Biscotti

I decreed Saturday a Day of Baking (tm).

This morning for breakfast (before going to the gym), I made almond poppy seed muffins with the leftover sour cream and yogurt from making kugel and chicken curry last weekend. We always have nonfat vanilla yogurt in the house, but this was plain lowfat stuff, so I figured I'd use it up in baking. In poking around the pantry, Gropius found some sliced almonds that we threw into the poppy seed muffins and I added a splash of almond extract to the sour cream/yogurt mixture. Got them in and out of the oven in 30 minutes, including 20 minutes of baking time. Who says home-cooked breakfast takes too long?? :)




So, while I'm (still) waiting for my Schwarzwalder Landbrot to finish its initial yeast-maturation (4+ hrs), I made chocolate coconut biscotti with macadamia nuts. The biscotti have both dutch-process cocoa powder and chunks of 65% Valhrona in them with a sprinkling of macadamia nuts (about 1/2 c) and coconut. I've never made biscotti before, but I've watched Martha Stewart do it several times (have her shows from the mid-late 90s on video--yeah, yeah, I know--I need help), so I felt prepared to give it a try. The dough came together pretty easily and all in all, they were easy to bake. I'm interested in trying out different flavors now...I know that Martha has a pistachio and cranberry version for the christmas holidays that I might give a whirl in a few months. For now, I am going to try NOT to eat all of these and take a few to school on Monday to share in the mailroom.




And, I've still got about 6+ hrs of bread-rising time before the brot is done. I haven't made this bread since we moved from Ohio, so I'm a little rusty on the German rezept I have, but luckily I have Gropius's trusty German-English dictionary to help me muddle through phrases like "In die Mulde gießen und mit wenig Mehl vom Rand her einen Vorteig rühren." It will be interesting to see how it turns out using the dough hook on the KitchenAid mixer (we didn't have the mixer last time we made this recipe and did all the mixing/kneading by hand).

Will post pictures of the finished product tomorrow, along with pictures of the Knödel mit Soße (made from pretzels and chanterelles, YUM!) that we're planning on making for dinner tomorrow night.