Biscotti Treats

Head-BiscottiJust as a change of pace, I decided to step out of the BBA Challenge for a bit and do something a little off the beaten track. I ran across a couple of intriguing recipes for Biscotti while perusing TheFreshLoaf.com and decided to give these Italian coffee-time cookies a whirl. They seemed like a relatively simple thing to make, were definitely a switch up from bread and looked like they’d make a festive treat for the holidays.

Two recipes were offered up by TFL member MiniCT: Cappuccino Biscotti and Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti. Although they require slightly different oven temps (350º vs 325º respectively) and times, I decided to give both a whirl together. “In for a penny, in for a pound” as they say. (OK, I’m not 100% sure that saying applies but it sounds deep, dunnit?)

You’ll find the Cappuccino Biscotti recipe here and the Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti recipe here. Both can be printed for ease of reference.

Let’s begin…

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Lavash Crackers

LavEntryShotAh, crackers. Simple, straight forward snacking yumminess.

I had done these previously, long before [easyazon-link asin=”1580082688″]The Bread Baker’s Apprentice[/easyazon-link] Challenge came about. At that time, I thought they were pretty good and, for crackers, totally snack-a-licious. So I was interested to see how these would turn out now that I have a little more bread baking experience under my belt.

I went into this without any real idea what toppings I’d end up using, although I’d toyed with cheese and hot peppers – we have Jalapeño and Scotch Bonnets from the garden so that seemed tempting. But then I wanted to have several flavours and to add cheese and peppers, I’d need to add them into the dough instead of just sprinlikng on top. So without a solid final plan (yeah, this is really living on the edge!) I fired everything up. I would just raid the spice cupboard and pick out some favourite spices, herbs and mixes.

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Corn Bread: Breakfast in a slice.

CBFancyShotCorn Bread: Breakfast in a slice.

This is recipe #10 (1/4 of the way there! [almost]) in [easyazon-link asin=”1580082688″]The Bread Baker’s Apprentice[/easyazon-link] Challenge.

By now we know the drill: look up the recipe, translate the ounce weights to grams for better accuracy and get all our ingredients set up for the Mis en Place. So let’s get this show going.

Wait!! Before we get going, there’s the overnight soak we need to attend to. So our coarse (palenta style) cornmeal gets a bath of buttermilk and left on the counter until next day. Straight forward to not need photos, right? Good, cause I didn’t get any.

So one full sleep later…

The ubiquitous Mis en Place. Althought there are  a fair number of ingredients here, the process is really simple.

cbMEP

WAIT!! Hold on, we’re already ahead of ourselves. A step we did before getting all the ingredients ready and measured was to cook up our bacon, about 15-20 at 375ºF on a parchment covered baking sheet. Book says use two, but there was plenty of spare space on one sheet. I even used 10 ounces of bacon to not leave one lonely slice in the package (and get in deep doodoo for it too)

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