Bunny Buns

I'm on attempt #3 to make the perfect sweet bun to stuff with marzipan, shape like a bunny and serve up at the local Shire of Baile na Scolairi event at the end of the month.

The concept: make bunny-shaped buns and display a few of them on a platter at lunch with some piles of raisins, making it look like "the rabbit's revenge" on lunch is some rabbit droppings left behind as the bunnies hopped around the plate. The buns have to taste good, though, because those bunnies not on display will be served up as food.

I've finally arrived at a bread recipe I'm happy with, so I'm ready to share that here.

Advantages of this recipe:
1. sweet, but not as sweet as the marzipan, so there is some contrast
2. tastes great (not dry or stale) as day-old bread, which it will be on the day of the event
3. easy to shape
4. variable for multiple purposes -- I may end up using this recipe some other time with other stuffings or with dried fruits or other spices in the dough.
5. one recipe makes more than 12 buns -- good, because I have to make at least 50
6. does not require me to buy milk -- great because we didn't have any at home yesterday

Bunny Buns
makes about 20 small buns

1/2 cup lukewarm water
1 package active dry yeast
1 tsp granulated sugar
1 cup lukewarm water
1 egg
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour
prepared marzipan (preferably a brand with sugar as the only sweetener)

Proof the yeast: pour water into a large bowl, sprinkle on yeast and 1 tsp sugar. Let stand until foamy, about 10 minutes.

Mix in the remaining water, the egg, 1/2 cup sugar, oil, salt, cinnamon. Whisk in 1 cup all-purpose flour, then 1 cup whole-wheat flour. Use spoon to mix in the remaining all-purpose flour. Knead with well-floured hands until well combined. Dough should be soft and pillowy and a little sticky.

Clean out bowl with soap and hot water and coat with vegetable oil. Return dough to bowl, turning to cover dough with grease. Cover with plastic wrap or thin towel and leave in a warm place until doubled in size. (see note below)

Punch dough down and knead with floured hands for 1 to 2 minutes. Divide into 20 portions of equal size. Place a small ball of marzipan on each portion, wrap the dough around it, and roll dough between hands into a round ball. Shape the balls into teardrops, leaving the marzipan in the fat end of the teardrop. Place on greased baking sheet or baking sheet covered in parchment paper. Let rise, covered by thin towel, for about 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit and brush dough with egg wash (see note below). Use scissors to cut long rabbit ears near the narrow end of the teardrop of dough. Bake buns for 15 to 20 minutes, until they are golden brown and sound hollow when the bottom is tapped. Be careful not to burn the tips of the ears too much. Cool on a wire rack. 

Note on rising: if the weather is chilly, bread dough does not rise quickly. Try one of these tricks:
1. Place covered bowl of dough in a closed oven with just the light on
2. for winter days only: turn the oven on to the lowest possible temperature for five minutes. Turn off and then let the bread dough rise in the oven with the door closed.
3. Boil water in a pan slightly smaller in diameter than your mixing bowl. Remove the pan from the heat and put the covered bowl on top of the pan.
4. Boil a cup of water in the microwave oven. Remove cup, place covered bowl with dough in it inside the microwave and let the dough rise with the door closed. Don't microwave the dough, it gets too hot and will kill the yeast.

Note on egg wash: egg wash is one egg beaten well with a little water. Use a pastry brush to brush the wash on the dough. It adds a pleasant sheen to the dough.  Egg wash can be used to help seeds stick to the top of breads (e.g. sesame seeds, poppy seeds, etc.). Some recipes will use a wash made only with egg yolks to add yellow color to the dough, or only with egg whites to prevent yellow color. This site has an interesting table of the different properties of different egg wash recipes: http://www.piemaven.com/egg_wash.html

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Roasting, baking and blanching on the fire

This weekend at my local SCA shire's event, we had a potluck lunch. I decided to challenge myself a bit by trying recipes and techniques that could have been used in Italy during the 16th Century. Only one recipe was an original from an Italian cookbook, the other two were more based on known ingredients and techniques from the time period.

I wish I had made some arrangements for photography, because I probably looked delightfully goofy standing over this large open-fire grill outside the event all morning, standing in the smoke, wearing my apron over my coat and with a very-not-appropriate-to-period Polartec fleece hat for warmth. The day was quite windy, so starting the fire was difficult and keeping it at a constant temperature was impossible.

The plan: get to the event site to unload the woodpile and start the fire at about 8 a.m., have three items prepared for lunch by 11 or 11:30. Planned items: spit-roasted leg of lamb, blanched asparagus with dressing and herbs, bread baked in a pot in the coals. And if anyone showed up to watch me cook, I intended to ask that person to roll marzipan stuffing to put inside dates for something to do while we chatted.

Considering the setbacks with the fire and the fact that I've never tried to cook over an open fire on a deadline before, I was pleased that my plan worked. It only did because I had an assistant, who turned up without being asked, who could watch the fire while I did a few last-minute preparations or who could deliver plated items while I continued cooking the last item. She also stuffed the majority of the dates.

Spit-roasted leg of lamb
recipe inspired by Buon Appetito, Your Holiness: Secrets of the Papal Table by Mariangela Rinaldo and Mariangela Vicini
four-pound leg of lamb, organic and free-range (mine also happened to be certified halal, which becomes irrelevant when you see the next ingredient)
1/2 pound pork fat (I used a very fatty bacon)
1 Tbsp dried rosemary leaves
5 cloves garlic
salt and pepper
2 cups red wine

Mince the pork fat and cut it together with rosemary and garlic that have been minced. Cut lamb into two nearly-equal pieces. One piece will likely have the bone in it. Make deep incisions on the side of each pieces of meat and stuff with the pork-garlic-rosemary mixture. Meat may need to be tied with kitchen twine so the stuffing does not fall apart while loading it onto the rotisserie spit. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast indirectly over hot coals that are still sending up a little bit of flame. Turn occasionally while the lamb roasts at a temperature that is hot enough to cause some sizzling, but not hot enough to quickly burn the lamb. Baste by brushing occasionally with wine.

The leg of lamb was the item that got the most effusive praise from eaters, and it proved to be the most difficult. Lesson one: spit-roasting is to be done with indirect heat, not flames leaping up to the food. On the other hand, having a bit of an overbrowned (okay, blackened) crust did add lots of flavor until I figured out how far away from the flame to place the spit. Lesson two: bring a secondary cooking vessel in case roasted meat needs finishing in a pan or covered pot. So glad I had that cast-iron skillet handy so I could pour in the rest of my wine for basting and just cook off the lamb in pieces in the skillet. The wind was cooling off the lamb leg on the other sides while it cooked on one side over the fire, so the very center never came up to temperature on the spit. If I'd had an extra hour to leave it over the fire, it eventually would have cooked fully, but I didn't have the time to wait. If the fire hadn't been constantly blown around by wind, I think the 2 1/2 hours the lamb roasted on the spit would have been long enough.

I was very excited about the bread for its flavor and texture. It came out of the baking pot with a black bottom, a caramelized-looking top and springy texture. I have learned quite a bit about bread from another shire member, Simon, in the past year or two, plus I have received tips whenever I ask from Laura, who bakes where I work. A bit more practice with baking hasn't hurt me either. Simon got me started with using sourdough starter instead of always relying on packaged yeast. Finding motivation to start sourdough is simple when Simon hands out little packets of dried sourdough starter from his own collection at a class. Sourdough starter is a pre-1600 technique, as is baking in a pot buried in hot coals. To accentuate sour flavor and add a bit of beery yeasty taste that could have come from using ale barm for yeast, I followed the recipe for Almost No-Knead Bread from Cooks Illustrated. That recipe uses beer and vinegar for part of the liquid. Instead of the instant yeast called for in the recipe, I added some of Simon's sourdough starter. The bread dough sits in a bowl at room temperature overnight to develop flavor. The pot I used for baking was not made of the correct materials, being a cast-iron pot instead of the more-likely-for-pre-1600 Italy clay baking pot, but it was the only heavy covered pot I have that I'd be willing to put in a fire. Lesson from this experiment: the bread probably only needs half as much baking time as in the oven at home. I checked it after 45 minutes of the expected hour, but I think I could have gotten away with only 30 minutes of baking time and had less burnt crust to cut off.

The part I know would turn out fine in this experiment even if nothing else did was the asparagus. I found some directions from a Renaissance Italian cook indicating that asparagus should be boiled until just tender, then dressed with oil and vinegar and fresh herbs. Even at my worst with outdoor cooking, I can manage to boil water as long as I have enough fuel. The vegetable was perfectly crisp-tender the way I like it, then I dressed it with a simple red wine vinegar-olive oil vinaigrette (with a dash of sugar), salt, pepper, and chopped fresh parsley. No need for the cold-water shocking after blanching. The air was brisk enough that the asparagus cooled off right quick after I put it on the serving plate. I was pleased to see that the plate of vegetable disappeared just as quickly as my other dishes. I guess the people who like asparagus ate it enthusiastically.

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