cumin seeds. (And a small dollop of yogurt and a few chopped green onions, if desired.)

Enjoy! If you’d like to learn more about how to prevent macular degeneration, please visit the American Macular Degeneration Foundation website.  If you'd like to buy the cookbook or read further reviews, check out Amazon.com or any of the major booksellers.

And since it was provided in the book, as it is for all of the recipes, I'll share the nutritional information for the soup:
Nutritional Profile for Carrot-Cumin Soup.
Serving size: 1 cup
Calories: 178
Protein: 4 g
Fiber: 4 g
Fat: 11 g
Saturated fat: 3 g
Sodium: 1,031 mg
Vitamin A: 19,312 IU
Vitamin C: 10 mg
Vitamin E: 3 IU
Beta-carotene: 9,420 μg
Lutein and zeaxanthin: 307 μg
Lycopene: 1 μg

I received a copy of Eat Right for Your Sight free of charge from the non-profit American Macular Degeneration Foundation. It seems ridiculous to have to say it, here goes: As with every post I write, all opinions contained herein are my own alone.