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Brett F. Braley

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To those I'm grateful for: Potato Bread with Cultured Butter (and a Giveaway!)

February 10, 2016 Brett
Potato Bread with Cultured Butter

I wake up these days to a bed that belonged to my parents for fourteen years. There’s usually a dog breathing deep sighs in my ear. I found a ladybug on my lampshade when I grabbed for the cup of water on my nightstand. I couldn’t take a drink; everything felt contaminated for a second.

My mother bought lace and made curtains from them. My mother makes me coffee and keeps it warm in a thermos for me. My mother wrote me a note this week that told me she loved me and she’d miss me. She called me on her lunch break to makes sure I was staying warm. “California is pretty hot, isn’t it?” she said between bites of her sandwich. “Don’t want you to freeze because your father’s too cheap to buy more gas.”

I didn’t freeze. I’ve worn two pairs of socks in the house; but I haven’t frozen yet. Instead I spent a day ripping clementines with my fingernails. I ate a chocolate bar for lunch. I drank too much coffee and shared three beers with my dad. I forgot to blow out a candle and ate leftover pizza for two days. I’m letting the days pass me by for right now, I’m savoring it slowly. Letting it dissolve on my tongue like cotton candy, like the snow that gets stuck in my mother’s eyelashes, like the echoing “I love you” outside of Terminal A that hangs in my mind like a heartbeat going still.

I keep myself busy; I have to. I keep waking up from dreamless sleeps to the sound of a space heater and hardly anything else. I thought I heard the snow fall one morning, gentle and slumbering as my parents’ Labrador. It was just my mother running the water for dishes. I set four alarms and slept through them all. I still woke up at eight. The coffee in the Thermos burned my tongue and I kept my glasses on until noon.

Potato Bread with Cultured Butter
Potato Bread with Cultured Butter

I keep myself busy. Sometimes I think about the past. Who I used to be. How I used to build space ships from cardboard boxes and hold my breath in the bathtub, letting my ears pop and my heartbeat get louder until the soap got in my eyes or the water grew cold. I was alone a lot back then, awkward and closeted.  I didn’t have friends and it was easier to stay hidden indoors most days. I read a lot. I changed a lot, too.

But I’m back in the old farmhouse, with its closets too small and its ceiling fans won’t be dusted until the Spring. Since I last left, I’ve been a fiancé, unemployed, a law student, and an outpatient. I’ve had temper tantrums and an academic paper published. A few more nosebleeds and a few less wisdom teeth. I’m back to the old farm house and my parents still watch TV Land when they get home from work. Nothing’s changed but me here.

Potato Bread with Cultured Butter

In the seven years since I have lived at home, I realized how desperately I need people. Connections, contact. Friendships. Relationships. People. I used to be so bad at saying I was sorry, I used to be even worse at saying anything nice. I’ve grown up in that way these last few years. I learned to appreciate the human conditions. That is why I feel so lucky to surround myself with good people, people I consider friends.  Friends who create bread lames and buy coffee for you while it’s raining in Philadelphia. This bread recipe is for them: the artists, the makers, the creators I call my friends: Aron Fischer of Facture Goods and Robbie and Pat of Dear Henry Owen. Aron created two gorgeous bread lames for me this Christmas and Robbie and Pat showed me how welcoming the East Coast can be, after so many years of being away from it. I made bread. I cultured butter. I made this bread for them.  They took the time for me.

Potato Bread with Cultured Butter

Potato Bread with Cultured Butter
Potato Bread with Cultured Butter

This bread is made in steps and you will have extra butter. Embrace it. The crumb is soft, the tanginess is there. My mother had three slices for dinner, so you know it’s good. Makes one loaf.

Ingredients for the cultured butter:

·      2 cups heavy cream

·      1-2 cups filtered water

·      ½ teaspoon salt

Directions for cultured butter:

1.     Measure out 2 cups of heavy cream and leave out at room temperature in a warm room for 12-48 hours (the longer the tangier)

2.     Every 4-6 hours, gently disturb the cream as a skin will form

3.     When you think you have a good culture in your cream, pour into the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a whisk attachment (I recommend freezing the bowl and the attachment for a good hour beforehand, as the cream will be warm/room temperature)

4.     Beat on medium-high for five to seven minutes. First, your cream will whip into stiff peaks. Keep beating as this breaks down and the solids separate from the buttermilk.

5.     Reserve liquids in a cup or Tupperware (this is cultured butterfat and it is golden) and push out anymore from the butter with a wooden spoon, turning and squeezing a couple times

6.     Wash the remaining butter with the water until water runs clear

7.     Salt, pat into a log and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate until needed

Potato Bread with Cultured Butter
Potato Bread with Cultured Butter

Ingredients for bread:

·      2 medium-sized potatoes

·      2 TB cultured butter (above)

·      1 cup water, warm

·      1 cup of reserved buttermilk (from above), warmed slightly in a sauce pan

·      5 teaspoon yeast

·      1 ½ teaspoon salt

·      1 egg

·      4 ½ - 6 cups flour + more for kneading

 

Directions for bread:

1.     First, bake the potatoes. The easiest way to do this is in the microwave. Pierce potatoes with a fork 5-6 times and then microwave for 5 minutes. Flip over and repeat. Check for doneness by piercing with a fork. Inside should be soft.

2.     Cut lengthwise and allow to cool slightly before handling

3.     While cooling, in the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, pour water, yeast, and salt. Allow to sit while bubbles form

4.     Spoon out potato into a bowl and add 2 TB cultured butter, mixing in the butter and ensuring it is melted (can be done in a food processor too). You will need one cup of this mixture

5.     When yeast is ready, add egg and beat on medium to incorporate.

6.     Add mashed potato mixture and beat on high for one minute

7.     Reduce speed to medium and begin adding flour by the cup.

8.     When dough begins to form and does not stick to the sides of the bowl, turn mixer off and turn onto a floured work surface

9.     Knead by hand for 5 minutes until springy

10. Place in a well-oiled bowl (turning once to oil the top) and cover. Allow to proof in a warm room for 1 hour or doubled in size

11. When hour is done, punch down and cover again. Allow to rest for 40 minutes

12. While dough is resting, preheat oven to 410*

13. When dough is finished resting, turn onto a floured work surface and shape into a ball before placing into a dutch oven.

14. Slash your bread with a razor blade or a bread lame in a couple lines at an angle

15. Put lid on Dutch oven and bake for 36 minutes covered

16. Remove lid and bake for an additional 5 to 8 minutes, or until top is golden

17. Remove from oven and allow to cool before eating with even more of the cultured butter

Potato Bread with Cultured Butter

 

Giveaway Announcement!!

Remedy Quarterly

In the spirit of friends and giving, I am giving away a Sweet Tooth bundle from Remedy Quarterly, an independent food magazine that shares the stories behind recipes. There are two ways to enter: Either comment below with your favorite memory of "breaking bread" with loved ones and friends, or comment on this instagram photo and tag two friends with whom you would share your bundle prize. Winner will be announced on February 15 at 12:00 pm EST.

Tags baking, bread, friends, facture goods, dear henry owen, writin, writing, home, Pennsylvania
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A Keystone I Left Behind

February 3, 2016 Brett

The light never looked clearer, even when my glasses were off.  It reflected on cat dishes that line the staircase, the black stove and the match box cars from when my brother was three. They sit on a shelf with a picture I drew. I’m holding my mother’s hands. I’m holding her hands and we have dots for eyes. She’s kept it for twenty years and it hasn’t yellowed much around the edges.

The Backyard in Pennsylvania

The snow makes this world seem aloof, deaf, abandoned. It’s a ghost town where footprints of dogs, cats, and my parents circle around the backyard in scatterplot zigzags of snow boots and pawprints.  It’s a world I abandoned twice, once for college and once for a boy, and it hasn’t seemed to forgive me yet. But I fall asleep to rushing waters from the creekbed and I think of how many cigarette butts are still hidden under the river rock.

I moved back home to Pennsylvania, into my parents’ old farmhouse. The one that creaks its arthritic floorboards. The one that I lived in, the interim between Kentucky and my year in Italy. I moved back home to Pennsylvania, compelled by failure and the aborted dreams of a life based on already broken promises. To myself. To someone else. I moved back to Pennsylvania on Saturday, paid an extra $270 to move my flight three hours earlier. I couldn’t wait any longer. Not even a second. Not even the fifteen minutes that we taxied on the tarmac and I texted my dad, “Be waiting for me in Pittsburgh. There’s no turning back now.”

I took a dog with me, the small one I named Milo. I left two behind. I tried not to cry, but I did. But Milo is small, durable. He took a tranquilizer and slept the whole time. When he woke up in a new bed, a new house, he wagged his tail and kissed me. Milo: the dog I once described as a “smoke ring of huffs and puffs” whose permanency I questioned is now the anchor to a past life. Milo, in his small sweater, breathes heavy and deep sighs when I touch him. Being home makes me feel like a person, human. Being home means the snow is blinding but I’m keeping my eyes opened.

Pittsburgh

My dad picked me up, a Diet Coke in hand. He carried my luggage, two bags I packed with enough clothes to last me a lifetime. Both tied with bandanas: one navy, one mustard. I wore those bandanas when I would clean the house or work out. I don’t have that house anymore, my body aches from packing boxes. I’ve repurposed my life into snowflakes that melt and toast that burns from a temperamental toaster oven. I’m taking it slow. It’s only been four days.

I took January off, I tried to plant a heart full of succulents. Dehydrated and delicate. But I wasn’t able to succeed; instead, evergreens of self-doubt grew in its place. I had to leave the world behind. The west never symbolized opportunity for me.  Even Alcatraz had a coastline. But I rode in the passenger seat of my dad’s Nissan Pathfinder and I saw a world that didn’t forgive the guilty, and I never felt so innocent in my life.

 

 

And some updates!

  • I am now on snapchat! Find me @figandbleu for more selfies like the one below
    • Which is also where you can find me for Twitter and Instagram!
  • I also have a Facebook page to really get into the new millenium
  • I will be working with many amazing brands this upcoming year and I am so excited to tell you all! Check back around Valentine's Day for a post I have with Bob's Red Mill
  • I miss and love you all!
My face!


Tags winter, pennsylvania, me, social media
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Heaven in the Form of a Peppermint Pavlova

December 24, 2015 Brett
Peppermint Pavlova

Heaven in the form of Terminal One. St. Peter’s gate with a metal detector. I came prepared, I didn’t wear any shoes. No obols on my eyes. No eye contact in general. I keep my head down, my headphones on. I think I listened to a podcast. Ambient noise. Women talking about war or famine or how to make the best gravy in the world for her family of five. Ambient noise, it drowned out the kids circled around their mother. It drowned out the loudspeakers of any changes, the subsequent groans of tired passengers who didn’t want to move three gates over.

Heaven in the form of stretching, getting my luggage, seeing the way the blue velvet of morning frays into a grey threadbare against the trees. A layover in North Carolina for two hours. I bought a McDonald’s coffee and I think the last time I drank coffee from McDonald’s was when I moved to Texas. When I tried to run away from a tether that choked a little sometimes. I think it’s all still a little raw, a little real. The coffee smells like motor oil and my fingertips smell like cigarette smoke. It’s all a little sensorial; I threw the coffee away. I think I was living in a dream. It was only 5:30 in the morning when we hit the tarmac.

Peppermint Pavlova

Heaven in the form of silence. Solitude. Grey light and warm hand dryers in the mens room. The metronome of my breathing. It’s too early for kids to scream, too early for television sets. It’s too early for the world to start and I like it this way. I feel an otherness to it. My being here isn’t disrupting any order, any regimen, any existence. I threw the coffee way. I sat behind a column, charged my phone, rubbed my head until I couldn’t feel my pulse behind my eyes anymore. I sat alone and I liked it that way.

Heaven when I saw the yellow porchlights expand and grow into a thousand sunbursts along the rivers. How the shadow skipped across the fields like creek pebbles. How the jolt in the landing meant I was there. I was alive. I wasn’t dreaming. I was home. I met my dad at the baggage claim, he had a hot coffee waiting for me. He hugged me with one arm, he grabbed my luggage with the other. We didn’t say much on the way home. But I felt alive. I felt good. It all felt like home.

Peppermint Pavlova

I’ve tried to create home in so many different boys, in so many different houses, in so many different recipes. But nothing beats the windows down in my parents’ “new to them” SUV. Nothing beats the cats that watch me, owl-eyed, from the stairwell while I bring my bag up to my old room. I see my mom’s knitting in a basket by the fireplace. I see boxes of Diet Coke by the fridge. All the lines in my mother’s face are new, but the same floorboards creak reassuringly that I haven’t missed too much. I haven’t been gone that long. The world here hasn’t forgotten me just yet, my dad hasn’t forgotten me yet. No matter how prodigal his son has been.

Peppermint Pavlova

Simple, eye-catching, and stunning for a last-minute dessert for a holiday party. Makes one large 9-inch pavlova or three 3-inch pavlovas.

Peppermint Pavlova

Ingredients for Meringue:

  • 3 egg whites, cold
  •  1 cup sugar
  •  1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  •  ½ teaspoon peppermint extract
  • 1/2 teaspoon white vinegar
  • ½ teaspoon cream of tartar
  • 3 teaspoons red food coloring (gel preferred)

Directions for Meringue:

  1. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper and draw either a 9-inch or three 3-inch circles for your meringues.
  2. Preheat oven to 300*F
  3. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment, beat egg whites on medium-high until they become stiff and peaks form (may take a few minutes—don’t rush and continue at the foamy stage)
  4. Add sugar, a little at a time, with mixer still running. Peaks will continue to stiffen and egg whites will appear to have a glossier sheen
  5. Turn mixer down a speed or two. Add extracts, vinegar, and tartar. Beat for about ten seconds to incorporate.
  6. Meringue should be stiff and hold a peak on the whisk attachment
  7. In a piping bag, or a gallon-sized Ziploc bag, drip a thin line of red food coloring on three sides of the bag. Use the tip (or a corner if using the Ziploc) as your vertex.  These will provide the coloring for the peppermint swirl of the meringue base.
  8. Carefully spoon egg whites into bag (if using Ziploc, cut the tip of the corner), making sure not to disrupt the food coloring lines
  9. Work from the center of the circles and pipe outwards, raising the outer side slightly to create an edge. Be generous and use entire egg whites, but be slow and steady with piping, as you don’t want the red lines of coloring to begin to mix and your whole meringue turns a more homogenous pink instead of a mixed red and white striped appearance.
  10. Bake for one hour and continue on with making the whipped cream while meringue is baking.
  11. When finished, gently remove from oven. Cool for ten minutes before transferring to a wire rack to continue cooling.

Peppermint Pavlova

Ingredients for Whipped Cream:

  • ½ pint heavy whipping cream
  • ¼ cup confectioner’s sugar
  • 2 tablespoons vanilla extract 

Directions for Whipped Cream:

  1. In a mixing bowl or bowl of a stand mixer, beat heavy whipping cream on medium-high until thick and peaks begin to form.
  2. Add vanilla and sugar and continue to beat until thick, glossy, and holds a peak
Peppermint Pavlova

Assembly: Place meringue on plate, dump a generous amount of whipped cream on top, smoothly slightly. Then, top with crushed Ghiradelli’s peppermint bark (or a similar brand) and a few crushed candy canes for added texture and flavor. ow go enjoy your holidays!

Peppermint Pavlova

And while I did the 9-inch pavlova for the shoot, here are a couple shots of the three-inch pavlovas!

Peppermint Pavlova
Peppermint Pavlova
Tags christmas, baking, dessert, pavlova, meringue
2 Comments

Remembering Rome: Fruitcake Biscotti

December 20, 2015 Brett

This week marks five years since I rode a carousel of gilded horses somewhere in the middle of Rome. I had too much wine and the piazza was celebrating Christmas early. There were witches on strings sold for seven Euro and small keychains where the gold was peeling off. They were one Euro. I bought five for everyone in my family. Good enough. They’d appreciate the sentiment. A week later, I found all five in the trash. All the gold scratched off with fingernails and spare change.

The lights of the carousel swirled manically in my memory and we weren’t even going that fast. We all seemed so much happier than I think we really were. I think it was raining then. I think I had forgotten my coat at the bar we went to later. I think we bought roses from a beggar and gave them to a nun cleaning when we got back to the dormitory (it was attached to a monastery). I think that memory sticks with me now because I felt both so vertiginous seated on the carousel and so grounded to the holiday season. I felt like I was home in a country where I had to carry my student visa to get into any of my classes.

But it has been five years. Two of those years I didn’t celebrate Christmas. I haven’t done much of anything since I’ve come out to California. But I think about that day, that night, that moment I felt so connected to a world where I still had to nod eagerly and point to order a pastry.  Not too much eye contact, ask a stranger for directions.

I still feel like a foreigner sometimes, like a fraud. There’s a personal dissonance for me when I see strands of lights wrapped around palm trees. I feel like I’m betrayal some primal Appalachian roots being in the West during the holidays. It rains in California more than it snows. So I try to make the best of it, to recreate the moments when I felt most festive. When it felt wholesome and good and I felt worthy to enjoy Christmas.  I’ve felt like a necromancer, resurrecting all those memories back to the surface, those feelings of nostalgia, of carousel rides and white Christmases. This week I made hot chocolate the way my mother does—full of cream and chocolate chips melted in the microwave. I made the sugar cookies my brother likes for a potluck at work. And with the help of West Elm, I made fruitcake biscotti for that night in Rome. And while the memories keep fading away, while they aren’t as bright in my mind as they used to be, I keep trying. 

Fruitcake Biscotti

Fruitcake Biscotti, makes 12-16

Ingredients:

  •  1/2 cup flavorless oil 
  •  2 whole eggs, plus one yolk
  • 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
  • 1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon molasses
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 3 1/2 cup flour
  • 1 tablespoon baking powder
  • 2 tablespoons dried cranberries
  • 2 tablespoon dried oranges, diced
  • 2 tablespoon candied ginger, diced
  • 2 tablespoon heavy cream

·    

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 325.  Prepare two baking sheets with parchment paper
  2. In a measuring cup, measure out and whisk together oil, eggs, extracts, and molasses and set aside
  3. In a mixing bowl, sift together sugar, flour and baking powder
  4. Create a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and slowly pour wet mixture into well, mixing with a wooden spoon until it begins to come together
  5. Dump out onto a floured work surface and sprinkle dried fruit on top of dough. Work dough by hand, kneading five or six times until it has come together
  6. With a sharp knife, cut dough in half and shape each piece into an 8-inch log that is about 1 inch high. Place on parchment-lined baking sheet. Coat each log with a small amount of cream.
  7. Bake logs for 30 minutes, and take out of the oven.  Using a serrated knife, slice both logs into ½-inch segments
  8. Lay all slices evenly onto baking sheet with one cut side up.  Reduce oven to 300 and bake on each side for 6 minutes, until crisp
  9. Allow to cool before serving. 
  10. Buon appetito!

Fruitcake Biscotti
Fruitcake Biscotti


Tags biscotti, italy, christmas, west elm, collab, recipe, breakfast, dessert, baking
1 Comment

Traditions and Tahini Gingerbread Men (in collaboration with West Elm SD)

December 18, 2015 Brett

We are cookie makers and pie bakers. Stepsons and second marriages. We grew into these roles through years of calloused hands that held the hands of distracted women in the back rows of church. You can trace my family back to the 17th Century and they’ve always held the same thing close to heart: tradition for tradition’s sake, tradition to anchor themselves to some higher meaning than the myopic, the provincial. The utterly human qualities of my family that are somehow inescapable in our genome. My family is built on a tradition of never valuing what they have.

We are cookie makers and pie bakers. Bread bakers, too. I had a grandfather who drove trucks and brought home a crate of oranges that fell off a truck once. He said he liked being on the road, how it gave him an obligation to run away every week. He said he only came home to get his paychecks; he didn’t care much for his family then. My other grandfather was a farmer and described how to properly collect eggs one Christmas when I was rolling out some dough. He told me how to keep the hens from getting restless. Sometimes he played them music and sometimes he whistled to them. He said he wish he knew how to keep himself from getting restless, so he kept the radio on at night.

My uncles were called the Tanglewood Pretenders when they got it in their heads that they were descended from a lord in England. They were named so after the Baptist church on their grandfather’s farm. They told people in their town they were kings to some degree. They rode horses to help their own grandfather with his store in town and one fought in a war instead of being crowned. Now he’s married and works a desk job and the other hasn’t been seen for almost six years.

Tradition. How we all grew up in the same chain link lots as our parents before us. Tradition when the fruit salad falls out of the fridge and the turkey is a little too dry. Tradition when the cake is eaten before the meal. Tradition is when we fight over scorekeeping during card games. Tradition so engrained in us that we can never seem to escape it. And we want to escape so bad sometimes.

This will be the first time I’m going home in four years to celebrate Christmas. The first time I’ll wake up to presents again. The first time I’ll see a tree decorated with the papier-mâché angel on top. The first time in four years that I’ll appreciate the tradition for what it is, for who we are, for what it all means to come from a long line of men who put food on the table and women who wanted to run away from it all. There is comfort in that inescapable reality and I’m facing it head-on next week. I’m ready. I’m waiting.

I wish I knew how to keep myself from getting so restless.  So I’m trying to keep my home as enticing as possible. I’ve been baking cookies this week to keep busy, to keep distracted, to stay inside and not feel the need to run away. I created a hearth. I baked in that hearth. I made gingerbread cookies. Painted faces with crooked smiles from my shaky and unsure hand. I made a home this week, attempted to bring some holiday cheer while I think of all the traditions I didn’t value when I was younger.

I kept busy by making this cold bungalow in California feel like home.  I needed some help from West Elm. And while I’m still waiting for Christmas to get here, they’ve made the wait a little easier. I’m a little less restless. I’m a little more comforted by the traditions that I didn’t understand before.

Tahini Gingerbread Men (makes 36 cookies)

Ingredients:

  • 3 cups AP flour, sifted twice
  • 1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1/2 teaspoon cumin
  • 1/2 teaspoon allspice
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
  • Pinch of salt
  • Pinch of pepper
  • 6 tablespoons butter, softened 
  • 1/4 cup shortening, softened
  • 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, tightly packed
  • 2/3 cup molasses
  • 1/3 cup tahini
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 1 large egg + 1 yolk
  • 1/4 cup candied ginger, finely chopped
  • Royal Icing (I added a little orange blossom water to mine)

Directions:

  1. Sift together flour, soda, and all spices in a large bowl and set aside
  2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, mix butter, shortening, and sugar on medium-high until light and fully incorporated (will be lighter in color)
  3. Add molasses, tahini, egg and yolk, and vanilla to the butter-sugar mixture. Beat for a minute
  4. With motor running on low, gradually add dry ingredients in thirds. Allow one third to fully incorporate before adding the next. Dough should be a homogenous browned color
  5. Turn out onto a floured work station and shape into a round disc. Cut into quarters and shape into discs again. Wrap and refrigerate for half an hour
  6. While dough is chilling, make royal icing, preheat oven to 350*F, and prepare a couple baking sheets with parchment paper
  7. When dough is finished chilling, take one disc at a time from the fridge and unwrap. Roll out onto a floured work surface into a rectangle (helps with sizing and spacing) to be about 1/4". Cut into desired shape and place on parchment-lined sheets, about 1 inch apart from one another. If making gingerbread men, you may want to use a spatula. Repeat for remaining/desired dough
  8. Bake for 12 minutes or until browned and crisp around the edges. Allow to cool before decorating.


Tags baking, cookies, christmas, indiana, writing, recipe, dessert
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