Peak experiences -- Flour plus butter

Veggie galette -- just ready to bake.

One of the high points of cooking is the chance to combine butter and flour. Add a bit of water, maybe salt, maybe yeast -- all very simple, but with the right techniques amazing things result. With five-minutes, and the right temperatures, you get delicate, flaky pie crusts; with yeast and a lot of time and effort, croissants are born. In between is a rolled pastry crust that I discovered recently that takes advantage of techniques from both ends of the spectrum.

Published in Cook's Illustrated ( January-February 2012 issue), I also found it on-line in a slightly different version. In both places it was being used for a galette, an open-faced tart that can be filled and topped with veggies, or can go sweet with fruits. Custards (eggs and milk combinations) sometimes add to the fillings, binding the ingredients, and giving extra richness. The pastry starts with more of a pie crust approach, cutting in very cold chunks of butter to flour. It switches to a croissant or puff pastry approach by then chilling the dough, and rolling it out, then folding and rolling, folding and rolling, until it's a many-layered splendor. A final chilling and rolling gives a flaky puff pastry crust with a buttery croissant taste.

My filling used a mix of sauteed and roasted vegetables -- roasted cauliflower and roasted red peppers with sauteed onions and garlic. Fresh frozen peas from the Matanuska Valley, tossed in just before baking the galette, provided color and summer flavor. I experimented with the cheese filling/binder as well, using a half cup of ricotta, a quarter cup of parmesan, and a quarter cup of heavy whipping cream. Next time I'll make more cheese,using 3/4 or a full cup of ricotta, a little more parmesan, and enough more whipping cream to give it all a slightly flowing consistency.

Here's the pastry dough recipe, quoted from the Macheesmo site, with my notes added in brackets:

Ingredients (from Macheesmo website, http://www.macheesmo.com/2012/01/mushroom-and-leek-galette/)
Dough:
1 1/4 cups (6.25 ounces) all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (2.75 ounces) whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
10 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold and cubed
7 tablespoons ice water
1 teaspoon white vinegar

Making the dough:

Phase 1:

"Start the dough by mixing together your dry ingredients in a large bowl and then mix in the cubed butter with your fingers. You could use a food processor for this, but I like using my hands. Just get the butter into pea-sized pieces and then add your liquid.

Once your liquid is added, stir it together, but don’t over-work it. There’s no need to bring the dough completely together at this point. The word Cook's Illustrated used to describe the dough is 'saggy.' I prefer the term 'crumbly.' . . .

Scoop this crumbly dough out onto some plastic wrap, wrap it very tightly and refrigerate it for about an hour." [You can refrigerate it overnight too, if that's more convenient.]

Phase 2:

"Once your dough has rested for an hour in the fridge the flour will be better hydrated and it’ll be closer to one full piece when you unwrap it."

 [Mine wasn't even close to one full piece -- it was still a pile of crumbles. I followed the advice I'd read somewhere to add driblets of ice-cold water, continuing to mix until the dough sticks together just enough so that you can roll it. Altogether, I probably added another 1/4 cup - 1/2 cup of water. You may have to do this too - not because there's anything wrong with you or the recipe but because flours are very different in their gluten contents, and in their ability to absorb water. There's no way to tell this ahead of time, so just be comfortable with this particular batch of dough.]

"Roll it out on a well-floured board to form a long rectangle. It should be about 8×14 if you want to get specific, but I just eyeballed it [Macheesmo has photos, if you want to check out that web site]. Then fold the bottom 1/3 of the dough up to the center. . . . Then fold the top 1/3 down . . . . This basically creates three layers of dough.

Rotate the dough 90 degrees and do the whole rolling and folding process again. For those that aren’t math inclined, the second time you do this, you’ll have 9 layers of dough (3×3). The third and last time you do this, you’ll have 27 layers of dough.

This makes the final dough very flakey and awesome and is worth the 10 minutes or so it takes to do it. Your final dough will be really easy to work with. Before you roll it out though, wrap it in plastic again and stick in the fridge for another hour so it firms up."

Filling:

Now's a good time to make the filling, while waiting for the dough to chill the second time. You also could make the filling a day ahead if preferable. I t comes in two parts -- the veggies, and the cheese mixture.

Veggies: Cut a head of cauliflower into about one-inch pieces, or break it into that size florets. Evenly coat with two tablespoons full of olive oil; salt and pepper lightly. Roast them in a preheated 450 degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes, until browned and tender. While the cauliflower is roasting, saute two minced cloves of garlic and 1/4 cup minced onions or leeks (white parts, with a little of the green, as preferred) for four to five minutes in one tablespoon of olive oil. Combine the roasted cauliflower and sauteed garlic and leeks with one cup of fresh raw peas, or frozen peas. Add as much as one cup of other sauteed veggies and/or mushrooms. I used about three-quarters cup of roasted red peppers that I had previously frozen.

Cheese mixture: Mix together one cup ricotta cheese, one-quarter to one-half cup parmesan cheese, and about one-half to three-quarter cup of heavy cream. If you like, mix in a beaten egg.

Phase 3, Dough:

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Take your dough out of the fridge a few minutes before you want to roll it out [Cook's Illustrated suggested 15 to 20 minutes. I had guests and wasn't thinking -- I just took the cold dough out and started rolling. Tough work! But eventually I got the 14" circle, 1/8" thick I bought a silicone pastry mat with sizes marked on it -- it was a great purchase]. Then roll it into a large circle. Ideally, it would be about a 14 inch circle, but you can just eyeball it. I do recommend taking a knife and actually cutting a round shape out of the dough if you have any ends that are sticking out because it will make the folding easier [put the trimmings on the baking sheet and you'll end up with delicious little rich pieces of pastry to nibble on the next day -- if the rest of the people in the house haven't finished them off].

Transfer the dough to a [rimmed] baking sheet lined with parchment paper and brush the center with some olive oil."

Phase 4, Some assembly required:

Pile one-half of the filling on the dough, leaving about three inches all of the way around, for folding the dough up over the filling. Layer on about one-half of the cheese mixture, the remainder of the veggies, and top with the rest of the cheese mix. 

Next, the galette part -- folding up the dough around the edges to make an attractive edging that holds the filling in. Take an edge of the dough and fold it up over the filling. Move about three inches, pick up the edge, and overlap it on the earlier piece and the next bit of filling. Continue this way all around the galette. When you're finished, you'll have dough overlapping the filling all of the way around, and an open space about six inches in diameter in the center so that you can admire the filling. Beat an egg lightly and brush it over the turned-up edging.

Now, the baking -- turn the oven down to 375 degrees (if you don't, the galette will cook too quickly, and the parchment paper will overheat and burn). Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the filling is bubbling and the crust is nicely browned.

This will serve four as a main course, or six as a side. 

What else can you do with a galette?

Any sort of vegetable or meat filling that you might use for a savory pie can be adapted to a galette. Here's a link to a zucchini and asparagus galette. You can use sweet fillings, fruit fillings, custard fillings -- anything that will go into a pie crust will go into a free-form galette. The zucchini and asparagus recipe also uses a much simpler crust, more like a standard pie crust, without the puff pastry emphasis on chilling and layering the butter and flour.

A March evening in Alaska -- one right setting for a galette.

London Breads Around the Town

London had as many delicious breads as Barcelona, although the settings were not as elegantly Art Noveau (in Spain, called "Modernisme"). Here are a few:


These first three are from the Food Halls at Harrod's.



Foccacia at Harrod's.


Breads and pastries in the Harrod's Food Halls.


A cake in a pastry shop in the Covered Market in Oxford.


Giant gingerbread men, cookies and kitsch at the Oxford Covered Market.


Naturally yeasted breads at the Borough Market, Southwark, London.

Cheeses at the Borough Market, to go with your bread.


Pigeons near the Borough Market, eager for some bread crumbs.

Barcelona Bakeries

   Barcelona is noted for chocolate, the 1992 Summer Olympics (and for wanting to be a contender for the Winter Olympics a few years hence; it is building an indoor ski resort, harvesting the cold from the transport of liquified natural gas to make the snow), and Gaudi's buildings variously described as hallucinogenic, bizarre, and world treasures. It also has one of the world's great street markets all along Las Ramblas, and bakeries everywhere. Our November 2011 two weeks there had more than its fair share of rain, but plenty of chances to sample breads and pastries that could hold their own compared to  any place in Europe.

My favorites were whole wheat croissants topped with toasted sesame seeds sold from Rocamora Forns, a small shop across the narrow alley from the St. Josep Market. We often were there too late to buy any -- I wasn't the only one in Barcelona who loved them. Many of the regular croissants were finished off with a sweet glaze, not to my taste. The breads were delicious too, and came in a full range from seed-chocked health foods to delicate white breads with thin crackling brown crusts.

The "peasant bread," "pan de tomate," was made with a ciabatta-like white bread, sliced thin and sometimes toasted. First, it's rubbed with a cut clove of garlic, then with a halved tomato, so that some of the pulp is left on the rough surface, and finally drizzled with olive oil. With luck, and a good enough restaurant, the waiter brings the makings, prepares the first slice before you as an example, and then leaves you to do the rubbing and drizzling yourself for the remainder. You get to do all of the eating, too. It was one of the best things in any bar or cafe, and also one of the cheapest.

Here are photos:

Barcelona bakery.

Escriba pastry shop on Las Ramblas, famous for its decorated cakes.

A day's haul -- cookies, a min-chocolate croissant,a roll to eat with butter and cheese.

A fruit tart, glazed, and centered with cherries.

Barcelona bakery, with a variety of naturally yeasted breads.

Presentation is all: a carrot cake; brownies, up by the peppers and potatoes on the top shelf, croissants at the lower left in a flower pot. Pastry shop in L'Eixample.

Escriba pastries -- plain croissants, filled croissants, something like palmiers.

The pastry shop in the St. Josep Market off Las Ramblas, that is home to the whole wheat croissants.

The Art Noveau (Modernisme) Wheat Goddess outside Escriba.

A Yeast of One's Own

Natural yeast breads at Borough Market, London (photo by Teri Carns, 11/24/2011)

People love their natural yeast starters for baking bread. They name them, and narrate their histories in as much detail as their own family trees. They praise the rough crumb of the bread, the browned crust, and the sweet tang and bite of flavor made with their special starter. These mixes of flour, water, and the yeasts and bacteria that grow in them exemplify “terroir,” the French word for all of the qualities of a place embodied in the taste and character of a food or drink. And that helps to explain why they are so cherished.  They are living things that embody the qualities of the places in which they grow, and they impart that uniqueness to the breads made with them. But predictable as they might seem, like all families the yeasts and their bacteria have a streak of wildness in them. You can’t predict what nuances of flavors they might come up with and that wildness delights the tongue as well as the soul.

Natural yeast starters are among the most ancient of continually cultivated crops, or if you prefer, livestock, on earth. They combine both yeasts, cousins to mushrooms and the smallest of the fungi, and bacteria, which are more animal than plant. The yeasts that are best-known for both beer and bread are the Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which means sugar (saccharo-) fungus (myces);  Cerevisiae comes from Latin and means “of beer.” Hundreds of variants of the S. Cerevisiae cling to plants and float in the air everywhere, the variety depending on the food available for them in the area. Two other yeasts often found in natural starters are Candida milleri or Saccharomyces exiguus.

The Lactobacilli in natural yeast starters are a much more varied group and there are several of them in any given starter. The combinations of Lactobacilli in any given starter depend just as much on the area in which they live as do the yeast combinations. One of the rock stars of the bread world is Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis, the lead creature in the group of Lactobacilli responsible for the unique tang of San Francisco sourdough. 

A recent commentary on mushrooms -- the yeasts' cousins, wildness, and terroir described the thinking of well-known forager, Hank Shaw (blog, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook)  Beth Pilar quoted Mr. Shaw, “'a wild thing living by its own wits not controlled by land or man" will produce something incomparable to what is grown for predictability and consistency.” Although the yeasts and bacilli can be tamed and sold commercially, if they can thrive in the more natural environment of a starter rather than coming from a carefully controlled factory they will yield more complex and rewarding tastes.

Terroir, the taste of home

Natural yeast starters take advantage of the local water, wheat, yeast and bacteria to express terroir. It is defined as the  “‘sense of place,’ . . . embodied in certain characteristic qualities, the sum of the effects that the local environment has had on the production of the product,” is perfectly represented by San Francisco’s sourdough. Its particular taste depends on letting both a bacillus and a yeast that prefer the Bay Area’s environment grow together for under specific circumstances. Taken to another location, the original San Francisco sourdough inevitably begins to lose its former taste and take on the qualities of its new home and the wheat and water that nourish it.

Chefs who are considered the world’s finest rely on breads made with local yeast and wheat. An example is Magnus Nilsson, of Faviken, Sweden, who in a meal that also features caviar in dried ducks’ blood cups and hand-cured hams, brings out the most classic of sourdough breads. “‘Do you see that trough?’ he [Nilsson] asks, pointing to a worn wooden vessel leaning against the wall. ‘That was what my grandmother made bread in. And it’s what we made this bread in as well.’ The wood is so impregnated with yeast that Nilsson no longer adds it to the recipe. In other words, he is not just using his grandmother’s bowl—he is using her yeast as well” [Robb Report, October 2011].

Another commentator who dined at Faviken noted: “This was the same tray that once belonged to Magnus Nilsson’s grandmother and her grandmother before her; it still harbours traces of the same sourdough culture she used . . .  now over two hundred years old. The family connection does not end there: with this ancestral starter, flour from Järna near Stockholm and from an island in lake Storsjön processed together at a mill in Östersund, he uses his wife’s recipe to bake a pain au levain loaf that possessed a thin yet crunchy crust and dense, dark yet moist and fluffy crumb.”  

Bread and beer, the ancient gifts

Who first figured out that fermentation was such a good thing? The Egyptians usually get the credit for discovering that water and grains left to themselves for a few days begin to bubble and brew, creating both raised bread and beer. But some authorities (Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, History of Food) say that the Babylonians led the way. “Babylonian beer was cloudy; indeed, the brewers of the time liked to thicken it with flour and let the mixture stand before fermenting it a second time, thus producing something which could be described as edible beer or alternatively drinkable bread. It might sometimes be cooked, and produced a raised cake or loaf.” The author says that the Egyptians took the Babylonian discoveries and became famous, exporting beer to the Athenians; the Greeks took the beer on to Gaul and Spain, and from there it quickly spread to the rest of Europe.

The History of Food suggests near the end of the Middle Ages someone rediscovered the use of beer yeast to raise the bread. Marie Medici “liked it so much that it was called Pain a la Reine, after her.”  Until the 19th century, a starter was the only method of making yeast breads. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, the Germans and Dutch began to develop cultures of yeast to sell for bread baking. Breeding strains of the standard bread yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, to be consistent in flavor and easy to use and store meant that breads gradually lost their local uniqueness and became sweeter in taste. This was a good thing because if a starter went bad, it didn’t take a week to get another one going. It was easier to make a variety of breads, both at home and commercially, and to be sure that they would all have the same qualities.

Leeuwenhoek in Holland discovered the wild little creatures that made bread rise in his homemade microscopes in 1680, but it was Louis Pasteur in the mid-1800s who demonstrated their role in fermentation. Others refined the discoveries, and found that while yeast produced the carbon dioxide that stretched the gluten in wheat flour, and made the bread rise, it was a bacterium or several that gave sourdough bread many of its distinctive flavors.

Grow your own

Aficionados of natural yeast starters, passionate about their methods and discoveries, have shared a wealth of knowledge and technique through books and the Internet. A pathologist, Dr. Ed Wood, who took a fancy to sourdough set out to replicate the breads baked in conical ovens found in Egyptian tombs. He hypothesized that although the original yeasts and bacteria were not available, their direct descendants would still be floating around. And although no recipes were available, by experimentation he thought that he could recreate a dough and cooking techniques that would produce breads that the Pharaohs would recognize. 

Dr. Wood found local wheat and had it ground using techniques that were depicted in paintings and sculptures from four thousand years ago, blended it with Cairo water, and let it sit out on the balcony of his hotel at night to gather yeasts and bacteria. After a week of cultivating the starter, he experimented with mixing doughs and baking them in the clay ovens. Pleased with the results, he has written two books on the topic, World Sourdoughs from Antiquity, and Classic Sourdoughs.

Dr. Wood’s techniques are similar to those used by many other authorities on natural starters, but of course, each expert vigorously defends his or her way as the right way. Most agree on a few basic steps, but debate many of the points about when to feed the starter, what to feed it, how warm to keep it, and more.  The food chain in a natural starter begins with the food: wheat flour and water, mixed and left sitting in a bowl in a comfortably cool place (65 degrees is recommended, to give time for the richest tastes). The life in the starter, the yeasts and bacteria come from both the flour itself which is alive with microorganisms, including yeast and bacteria, and from those that are always floating through the air. Some land on the damp surface, and settle in along with those that rode in on the wheat. The yeasts eat the starches and sugars in the wheat, giving off alcohol and carbon dioxide. The Lactobacillus bacteria also eat the starches and sugars, but at a slower pace. They thrive in the acidic environment created by the yeasts, and add nuances to the tastes in the starter. A starter has to be given food (flour) and drink (water), or hibernated in a refrigerator or freezer because the yeasts and bacteria are living creatures using up the available nourishment. One blogger, Wardeh Harmon on passionatehomemaking.com offers an explanation:

"Regular flour feedings keep the organisms fed and in balance. But missing a feeding gives the bacteria a leg up. You see, the yeasts run out of food when the simple sugars in flour are all consumed, and they start dying off. But the bacteria still have food to eat. They eat the expired yeasts, along with the yeasts’ wastes, and continue to produce lactic acid, the main sour flavor. And so the starter gets more sour."

Start with wheat and water that are as close to home as possible. The wheat is more of a challenge, because it’s mostly grown in temperate climates that aren’t at extremes of heat or cold. It should be noted here that people make yeast ferments for starters from almost anything – rice, dandelions, any plant substance can be fermented, and will supply a yeast culture that will raise gluten-containing flours into breads. But this description focuses on wheat, so choose a wheat that was grown as near to your area as possible. Water can almost always be local, although it can be left to sit out to dissipate chlorine, or filtered or boiled to purify it.

Samuel Fromartz, writing about Tartine Bread, one of the most noteworthy new books on natural breads says:

"[Chad] Robertson's [author of Tartine Bread] main departure from standard practice comes with his natural leaven (I'm loathe to use the word sourdough, which is a misnomer, since this leaven is anything but sour). Unlike most leavens made with white flour, he uses 50% white and 50% whole wheat flour. Normally, that would lead to an explosion of activity, since the minerals and bran in whole wheat flour make for a very active starter that can be difficult to master.

But he tackles this problem by doing two things: first mixing a large amount of leaven - 400 grams total, or 2-3 cups - with just a tiny tablespoon of starter. Then he ferments it at a rather cool temperature to reduce its activity. The result is a mildly flavored leaven which when added to the dough inoculates the mix with copious amounts of yeast but has very mild acidic notes. Shining though is the sweetness of the wheat, which is probably why San Franciscans line up to get their hands on this bread. Plus the loaves just look gorgeous, judging from the pictures in the book by Eric Wolfinger."

Making a starter from scratch takes several days of feeding the yeasts and bacteria new flour and water daily (or oftener) to eat so that they can continue to grow and develop more complex flavors in the dough. But once the starter has matured, it can hibernate in the refrigerator for months at a time, getting warmed up and fed once a week, and then going back to its chilly den to rest. Feeding the yeasts new flour oftener, or adding sugars to the dough, makes a sweeter taste; letting the bacteria have more play gives more sourness. Peter Reinhart, in Crust and Crumb, describes this process in great detail, observing that creating a starter like this is “essential for attaining world-class results in many breads.” 

Natural yeast breads at Borough Market, London, (Photo by Teri Carns, 11/24/2011)

More detailed instructions are beyond the scope of this article. Two very different approaches are favored by Peter Reinhart and Chad Robertson. Peter Reinhart’s technique is described in his books; go to http://www.breadtopia.com/make-your-own-sourdough-starter/ for an Internet source for an adaptation. Here is a recipe for making Chad Robertson’s starter and a loaf of Tartine Bread. There are dozens more subtleties described in the care and feeding of natural starters by different writers, so choose one that works reliably for you, and enjoy experimenting. The cook is also an essential part of the terroir of the starter.

Foraging for a sourdough link

Lichens for dinner? Pine bark petit fours? Fireweed shoots and fiddlehead ferns? These appeared on the menu from Faviken Magasinet, as reported by FoodSnob blog, but could have been foraged from my backyard woods in the heart of Anchorage, Alaska which lies at nearly the same latitude as Jarpen, Sweden. Although no restaurant in Anchorage routinely serves lichens or fireweed shoots, many serve sourdough bread, also found at Magnus Nilsson's "superlocavore" Faviken Magasinet.

The sourdough appeared in a description of a May meal prepared by Mr. Nilsson. Many of the courses offered -- Wild Trouts Roe served in a Warm Crust of Dried Ducks Blood  for example, or pine bark petit fours for after dessert presented bits of nature that I don't usually think of as edible. The methods of preparation were equally unfamiliar. Shavings of Old Sow and Wild Goose featured thinly-shaved pork from a sow that had been hanging to dry for two years, and slices of goose that were aged for nine months. Many of the other ingredients saw their beginnings in previous years -- the "mature fermented mushroom juices from last year," and the duck egg and sour milk liquors. Some dishes, particularly the scallops, were still alive when cooked at the table before the waiting diners, or, like the fireweed, had been foraged earlier the same day.

Intriguingly, the sourdough bread was one of the few things served at the meal that would have been recognized and served without fanfare almost anywhere, especially Alaska. Made with 200-year-old sourdough from the chef's grandmother, flour from wheat grown nearby, and the grandmother's kneading trough, the end result was more about tradition than about emphasizing creative and minimalist presentations.  "Bröd och smör: Tove’s Bread and the Very Good Butter. As the bread was brought out, an old kneading trough was shown off. It was served with a story. This was the same tray that once belonged to Magnus Nilsson’s grandmother and her grandmother before her; it still harbours traces of the same sourdough culture she used – now over two hundred years old. The family connection does not end there: with this ancestral starter, flour from Järna near Stockholm and from an island in lake Storsjön processed together at a mill in Östersund, he uses his wife’s recipe to bake a pain au levain loaf that possessed a thin yet crunchy crust and dense, dark yet moist and fluffy crumb. It was simply excellent. The very good butter (its official name here), from close by Oviken and with a texture like melting cheddar, was superb too." [from the Food Snob blog review]

The degree of focus on terroir -- "the sum of the effects that the local environment has had" on the taste and qualities of a food, and attention to preparation of food found at Farviken Magasinet might seem limiting to most Alaskans, even those who work with the same principles of eating local foods. Kirsten Dixon, one of the state's better known chefs (she recently appeared on the Today show) and cookbook authors creates with foods found in Alaska, but happily combines raw seaweed pulled from the Tutka Bay beach with flax seed, sun-dried tomatoes, lemon juice and cayenne pepper into sea crackers that have their roots in half a dozen different climates.

From her perspective, Alaskan cuisine is based in the many cultures that have left their mark on Alaska -- the Alaskan Native peoples, the Russians, Asians, and the gold miners. She sees sourdough as representative of "hearty and determined pioneers." Swedish cuisine as re-imagined by Mr. Nilsson with his innovations at Farviken Magasinet draws on local ingredients and techniques that have been used for generations within that one country, including his grandmother's sourdough. And thus the sourdough bread that links the two cuisines is just as at home in the Alaskan repetoire as it is in Jarpen.

A week of wheatavoring

One can eat well as a wheatavore. We just spent a week in Seattle and Victoria, B.C. and we ate great wheat every day. From veggie arrabiata at Fiamo in Victoria and carta di musica atTutta Bella in Wallingford (Italian), to croissants and palmiers at LePanier (French) in Pike Street Market, to udon at Boom Noodles (Japanese) at University Village to naan and samosas at Pabla (Indian) in Renton, the wheat dishes came from around the world.

                                             Pappardelle's at Pike Street Market


We found wheat to take home as well, from Pappardelle's Pasta in Pike Street Market across from Sosio's produce stand. The company has a website, and sells online as well. We took Extreme Habanero back to Anchorage to try ourselves, and Calypso, a mix of lime, mango-peach, and red Southwestern chile lumache shells for a friend. We didn't have room in our carrry-ons for the dark chocolate linguini, so will have to order that.

Pappardelle's gives out recipes, both on the website, and with each package of pasta purchased. But it's easy to think of interesting twists. The recipes offered for the chocolate pastas focus on desserts, with ice cream and chocolate sauce and fresh raspberries. Hard to beat that, but how about trying the chocolate gemelli instead of a plain pasta in this cacao and zucchini absorbtion recipe from Chocolate and Zucchini blog? Or use the Extreme Habanero radiatore with that chocolate sauce and rich vanilla ice cream -- a livelier dessert than most.

Gilding the lily – pasta with bread crumbs

We walked to Barnes and Noble this evening, delighting in the long sunset brightening the sky. There are unnerving new open spaces even since our visit a couple of weeks ago – bookstores are meant to be lined with books, not minimalist in their displays of them. On many of the remaining shelves, bright-colored puzzles and board games replaced the books, not offering knowledge or new worlds but entertainment. I felt it critical to buy something papered and wordy as a small statement of my view of the real worth of bookstores, so picked up a “Lonely Planet” travel magazine and the October 2011 issue of “La Cucina Italiana.”

“La Cucina Italiana” features pasta this month, with many of the recipes relying on the eternal marriage of pasta and tomatoes using different shapes and methods of preparation:

∙ tagliolini all’uovo con passata fresca casalinga (fresh egg tagliolini with homemade tomato sauce)

∙ elich con salsa di san marzano e ortaggi aromatici (pasta with fresh plum tomato sauce)

∙ spaghetti con pomodori al forno (spaghetti with oven roasted tomatoes)

∙ mezzi paccheri con pomodorini ciliegia all marinara (mezzi paccheri with cherry tomoato marinara sauce)

∙ tortiglioni con salsa di pelati (tortiglioni with tomato sauce)

∙ linguine con polpa fresca in dadolata (lingune with fresh chopped tomatoes)

∙ linguine con san marzano e erbe (linguine with plum tomatoes and herbs)

 The pappa al pomodoro, Tuscan tomato and bread soup, sounded very much like the linguine con polpa fresca in dadolata and the linguine con san marzano e erbe except that it used bread instead of pasta. 

      But my favorite was spaghettoni con mollica e pomodoro – spaghetti with breadcrumbs and tomatoes – that managed to gild the lily by topping pasta and tomato sauce with bread crumbs roasted in olive oil. Besides the La Cucina Italiana recipe (in the magazine, but not on the website), dozens of recipes for pasta featuring breadcrumbs with other ingredients are available on the Internet, including  with sardines, from the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/dining/31minirex.html), or from the Food Network (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/sicilian-style-sardine-pasta-with-bread-crumbs-recipe/index.html); with mixed chopped olives (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/everyday-italian/spaghetti-with-olives-and-bread-crumbs-recipe/index.html); or with fried peppers and anchovies and tomatoes (http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Pasta-with-Fried-Peppers-and-Bread-Crumbs). That last is the one I will try next time I get a chance to cook. The idea of toasted bread crumbs on top of pasta is irresistible and the fried peppers must be the perfect finish.