Suzi's Blog

The Sweeter Side of Amy’s Bread

by Suzi on November 17th, 2008 in Cookbook Reviews, Dessert Digest No Comments

While Brian has been the willing recipient of many goodies from Amy’s wonderful new book – country loaf, pecan rolls, challah, sour dough bread semolina bread, the list goes on – I have been the one really baking recipes from her book. Brian and I have a simple rule: whoever cooks gets to write the blog. The other person cleans the kitchen.

First of all, I must say that Amy Scherber’s first book, Amy’s Breads, is the book that taught me how to bake bread. I take serious pride in my baking. Each weekend, I bake using my sour dough starter (mother). Brian and I get upstate on Thursday night and pull the mother out of the refrigerator and feed her until she is ripe and ready to go. By using Amy’s Bread, I have taught myself to understand the basics of fine bread baking. With several months of Amy’s under my belt, I had the confidence to take an artisanal baking class at the Culinary Institute on America. There, I climbed the next steps of fine bread baking. In my opinion you can never complete the mastery of bread making. You just keep learning and baking. Amy’s Bread is out of print and I have scoured the internet for any available copies. I give it to friends and relatives for gifts for those who I think are very serious about learning how to bake bread.

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Simply Delicious Yellow Cake

by Suzi on November 17th, 2008 in Recipes 5 Comments

Yield: one 9-inch double-layer cake
Equipment: two 9 x 2-inch round cake pans

This is the cake recipe we use for our almost famous Amy’s Bread “Pink Cake,” a moist vanilla-flavored butter cake inspired by a recipe from one of our favorite baking colleagues, Carole Walter, in her book Great Cakes. The delicate flavor and texture of this cake is a perfect match for a heavy, intensely sweet frosting such as a classic confectioner’s sugar buttercream—to which we add 1 or 2 drops of rose food coloring to give it a pale pink tint. It’s also delicious with chocolate frosting, but bittersweet chocolate tends to overpower the delicate vanilla flavor.

At the bakery, we use a more subtle, creamy Milk Chocolate Buttercream Frosting that comes directly from The Cake Bible, by Rose Levy Beranbaum, so we can’t include that recipe in our frosting chapter. The retail staff and the bakers in the pastry kitchen are always hoping for broken layers or cupcakes because they love to eat this cake without any frosting at all, to savor the sweet warm flavors of butter and vanilla. Try it plain with sliced fresh strawberries or peaches for a sublime summer dessert.

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