This is a recipe I have been wanting to try forever! I lived in Louisiana for a few years and just loved this tradition, how people eat this cake all Mardi Gras season. It was a neat way to end the day on Fridays at the office. People in Louisiana are always very convivial and I've learnt so much about the various traditions (besides what people see on TV) of the Carnival season in Louisiana. So this is a salute to those whose friendship made these years fantastic!

The recipe I found was this one. I don't remember when I found it but apparently it comes from the February 2006 edition of Southern Living. Well, I can tell you I am incredibly happy with the end result, so this recipe goes into the family recipe book!

My challenge this week: to make brioche, you know, that sweet, light and fluffy bread one eats for breakfast. So I looked online for a recipe. Frankly, I should have looked first through my cookbooks because the plethora of recipes out there is overwhelming. But I picked one that said it was easy...

And I followed the recipe word for word, I did not get impatient, I did not skip any step. I was proud of myself. And yet, the result was so disappointing. Mind you, my daughter loved it, she kept eating it, she even took some of it to school today. My husband loved it too, he even compared it to something his mom makes, and he has only the highest compliments for his mom’s cooking.

But I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the taste, the look or the texture of it. The dough looked weird and never rose. The bread itself was dense and looked more like a cake than bread.

So I decided to make another one. I looked at other recipes to see if they were doing this differently. I looked through a book I have on breads and one thing struck me. It mentioned that for brioche, you could just mix all ingredients, like the recipe I used mentioned, HOWEVER, the dough then needed to rise for 12 hours!!!!! 12 Hours!!!! The recipe mentioned 2 hours! And I believe that this was the problem.

Thus, I mix the ingredients, same ingredients, in a different way. And I have to say, the result is spectacular. The dough did rise, the bread looks like a bread and tastes fantastic too. Now, remember, I used the same recipe as the day before (except the butter was softened instead of melted). I just changed the way I mixed the ingredients and I got a totally different result.

Here is my modified recipe.

I just love the smell of fresh bread, but I didn’t want to make my regular country bread, I wanted to try something else. Many years ago, I subscribed to one of these mail-order recipe collection, “The Great American Home Baking”. I have the whole collection, four full binders, but I admit, I rarely made anything out of this collection... and yet, I’ve always been reluctant to get rid of it. I thought it was time to finally use them. So I went through the first category, “Biscuits and Rolls”, and selected their Sweet Breakfast Rolls.

Ingredients:

• 2 pkgs active dry yeast
• ¼ cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup warm milk
• 4-4 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• ¼ tsp salt
• 6 tbsp softened butter
• 2 large eggs
  

For the glaze:

• 1 large egg
• 2 tsp water
  

Preparation:

1. In a large bowl, dissolve yeast and 1 tsp of sugar in warm milk. Let stand until foamy.
2. Mix together flour, cinnamon and salt (use a whisk, it does the same work as sifting while mixing all dry ingredients).
3. Beat the butter and sugar into the yeast mixture. Use the hooks of your stand mixer. Stay at medium speed. Add the eggs, one at a time. Then, at low speed, add the flour mixture, ½ cup at a time, until a soft dough forms.
4. On a floured surface, knead dough until smooth and elastic (5-10 minutes), adding more flour (on the surface, the dough and your hands) as necessary to prevent sticking. Place dough in a large greased bowl, turning to coat. Cover loosely with a damp towel, let rise in a warm place until double in size (1 hour to 1 ½ hours).
5. Grease a baking sheet (I used parchment paper but that might explain my results, see below). Punch down the dough. On a floured surface, knead dough for 1-2 minutes. Roll the dough into a long rope OR if you’re having difficulties with rolling dough into ropes, like me, cut the dough in half, to make more manageable ropes. Cut the rope(s) in 16 equal pieces. Roll them in your hand and shape them into oval buns.
6. Place the buns 3” apart on the baking sheet. Cover loosely with a damp towel and let it rise in a warm place until doubled (about 30 minutes).
7. Preheat the oven at 425º. Brush the rolls with the glaze (one egg beaten, with water). If you want, you can also sprinkle the top of the rolls with granulated or coarse/pearl sugar.
8. Bake the rolls until lightly golden. The recipe mentions 6-8 minutes. After 8 minutes, my rolls still were not golden, so I added 2 minutes. This might account for the bottom of the buns being a bit darker and harder (although not noticeable when eating the bun), unless it had to do with using the parchment paper instead of greasing the baking sheet...
9. Let it cool on a wire rack.
   

Makes 16 rolls.

Invite a few friends over who don't mind being guinea pigs and try out new recipes... kind of... A mix of tried and true and new is always safest and having a contingency plan, a must (for me, at least, as one of my friend was teasing me about last night).

Ingredients:

• Individual faluches (see previous post) - a bit thicker than normal to be used as dish.
• Butter
• Smoked salmon
• Salmon (fresh or canned) - I used fresh
• Extra-small shrimp or salad shrimp
• Mixed greens
• Tomatoes or asparagus
• Head of lettuce
• Mayonnaise
• Salt, pepper, herbs
• Vinaigrette

Preparation:

1. Poach the salmon (5-7 minutes in boiling water). Then take it apart with your fingers. Delicately mix it with mayonnaise, salt, pepper and your favorite herbs. Do not crush the salmon.
2. Take your faluches and cut from the top to make some kind of trough. Remove the bread inside and either set aside for different use (making bread crumbs, pudding...) or discard.
3. Butter your bread trough and line with smoked salmon.
4. In a separate bowl, mix your greens with your vinaigrette. I used store-bought raspberry vinaigrette but you can make your own. Try and use perfumed vinegars and different oils.
   
5. Put some of the greens on top of the salmon.
6. On the bed of greens, put some of your salmon salad.
7. Decorate the whole thing with pieces of rolled smoked salmon, tomatoes or asparagus, and shrimps.
8. Place on a plate covered with leaves of lettuce. Place more of the tomatoes or asparagus around your faluche for decoration.

The food itself is fresh and very summery. The size of the faluche dictates how hungry you have to be. All in all, I am really happy with the way it came out and this is definitely going on the must-have list. And when you think about it, many variations are possible, both sweet and savory.

This weekend's project: bread, to give myself and the family a break from sweets.
I chose to make a "faluche". This is a bread that is typical of my hometown in Belgium (and surrounding areas) as well as the Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardie regions in France. In my hometown, they usually have a more rectangular shape, while in France, they tend to be round.

This bread is pretty flat and very white and it can be used in a variety of ways, whether savory or sweet. To give you an example, my daughter had some with honey mustard and ham; while I had some with seafood salad. Below the recipe, you will find a way children from my hometown eat theirs after school. I just ate some that way and childhood memories came flooding back.

So playing around on Pinterest, I come across this recipe for 30 minutes homemade soft pretzels. They look delicious and easy to make. All the comments seem to agree... I'm going to try it!

Let's just say, this was a disaster of epic proportion... And proportion is the word. I know it has somehow to do with the amount of flour. I can't figure out if I put too much (some pieces would come off, not adhere to the rest of the dough) or not enough (it was so sticky at some point, I had to add flour). The small balls of dough would not ROLL, no matter which surface I used, it would just slide. My husband even tried it and even though he was more successful than me at getting a long string, the fact that we couldn't get it uniform or round... So I just gave up, I threw it all out and I posted a comment on the website. Sally was nice enough to respond very quickly. I still believe I can do it but maybe I should wait for a bit less humidity, 99% must be screwing with my dough, right? :-D