ABC - Focaccia (Tart) for Breakfast

Focaccia Tart with Apples and Craisins and Olive Oil Streusel

This month's Avid Baker's Challenge recipe is a yeast challenge: Focaccia for Breakfast. It's Flo Braker's "sweet" take on the classic Italian bread, Focaccia. Her recipe has us dot the dough with fresh berries and an olive oil streusel. Interesting combo, huh? That's what I thought too!!

The dough for the Focaccia has a hydration percentage of about 66%, so it's a fairly "wet" and sticky dough. Avoid adding any flour to it for a light and airy end result. I made the dough in the bread machine last night and let it go through its first rise. Then I refrigerated the dough overnight in a well-oiled container.

It dawned on me that this dough will make a big batch of "dessert" Focaccia. So I started thinking "savory". The dough itself is not sweet so it could go either way. Why not both? How about I make lunch AND dessert with this dough? That's when the idea of making a Taco Pizza was born.

BOM: Pumpkin Knotted Dinner Rolls

Light-as-air pumpkin dinner rolls

It's that time again. The Artisan Bread Bakers on Facebook are baking this month's BOM (Bread of the Month): Pumpkin Dinner Rolls. Our host, Phyl, could not have chosen a more appropriate Fall recipe for us to bake. I love anything pumpkin and couldn't wait to make these. The thought of cutting the recipe in half didn't even cross my mind, even though I had never used pumpkin and yeast together in a recipe. Several group members had already baked it and everyone raved about it. The recipe can be found here, although I used a slightly modified version which included weight measurements.

Apple Crisp

That's what was left after eating and giving away a bunch of apples :o)

When life gives you apples, you bake apple crisp and do so often. We were blessed with an abundance of apples from our two trees this year: HoneyCrisp and McIntosh apples. So far I've baked apple crisp three times these past two weeks. I took some to work. At home, we served it with ice cream. Everybody loved it and I even got some recipe requests. I figured I might as well do a blog post about it. Normally I don't measure very closely when I make apple crisp because it doesn't need to be exact, but the last time I baked it, I paid close(r) attention for the purpose of sharing the recipe. I hope you bake it too. It's very easy to make and doesn't require a lot of time. Since we're on the topic of apples, what's your favorite apple dessert?

Apple Crisp - simple, homey, but oh so satisfying!

ABC - Frangipane Ripple Chocolate Pound Cake

Happy to see some sort of frangipane ripple! :o)

Oh boy, I'm a week late for my own baking group, the Avid Baker's Challenge. As the administrator I'm definitely not setting the right example with this post but what can I say... life happens and then priorities need to be revised. Now onto this month's baking project: Frangipane Ripple Chocolate Pound Cake which is chosen by fellow ABC-er Lola of Lola's Artistic Endeavors. I love almonds and I love chocolate, so I was very much looking forward to this cake. I had leftover homemade almond paste in the freezer from when I made the Neapolitan Bars (I doubled the almond paste recipe so I'd have extra in case I needed it later).

BOM: Fig and Almond Bread

This is my first time baking along the Artisan Bread Bakers on Facebook and I'm already late (sorry Phyl!). Better late than never, right? BOM stands for Bread of the Month and is hosted by blogging buddy, Phyl. For September's BOM he chose Nick Malgieri's Fig and Almond Bread. This recipe is a sneak preview from Nick's upcoming book, to be published in 2012. This recipe came with weight measurements which scored points with me right away but even without that, I'm a big Nick Malgieri fan. Judging from this recipe alone, I'm already looking forward to his new book.

Bread studded with apricots and almonds