Categories
Belgian bread Breakfast Brunch dessert

Real Belgian waffles

I love a good breakfast. When my family goes on vacation, I always look for hotels which have a breakfast buffet. You start your day right when you feed your soul and tummy with good food at the beginning of the day.I love a good breakfast. When my family goes on vacation, I always look for hotels which have a breakfast buffet. You start your day right when you feed your soul and tummy with good food at the beginning of the day.

I love this quote from Winnie the Pooh;

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”

“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”

“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It’s the same thing,” he said.” 

See doesn’t it make complete sense?

I love Indian breakfast foods, like Pohe, Parantha, and Appe. And eggs are always classic breakfast candidates, I love them even for dinner. In fact, I do ‘breakfast for dinner’ more often than I probably should. Eggs Benedict are perfect when you are in a mood to indulge, and ‘Huevos rancheros’ when you want something spicy. I love good scrambled eggs, made the French way. A video on those will be coming soon!

When I am in a mood to make something special, waffles are always on the breakfast or brunch table. I love making different types of waffles: savory, plain or something so decadent that you can have it for dessert. Today’s recipe was introduced to me by my son, Mihir. He is not only a foodie, but my best critic and a great cook as well. He makes some mean pork and fish.

He ate these waffles at Blue Bottle Coffee in San Francisco and loved them. So obviously, as soon as he was back home, we started chatting about it and next thing we knew, we were planning brunch for the weekend.

What we might picture as Belgian waffles are very popular in the United States; typically, a waffle that is much thicker than the standard American waffle but made with the regular pancake batter. In the process of making these waffles, I learned that the true Belgian waffles are in fact more like a brioche dough, enriched and risen with yeast.

Look how gorgeous the dough looks with all that amazing yeast at work.

The yeasty dough and the pearl sugar is what make this recipe special.

So what is Pearl Sugar.

I did not about this until came across this recipe. I even found an article that shed a little more light on this. When I wanted to make this recipe, I searched on Amazon and found this. Sometimes its also called Nib Sugar.

If you don’t find pearl sugar, you can take the sugar cubes we get for coffee/tea, and crush them a rolling pin.

When the sugary goodness melts and caramelizes, its just divine. I love serving it with just freshly whipped cream and sometime some fresh fruit compote.

IMG_9614

I know its a dish that you need to plan ahead, but trust me its really worth all that planning and effort.

So give it a try and let me know how you liked it

[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:5]

I got this recipe from Smitten Kitchen who had heavily tweaked from the excellent Gaufre de Liège Recette Blog and the copious notes of Not Martha.

Categories
bread Jewish

Mother’s day Challah

My mom is an amazing woman. Strong, caring, intelligent and yet loving. She is the strength of the family and we are so lucky to be born to her.

18423904_10213262390663762_2052790983658134974_n

She is my inspiration in so many ways. She manages home while handling the business just as well. I still remember to what lengths she would go ( and still does to make things for us. Be it a dress for a play in school, be it packing tiffin with special treats for the school trip, be it helping with math homework to be it helping us with the babies, she does it effortlessly.

She is a great cook, a great entrepreneur and so many more things, but the biggest things that stands out is her unconditional love towards her family. She brings every one together. So today;s recipe is dedicated to my Aai( Thats what I call her).

 

She always pushes us to challenge ourselves. As you all know I cook a lot but have not been much of a baker. So this birthday resolution was to learn baking.

Today I have made Challah. Challah is a jewish bread( said like halla). You would typically see this in a braided form. Since I am making this for mother’s day I wanted to incorporate something that is significant to my Mom. My Mom not only loves us all very much, she has also created a family where all of us love each other very much.We are four siblings and we are like a tight fist.

Today I decided to make a round challah with four ropes and top it with four different seeds. This represent how my Mom’s love has brought us together and sort of her arms around the four of us.

Mother’s day Challah

20170513111846_IMG_9736-01

The recipe comes from a very famous book, Breaking breads .  I am in love with that book and you will be seeing many more recipes soon. I love how he not gives step by step instructions but also tells a bit of a history as well.

Ingredients

Dough

  • 1000 grams ( about 7 cups) flour sifted well
  • 400 grams room temperature water
  • 15 grams Active dry yeast
  •  100 grams granulated sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 5 tbsp oil
  • 15 grams salt

Egg wash and toppings

  • 1 large egg
  • 1 tbsp water
  • 1 pinch salt
  • 2/3 cup different seeds, I have used Nigella, Poppy, Fennel and sesame seeds

Mix all of these together to make an egg wash

Method

Make the dough

  • In a stand mixer, add water and yeast, whisk it till combined
  • Add flour, eggs, sugar and salt
  • Mix the dough on low speed till the ingredients are combined. Stop and sracpe the flour if needed to avoid dry flour patches. It should take about 2 mins for the dough to come together
  • Now increase the speed and knead the dough on medium for about 4 minutes.
  • Now take the dough on a lightly floured surface
  • stretch and fold the dough  for about a minute as shown in the picture below 

     

  • Rest the dough for about 45 mins. It should be about 70% risen
  • Heat the oven at 425 F
  • Shaping the dough-Today I am going to shape it in a circle with 4 ropes, representing my Mom’s four kids. 
    • Take the risen dough and gently put it on a floured board.
    • Make it into a rectangle, make sure you do not deflate the dough
    • Cut the rectangle into 2 pieces.  Keep one piece aside.
    • With one half of the rectangle, make four parts.
    • Roll each part into a 14 inch cylinder
    • Weave the four ropes as I call them into a round
    •  
  • Cover and let it proof for at least 40 mins. To check if the dough has risen enough , when you press the dough surface with your finger, the indentation should fill up about 1/2 way. If your dough is not risen, the indentation wont fill, if its over risen, it will fill up to fast
  • Decorating
    • Now comes the fun part, decorating the challah
    • Brush with challah with egg-wash
    • Sprinkle with seeds of your choice.
  • Here I have used four different seeds to decorate

 

  • Bake at 425 F for about 25-30 mins
  • Serve with butter & honey. I served it with a Apple -Honey Jam

WhatsApp Image 2017-05-13 at 11.39.03 AM

en_USEnglish