A Lovely Love Note
Feb 23, 2006 | From the kitchen of Rose
KATHY COMMENT
Feedback: This seems like a reasonable time to drop a love-note to Rose. Years ago I used to pick up the Cake Bible in bookstores to read and re-read the story of your brother's wedding cake and the snowstorm of 1983. Eventually my husband gave me the book as a gift. The story about your discussion of "sifting" with your (eventual) husband was a gem. It is the stories, I guess, that make me love the book and so, you. The recipes, resource information and photos are the frosting on the cake, as it were. Thanks for all of it. Kathy Mc (devoted fan!)
ROSE REPLY
I'm going to put this up near my computer monitor for inspiration as I work on my new cake book. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Print
Post/Read Comments (12)
Digg
de.licio.us
Facebook
StumbleUpon
Anonymous
01/21/2008 08:23 PM
dana,i've never seen a 5 inch deep flan ring but if you go to a metal worker you can have one made!
beth, it CAN be done & successfully!
REPLY
Beth
01/20/2008 08:29 PM
I made my first "Rose" hearth bread today. It turned out quite well, even though I rushed things a bit in order to be able to use the oven to cook dinner. I decided to bake this today and freeze it in order to take it to the potluck on Saturday. I hope it won't suffer too much. Then, on Saturday I'll make my first Brinna's Pugliese, and take that along, too. There are so many breads to try: Struan may be next. I wrote on Friday how I ended up making Rose's sourdough without having the bread do most of the rising - I ran out of time. It was and is still great, esp. wonderful as toast. Thanks, Rose, for all the inspiration. Next year I'll be away from my home for 3 months, and will somehow just go back to making bread with a bowl, spoon, and loaf pan. It will be quite an adjustment after all of these artisan loaves, but at least it will still be bread!
Beth
REPLY
Dana B
01/14/2008 11:32 PM
Rose, thank you for my favorite book! I have been trying and trying to figure out one thing in your book. You suggested to get smooth sides on the cake to use a flan ring or a loose-bottom pan. Most wedding cakes are about 5" tall. I have never found a flan ring or loose bottom pan that is that height. Could you explain how this is done with the sizes that are currently available on the market, or how to use the flan ring that is a shorter size to do the whole cake height?
THANKS SO MUCH!
Yours,
Dana B.
REPLY
Xiuwen
06/08/2007 09:37 AM
Sorry, please ignore the above comment - I intended to post it on The Bread Bible's errata page.
REPLY
Xiuwen
06/08/2007 09:18 AM
I fell in love with the results of your Basic Hearth Bread recipe, and am now in the midst of making the Velvety Buckwheat Bread variation. My question is this: In the instructions for the sponge starter, you ask readers to replace the 1 1/2 cups water with 3/4 cup sour cream. I tried it out, but the results were far from the 'consistency of a thick batter'. It was more like soft pastry dough. Am I using the wrong type of sour cream, or is there a mistake somewhere?
REPLY
The other Rose
04/08/2006 03:10 PM
I wrote in a while ago looking for a recipe for the chewy brown bread of my childhood in England. Well, I was unable to find a similar recipe (even in the Balymaloe cookbook) recipe, so I've been working on coming up with one de novo. Starting with your Tyrolean Torpedo as a base recipe for proportions, after about 12 loaves, I think I've nailed it! It's chewy, but still very moist (extremely wet dough), and full of soft whole wheat kernels. Is there a way I can e-mail you the recipe as an attachment. I suspect you may like it...
REPLY
Rose Levy Beranbaum
02/25/2006 05:08 PM
dione, the full flavored version of the hearth bread can be made to suit your schedule. what i'm suggesting as the fullest flavor is as follows: after the sponge is made you let it sit 1 hour at room temp and then refrigerate overnight or as long as 24 hours. then mix the dough and let it rise til doubled, deflate the dough and refrigerate it for say 8 hours up to overnight (depending on when you started the whole process and your convenience) for the third rise. then remove it from the frig, let it sit for 1 hour at room temp, shape it, and let it rise again before baking.
REPLY
Rose Levy Beranbaum
02/25/2006 04:57 PM
rose--how rarely i encounter another one!--i appreciate what you wrote, especially bc it is such a hard call deciding whether to give all the details that will enable one to suceed vs making a recipe look deceptively simple!
re the bread you described: it is very remniscent of the bread i enjoyed at balymaloe in ireland this summer. i think they refer to it as their every day brown bread and it is in tim allen's delightful bread book. i bet the book is available through amazon.com but if not, darina has a website and i'm sure she could point you in the right direction.
REPLY
Rose Levy Beranbaum
02/25/2006 04:52 PM
i'm so very pleased to hear that you and your daughter have the pleasure of baking together using my recipes. not only is it a bonding experience, years ago my friend jeanne bauer told me that her mother would always save some of the xmas cookie dough for when she would visit at xmas time so that they could bake together, saying that when your hands are busy it's often easier to talk about things that may be difficult to say. i was so moved by that i wrote about it in my book "rose's chrismas cookies!"
REPLY
Daria
02/24/2006 09:01 PM
This is my first visit to this site though I have owned and used all of your books for years. Now my daughter, Leslie, who is also an avid baker, owns and uses your books several times a week as well...especially the Bread Bible. Les lives a couple hours away, in Boulder, CO., and during the week we plan our weekend time around what we will be baking together. We make our lists, shop together, and then bake, talk, and enjoy each other and you as well! Thank you for the time and caring you put into your work. It has certainly made a difference to us!
REPLY
Dione
02/24/2006 04:59 PM
I've made your recipe for Basic Hearth Bread several times but now I want to do the full flavor variation. After I let the sponge sit overnight in the fridge, do I mix the dough and then put it back in the fridge immediately to rise overnight? Then shape it and let it rise again before baking? Thanks!
REPLY
Rose (another one)
02/24/2006 12:33 PM
My mother bought me The Bread Bible when it first came out, but it stayed in my cupboard for a year before I started using it (the detail in your recipes was a bit overwhelming at first). I can't tell you how wonderful a book it is - just love every recipe I've tried (and I am probably 1/3 of the way through). Thyanks for such a remarkable resource.
My question: growing up in England, our local bakery made a light, crusty, chewy, brown hearth bread. Very rustic, had whole or cracked (but soft) wheat berries in it, not sweet at all.
Any idea if a recipe for something like this ests? I ordered some of the coase Irish-style flour from King Arthur, but I'm not sure where to go from here. Any suggestions?
REPLY
Weigh to Bake Revisited--The Perfect Scales
Lumpy Buttercream